Unpacking Poverty

Hey, y’all and welcome back to Fostering Compassion, the podcast that bridges the gap between sending thoughts and prayers to actually providing the support that people need. I'm Tibby Starks, your radically compassionate podcast host, and I'm so happy to be back with episode 7. Before we get into the episode, if you're not already following the podcast on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, give me a follow. I'm @FosteringCompassionPod. Share with me how you're fostering compassion in your own communities by taking a picture or video of what you're doing and tagging the show. Also, if you wanted to highlight somebody in your community, send me an email. I'm tibby@fosteringcompassionpod.com, we'll give them a shout-out on the show and even have them on to chat about the impact that they're making in the community and how we can all get involved.

Lastly, on the previous episode, I talked about how to identify the perfect volunteer opportunity that aligns with your values and interests, no matter where you live or your circumstances. So, if you missed that one, go on back and listen. I do talk a lot about my own experiences, so you'll hear some firsthand experiences of volunteering in a variety of capacities.

Now, in this episode, I wanted to take some time to discuss poverty. January is Poverty Awareness Month, and I recently finished a book by Matthew Desmond called Poverty by America. That book came out last year in 2023, and I had previously read his book called Evicted, which was amazing and I highly recommend that you pick up Evicted by Matthew Desmond if you haven't already read that book. He follows a variety of people from different backgrounds in Wisconsin and details and reports on what it's like to live in poverty. And it's fascinating, all of the obstacles that these folks face that if you haven't found yourself unhoused or impoverished, you wouldn't really think about some of these challenges and just how cyclical poverty can be. So that book is something that I highly recommend. It's a little bit different than his more recent book, Poverty by America, which talks more about how we all contribute to poverty and how we can rethink some of how we approach politics and just our everyday lives, which I really appreciated. But Desmond challenges us to challenges us to become poverty abolitionists, which entails conducting an audit of our lives, personalizing poverty by examining all the ways that we are connected to the problem and the solution. And he makes a really great point that increasingly Americans are considering environmental impacts of their purchases and he says that we should consider the poverty impact too, and we'll be unpacking a lot of that today So stick with me. There's a lot to unpack.

So, one of the biggest misconceptions, I think, and the book also points out, is that poor people are not paying their fair share and, in fact, they are taking more resources from the government than they're contributing. However, according to the book, the more recent data on spending social insurances and tax benefits, and financial aid for higher education, the average household in the bottom 20% receives $25,733 in government benefits per year, while the average household at the top 20% receives $35,363. So essentially every year, the wealthiest American families receive almost 40% more government subsidies than the poorest, which was sort of a startling fact when I read that. So, the top 20% of income earners receive 6 times what the bottom 20% receives in tax breaks.

Let's start there, because I think if we look at things from that perspective, it's we're gonna bring our guard down a little bit. I think that we've kind of been trained to think that we are all pitted against one another because if we think there isn't enough to go around, then we'll fight with each other. But in reality, there's plenty for everyone, and we all just need to think more about how we can take care of our fellow man and our community members. So, what is causing poverty? And if we're such a rich country, how do we get to this place? But I think we like to look at issues like poverty and wonder why it's perpetuating and why it seems like no matter what we throw at the issue, it doesn't seem to change. However, when the COVID pandemic happened in 2020, the child tax credit brought a lot of children out of poverty, and the poverty rate for children after that program went away, the poverty rate doubled. So, the poverty rate for children more than doubled from a historic low of 5.2% in 2021 to 12.4% in 2022, erasing all of the record gains made against child poverty in the previous two years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Now, my point here is that we had this amazing program that cut child poverty in half, and then we let the program go away, and nobody really said anything when child poverty doubled. So my point is, let's all do a little bit better at paying attention to what's working and encouraging our representatives to maintain these policies or in this situation, maybe bring that policy back because doubling the child poverty rate in 2022 is unacceptable. 

