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Finding the Good in Others: Kaydra’s Journey from Foster Care to Caregiver

Finding the Good in Others: Kaydra’s Journey from Foster Care to Caregiver

Kaydra’s experiences with foster care forced her to grow up quickly, taking on the responsibility of caring for her siblings while navigating her own challenges. Today, she is a well-traveled college graduate and accomplished foster care advocate, offering the care and compassion she deserved during her time in the system. Her journey is among countless foster care success stories, proving that resilience and a kind heart can turn hardship into hope for anyone overcoming adversity.

It’s hard to imagine the challenges Kaydra faced growing up when you meet her today. 

She is surrounded by a loving family, including her mother and two brothers, and her life is deeply rooted in purpose and advocacy. As a proud graduate, she discovered her passion for public speaking during her college years. It was during this time that she first encountered Foster Progress and Foster Love. Since then, she has been actively involved with Foster Love’s Family Fellowship program and played a key role in creating Traverse with Foster Progress—a program designed to empower foster youth to create their own foster care success stories through travel and cultural connection

Kaydra is an accomplished nurse in Illinois, currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Nursing Education. She reflects, “I love giving back to people. I’ve always loved giving back to people.” This passion is the driving force behind her work, both as a dedicated caregiver and a committed advocate.

But it’s important to remember that foster care success stories like Kaydra’s don’t begin in such positive places. Her journey began with years of instability, and huge challenges that no child should ever have to face alone. Kaydra’s story sheds light on the struggles within the foster care system, but it also shows how foster care success stories can emerge despite hardship, fueled by the power of compassion and resilience of the human spirit.

The Weight of Caregiving at Only 16

foster care success stories
Kaydra with Family Fellowship Scholars

Kaydra entered foster care as a teenager. When she and her siblings entered the system, her older brothers and sisters were sent to live with their biological mother and the younger ones were placed in different foster homes. Only she and one of her little brothers remained together.

“Because they knew I was the one who could care for him, they placed us together in our first foster home, and my life essentially became managing his chronic illness,” she recalls.

Their foster family didn’t know how to handle caring for a child with Type 1 Diabetes, so the responsibility of managing her younger brother’s care fell entirely on 16-year-old Kaydra. 

“I did everything—measured his carbs, gave him insulin, took care of him. Everything.”

It was Kaydra’s incredible thoroughness that first sparked an interest in Nursing. 

During a checkup with her brother, a doctor was so impressed with her care, he offered her an internship on the spot. “Of course, at the time, as a 16-year-old who was just taken from her family,” Kaydra resolves, “I did not accept that offer, but that’s what essentially started turning the wheels.” 

While this would inspire Kaydra’s career in nursing later, this caretaking led her down a long and difficult road during her teenage years. 

When the System Fails Those It’s Meant to Protect

Kaydra often acted as her siblings’ caseworker, advocate, and unofficial parent. She navigated the system on their behalf, attended their court dates, fought for better placements, and worked tirelessly to ensure their well-being. 

“[My siblings] saw me as the person who showed up when everything went wrong,” she explains. 

For children in foster care, frequent moves are extremely common, averaging at least 2-3 moves for each child per year, and her four younger siblings were no exception, often uprooted and shuffled between homes. 

Each time, Kaydra found herself stepping in to manage the chaos. “They always saw me as the one to call when everything fell apart,” Kaydra says. “Every time something went wrong with them, I ended up taking over…It got to the point where, every time a caseworker would switch hands with another caseworker, they’d say, ‘Just go to Kaydra. She knows everything.'”

This lack of oversight continued for many years of Kaydra’s time in the foster care system. 

Parentification – Taking on Adult Roles as a Child

The heavy responsibility Kaydra bore is a prime example of parentification—a phenomenon where children are prematurely forced to take on the roles of caregivers due to the failures of the adults around them. She had no choice but to step in for her younger siblings, sacrificing her childhood in the process.

