Simply Foster was just accepted into the Boston cohort of the MassChallenge incubator. The non-profit runs on a for profit Saas revenue model to reduce the administrative burden of child welfare by engaging the caregiver in the foster care system and reduce turnover. Annually the U.S. child welfare system has a $5 billion budget but $1.5 billion of that is lost to turnover costs – and that is not the worst economic cost to society over time. Kids who fall through this safety net are at staggering risk of becoming incarcerated or homeless adults.
Darnell ‘DJ’ Brown, Simply Foster
“The brokenness in the child welfare system is the turnover. So let’s attack the turnover,” Simply Foster Executive Director Darnell “DJ” Brown told the 4thEst8. For both foster care parents and caseworkers “there’s a huge caregiver turnover of around 60 percent in the first two years… Simply Foster builds parent resiliency through SMS and checkbox messaging technology.”
This isn’t Brown’s first rodeo when it comes to incubators and accelerators. He’s been through the Square One program, SLU Start, ITEN and the BALSA Foundation. But the MassChallenge incubator has judges from JP Morgan Chase, MIT Social Good and Harvard… and Brown says the Boston incubator may put him in touch with a rare individual involved in both philanthropy and the tech startup ecosystem.
“I call (child welfare turnover) the secret plague of our society,” Brown said. “Given that our solution is not really native to a lot of people I need to continuously pitch to people who have close ties and kind-of understand what ‘child welfare’ is and the costs to our society… how massive the challenge is and how massive the problem of caregiver turnover is and it’s costs to society as a whole. Pun intended.”
Founded in Nov. 2019, and headquartered in the CIC co-working space of the Center for Emerging Technology in St. Louis, Brown is the only full time employee.
Links:
