As a Napa High School freshman, Mitch Findley, along with his two sisters, was plucked out of their father’s troubled home and put into foster care. At first the siblings lived together with relatives, but later Findley was placed alone with strangers.
“At the time it was tough,” Findley said. “For four years of my life I had opinions and ideas about my life, but I had no control. It depended on what the judge thought or the case worker thought.”
Now 24, Findley is well into a career to reform the foster care system that once controlled his life.
He was a founding member of Voice Our Independent Choices for Emancipation Support (VOICES), the 6-year-old, Napa-based nonprofit that works to help emancipated foster youth find housing, jobs and continue their education. Today he is one of the program’s assistant directors, helping to launch a satellite operation in San Jose.
Alissa Gentille, VOICES program director, remembers Findley’s early years in the program. “He was an active participant ... but was also really shy when he first started. He was not big into public speaking and still figuring out who he was and what he wanted to be in the world,” she said.
“Within a very short period of time, he stepped up to be a leader,” Gentille said. Soon he was charged with going out into the community to represent the program and train other foster leaders, she said.
His foster care background could easily have been something to be ashamed of, Gentille said. Instead, “he turned it into something positive.”
When he was about to “age out” of foster care upon turning 18, Findley said he didn’t know what he wanted from life. His first impulse was to “run as far away from the system as I could.”
Napa had never had a program like VOICES to help emancipated foster youth make the passage into adulthood, Findley said. “Luckily for us, we were able to ride this wave of foster care momentum that was building right when we were opening up.
“The San Francisco Chronicle had just done these editorial pieces on the foster care system, and that was starting to open people’s eyes to what was happening within the state, or within the country,” he said.
Around 65 percent of California’s aged-out youth leave foster care without knowing where they are going to live, he said. Much of the foster youth population will struggle with homelessness and unemployment. Women who have been a part of the foster care system are also more likely to have children of their own before age 21.
Only 3 percent go to college and only 1 percent ever get a degree, Findley said. “One in a hundred — that’s pretty bad,” he said.
Findley is defying those odds. He attended Napa Valley College and is working toward a bachelor’s degree in sociology at San Francisco State University.
“One thing I always got from my dad was how he stressed the importance of education,” Findley said. “Once I got really involved with VOICES, I knew that this is what I wanted to do with my life. That being the case, I needed to have a degree in order for people to take me seriously and in order to learn more.”
Findley’s role within VOICES has changed over the years. He has accepted positions that require more accountability, including leadership on a trip to New York.
“I was trustworthy enough to be sent to New York and rep it for VOICES, and people here at the center weren’t worried. I was the person that other people were relying on,” he said proudly.
While studying at San Francisco State and working for VOICES in San Jose, Findley also trains future foster youth leaders for the National Foster Youth Action Network.
“That’s what I liked about working in VOICES and doing this kind of stuff,” he said. “We weren’t happy with the way things were, so we did something to change it. The work with the Action Network is really along those same lines. We support people in changing the system for the better and making outcomes better for them and people that are coming up behind them.”
Unlike most kids who have families that can support them in crises well into adulthood, foster youths don’t have that advantage, Findley said. Come age 18, they’re generally on their own.
A foster child is a ward of the state, “and the state is a horrible parent,” he said. “It can’t provide you with love like a parent can.”
