Stephen Montoya
Maddison Cardona is your typical young twenty-something college student with a four-month-old baby, her own car, and for all intents and purposes, a family support system. From the outside, Cardona seems to be the absolute embodiment of the girl next door. But a few years ago, Cardona’s life was anything but perfect.
Cardona’s backstory is a bit blurry since she was brought up in the foster care system. Cardona says she's had to move more times than she can count, which left her feeling hollow and unstable. But Cardona wasn’t the only one in her family to experience the trials of foster care. She verified that she has seven siblings that were all split up once they were all placed into foster care. Her blurry recollections can be justified since she was only 16 months old when she was first placed into the ‘system’ as she calls it.
“All my childhood was back-in-forth between houses and families and then in 2006 I was adopted and when I hit 13, I was put back in the system again,” she says. “This was tough to handle because when they would set out the trash bags, I knew what was going to happen; I knew I was going to be leaving soon.” Abuse was the norm at many of the homes Cardona passed through over the years, she says. “I was neglected, sexually abused, and never felt safe.”
For Cardona, this continued until she aged out of the foster care system at age 18. By this point in her life, Cardona had a spotty education at best and did not possess the skills or understanding of the world someone her age in a stable environment would receive. “There were some places I lived we didn’t even go to school because we just weren’t in a placement long enough, we were just being bounced,” she says.
According to the National Center for Housing and Child Welfare, 1 in 4 of America’s foster youth are homeless within four years of leaving foster care. Less than 3% of former foster youth graduate with bachelor’s degrees. Other statistics indicate that 1 out of 2 kids that age out of the system will develop a substance abuse dependency. Furthermore, 7 out of 10 girls who age out of the foster care system will become pregnant before the age of 21.
This is where Angela Lippens, CEO and co-founder of Unfaulted, a local nonprofit that helps foster young women who age out of foster care find resources, enters the story.
“I felt there was a need to initially help after it was brought to my attention about the number of youth that age out of foster care and their challenges,” she says while sitting at her kitchen table, which doubles as her nonprofit’s headquarters. “After I spent time looking into programming and statics for these youth, I was heartbroken.”
Soon after this epiphany, Lippens says she met a young woman who had been through the foster care system, who had experienced every single one of the statistics she had read about.
“She had been trafficked, she had been abused by her biological family and her foster family and she had been connected with [a street gang],” Lippens says. “She had just been through it in every way shape and form.”
Stephen Montoya
According to Lippens, this woman lived in 45 different homes while in the foster care system. “A move is hard by itself,” she says. “But a move where you don’t know who you are about to move in with and you’re moving all of your things is pretty daunting.”
Lippens says, this woman never had a chance to learn her teacher’s name or make friends with classmates. Instead, she would just prepare herself for the next move, which was an inevitability at that time.
This scenario was very close to how Cardona says she felt when she was in the system. “I felt uneasy and messy because I knew I was missing out on something important,” Cardona explains. “I hated bouncing around, like every home I went to I just felt like I wasn’t wanted,”
Cardona said she felt so frustrated by her living situation or lack thereof, that she began practicing self-harm as a coping mechanism. “That really was the only thing I could take with me wherever I ended up,” she says.
Lippens says meeting these young women put a face to all of her research, which made the severity of this issue hit home. “It just became very evident that something had to be done,” Lippens says. “I just felt righteous anger toward the situation and wanted to help.”
So, in the vein of taking the bull by the horns, Lippens says she began Unfaulted to be a clothing line that would employ former foster youth and give them a safe place to work and grow.
“The more time I spent with this young woman, and built that relationship, I found out she wasn’t really looking for a job, she just needed healthy relationships in her life,” Lippens says. “This is when I realized we needed to make Unfaulted a non-profit that focuses on relationships and providing a sense of permanency after foster care.”
With her non-profit goals clear, Lippens says she and Unfaulted Co-founder Carin Bird, wanted to create a program that is set up to help with just that — emotional support.
“This could mean just offering like a jacket to a young woman who is cold,” Lippens says. “All the way up to helping a young woman go through the adoption process even though they are 24.”
Other resources Unfaulted has offered include, helping young women get their driver’s license, government I.D., setting up a bank account, or birth certificate to name a few.
“You can’t get a job if you don’t have those things and so if we can set down with a young woman, even if it just for a couple of hours, and help them fill out some forms, that gives them a huge step in the right direction,” Lippens says.
Now, Unfaulted has an established three-year program that has evolved after working with over 34 young women that have aged out of foster care. During this time, young women can receive one-on-one counseling, group therapy, life skill goals in a conference form, and contact with a mentor. “With this, we offer a community of people who aren’t going anywhere,” Lippens says. “We are focused on a permanent relationship for these girls.”
Unfaulted does six conferences a year, which are based on different life skills and needs that almost every participant in the program has run into at one time or another. The breakdown goes as thus:
- Relationship’s
- Health and Wellness (physical, medical, and mental care)
- Hobbies and interests
- Finances (budgeting)
- College and education
- Career
“Yes, these girls can go to [college] for free but doing the paperwork to be accepted can be overwhelming,” Lippens says. “So, we offer these conferences to help address these reoccurring issues.”
What Lippens is referring to, is the Texas fee and waiver program for youth who experienced foster care. According to this program’s waiver form, many current and former foster youth are eligible to have tuition and fees waived at Texas-funded vocational schools, colleges, or universities, including dual credit courses, if they meet certain criteria.
The stipulation for anyone who qualifies for this program is that they have to enroll in a program-designated school by age 25. Once a foster youth has enrolled in a course in a Texas institution before this age, they are entitled to this benefit at any covered school, no matter how old they are, as long as this state law is still in effect.
But this is just one aspect of many that Lippens and Bird help nurture for these young women that never really had a stable learning environment. “These women never had a chance to learn the basics and many times they are too ashamed to admit it or ask for help,” Lippens says.
For example, Cardona says she didn’t even know where to put the gas in her first car after she bought it. “It’s embarrassing because I didn’t even know which buttons to push on the gas pump or how to look it up,” she says. “I didn’t know how to do laundry or how much soap to put in, or which soap to put in, I just thought I should already know this stuff.”
The most important aspect of being a member of this program, Cardona says, is learning to love yourself. “Thanks to Angela, I learned to respect myself enough to not allow people to walk all over me or hurt me or put their hands on me or take advantage,” she says.
Stephen Montoya
Now, Cardona has a forever family to lean on but it’s not just from the love and support she has received from Unfaulted. Cardona was officially adopted by a family connected to this non-profit at 24. “It happened on a pamper night while we were doing mannies and petties, when Maddison met her forever mom,” Lippens says.
At first, the two women met for coffee, making sure to take it slow and feel their way around this fragile situation. “I was hesitant at first because usually when people were nice to me it’s because they wanted something, where they were going to take advantage, so I didn’t put my guard down at first,” Cardona says. “But something kept on telling me to just do it and see how it goes, and now I have a family that cares for me.”
To top that off, Cardona helps Unfaulted whenever she can by telling her story and offering support to other young women who have been through the same tumultuous upbringing she had to endure.
“Whatever you are going through you can get through it, there are going to be better days,” Cardona says.
For more information on Unfaulted click here.
