(WXYZ) — Michigan has thousands of children in foster care, ranking 18th nationally.
But data alone does not tell the story.
Watch Carolyn's full piece on the foster care system in the video player below:
In fact, many kids are being plucked from their hometowns and relocated to facilities that act as orphanages in other countries or states.
"My parents were on drugs, so there was a CPS worker who would just come out, and sadly, I tried to commit suicide when I was younger," said Alexia Roberts, a foster youth advocate.
She went from the hospital to treatment to foster care.
"They explained to me I could not go back to my parents," said Roberts.
Raymond Miller was taken at age 6 and placed in five different homes.
As he got older, he would run away, not to the streets but to family. But the state would snatch him up again. One time, he was driven far away from his hometown of Detroit.
"It was one in Saginaw. I didn't even know where I was ... I was totally lost," said Miller.
Two months would pass before he would learn his location.
"They make you have no communication with nobody besides the clinical team there," he said.
Approximately 10,000 kids in Michigan are in foster care. Saba Gebrai is a foster care advocate and director of the Park West Foundation.
Gebrai says the state now sees the damage when kids are sent away from familiar schools, neighborhoods, and family. But residential placement can be big business.
"Residential placement easily, 200 to 1,000 dollars," she said, and that's per day.
Cornelius Frederick, 16, was placed in foster care when his mom died and his dad went to prison. He would receive a residential placement away from Detroit and would lose his life in 2020 after being restrained for 10 minutes.
I spoke to his mother’s sister, Tenia Goshay, who says he was better off in a nearby group home.
"We would go visit him all the time there, but eventually, I don’t know why they moved him all the way to Kalamazoo, but they did and it was hard for us to get to him," said Goshay.
The facility was shuttered after his death, and two lawsuits were settled.
"There are a lot of documents that were published when Cornelius Frederick was killed at one of the facilities in Kalamazoo, and that establishment had made a profit of 200-million," said Gebrai.
Goshay's message to lawmakers and to others in the foster care system: "Try to keep the children in their community as best you can."
But who decides when a kid is plucked from the metro Detroit area and taken out of state?
"So the workers are definitely making decisions, but these programs are also made available when kids have already exhausted where they can go," said Gebrai.
Gebrai says the education is also sub-par, and their records are often lost.
Shania Norfleet was sent away from Detroit to Muskegon.
I asked if she felt like they kept her in the proper grade, or if she fell behind.
"I do feel like they kept most youth behind, just based on their schooling, it’s not set up to help us as we got older and aged out of the foster care system," said Norfleet.
In 2024, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed into law that kids in foster care must receive a real education that complements the Michigan Merit Curriculum.
"There's a federal law that says school records for foster kids have to be transferred immediately, but Michigan has not taken steps to address that issue," said Gebrai.
Norfleet says she knew foster kids who could not graduate because their transcripts were lost. She took action on her own, tracking down her transcripts.
Miller and Norfleet beat the odds and are now in college.
"I’m not 100% satisfied because the kids are still in that same boat of changing schools, because everyone is not coming together as the village," said Gebrai.
Roberts, now 21 with three children of her own, has been accepted to Wayne State University, and she has testified in front of lawmakers as a foster care advocate.
"You should not have to worry about what you’re going to eat, and how you’re going to wash your clothes, and how you’re going to get to school and things like that...that should not be your worry, you should be able to be a child and have fun," said Roberts.
