Foster Power app helps youth in foster care around Florida

SAFETY HARBOR, Fla. — A local attorney is helping foster children across the state find the answers to all of their legal questions with the Foster Power app. It’s the only app of its kind, and has the potential to help thousands of foster kids who otherwise may not have the opportunity to even talk to an attorney.

Foster Power is free and easily explains all the benefits, protections and legal rights for children in foster care.

“For instance, you can go to the ‘all about court’ page, you can go on this page and see a chart of who is in the courtroom, the types of case plans you may have, and goals, and here you can type in where your case plan is working towards,” explained Taylor Sartor.

Sartor is a senior staff attorney at the L. David Shear Children’s Law Center, where she represents youth in foster care. She says that during a fellowship with Equal Justice Works, she realized how many legal questions children in foster care have, so she created a place they can easily find answers.

“Kids in foster care, they have so many things happening to them when they’ve been taken from their families and they’re put in a system that is very confusing,” she said. “It can be very isolating and there’s not someone there to explain what their rights are.”

Nicolaus Reynolds is one of her clients. He was put in the foster care system twice when he was younger.

“Throughout foster care, I dealt with quite a bit of stress, abuse, neglect. (The) foster care system in Florida really isn’t that great; however, I was lucky enough to be assigned an attorney, and that has helped quite a bit,” he said.

He says friends in foster care who didn’t receive any legal advice didn’t have as positive of an outcome as him, and he thinks an app like Foster Power will help.

“Even now at 21 years old, still struggling with some things, but having an attorney is one of the best things I’ve had because I know a little bit about the law, but I don’t know everything,” he said. “However, through my time in foster care and the guidance of my attorney, Miss Sartor, I was lucky enough to actually understand what was going on.”

Which is Sartor’s goal with this app — connecting children in the foster system with the information and programs available to them with one simple download. 

Sartor is currently working on expanding the app nationally.