“Foster care is a trauma event. Period.”

Jermaine Reed is determined to make foster care a more effective system -- especially for black youth. He calls foster care an “incubator” for the criminal justice system. Jermaine is the Executive Director of Fresh Start Family Services, Wisconsin’s first private placement agency run by an African American. He also hosts Fresh Start Today, a radio program on WNOV dedicated to educating the black community about child welfare.

He believes that bias in the system and a lack of culturally appropriate care causes further damage to a group of kids already walking around with too much trauma. Jermaine worries that without proper treatment, black children in the foster system are at greater risk of picking up a gun.

Jermaine Reed, founder of Fresh Start Family Services, is on a mission to break the “foster care to prison pipeline.”

Photo courtesy of Jermaine Reed’s Facebook page.