Changing the Story, One Character at a Time
Last week, First Place for Youth had the opportunity to join a half-day convening with UCLA’s Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS), focused on a powerful question: How can the entertainment industry tell more meaningful, authentic stories about systems-impacted and opportunity youth?
For First Place, the answer begins with lived expertise. Young people who have experienced foster care are not a storyline device, a tragedy, or a stereotype. They are individuals with talents, ambitions, complicated relationships, humor, goals, and futures—just like anyone else. Our partnership with CSS is grounded in helping entertainment creators see, understand, and ultimately portray that full humanity.
Why representation matters
Film and television do more than entertain us. They shape what audiences believe is possible, who they see as deserving of care and opportunity, and how they understand the systems that touch people’s lives.
Too often, young people in foster care have been reduced to a narrow set of harmful tropes: the “bad kid,” the “damaged” teen, the problem child, the inevitable failure, or the person whose experience in care exists only to explain their villainy or dysfunction. These portrayals do real harm. They reinforce stigma, obscure the systemic conditions that bring families into contact with the child welfare system, and make it easier for the public to overlook the resources and support young people need to thrive.
The reality is far more nuanced. Young people enter foster care through no fault of their own, most commonly because of neglect that is often connected to poverty. Foster care is not an identity or a personality trait, and people with lived experience in the system are not a monolith. Their experiences, families, identities, strengths, challenges, and dreams are wide-ranging and deeply individual.
Authentic representation matters because it can help replace stigma with understanding—and low expectations with a fuller picture of possibility. About 70% of young people in foster care aspire to attend college, yet their educational goals, achievements, friendships, creative interests, and future plans are too rarely reflected on screen.
Learning from industry leaders
The convening created space for advocates, people with lived experience, and entertainment professionals to learn directly from one another. We began with fireside chats featuring Jaimie Woo, Director of Content Advisement at The Walt Disney Studios, and Rachel E. Cooke, Vice President of Impact at 1Community.
Their conversation reinforced an essential point: lived expertise and diversity are not simply “nice to have” additions to a creative process. They are vital to accuracy, emotional truth, and stronger storytelling. When creators engage people with direct knowledge of the experiences being portrayed, they are better positioned to avoid familiar shortcuts and create characters audiences recognize as real people.
That authenticity also makes practical sense. Young audiences are paying attention to whether stories feel truthful, specific, and respectful. Nuanced storytelling can create deeper audience connection, help a project resonate more broadly, and ultimately contribute to work that performs more strongly in the marketplace.
In other words, accurate representation and compelling entertainment are not opposing goals. They strengthen one another.
From lived experience to a pitch
After the fireside chats, we moved into small groups for a hands-on storytelling exercise led by entertainment industry executives. Each table received a breakdown for the pilot episode of a new series, including character descriptions and major plot beats.
Our task was to imagine how a character with lived experience in the child welfare system could be meaningfully integrated into that world. We were challenged to develop a character, storyline, or plot point that reflected the young people First Place for Youth serves—and then pitch that idea directly to the executives.
We learned how to craft a concise, compelling pitch; how to build storylines that can fit within existing intellectual property; and what development executives are considering when they evaluate a character or plotline. Most importantly, we saw how advocacy knowledge and lived experience can become creative assets in the writers’ room and development process.
A partnership for narrative change
The ultimate goal of First Place’s partnership with UCLA’s Center for Scholars & Storytellers is narrative change.
For too long, children and young adults who have been involved with the child welfare system have been marginalized in popular culture and public imagination. They have been portrayed as bad seeds and problem children rather than as people navigating circumstances they did not choose. That framing is not only inaccurate—it can shape how communities, policymakers, employers, educators, and potential supporters view young people with lived experience.
We believe entertainment can help tell a different story.
A young person’s time in foster care may be part of their story, but it should never be treated as the whole story. Young people with lived experience are artists, students, friends, leaders, advocates, employees, entrepreneurs, parents, siblings, and community members. They have dreams, talents, and the capacity to build positive futures when they have access to opportunity, stability, and support.
Last week’s workshop was a meaningful reminder that changing the narrative is not abstract work. It happens in the details: a thoughtfully written character, a more accurate plot point, a consultation that prevents a harmful stereotype, or a pitch that opens a creative team’s eyes to a new possibility.
Those details matter. They help make room for stories in which young people who have experienced foster care are not defined by the systems that touched their lives, but recognized for the full lives they are building beyond them.