LOS ANGELES — Poetry is how Briana Spencer copes with the scars from her life as a foster child:

“I am the reminder that you never belonged to anyone… that you were raised by everyone and by no one,” she reads.

During those foster years, she would often come to the Edmund D. Edelman Children’s Courthouse in Monterey Park, as her future was being debated.

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“It can be nerve-wracking, it can bring up a lot, anxiety,” Spencer said.

A decade later, Spencer comes back to the court every day to work at the Court Appointed Special Advocates for Foster Youth, also known as CASA of LA.

She says that in the three or so years she was a foster child she had more than five social workers and she lost count of how many lawyers. 

“It’s scary, you don’t know what’s gonna happen, what’s gonna occur, you’re stepping into unknown territory when you’re stepping into the foster care system,” said Spencer. 

That’s where CASA comes in.

The organization pairs foster children with trained volunteer advocates, giving them some semblance of stability and mentorship. But with 30,000 children in L.A. County’s foster care system, there aren’t enough volunteers to go around.

“We’re here today to talk about the hope that the Los Angeles community will help us with a crisis, which is the need for more advocates for children who are in foster care,” said Wendelyn Julien, CEO of CASA at a press conference earlier this month.

Foster children are particularly vulnerable. According to the National Foster Youth Institute, 20 percent of the children who age out of foster care will become instantly homeless, less than a 3 percent will graduate from college, and seven out of 10 girls who age out of the system will become pregnant before turning 21.

An adult, a mentor, an advocate can change those lives.

“They need someone to accompany them to court, they need someone to make sure they’re doing well in school, they need an adult to count on that can act and make recommendations in their best interest, they need help, reunifying with their family or finding a permanent adoptive home,” said Julien.

So they’re asking for at least 300 people in L.A. to volunteer just 10 hours a month. Spencer says she knows it would have helped her.

“I think it could have helped me in those times when my self-esteem was really, really low, and I didn’t know how to process my emotional issues,” she said.

Issues that might have never affected her had she had a CASA, but that 10 years later she’s beginning to deal with herself. 

“This is why I’m so passionate about this, because I don’t want to see another youth struggle in the ways that I have necessarily, and everybody deserves love,” said Spencer.

That love is beginning to show in her poetry as well:

“You’re so ready to leave behind the shattered pain that you never belonged to anyone or anywhere on holidays or birthdays, instead you sing your own birthday tune and play with anyone willing to join you. You’re ready to captivate an audience to its feet and give your cardinal stance against me. Oh Briana, you are a queen.”

For more information and requirements on becoming a CASA visit casala.org