Tampa attorney gives youth in foster care hand with new app

There were 21,031 children in foster care in Florida last year, according to Florida Health Charts. It can be a scary and confusing time for a child, and many have no idea what they’re entitled to or what their rights are while in placement. 

With this in mind, Tampa attorney Taylor Sartor set out to create FosterPower, an app that provides up-to-date information to young people in the foster care system and even adults who have aged out. 

A practicing attorney and the legal director of FosterPower for L. David Shear Children’s Law Center, an arm of nonprofit Bay Area Legal Services, Sartor says the idea is to provide an updateable portal of provisions and laws of the system to many who might otherwise be unaware. “So that's what FosterPower is for, to give them this information so that they can be empowered,” Sartor says. 

Sartor joined the L. David Shear Children’s Law Center as an Equal Justice Works Fellow in 2018, specifically to work on a project in an area of unmet legal needs and her focus became children in group homes. From there, she created a Know Your Rights guide, a paper brochure to give to kids. It was a step in the right direction getting the information out, but proved to have some setbacks. 

Mark Wemple

“Kids lose things,” she says. Laws become updated and information becomes obsolete, sections need adding, copy needs finessing. All the issues with print pointed her in the direction of creating an app. 

Since the app’s launch in May 2023, FosterPower has over 4,000 app downloads; 10,000 website users; and 100,000 video views. The app is funded by Legal Services Corp., Community Foundation of Tampa Bay and Suncoast Credit Union. 

On the app are short form videos of testimony of former youth in foster care and easy-to-digest information for young people and adults tasked with their welfare (caregivers, judges, attorneys, child welfare professionals, etc). Although anyone can download it, the target age demographic is approximately ages 13-26. 

One right that children in foster care have is the right to an allowance. The state provides foster parents and group homes with a board rate that includes a stipend for allowance each month. It’s not to be used for necessities like school supplies and clothing and can’t be taken away as punishment. 

At one point Sartor was providing training in a group home and the kids in placement were shocked to learn their allowance couldn’t be taken away since it had been up to that point. Given this feedback, she was able to provide the correct information to the adults presiding over the home. 

A major focus of the app is accessibility. It can be downloaded on both Android and Apple devices and is able to be accessed without Wi-Fi. “They don't often have cell phone service because there's many times no one to pay for that service. So the app is, once you download it, you can access it without the need for Wi-Fi to update it,” Sartor says. Turning off Wi-Fi is also disciplinary action in some homes, so this allows users to be able to access the information on the app regardless of connectivity. 

It can be difficult to gauge the success of the app since the privacy of children is closely guarded. However, Sartor receives anecdotal reports from the field. “I had a placement director reach out to me and tell me he had gone to a home where there were six girls in foster care that were there, and he was going to tell them about the app, and they all already had it downloaded on their phone,” she says. 

So she presses onward with the goal of spreading the word. With the next round of grant funding, a new community engagement coordinator will be hired, additional sections on immigration and human trafficking will be added and someday she plans to expand into additional states. But for now, there is plenty of opportunity in Florida. 

“The broad goal would be for every youth in Florida who has experienced the foster care system to have the app, know how to use it, and that it affects them, and that it helps them.”