Eric and Kara Gilmore, the founders of Immerse Arkansas, share with us that there’s a national crisis of teenagers aging out of the foster care system.
Approximately 15,000 teens ‘age out’ and exit foster care each year, often at age 18, without a support system, education, or essential life skills, which can lead to negative outcomes like homelessness and even incarceration.
The creation of Immerse Arkansas was directly inspired by the founders' experience with a young woman who aged out of the system with only a bag of clothes and a one-way bus ticket. Non-profit Immerse Arkansas was designed to combat the isolation these youths face by immersing them in a supportive community, loving relationships, often including the church.
Eric Gilmore explains, “It's a really challenging thing to be a teenager in foster care. And then let's say that you don't find that forever family or you're unable to go back to your original family. Young people will get to the point where they exit the foster care system simply because of their age. And a lot of times it's when they turn 18. And unfortunately, they're often unprepared. They're not ready for what's ahead. Unfortunately, a lot of times they haven't finished high school. Sometimes they haven't worked before. They don't have transportation. They don't have a driver's license. A lot of times they don't have anybody in their life who isn't paid to be in their life. So, relationally, they're just isolated. So, it's a big challenge and you just see it lead to really challenging outcomes around homelessness and addiction or incarceration. So, it's a really hard way to step into adulthood for these young people.”
Kara Gilmore helps us understand how a child can end up in the foster care system. “So, a child is brought into foster care when there's been evidence of abuse or neglect in the home that they're currently in. So, they'll stay in a foster placement until they can find a permanent home or place for the child. So, the goal would be reunification with a family member or adoption. And then also, as Eric had just already talked about, is that sometimes those aren't options for every young person. So, that's where you get the term aging out of foster care. That's where that comes from. Once you turn 18, you're an adult. And so, if you haven't been reunited with a family member and you haven't been adopted, that is your time to exit the system.”
(Richard) I understand you got a directive from God at one point - and it was pointing you toward what you're doing now. Can you share what that was, what God told you?
“That really came after an event that really opened our eyes to the challenges that youth aging out of foster care were facing. So, Kara had been a caseworker for Children and Family Services, and we kept learning about the needs of teens in foster care. And so, eventually we signed up to be house parents at a group home. And immediately we got there late one night, and the next day we were caring for teens. And one of the young people that really grabbed our hearts, her name was Megan. Megan came into foster care at the age of 12. So, before that, she had experienced all kinds of horrible abuse and neglect. And then between the ages of 12 and 18, she was in about 50 different foster care placements in Arkansas! So, she bounced all over the state, different foster homes, group homes, facilities.
And we did our best to keep up with her. We'd go visit her at family sessions. She'd come stay with us every now and then, but it was clear she was struggling in the system. Fast-forward, it's the day before her 18th birthday, and she says, ‘Hey, you guys come wish me off tomorrow at the Greyhound bus stop.’ And we really didn't understand what she was saying, or what to expect, but we showed up and her caseworker pulls up. This is at the Greyhound bus stop. Megan has one bag of clothes, one night's worth of her bipolar medications, and a one-way bus pass to go back to some family members that she hadn't seen since she came into foster care. And this really just was just shocking to us. It was alarming in a lot of ways. It's almost like we couldn't believe our eyes in terms of what was happening, but that's the moment and the time that God really used to grab our hearts, grab our attention, I think to let us see what he was seeing.
And so, in that, the questions flowing through our minds were, "Man, where is the church in this?," almost in a self-righteous way, followed by this uncomfortable voice of like [God], "Hey, you are the church." And this question of, why isn't somebody doing something followed by that voice of, ‘Why don't you do something?’ And so, we just couldn't pretend that we didn't see what we saw. And with those questions, we started talking with others and they said, yeah, this is not necessarily an isolated incident. So about 200 young people age out every year in Arkansas, like you said, about 15,000 nationally, they all do it in different ways, different experiences, but it's a really challenging thing for a young person to enter adulthood like that. So, as we shared this story, more and more folks said that they wanted to help, and really that's how immerse came to be,” explains Eric.
Eric & Kara share their hearts and faith in our complete podcast interview just below:
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