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As a young person growing up in the foster care system, Marissa Pike was all too familiar with instability: between the ages of 12 and 22, she had more than 30 foster placements across Massachusetts. A turning point came when, she recalls, “I was literally in the darkest point of my life. I was 18 years old. I was homeless. I didn’t have a connection to my family…but I just kept persevering.” That perseverance led Marissa to receive a college degree – tuition-free through the Department of Children and Families (DCF) Foster Child Tuition Waiver and Fee Assistance Program, an initiative for which MSPCC advocated – become a paramedic, and be the parent she’d always wished she’d had herself.

Now, at 28, Marissa is a caregiver to multiple children: she is an adoptive parent to Emani, 14, and Austin, 4 (both of whom were adopted from the foster care system) and is a foster parent to hundreds of children throughout the year. In light of her own journey, adopting Emani and Austin was especially powerful for her: “I was in so many different placements, and I actually never found permanency,” she reflects. “I never found my forever family. And that inspires me to ensure that’s not my kids’ story.“

As a hotline foster parent, Marissa often brings children into her home who have been removed from their homes under emergency circumstances. She notes, “I get some of the kids at their most broken points in their lives, when they’re taken from their parents in the middle of the night.” 

Marissa now serves on the Massachusetts Alliance for Foster Families (MAFF) Advisory Council, MSPCC’s foster parent advisory board. In her work with MAFF, she advocates for policies to improve the foster care system for children and families, sharing an important perspective as someone with lived experience within the DCF system.

As Marissa looks back on her journey, she’s sometimes in disbelief at how far she’s come: “Some days I feel like I’m in a dream. I have everything that I want. I have kids, I have a family. I literally have everything.”