And then I also learned from eviction labs that nine out of every ten evictions occurs outside of a gentrifying neighborhood. What that tells us is that as we're taking up neighborhoods that were previously low-income and gentrifying them or building new apartment complexes that are for more middle-income or upper-income families, we're gentrifying that area, and what we're seeing is a shortage of affordable housing over and over again. And so again, with a housing shortage is something that I've brought up in several episodes. But, I learned specifically that since 1985, rent prices have exceeded income gains by 325%. So it's no wonder that people are having a difficult time finding affordable housing when our rent has exceeded income gains by 325% in my lifetime. So. The shortage of housing, obviously that's one reason why costs are going up. You know, when we have a shortage of something, we're going to pay more to get it. But what I learned from this book by Matthew Desmond was that zoning laws have made it so that it is illegal in 75% of residential land in many American cities to build anything other than a detached family home. So, in 2021, a study of a hundred large cities found that the median central city permitted apartment dwellers to live on only 12% of its residential land. So if in 2021, people who can afford apartments only have 12% of residential land to live on, it's no wonder we have people at the bottom of the income brackets living on the streets. But the book also brought up something that I was not aware of. Apparently, in New Jersey, they have one of the country's most robust civil rights frameworks called the Mount Laurel Doctrine. Now, under the New Jersey State Constitution, as interpreted by the state supreme court in 1975 and 1983, municipalities must use zoning authority to create realistic opportunities for a fair share of affordable housing for low and moderate-income households. That's amazing. So in 2015, the New Jersey Supreme Court declared that the Council on Affordable Housing, or COAH, as it's shortened, was inoperative. So the Council on Affordable Housing… the dysfunction, reached a crescendo when Governor Christie stopped the agency from operating altogether and played a significant role in the housing crisis we are facing today. So since 2015, affordable homes have been created faster than previous iterations of the Mount Laurel framework in places like Springfield and Union County, where mixed-income, mixed-use buildings have replaced vacant buildings like the Saks Fifth Avenue store, which is exactly what we should be doing with all of these empty stores and office buildings that we've abandoned. But it goes on to say that families who live in affordable developments have seen wage increases, better physical and mental health outcomes, and increased college attendance. Meanwhile, the surrounding residents continue to experience stable taxes, low crime rates, and high property values. So, I think that this is a really great example of what we should be doing and a great study for us to watch as to how this policy in New Jersey, now that it seems like they've freed it up to work again, thank you, Christie, now that that's working again and it's almost been 10 years, we can kind of keep an eye on what's going on there and hopefully replicate that in other areas of the country. That would be amazing. 

So another issue that you might not realize for folks in poverty is that...Yeah, we have food stamps and TANF, which is Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. But have you ever tried to apply for these things? Like, if you've ever applied for unemployment, especially during 2020 like I did, it's a complete nightmare to navigate these government websites, and it's almost on purpose that they're making this difficult. So anyway, people must provide many personal documents, complete lengthy, confusing applications correctly, and prove that they are eligible by regularly updating their information. Now, in a recent study, the Urban Institute reported that three in 10 adults reported enrollment difficulties in various programs, assistance programs. So my point here is that we offer these benefits, and a lot of us just sit back and think, well, at least they have food stamps to apply for. But if our government is not making them accessible, if the state is not making the website and the process and the application work for folks, and they have to go back over and over again to prove over and over again that they are worthy of these benefits that they're paying into then it just doesn't work. People are gonna, they fall off of the roles, they lapse, and when you lapse in a benefit…like that does, that means no food, that means an inability to pay that bill or those bills this month, and that could lead to turning off of utilities and various things, and we'll talk more about how that cycle of poverty, one thing leads to another, and how that can affect not just working adults, folks, but children. 

Okay, so why do we even need these benefits? I mean, we're in America, like, we're the richest country, but we don't like to pay a living wage in this country. There I learned the startling fact that there is no minimum wage law in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, or Tennessee, so the minimum wage defaults to the federal law of $7.25. Now try paying rent on that shit. Yeah, I don't think so. So in Georgia and Wyoming, the state minimum wage is lower than the federal minimum wage at $5.50 an hour. Yeah…Just let that sink in. But, many employers are subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act and must pay the federal minimum wage. Oh, whoopee. In 2024, there were several states, I think 20 some odd states that increased the minimum wage. A few that I pulled out and wanted to note were Colorado increasing from $13.65 to $14.42. Florida's an increase of $12 an hour to $13 starting on September 30th, way to hold out. Illinois increasing from $13 to $14 an hour. Meanwhile in Ohio, increasing from $10.10 to $10.45. 

