The Kinship Initiative

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Kinship: The Community’s Immunity

The Future of Child and Community Wellbeing.

A healing-centered, community-powered framework to replace foster care and reimagine mental health care for everyone.

The Truth In Numbers

We are already aware of the problem

The numbers prove it

More than 400,00 children are in the United States foster care system at any given time.

–Promise Love Foundation, Foster Care Statistics

Approximately 20% of former foster youth experience homelessness within the first four years after aging out of care.

–Allied Family Services

Up to 80% of children in foster care have significant mental health challenges, compared to approximately 18-22% of the general population.

-California Department of Social Services

Over half of youth in foster care experience an arrest, conviction, or overnight stay in a correctional facility by the age of 17.

-Juvenile Law Center

Among children in foster care for two years or longer, 59% experienced three or more placements.

-Casey Family Programs

Less than 3% of foster youth earn a college degree by the age of 25.

-CASA For Children

Raise Your Voice For Kinship

Together, we’re shifting from managing trauma to healing it. From disconnecting to belonging. From waiting for change to being the change.

You’ve seen the crisis. You’ve lived it, passed by it, worried about it. It’s not just someone else’s problem anymore.

This is the disaster And Kinship is the response

What is Kinship

Not about relatives—about accountability, care, and community.

Not a patch for a broken system—a replacement for a failed model.

Built from what already exists—tools, training, science.

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Who This Serves

The Kinship Initiative is designed to support and connect people across all walks of life. Whether you’re nurturing young minds, guiding others through crisis, or simply striving to build a more compassionate world, this initiative is for you.

  • Children – Encouraging empathy and belonging from a young age
  • Families – Strengthening connections and shared values at home
  • Educators – Equipping leaders to foster inclusive, caring environments
  • First Responders – Supporting those who serve in moments of urgency and need
  • Faith Communities – Bridging compassion with action through shared purpose
  • Everyday People – Empowering all of us to live with empathy and respect
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Why It Matters

This isn’t crisis waiting to happen. This is the disaster. No one is coming to fix it-unless we do. 80% of foster youth develop PTSD-more than combat war veterans. Most never receive mental health care. Nearly half will experience homelessness, addiction, or incarceration within two years of aging out of the system.

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How You Can Help

Kinship isn’t a one-person mission. It’s a movement and movements need people.

You can:

Get informed.

Advocate for legislation.

Share the message.

Sign up for updates.

Become part of the community care framework.

Everyone can do something. This is for everyone.

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A System in Name Only

We act like we have a mental health system—but we don’t. What we have is a fragmented maze of siloed providers, overwhelmed clinics, and inconsistent care—all built on bureaucracy, not healing. There’s no standard. No continuity. People start over again and again, telling their stories to new providers every time someone relocates, retires, or changes networks. The trauma that brought them to care is often amplified by the care itself. We don’t treat trauma with compassion—we treat it with paperwork and waitlists. But it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s time to build something different—intentional, relational, regulated, and rooted in healing.

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Trauma Body Impact

Trauma doesn’t just hurt—it rewires everything.

Trauma doesn’t live in the past. It lives in the body. It changes how we think, how we feel, how we respond. That’s why true healing takes more than time—it takes understanding every part of what trauma touches. Kinship is built around this truth. Our layered, trauma-informed care doesn’t just treat symptoms. It treats the whole person.

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How Trauma Affects the Body – And Why We Must Treat All of It

Trauma is not just emotional. It is physical, neurological, biological, hormonal, and even generational.

Without layered, trauma-informed therapy, we are treating surface wounds while the deeper injuries go unhealed. Here’s how trauma affects each major part of the body—and why our approach must be whole-person, whole-body healing.

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Cindi’s Story: The Heart Behind The Kinship Movement

From trauma to transformation. From survival to solution. This isn’t just her story-it’s a call to change the system that failed her.

