Reimagining Nonprofit Praxis in Foster Care Through Lived Experience and Radical Hope

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18666/JNEL-2025-13298

Abstract

This autoethnographic editorial interrogates nonprofit praxis in U.S. child welfare through the author’s lived experience of repeated placements and aging out. It contends that benevolent narratives obscure cumulative, state-produced harms that pathologize difference, sever relationships, and reduce youth to deliverables. Bridging scholarship on social equity, administrative burden, and psychological safety with storytelling, the essay reframes foster care as a system of power in which nonprofits function as paradoxical actors—at times reproducing bureaucratic harm, at others serving as lifelines that restore agency, access, and belonging. Advancing radical hope as praxis, the author calls for trauma-responsive practice; leadership by people directly impacted by the system; and funding, metrics, and pedagogy aligned with healing, family preservation, and flourishing. Reimagining nonprofit praxis in foster care requires rejecting case processing as a proxy for success and building organizations that help young people not merely survive, but thrive. This editorial also curates accessible resources for readers working in contexts where equity content is restricted.

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Published

2026-04-07

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 3 (2025): Special Issue on Foster Care and Adoption

Section

Articles

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