Alright, another thing that you might not realize is that folks in these income brackets, these lower minimum wage workers, are also becoming subject to wage theft. Now, if you haven't researched or heard about any cases of wage theft, I will put some links in the show notes because what I learned was pretty shocking. Now on average, workers lost 20% of their hourly wage in one study, and it showed that women were 43% more likely than men to experience a violation. And you know, when you're making these $12 or $10.45 an hour, and then you also have hours being stolen from you…It's pretty incredible to think how are people supposed to afford to live when we have, as I said earlier, a 325% increase since 1985 in rental costs. So what I found was that several companies, including Circle K, had violated workers' rights by making them work off the clock. So, one story in the AP News that I'll share in the show notes talks about an employee of Circle K gas station in Brevard County, Florida during shifts that started at 4:30 am and ended in the early afternoon. Before and after clocking in, her manager made her work for free according to a lawsuit that she filed in federal court in February 2020. She counted cash in the register, brewed coffee, cleaned the store, set out condiments, and refilled lottery machines, all well off of the clock. The unpaid work added up to about $1,250 in one year, according to the court filing. For someone earning $10 an hour, that's about three weeks of pay. So, again, how is somebody supposed to pay rent on minimum wage and then lose three weeks worth of pay to having to work off of the clock. I mean, I'm speechless. Circle K stores of course denied the underpayment allegation and the court filing and settled for $2,500. But it goes on to say that federal investigators caught Circle K stores underpaying employees 22 times since 2005, most recently in February of 2020, the total adding up to $54,069 taken from 120 employees. The article talks about how some of these companies weigh the cost of getting in trouble with fines and paying back employees so they decided that if it's cheaper just to pay the fine than actually pay the employees, they would rather rip off their employees and pay a federal fine than pay everybody the wages that they've earned. So when we're thinking about what leads to poverty, and we are asking ourselves, how did we get here in a wealthy nation, stories like this really reveal what's going on for people who don't have as much say over the time that they spend at work. And what I wanted to get to was that these things lead to a cycle, right? 

And when somebody loses out on three weeks worth of work and then can't pay rent and then they become evicted from their home, a lot of the stories that I read in Matthew Desmond's book, Evicted, revealed that when you These folks are being evicted, their belongings are often placed in storage. And if they can't make regular payments on that storage, then they lose all of their furniture, all of their belongings, all of their photos and memories, all of their children's favorite toys. So you can see how quickly somebody can become buried by poverty when not only have you lost your house, but then all of your things have essentially been taken from you because you can't even pay your rent, how are you supposed to pay the storage that you've been forced into? And, disturbingly, the populations that are impacted are more often than not, families. Youthtoday.org says that kids face the greatest risk of eviction of any age group and the consequences can last a lifetime. So a recent Eviction Lab study found that 2.9 million children are impacted by eviction filing every year and they represent nearly 40% of individuals facing eviction from their homes. In Dane County, Wisconsin, more than a third of eviction filings are against single parents, according to data from the Eviction Diversion and Defense Partnership. We found that in your life course, you're more likely to be evicted when you are a child and may be at higher risk between the ages of 0 to 5 years old. The US allows more poverty among children, over 5 million, than any other nation. So although we might think less of people in poverty when you frame it like this, that the ages of 0 to 5, how can you possibly blame that on a child? And I think if we're allowing more poverty among children than any peer nation, it's time to wake up. And the parents of these children, they have to decide between spending time with their children or working long hours at low-paying jobs like Circle K where they're potentially not even compensating you for all of your hours. So, how can you possibly pay for childcare? Again, it's cyclical. Often what low-income parents are doing is making a choice between spending adequate time doing things like doing homework, reading a book together, or just playing with your child. You're making a choice between that and going to work. And a lot of these folks are obviously juggling more than one job. 

