Vanessa Diffenbaugh Quotes

At Camellia Network, we believe if we can create a way of identifying every young person aging out of foster care, defining what they need, and giving a community of supporters a simple and clear way to fulfill those needs, we can produce radically improved outcomes for youth.

I founded Camellia Network with my dear friend Isis Dallis Keigwin. The mission of our organization is to create a national network that connects every youth aging out of foster care to the critical resources, opportunities, and support they need to thrive in adulthood.

I was 16 when I entered the foster system, and know firsthand the statistics for 'aging out.'

Though politics is by nature divisive, surely we all can agree that foster children need stability, safety, education, opportunity - and love.

I wanted to write with emotional honesty and tell a story people could connect with. And I wanted people to know how the foster system in America fails children; and how, at 18, they fall through the cracks. Then we can all work together and give support.

Faced with stress, too many people feel they have nowhere to turn to, that they don't have access to the kind of friendships or communities where they can easily and openly share their problems and worries.

My husband and I have been involved with foster youth since our early 20s. Right out of college and not yet married, we spent weekends mentoring a family of young girls.

I have a family member who was in the foster system briefly, and so I've kind of grown up knowing about it myself.

I've never had very high regard for therapists. I owe my health, my mental survival, to my friends and loved ones.

Many children in the foster care system are often in the midst of a family challenge.

The Heart Gallery premise is very simple. It is a special traveling exhibit of photographs featuring Los Angeles foster youth, designed to highlight the need to find loving adoptive families for waiting children.

As an adoptive parent myself of foster children, I have seen firsthand the glaring problems of the system currently facing this Nation.

We are willing to spend the least amount of money to keep a kid at home, more to put him in a foster home, and the most to institutionalize him.

I was a ward of the state, initially, and then in the foster care system for quite some time, even though I did live part-time with my aunt in Brooklyn.

They shut down kids' homes, for a number of reasons, and I was part of that transition into foster care. That's all well and good if it's populated by people who feel their work is paid decently and supported.

Be in no doubt: we are completely committed to make sure we support young people with the additional resources that are necessary to give them the alternatives to the offer that's put forward by the terrible criminals on the streets.

I have a lot of people in my life who support me.

I think there's a need for more oversight by social workers, because there are a lot of foster parents who are just collecting checks. They need to look closely into the backgrounds of the people whose hands you're putting the kids into and then continue to monitor them.

Something we learned from foster kids after sitting down with them to hear their stories is that so many of them are invested in social justice, and they're all invested in making the system better for the kids behind them.

Some people don't necessarily have family helping them or anyone, even friends, that care enough to help.

As an 18-year-old, I would have needed an agent or a family to push me in the right direction. I would have liked that.

A great foster parent can end the cycle of abuse and neglect, and impact not just the foster child's life, but also that child's future children's lives, the lives of people who would otherwise be victims of a lost foster child's crimes, and help end human trafficking and homelessness.

I started up this program here in Bermuda, working with what society deems under-privileged kids, at-risk kids.

My wife and I are foster parents.

The main reason I started The Katie Piper Foundation was because I had treatment abroad that I wanted other burns survivors in this country to have access to.