“You don’t need a degree or a title to make a difference. You just need to care-and to do something.” -Cindi

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A Kinship Story: Imagine this

Through powerful “imagine if…” narratives, we explore a future where every child is seen, supported, and given the chance to thrive.

A Kinship Story: Imagine this brings you into the lives we’re fighting for-through stories that stir hope, reveal injustice, and show the future we can create together. These aren’t just dreams. They’re glimpses of what every child should have- and what’s within reach if we act now.

Imagine if a child in crisis wasn’t treated like a case file. Imagine if instead of judgment, the family was met with compassion-by neighbors who recognized the signs of trauma, by community trained to respond, and by a Kinship hub that stepped in early.

Imagine if someone had noticed the warning signs. And instead of calling law enforcement, they called the Kinship Hub. Imagine if every neighborhood had a Kinship Hub-the heart of the community-ready to respond before the cracks became crises.

Imagine if removal was rare- and if it had to happen, it was done gently. By someone trained in trauma informed care, who saw the child as human first. The child would enter a Kinship care home, not a stranger’s couch or on an office chair. No trash bags. No revolving door. Just a safe bed, in a stable home, with a family committed for life.

Imagine if that child had a HOPE coordinator. Not a burned-out caseworker juggling 40+ files. A real advocate. A guide. Someone who knew their story, stayed connected, and coordinated every layer of care-mental health, school, medical, emotional-for the whole family, not just the child.

Imagine if they were surrounded by a Kinship circle. Therapists. Mentors. Peer supports. Every service vetted, trauma-informed, and consistent. Not a referral and a wish-but real follow-through. A team that stays in contact and speaks to each other regularly, like an extended family. A circle that knows their history, sees their struggle, and never stops showing up.

Imagine if there was a Kinship hub at the heart of every community. A place people trust, like they trust their local hospital. A place where emotional and mental well-being are treated with the same urgency and respect as physical health. A place where being human isn’t something you’re punished for- it’s something you’re supported through.

Imagine if the support never ended. No “aging out”. No falling through the cracks. Just lifelong care that wraps around when you’re five, and is still there when you’re thirty-five and going through a hard season.

Imagine if this framework existed in every town, every city, every neighborhood. Not as a program for the privileged. Not as a pilot for the lucky. But as the new standard for how we care for each other.

Imagine…A seven year old girl sits on the front steps of her apartment as a law enforcement car pulls away. Her mother is screaming behind her. She’s not sure why. She only knows something went wrong. In the old system, she would’ve gone into a stranger’s home-seperated from her siblings, her school, and her world. But this time, something different happens. A soft-spoken woman approaches, kneels behind her, and says, “You’re safe. You’re not alone. We’re going to take care of you and your family-and we’re staying with you.”

She and her siblings are placed in a Kinship care home two blocks away. Her HOPE coordinator meets with her every week. She sees a therapist at the local Kinship hub who helps her understand what happened-without shame. Her mother? She’s not punished-shes supported. Offered food, stability, trauma informed therapy, and parental help.

Over the next year, things change. The little girl heals, and so does her siblings. Her mom stabilizes. Her family finds its way back together-with the Kinship circle still around them. That’s not a fantasy. That’s Kinship. That’s what happens when a community decides to heal instead of hide.

At The Circus: A Memoir Series

Coming Soon.

More than a memoir

At the Circus pulls back the curtain on a childhood shaped by chaos, resilience, and survival. Each book dives deeper into the systems that failed her, the people who shaped her, and the moments that nearly broke her—but didn’t.

Told in a braided narrative rooted in lived experience, this five-part series unpacks what it means to grow up without a safety net—and what it takes to build one from scratch.

This is not just a life story. It’s a lens into foster care, mental illness, and the raw reality of healing.

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Join The Movement

This isn’t a one-person mission. It’s a movement.

Sign up for the Kinship newsletter to stay informed, email your legislators, and share the message to grow the movement. Every action counts-join us in making a lasting impact.

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