“Nothing about us, without us,” is a rallying cry that originated in the disability rights movement, but it has been widely adopted by young people who have been in foster care. The stakes are high. “One person frames your life before a court, and a couple of people decide where you live,” says Sixto Cancel about his experience with the system. Cancel remembers just how little say he had in his own future and how that made him feel. “Your life goes on a whole [unwanted] trajectory because someone didn’t ask you [what you needed],” Cancel says.
Read the full article, appearing in Stanford Social Innovation Review’s Summer 2021 edition, here.