This Spring, Manatee Community Foundation partnered with the Gamma Xi Boule to welcome Southeast High School junior Jasmine McDaniel as a Foster Care Research Assistant. She met with key community leaders in the foster care and child welfare community and compiled a guide to help donors and others learn more about the agencies supporting children and families in the system.

If you could share one thing about what you learned in this internship with others, what would it be?

All the organizations helping the Circuit 12 foster system are working hard to make sure all the children in the system are safe and taken care of. However, there is a shortage of foster families and due to the quarantine, many organizations have had to change the way they go about fundraising and raising awareness for their cause.

What was most surprising about this work to you?

The most surprising thing that I found is just how big our foster care system is and just how many people are working to help protect the children in Manatee, Sarasota, and DeSoto counties.

If you could make an improvement to the foster care system, what would it be?

If I could improve anything it would have to be increasing the number of foster families in our foster care system. A lot is being done to help this with many organizations working on raising awareness and recruiting new foster families because they believe that a child should be with a caring family opposed to being sent to a group home.

Tell us about your career aspirations.

I aspire to be a child psychologist. I have always been fascinated by how our minds work and I enjoy working with children, so this seemed like a good career to go into. By becoming a child psychologist, would allow me to help children affected by traumatic experiences.

We are so grateful for the time Jasmine spent with us.

Download the Foster Care Guide she created.