In recognition of National Foster Care Month, this episode centers the experiences, challenges and needs of foster youth across Los Angeles County.

Leading this conversation is Dr. La Shona Jenkins, Director of Foster Youth Services at the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE), and Dr. Kanika White, LACOE’s Chief of Human Resources, for a powerful conversation that brings both systems-level insight and lived experience to the table. Dr. White shares her personal journey of growing up as a foster youth and reflects on how that experience shaped her leadership and her work supporting foster youth as a former school principal.

Together, they discuss what the foster youth population looks like in Los Angeles County today, the educational challenges foster youth often face, including school stability and transitions, and the resilience and strengths that too often go unrecognized. They also highlight how LACOE partners with school districts and community agencies to support our foster youth, areas where meaningful progress has been made and where systems still fall short.

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About Let Me Add to That: An Education Podcast

Nearly 2 million students and 80 school districts make up the Los Angeles County education system – as you can imagine, the experiences, the success and the challenges vary from district to district as it does student to student. The Let Me Add to That Podcast, presented by the Los Angeles Office of Education will feature education experts including superintendents, administrators, teachers and students themselves who will highlight various hot topics that the county faces on a day-to-day basis. Let Me Add to That is titled and modeled after the inclusion of different perspectives, experiences and challenges. New episodes will be released on the first Wednesday of every month.

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