Social Workers Who Hurt More Than Help

Managing her brother’s chronic illness wasn’t the only burden on Kaydra’s shoulders. She navigated many more challenges in a system that consistently failed to provide her with the most basic support. Caseworkers frequently came and went, all making empty promises and ultimately neglecting their duties. 

One of Kaydra’s first social workers left a lasting impression for all the wrong reasons.”My little sisters were being abused…and I had a place for them to go. All the caseworker had to do was say the word…and she literally, verbatim, said, ‘I could do that, but I’m not going to, because I don’t want to.’ ” 

This shocking lack of compassion continued for so long that Kaydra was forced to bypass the system to advocate for her siblings. She explains, “It got to a point where I ended up having to outsource to their director of that DCFS office to get anything done.”

After one of her sisters had run away, another caseworker coldly asked the rest of her siblings, ‘So, when do you think Kaydra is going to run away next?’ “

This pattern of callous disregard wore down any faith Kaydra had left in the system. It became harder and harder for her to trust in the support when it finally arrived. 

A Caseworker Who Was Up For the Challenge

After an endless rotation of caseworkers, none of whom were able to help, one woman finally broke the mold. Determined to prove she was different, this caseworker made Kaydra a promise–and for the first time, kept it. 

“I literally told her, ‘You’re going to be here for two weeks…I’m never gonna see you again. So what, really, what’s the point? You know, what am I doing here? I’m wasting my time.’ ” 

Rather than being discouraged by Kaydra’s skepticism, the caseworker made it her goal to make a difference. 

“She took that as a challenge,” Kaydra said. “She was like, ‘Okay, Kaydra, I’ll stay.’ ” 

True to her word, the caseworker stayed and showed Kaydra that she really cared. For the first time, Kaydra felt like someone in the system actually wanted to help her. She was dedicated to making a real difference. This caseworker even went as far as to move her practice to remain on Kaydra and her sisters’ case, requesting to be their permanent caseworker.

“She was always, at every court date, every time I needed something done, she was on it, and she was just there,” Kaydra says.

This caseworker’s unwavering dedication marked a pivotal turning point for Kaydra, giving her a new sense of hope after the system had so often failed her.

A New Chapter in Learning and Life

With stability at last, Kaydra was finally able to focus on her education, something that she had been unable to do before. Kaydra didn’t attend school until the age of sixteen, so she dedicated countless hours in high school, working mornings, lunch, and after school to catch up.

Kaydra and Mario (Foster Love Academic Services Manager) at the 2024 Foster Love Gala

An English teacher from her high school played a pivotal role in her academic progress, helping her bridge the gaps in her education. But this teacher’s commitment to Kaydra didn’t stop with school. 

When faced with the prospect of being separated from her younger sister and placed in a group home, her teacher made a life-changing offer. 

“We were about to be moved again, and they didn’t have any placement for us,” Kaydra remembers. “I was 17 at the time, and I didn’t have a place to live. My younger sister also didn’t have a place. So I was going to be sent to a group home and she was going to be sent to a group home separately, one for younger girls… And I had really connected with this English teacher…she helped teach me because I would go into her classroom before school, during lunch, and after school to kind of like, learn what I didn’t know .”

Kaydra had just been blown off by a choir director who had dismissed her efforts to audition for a higher choir. “He said ‘You’re leaving anyway,’ ” she recalls, “I went [into her classroom] crying and I was like, ‘I don’t have a place to live, and I’m trying to do school.’ “

Her teacher, seeing her distress, pulled her aside. “[I] would love to have you and your sister as part of our family,” she said, offering them both a lifeline. Kaydra’s sister eventually went to stay with a social worker, but Kaydra was taken in by her teacher to become part of her family.

Kaydra continues, “She’s my adopted mom, and I’m still in her life today. Her two boys, who were two and four when I joined the family, are like my little brothers—they are my little brothers. I’ve always been there for them because they were so young when I came into the family. And that’s how I found my family.”

