Most of what breaks a placement is decided before a youth ever arrives.
Size, staffing, whether siblings get split, whether anybody thought about transportation. KID is my attempt to get those decisions right up front, for sibling groups and youth aging out of care.
The name is the model
Three things most of us were handed without noticing.
Keep the siblings together. Keep the same adults. Keep the plan when the address changes. Continuity is the rarest thing in care and the one that most reliably predicts how it ends, and it's usually the first thing traded away for a bed that's free this week.
Nobody aims at a life they've never seen. Most of us got shown one by accident. A relative's job, a friend's parent, a campus somebody drove us past. Where that hasn't happened it has to be done deliberately, and it costs almost nothing to do.
The practical scaffolding adulthood assumes you were given. How money works. How to ask for help without it costing you something. How to recognize a situation that isn't right and leave it. Taught on purpose here, because everywhere else it's taught by accident, and accidents skip people.
Deliberate departures
Every choice here is a decision not to do it the usual way.
Siblings stay together
Separating siblings is common and administratively convenient, and it's one of the losses youth still talk about years later. I want keeping them together to be the default here, not the exception somebody has to fight for.
Small, not institutional
Four to six at a time, ten at the absolute most. The ceiling is there so growth can't quietly become the thing that breaks it. Capacity is a promise, not a target.
Structure with clinical oversight
Routine and accountability on one side, real clinical supervision on the other. Warmth without structure doesn't hold, and structure without clinical grounding turns into control.
Built around the actual barriers
Transportation, instability and scheduling defeat more good programs than bad intentions ever have. They're design constraints here from day one, not excuses afterwards.
Attachment repair, not behavior management
A relationship that survives a bad day teaches something no unbroken one can. That's the work, and it's slower and far less legible than managing conduct.
It does not end at eighteen
Support continues through the transition to adulthood, which is the point where most youth in care get handed independence and a trash bag on the same afternoon.
Where it stands
KID is a plan, and I'm building it in the right order.
KID is in planning. I'm its founder and intended executive lead, working toward it with a licensed clinical social worker who'd carry clinical leadership. It isn't open, and nothing here should be read as a claim about registration, charitable status, or the tax treatment of any gift.
The order isn't an accident. A home like this is only ever as good as the clinical judgment behind it, so the training comes first. That's the whole reason I'm doing the doctorate.