On a given day, 400,000 children in the U.S. are living in foster care, with more than 100,000 children awaiting permanent homes. And while about a one-third of American adults consider fostering, most don’t—deterred by a broken system that offers little support to parents. Enter Susan Silverman and Second Nurture. Working with communities, mostly synagogues, she transforms fostering from an experience of isolation to one of belonging and shared responsibility, making the journey less daunting and creating ways for everyone to help. Her philosophy: “All of our children are all of our children.” Ashoka’s Danielle Goldstone caught up with Susan to learn more.
Danielle Goldstone: Let’s start at the beginning. How did you start thinking of this idea?
Susan Silverman: It was really about two emotional pulls. One was fostering—I grew up in a family that fostered, so it was up close and personal as I was a foster sister. The other was being a rabbi and understanding the power of community. What helped crystallize this was an experience in Israel around 2015 when the government was trying to deport asylum seekers. Some colleagues and I created a program asking fellow Israelis to sign up to hide families in their homes. Within a week, we had 2,000 families volunteering. It showed me the power of a household, the power of family and community. I realized that this could work for any vulnerable population, melding those two things—family and community. If you think about family values in an expansive and loving way, it’s really powerful.
Goldstone: So you started to apply this insight to foster care.
Silverman: Yes. Initially, we planned to partner with synagogues and churches to encourage them to foster, but that was a big lift. But we discovered people coming to our cohort meetings were mostly already fostering. We learned there’s a 30-50% drop-off rate of foster families within a year, so we shifted focus. Now we support existing foster families so they can succeed with help from their Second Nurture “host community.” Since returning to in-person meetings after Covid, none of our families has stopped fostering.
Goldstone: Remarkable. What kind of support do you offer?
Silverman: Practical support. We reach out to the community members saying, “We need a tutor, we need this or that,” and people volunteer. So many people want to support foster kids and families, but it feels overwhelming and amorphous. But when there’s something specific they can do, they step up.
Goldstone: Why are faith communities good partners?
Silverman: They’re already gathering with a sense of purpose and values. No community is like, “Oh, screw the orphan.” Most, at least in theory, want to help. Our partners, mostly synagogues, are already engaged with issues like homelessness, mass incarceration, drug abuse, human trafficking—and the foster experience is the number one feeder into all those problems. If you went to a soup kitchen and asked how many people were raised in foster care to any extent, maybe 80% would raise their hands. That’s because when you “age out” of foster care at 18 or 21 with no safety net, no one to say “come live at home and save money,” you’re vulnerable. If foster families are successful—whether through adoption or helping biological families get back on their feet—children don’t age out without support.
Goldstone: Are all your host communities faith communities?
Silverman: Currently, yes. But we’re just starting to work with an LGBTQ center. Right now, they’re referring people our way, but my hope is they’ll become a host community formally because they have many foster and adoptive families and a strong centralized community.
Goldstone: What needs to be in place in a host community for Second Nurture to agree to partner?
Silverman: Well, our approach has evolved. Initially, we approached synagogues saying, “We will provide lots of stuff.” Now we are more open source, more an AA kind of model where they have to find the people from the community to run the program. Our most successful community started from its members reaching out to me saying, “Hey, we heard about Second Nurture. We want to do it in our synagogue.”
Goldstone: How does your approach affect foster kids and parents and host communities?
Silverman: For the kids, the most magical part is being in a space where they don’t have to explain their lives—why they’re new to a family or why they have other parents they visit. They just get to be themselves.
As for foster families, Second Nurture creates a sense of belonging. They’re often the only foster family in their neighborhood or school. Research by iFoster found that a sense of belonging is crucial. During our community meetings, practical solutions emerge organically. When someone mentions a challenge, others often have solutions. We’ve also partnered with Change Reaction for one-time financial assistance—like when someone is about to lose their car insurance. We partner with A Home Within for free therapy for foster kids. We bring in volunteer massage therapists, organize parents’ nights out with childcare and restaurant gift certificates. The nice thing is parents choose to go to dinner together.
For faith communities, participating is empowering and builds multigenerational connections. You’ll see 80-year-old women and teenagers playing with the kids. One rabbi said it’s his favorite part of being a rabbi, that Sunday every month when the cohort gets together. For Jewish communities facing rising antisemitism, there’s been an unintended positive outcome—a beautiful merging of worlds.
Goldstone: And your bigger goal is integrating into the foster care system as a whole, no? Tell us more.
Silverman: That’s right. If this approach could be taken up by the system overall, that would be best—making it less siloed and incorporating communities throughout the U.S. We work closely with child services in LA and Boston. I’d love to grow this outward, put ourselves out of business if the system could take it over with the same love and support.
Goldstone: Susan, your work draws out the power of relationships, which feels so hard in our digital lives. How do you create strong relationships?
Silverman: I wish we could take credit for that but it just happens. It’s not a genius idea, right? It’s really very basic. These communities exist. People need community, peanut butter and chocolate, it just works. So, I feel like our job is to convene, to support. You know, a teenager was just doing his school volunteer hours with us and then planned to be done when one of the foster kids said, “I’ll see you next month, right?” He said, “Yeah, you’ll see me next month,” and he hasn’t stopped volunteering. Because there’s a little kid saying to him, I like you and I want to see you next time. The teen responded to that love, that connection. In a sense, there’s only one thing we need to do. We need to respond.
Susan Silverman, an Ashoka Fellow, is the founder of Second Nurture that operates in the U.S. and Israel.
Danielle Goldstone, an Ashoka interviewer, is the founder of innoFaith.
This interview was condensed for length and clarity by Ashoka.
Read the full article here
