By Clarke Lowry and Karen Wang
When Jenny Serrano aged out of the Los Angeles County foster care in September 1994, she was 18, alone and “subsequently homeless.” There was no transitional housing available for youth exiting foster care.
“After I left care, I just kind of couch-surfed and spent a couple of months where I was literally just on all night buses, riding all night to keep safe and to be warm,” Jenny said.
She participated in a local program and shared a temporary house with a dozen people on the USC’s fraternity row for six months, before she made enough money to afford her own home.
Having spent six years in the foster care system, Jenny was devoted to serve and advocate for changes to the child welfare system in California. After graduating from California State University Northridge with a Master’s degree in Public Administration, she has worked in different public sectors, including the local city, state, nonprofits and federal government.
Now, as a mother of two kids, she is working for the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, overseeing programs for transition-age youth.
Jenny used her background and experience to make an impactful change in the system, even in designing her own positions.
“A lot of the positions I took were because people knew me and they knew what I could do, and they created those positions for me,” she said. “Sometimes, creating things that you didn’t even know were possible – that’s how I got here.”
Jenny has found her home, but she is still working tirelessly for the wellbeing of other families and children.
“No matter how long I’m working here, no matter how much money I get paid, no matter what my title is, that at the end of the day, we’re here because families are distressed, because families are experiencing crisis, and because children’s safety and well being has either been threatened, or is being threatened,” she said. “So we need to be always mindful of the work that we’re doing. And at the same time, be very hopeful and hold that hope for all of the kids that we work with.”
“Someone, I think, somewhere in the universe held that hope for me,” she said.
