MY WHY

Megan Smith

My early career years as a youth advocate and family coach, followed by a year counseling foster, kinship, and biological families during my master’s internship, gave me a firsthand understanding of the complexities of foster care. I’ve sat alongside families as they celebrated good news, faced heartbreaking decisions, and navigated challenges with no clear or easy answers. Very little about the foster care system is straightforward, except perhaps that no one enters it under happy circumstances.

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My experiences with the youth I advocated for and sat in therapy with also showed me how easily children can fall through the cracks. I saw instances of inadequate or inappropriate care and watched children become caught in decisions over which they had little, if any, control. Through both personal and professional relationships, I've also seen how the needs of biological children in foster families can be overlooked. Too often, they're asked to grow up too quickly or miss out on opportunities as their families stretch their resources and attention to provide a home for children in need.

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These experiences shaped my belief that supporting vulnerable youth requires supporting the entire family. I’m passionate about ensuring families have access to the mental health, relational, and practical resources they need to care for the children in their homes, without overlooking the needs of anyone else in the family. That's what draws me to the Carmona Foundation. I believe in its thoughtful, practical approach to making an inherently difficult experience a little more approachable for everyone involved.