Helping Foster Youth Find a Successful Path Forward

Every kid who travels a successful path has someone supporting them. Someone who always answers the phone, who’s cheering them on, who’s there to say: I believe in you. That someone is usually a family member, but for the 400-plus young people Pivotal serves each year across Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, it isn’t. For a child in foster care, the state takes on the role of parent. But this version of parenting is limited and comes with an expiration date. Age out of care, and services vanish at the very moment the state determines adulthood has begun. 

Pivotal’s answer is to provide what is often missing: one consistent, trained, compassionate coach with no expiration date. Free, one-on-one, youth-led coaching is at the heart of Pivotal’s mission, starting as early as eighth grade through the completion of a bachelor’s degree or post-secondary credential. Services are available to any young person who spent time in foster care after age 13 in either county, whether they left care last week or a decade ago. 

“The relationships we build with scholars are founded on trust, acceptance, and investment in the individual,” says Adam Ramirez, Pivotal’s Post-Secondary Coach Supervisor.

Coaches and scholars build individualized goal plans and coaches are trained in a vast array of service navigation: housing referrals, childcare, and a new mental health care fund that finds and pays for therapy and diagnostic assessments after scholars lose county services. “Before we can talk about academics and career, we often have to remove other barriers,” says Savonna Stender-Bondesson, Pivotal’s Vice President of Programs. “A student can’t focus on their homework if they have nowhere comfortable to sleep that night or aren’t sure how to pay their bills.” 

Pivotal wraps other uplifting programs around its coaching core: annual college scholarships of $2,000 for up to five years and career readiness that runs from résumé and interview training to career days at local organizations like Equinix, Comerica, and the San Jose Sharks. The goal is to provide each scholar with a sense of a future filled with possibilities, including non-traditional paths. Trades and vocational programs can often get scholars into a career faster so coaches champion vocational and certificate programs alongside bachelor’s degrees.

Through it all, the scholar leads the way. “It’s critical that these young people have agency over their own lives,” says CEO Matt Bell. “At Pivotal, we ask: what do you want for your life? Then we help create a plan and walk alongside them on the path they have chosen.” 

The results speak volumes. Last year, 92 percent of Pivotal scholars graduated high school, versus 69 percent of California foster youth. More than 80 percent of those graduates went on to college. “We want to help these young people build the lives they want for themselves,” says Stender-Bondesson. Which is all any guardian wants. Pivotal is there for every step, until their kids are well on their way.