So it makes a lot of sense that we have a high population of children facing eviction, and we have poverty being the leading cause of foster care. So things are all coming together. They're kind of aligning in my eyes, and it all kind of makes sense because over 70% of families coming to the attention of state child welfare authorities concern claims of parental neglect and not abuse, and I've talked about previously how the definition of neglect is varied, and poverty can often be misconstrued as neglect. So families below the poverty line are 22 times more likely to be involved with child protective services than families with incomes just slightly above that line. So that tells you a lot. Neglect allegations include concerns over inadequate food, clothing, shelter, child care, or medical care, conditions relating, as I said, more to poverty and its stressors rather than parental fitness. In 2017, 27,871 children in the United States were removed from their homes to foster care due to inadequate housing. It is estimated that 30% of children in foster care could have been returned home if their families had adequate housing. So think about how much more it costs us to maintain the child welfare system to remove that child and then pay another family every month to house that child while we're traumatizing them by separating them from their family and home school and their friends at school. All of that money is being spent because a family couldn't keep a roof over their head. Huh. Think about how much money we would have saved if we just would have given those parents or that parent enough money to make it that month. Hmm. Most recent child maltreatment data tells us that 60% of victims have a finding of neglect only. One story I found was, that the children of a young single mother were removed solely due to eviction. She had hoped that the system would rally to help her find decent safe housing, only to be told you must comply with this or that in your case plan to regain custody. So, what Child Protective Services does if they remove a child is they give the parent a service plan, depending on which is specific to the situation. So, in a situation like this where the parent was removed or the child was removed because of eviction, the parent would have to obviously find adequate housing in order to regain custody and so as I alluded to, we should be helping, you know, we're pouring money into the child protective services and foster care system, why wouldn't we want to maintain that child in the original home and avoid all of that in the first place? So parents were also required to pay for certain services like drug testing. And they couldn't, they can't afford these extra fees when they are in the situation in the first place because they can't afford housing and utilities. So it just is nonsensical, and it adds to the cycle of poverty. The cycle of poverty is continuing. You may not realize this, but often when a child goes into foster care, the system charges parents child support. I read one story which I will share in the show notes, because I really encourage you to familiarize yourself with some of these situations. It's a story about a mom and two children who lost her children due to unsteady housing and she has received a bill of $19,530 for the time that her children were away from her. And this bill is following her around and she's already having issues maintaining her household. And it just talks about her experience and how the fee has affected her family situation. So again, I encourage you to read that story from NPR. I will share it again in the show notes. 

But, Like I said, we are paying for programs to help these folks. So what is happening with these funds? And that's a great question. So one of the lesser-known resources of federal funding for the child welfare system is Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF as it's called. TANF is supposed to be cash assistance serving low-income families with children, but in reality, the funds can be used to support many services designed to help needy children, including protection agencies. The result is that much of the temporary assistance for needy families has been used to finance the foster care and child welfare system and child welfare investigations and adoption or guardianship payments. So, because child welfare program data is self-reported, it's difficult to track exactly how much of each dollar is spent, but a study was able to identify 8 states using TANF to pay for adoption subsidies, 23 states funding CPS investigations or child protective services investigations, 27 states funding foster care, three states diverting TANF funds to residential treatment facilities for child welfare-involved children. So considering that three-quarters of substantiated child maltreatment cases are related to neglect, which is often the result of poverty, as we said, it's extremely unjust that funds that are supposedly intended to offset the worst effects of poverty are instead being used to finance the separation of mostly poor families. So specifically in Michigan, they spent $47.8 million in TANF dollars on adoption subsidies in 2015, which are provided without regard for the income of the adoptive parents. So TANF funds could potentially be going to rich families in the form of adoption subsidies rather than to poor families to prevent children from being removed from their homes in the first place. If you're not outraged, are you even fucking listening? I swear to God. Ugh. In Georgia, the state spent more TANF funds on foster care than on support for needy families.
In three states, TANF money helps pay for institutionalizing children in residential treatment centers, and I've talked about these treatment centers in my previous episode about youth and foster care. One recent article that I found was that an Illinois judge closed a juvenile detention center after the facility was found to be in crisis and failed to meet the date standards. It says the facility was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Illinois alleging that it had violated youth's constitutional rights by subjecting them to excessive forms of restraint and seclusion while denying them adequate education and mental health services. The facility had still not come into compliance as of the end of 2023. Another story that I wanted to share with you was a local to Ohio. This particular story happened in Miami County, and it says that a former executive director of Miami County foster care agency pled guilty to stealing money from the organization. So report stated that 54-year-old Kelly Gunter of Troy pled guilty to one count of third-degree felony aggravated theft. She was indicted for stealing money from Isaiah's Place, a foster care agency in Troy, Ohio. A joint plea agreement was filed to recommend community control. Gunter could face nine to 36 months in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Gunter's brother, 57-year-old Matthew Gunter pled guilty to one count of fourth-degree felony grand theft and faces 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine. Kelly is accused of withdrawing large amounts of cash that she spent on local casinos, home remodeling, items for her private pool, weight loss services, salon services, tanning, nail services, jewelry, clothing, and cash advances. The siblings also bought University of Dayton basketball tickets for $10,000, Bangles tickets, and vacation. During this time, it is believed that more than 100 children from 10 different counties were in the facility's care. And, in general, a good thing to know is that for every dollar budgeted in TANF funds in 2020, poor families only received 22 cents. So, all good information to know.

