“I was adopted out when I was 12 but I did face a lot of the negative outcomes that foster youth usually do face without the proper support,” said Phillips. I just don’t know if they really trusted the kids as much but when we told our case worker that abuse was happening, the case worker told the woman and then she abused us more.”Įventually she was adopted by a family that had been taking care of her older siblings. “I never went to therapy, and they just wanted to put me on meds. She said her foster parent “was also extremely abusive and unfortunately this was a time… this was 1998, there they didn’t really address kid's trauma,” said Phillips. This can be in the form of a relative or family friend. Throughout her time in the foster-care system, Phillips moved between group homes and two kinship placements where she says she was physically abused.Īccording to Phillips, a kinship placement occurs when a child is assigned to a caregiver who has had prior relationships with the child’s family.
She said she entered the foster care system when she was three years old, along with three of her siblings, due to physical abuse and neglect in their home. Phillips was one of six children in her parents' household. Phillips says working with Onward Hope has allowed her to ensure that children in the foster care system are placed in nurturing, safe and loving environments, something she didn’t always have growing up. “In this field, there are a lot of different agencies and we are one of the smaller ones in comparison, but the focus has always been on quality foster parents, quality service for young people, and Jackie is committed to that.” Being the person she needed when she was in foster care I am more of a visionary, the big picture person and she is definitely more the executer,” said Peterson.
Guided by their own experience in the foster care system, Phillips and her sister Eshawn Peterson, who is the founder of Onward Hope, started the organization in March 2014. Onward Hope is an organization contracted with the Arizona Department of Child Safety to provide home recruitment, study, supervision, parent aide, and foster parent pre-service training to families across Arizona looking to foster or adopt “at-risk youth.” “I think not a lot of people who work within this community has that reach.”
She is connected to each and every kid that enters foster care in a way that I think is magical,” said Takeya Mills, a foster and adoptive parent with Onward Hope. “She really is connected and I don’t mean network wise. As the co-founder of Onward Hope, the highlight of Jackie Phillips' day is connecting with children in the care of foster and adoptive parents across Maricopa County.
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