What is a story? 

• A story is about things that happened. It's also about how you changed and others around you changed because of the things that happened.  

• A story may be about what you have learned because of what happened to you. 

• Our stories tell our joys, our sadness, our fears, our worries and our passions. 

Our intention:  

• Our intention is to publish a wide range of diverse, complex and multi-layered stories of your truth 

• We want to amplify the multiple voices of child welfare and simultaneously acknowledge your unique experience of this system. 

• We believe that we can learn from your individual and our collective experiences 

• We intend to use this learning to advocate for better systems. 

We invite stories from: 

• Parents, siblings, extended family members who have experienced the child welfare system.

• People who spent time in the foster care system.

• Foster parents, kinship and or kith families.

• Anyone who has been employed by a child welfare agency in any capacity, including administrators and policy-makers involved in the child welfare service delivery.

Why our many stories matter:  

• Stories help us to form connections with each other and make sense out of our individual and collective experiences.

• Voices of people with lived expertise of child welfare systems are often ignored; sometimes they are actively silenced or erased. Sometimes the story has been distorted. So, we share stories to set the record straight. Researchers (many of whom have not experienced the child welfare system) or child welfare representatives may have spoken for you and about you.  Sometimes they just don’t get it, or worse, they’ve re-told your story in ways that don’t make sense to you. 

• Stories can inspire action. They can humanize and empower.  They can repair broken dignity.