Now when you're thinking about poverty, maybe mass incarceration is not the first thing that comes to mind for you. But, I want you to think about the fact that most people in prison are parents. In the book that I keep mentioning by Matthew Desmond, I really appreciated this point. It says, “In the history of the nation, there has only been one other state-sponsored initiative more anti-family than mass incarceration. And that was slavery.” I just, that really resonated with me and I really wanted to bring it to the show so that everybody could kind of marinate on that. Now, mass incarceration is a key cause and consequence of poverty. When a person is incarcerated, think about it, their family has to find a way to make ends meet without that income all of a sudden. A minor criminal record or an arrest without conviction can prevent someone from getting a job and prevent them from getting housing and certain benefits and that contributes to multi-generational poverty. So currently there are more than 44,000 legal sanctions that create barriers to housing for people with criminal records and various restrictions prohibit justice-involved individuals from accessing SNAP, which are food stamps, and TANF benefits and putting barriers like mandatory waiting periods, drug testing, and other obstacles in the way of folks getting assistance just adds to families finding themselves in poverty. 

So, I know a lot of this can be really upsetting, especially when we're talking about children under the age of five being evicted and finding themselves homeless. So what are some things that we can do? What are some solutions? As I mentioned the child tax credit is a proven solution to pulling millions of children out of poverty. It's something that we saw happen during the pandemic and made a huge difference. And if that wasn't proof enough, as soon as this child tax credit went away, it doubled the number of children in poverty. So easy, right off the bat, bring back the child tax credit. Another thing we talked about was TANF funds and a suggestion is to ease TANF restrictions, such as lifetime limits of 60 months or severe sanctions for not meeting work requirements. We talked about how working often for parents is a choice between having time with their child to do quality time, but also to do things like homework and supporting them in their sports or community involvement. If we're just expecting poor people to work, work, work, we are not emphasizing the importance of family and of parental support. So just because people are poor does not mean that they don't deserve downtime and family time. A 2004-2016 study using TANF fund restrictions found that if the policy were implemented nationally it would have reduced the number of children entering foster care by an estimated 29,112. One study found that substantiated child neglect reports increased by 23.3% in states that implemented the most severe sanctions of work requirements. Foster care entries due to child neglect increased by 13.4% and total foster care entries increased by 12.7%. In states with TANF, time limits of less than five years, there was about a 34% increase in substantiated maltreatment reports and about 37% increase in substantiated neglect reports after the policy was implemented. So we literally know that reducing assistance to needy family funds based on work requirements and time limits increases the number of children who are being taken into foster care. I don't see anything more black and white than that. 

Another suggestion on reducing poverty from the book by Matthew Desmond is to close tax loopholes. You might have heard of this before and I think it's a really easy one. The IRS estimates that the US loses more than $1 trillion a year in unpaid taxes, more of it owing to tax avoidance by multinational corporations and wealthy families.
Since 1962, the effective tax rate for poor and working class and middle class Americans has increased while it has decreased for the top 10% of income earners, particularly for the richest among us. And the corporate tax rate is the lowest in 80 years. So these are all things to consider when we're asking ourselves why we don't have enough money to pay for poor children. Another great quote from the book was that Congress should outlaw poverty wages. If companies are not allowed to place employees in unnecessary danger or degrade them via discrimination or harassment, why are they permitted to pay workers dangerous and degrading wages? What a great question, right? Another anecdote that I read in my research, comes from the imprint story about a community adoption agency that actually took on the prevention mantle by rallying around a family at risk of losing its children by lining up safe childcare, bringing meals to the family, and securing rent to head off the impending eviction. This is exactly what I'm talking about, y'all. Like, seriously. Bravo. 