This gesture of love and care not only gave Kaydra a place to belong but also provided the foundation for her to thrive, teaching her the true meaning of family and stability.

Kaydra now has a brighter future full of love and freedom

Since her time studying abroad in Spain during college, Kaydra discovered a sense of freedom she had never experienced before. Reflecting on her time there, she shares:

“Spain was actually really, really cool. It was one of the first times in my life that I was able to choose a home and stay there on my own account. And for a lot of people, that seems kind of weird, but for somebody like me, where homes were always chosen for me, and I had to hop from place to place, and nothing was ever certain, you know, this was my first shot at independence.”

Since then, she has been all over Europe, with plans to travel even more in the future. She continues traveling with Traverse, helping others mentor foster youth through their last two years of high school and their first two years of college as well as offering travel opportunities for their students. 

“We traveled to Guatemala, and we stayed for a week in an orphanage. We helped to make the food, we helped with the gardening, we helped to teach the kids. It was really, really impactful,” she recalls a trip she took with students.  

Her public speaking takes her all over the place as well, alternating between her shifts as a nurse, and attending events like galas and CASA events. 

“It never feels like work,” she says, “even the nursing aspect of it, there are hard days, but it never feels like work.”

Working with Foster Love

Kaydra’s work with Foster Love allows her to share her experiences and advocate for change in the foster care system. As a former foster youth, she says she appreciates what Foster Love does for the community.

She recalls a critical moment in college when the Rapid Response Program helped cover her rent, preventing homelessness. For Kaydra, it’s the holistic care Foster Love offers that makes it stand out from other organizations. “It’s not just about getting you to school—it’s asking, ‘How’s your mental health? How can we help in other areas?’ That’s what makes Foster Love so special.”

Working with the Foster Love team

Kaydra reflects on how small, thoughtful gestures can have a huge impact. She remembers receiving socks and old coats for Christmas as a child. But when she saw a bag of bubbles at a Foster Love facility, she knew it was different. “Growing up, I loved bubbles… but no one ever gave me bubbles.” For her, something as simple as bubbles can bring immense joy to kids who have so little.

She wholeheartedly supports Foster Love’s mission, especially its emphasis on allowing foster kids to simply be kids: “Their Disney program brings siblings together for magical experiences while providing duffle bags full of toys and necessities. That’s what truly sets Foster Love apart.”

Kaydra finds strength in treating everyone as their own individual

Although she had a difficult childhood, Kaydra chooses to view life in a positive light. 

“I learned really fast that playing the blame game is not usually conducive…If my parents abused me, I cannot put that on other people who have done nothing wrong…If f I go through my life treating everybody like they’re going to hurt me because one other person hurt me, that’s not really fair to them or myself, and I’ll miss out on so many amazing people and experiences.”

“You choose your family,” she says. And by choosing to dedicate her life to helping others, she has created a future filled with hope, compassion, and purpose. 

How you can help create foster care success stories like Kaydra’s

“A lot of people think that how they can give back to a foster youth is by being a foster parent. That’s it. And that’s not it. ” Kaydra says. “There are so many ways you can give back to the foster community, you can touch so many kids’s lives without having to physically be their parent.” 

Sometimes all it takes is the desire to know more and do better, and having the curiosity to learn more about foster care. “I think [that curiosity] can be transcribed into other realms of life as well, that really drives people.” She adds that your curiosity can drive you to continue to help others.

In the end, she says, “All we can do is our best…do the next right thing…I live by it now. That’s all you can control. It’s the next right thing, and those little things build.”

Kaydra inspires us to do more good in this world. Foster care success stories like hers show that success is possible for everyone, and giving back is not only fulfilling but makes the world a better place to live in. 

You can help create even more foster care success stories and make a difference by volunteering your time or donating resources that will help foster youth on their journey. Or, as Kaydra said, just be curious. Get to know more about the foster care system here: https://fosterlove.com/category/foster-system-news/

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