Aging out of foster care
Your Heart.
Our Hands.
An Arizona nonprofit providing direct, practical support to young adults aging out of foster care. Run by professionals and built lean on purpose, we show up where the need is, keep resources pointed at young people, and stay involved when formal support ends.
Where the system ends, we step in.
Photo illustration
Aging out of foster care
Your Heart Our Hands is an Arizona 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization providing direct, practical support to young adults aging out of foster care. Run by professionals and built lean on purpose, we show up where the need is, keep resources pointed at young people, and stay involved when formal support ends.
What ends at eighteen is not the help. It is the phone calls.
At eighteen they think they are alone. Arizona keeps the door open until twenty-one: stay in care, or leave and come back. Saying no at eighteen is not final. Most of the young people we meet are hearing that from us, years late.
See the NumbersStreet Ministry
We go looking
We do street ministry. We look for the aged-out foster kids where homeless people gather — encampments, shelters, transit centers, the parking lots and underpasses where people end up when there is nowhere else. Most of the young people we serve did not come to us from a referral list. Someone went out and found them.
What we do
Four ways we show up
- Housing
Housing Navigation
We help young people find, apply for, and keep stable housing, and stay reachable when things get shaky.
- Education
Career & Education
Support enrolling in school or training, building a resume, and landing a first real job.
- Mentorship
Mentorship & Connection
A consistent adult in your corner. Not a caseworker who rotates out, someone who stays.
- Crisis
Crisis Response
Direct, fast help when something urgent comes up: a lost ID, an eviction notice, a missed paycheck.
How we work
Lean, direct, and built around one thing
Run by professionals
Social workers, case managers, and operators who have worked inside the system and know where it drops people.
Nobody takes a salary
Three working professionals run this organization unpaid. There is no payroll line to cover before the work starts.
We go where the need is
Meetings happen at a job site, a bus stop, an apartment complex, not only in an office.
We stay after the paperwork
There is no exit date on the relationship. Support does not end because a file closes.
Featured news
He Is a King That Loves
We spent the morning with three young adults who recently aged out of foster care. They were each given a budget and told to choose. What they chose is theirs, not ours.
Read the note →From the field
Recent news
A widow, two kids, and the cost of living
About $2,850 a month, and nothing covers it. Every figure here comes from the agency that publishes it, and at the end there is something you can do about it.
Read the note
Having nobody to turn to
Most people who leave foster care do have someone. What the research shows they run short of is specific: enough people to ask for one particular kind of help. Here is what the studies actually measured, and what nobody has shown.
Read the noteGetting a birth certificate and state ID
If you are still in DCS custody, the documents are supposed to come to you starting at age 16. If you are out of custody, you order the birth certificate yourself for $20, and the hard part is proving who you are without the ID you are trying to get.
Read the noteWhat it actually costs to start over
The real, published price of the documents and deposits it takes to set yourself up in Arizona, with every figure traced to the agency or statute that sets it. No estimates, and no numbers where the state does not publish one.
Read the noteWhat congregate care is actually like
Congregate care means living in a staffed building instead of a family's house. Here is what federal law actually requires, what the counts show, and why a funding limit meant to shrink these placements has not emptied them.
Read the note
Something that worked somewhere else
Most programs for young people leaving foster care have never been tested against a control group. A few have. Here is what they actually found, with the numbers and links to the reports.
Read the note
Carried By
Recent supporters
The Black Family
California
A very generous heart.
C M - Texas
Floresville , TX
Became a monthly supporter!
The Substack Fam
Readers who became supporters!
Marcie
For coordinating many gifts.
April Elliott
Became a supporter.
Mr. William
Became a monthly supporter.
TLM
Became a supporter for aging out foster kids.
The Rhoads Family
Tucson
A widow’s answered prayer.