So if you're trying to think of ways that you could make an impact on poverty this January, Poverty Awareness Month, I would encourage you to prepare to vote. As I said last week, this is a voting year. Or an election year. As I suggested, Matthew Desmond's books, I really can't say enough about the book Evicted and his latest book, Poverty by America, and how much great information is in there. I commend him for living side by side with people in poverty in Wisconsin to do the reporting on his book Evicted. I highly encourage you to read the book. Now if all of these, all of this talk about the child welfare system has you ready to abolish the child welfare system, you might go to upendmovement.org where they are rallying to end the child welfare system as we know it. You can support unions. We've talked a lot about a living wage and right now corporations and CEOs are making a lot of money and they're leaving the least of us with as little as possible and there's no other way for us to have our voice heard unless we are organized and supporting one another, so consider supporting unions. 

A creative way that you might give back is to grow a garden and share or donate your excess food and teach others how to do the same. If you're looking for an organization to get involved with, I suggest if you're in the Orlando area, Fleet Farming is a great organization that goes around growing urban gardens in people's yards and harvesting the food and donating it to SNAP as well as other charities. So Fleet Farming, if you're in Orlando, just an example of something that you could look for in your own community or even start up in your own community and they have a great about page that discusses the things that they've done in Orlando and how they operate. So if you're looking to start something really cool, it's really inspiring. They go around on their bikes and have trailers behind their bikes and they garden. It's really hard to miss them. They team up in huge groups of bikes with wagons and shovels and ride around farming the city. So really cool. 

Easy thing to do is stop supporting companies who exploit cheap labor or prison labor. Amazon is very exploitative and we often find ourselves shopping there because it's easy. But educate yourself a little bit on what they're doing to workers. Another one is Starbucks McDonald's and Walmart both use prison labor. So I will share some articles on those issues if you want to learn more.

Other organizations that you might involve yourself with are the Poor People's Campaign, one I mentioned last week was Feeding America or Habitat for Humanity, I believe I mentioned that as well. One Fair Wage is a national organization. Nearly 300,000 service workers, over 2,000 restaurant employers, and dozens of organizations nationwide all working together to end the subminimum wage in the U.S. and improve wages and working conditions in the service sector in particular. So if you live in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, D.C., or Maine, there is already a presence there for the one fair wage, but maybe you could start your own if you live in another state.
Now before I sign off, I really wanted to read another quote from the book that inspired today's episode. It says, “We can also look more closely at our own institutions. We can audit our alma mater or current universities, for example. Are they providing enough support for first-generation students? Are they fairly compensating their adjunct faculty landscapers and support staff? Are they responsible for gentrifying low-income neighborhoods? Are there endowments, bankrolling, exploitative corporations? We can evaluate our workplaces and industries, asking if they are in the business of exploiting their workers. For example, do their occupational licenses establish unnecessary entry barriers in the form of hours of training and costly exams that protect those with jobs but harm those trying to break in? Turning to our banks, we might ask...Are they charging exorbitantly high fees for overdrawing accounts? Are they bankrolling the payday loan industry? If so, might it be better to take our money elsewhere? Wherever we stand, we can leverage the specific influence we have in our congregations military units companies, and school boards to instigate change.” It goes on to say, and this is what really inspired me, “We hold many ethical beliefs, but we tend to act on them only when we receive a social push. This is why it's important that we find ways to broadcast private acts of poverty abolitionism, bringing them to the light.” And that's what I hope you're hearing from me today, and that's what I hope that y'all will go forth and share with others. 

Now starting on January 30th, a week from today, the day this episode goes out, marks the start of The Season of Nonviolence, which is 64 days between January 30th and the day of Gandhi's assassination and April 4th, the day of Martin Luther King's assassination. During the season, participants practice a new principle of peace and nonviolence each day. So I invite you to look up The Season of Nonviolence and think about how you might spend those 64 days honoring Martin Luther King and Gandhi and the message that they were, the families were hoping to create with that season. 

Now as I mentioned earlier, you can find me @FosteringCompassionPod on social media and fosteringcompassionpod.com if you want to learn more about the show or leave me a voicemail. You can also email me tibby@fosteringcompassionpod.com and if you want to support the show I would appreciate a five-star review or just mention it to a friend who might appreciate the show and become a listener. Don't forget that I do put together show notes with links if you want to learn more about some of the specific things I mention in the show, and I do try to provide transcripts if that's something that you're looking for. You can find all of that at fosteringcompassionpod.com. Until next time be kind to each other y’all.