María Margarita Guzmán Montes

Margarita is developing a paradigm of cooperation among government institutions and non-profits that creates a new support system for abandoned children and youth in Chile.

Margarita is reinventing a new ecosystem of support regarding the foster care system in Chile, following the revelation of grave problems in the previous system, in which more than one hundred children per year died under the government’s care for more than a decade in three different administrations. To do so she is leading the effort of creating new laws and budgets for two different vulnerable groups, first for 18-year-old youth who must leave government homes, even though they have not been prepared to be reincorporated in society, and second for children 14-17 years old who will live in a new version of children’s homes.

Abandoned youth and children in Chile’s foster care system have been frequently ignored by civil society, and the government. Margarita is convinced that this problem needs more attention and long-term solutions, and that it is necessary to work on the development of a new paradigm with a logic of cooperative work. Margarita involves people from different sectors of society, creating networks with institutions and organizations and working to improve the living conditions of these vulnerable young people.

For those aging out of the foster care system, Margarita focuses on transitional homes where young people, after reaching the age of 18, can live and have the support of mentors and workshops who will prepare them to live independently. On the other hand, Fundacion Sentido focuses on youth ages 14-17 years old through a program where they provide additional training to intervention program coordinators on how to prepare foster children to prosper in society when they reach 18, providing the methodology, goals, and process measures to ensure each child is progressing toward self-sufficiency and independence. Along with developing this protection ecosystem, Margarita highlights that to guarantee an effective protection model, it is necessary to work hand in hand with the public sector, generating awareness and improving the conditions of these transitional houses. Living independently is fundamental for a proper societal integration. Immediately abandoning foster children to unaccompanied housing only extends the time they will have to face society without tools and perpetuates the poverty chain indefinitely.

Margarita and Fundación Sentido have succeeded in changing laws to ensure a better life for young people. Under the new Social Protection Law, she has guaranteed public funds destinated to Transitional Houses in which she seeks to install her systematized model.

The National Service for Minors (Sename) is a centralized government agency, working with the judicial system and dependent on the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. This public entity is responsible for the protection of the rights of children and adolescents living in dangerous situations such as living on the street or in areas characterized by the presence of groups with criminal behavior.

This organization was strongly questioned after reports of neglect, deaths, and violations of rights within the organization emerged in 2016. The organization itself agreed that something must change. In a report, the National Director of Sename said that between 2005 and 2016, an estimated 865 children and adolescents died within the protection system. In 2021, a Human Rights Watch report showed children's rights as a major issue, especially the treatment of children in Sename. The HRW report found evidence that neglect and human rights violations had been happening for decades in these institutions.

In addition to accusations of mistreatment of children in the system, Sename lacks adequate funding to cover the costs of raising and working with the whole family in a systemic way. As a consequence, the preparation given to young people to live independently once they leave the system are ineffective. Historically, children and adolescents who have lived under the protection of the State do not have enough resources when they graduate, nor do they have adequate education or training, housing solutions, external networks, job placement and insertion programs.

When they turn 18, young people are obliged to leave the social service, and can only regain access to these social services if they demonstrate that they’ve been on the street for at least six months. In this way, the state system itself perversely incentivizes former foster youth to go to the streets. Chile is the only country in Latin America (according to the Latin American Network of Protection Graduates, 2019) that does not support young people who graduate from its protection system, leaving them homeless and likely to cycle back to the spaces from which they were removed for protection. This is evident in the fact that 25% of the people living on the streets have passed through foster homes.

As a response to reports of abuse and overall inefficiency, there has been an over-intervention of different NGOs who now manage 97% of the programs in foster houses. Each NGO uses a different methodology which leads to a lack of standardized metrics since each one measures the results in different ways. This makes it difficult to have an integrated and useful analysis of data that otherwise could help older foster children prepare for transition and respond better to the different challenges once they graduate from the system.

In order to create a systemic change, Margarita is not only working with adolescents (18 years and over) who are obliged to leave the system without the tools to reintegrate successfully in society but also with adolescents and children from early ages, who are victims of extreme violations and enter foster care systems. While she focuses on specific interventions with these two groups, Margarita also works to create a hub of private and public sector actors to mandate government legislation geared toward improving living conditions across the foster care system.

Margarita first systematizes the programs targeting at-risk youth and builds models through a cooperative logic. Fundación Sentido works with other groups to develop fundamental tools and useful experiences for young people in their reintegration into society. In addition, the organization has several technical committees that focus on specific areas such as Children, Quality, Residences and Street. Through these experiences and their approach in the field, they standardize the execution of the programs for all organizations working with foster children, reducing errors, and providing necessary tools to overcome the challenges and difficulties of programs and pilots. Together with the Focus Study Center, she covers all the bio-psycho-social dimensions of children and youngsters in need.

Using Spanish foster home methodologies, Margarita replicates workshops across government-run facilities to impact 14–17-year-old children. The core focus of this methodology is the personal identity of young adults before they leave the foster houses. Having a strong sense of identity is essential to make life decisions based on your interests and skills/strengths. Once they reach age 18, Margarita offers an innovative and exceptionally integral service, that considers and accompanies former foster youth in all the necessities of life for up to three years in transitional houses. During these three years, these young people can attend workshops and receive mentoring and accompaniment to achieve the immense challenge of successful social integration into adult life. In this period, Margarita’s program prioritizes the generation of emotional bonds, the development of trust, and the recognition and the creation of social experiences in order to prepare former foster youth for independent life. She establishes interventions that are not welfare-oriented and by challenging the participants to their maximum potential, she helps them regain their sense of dignity and brings them closer to the society from which they have felt excluded and “different” for having lived in the State protection system.

In order to create long-term change with a large scale, Margarita is working to challenge current public policy, by focusing on key individuals within Sename rather than the organization at large. This mindset has allowed Fundacion Sentido to collaborate directly with the Undersecretaries of Social Services and Children to create legislation to support programs like Transitional Houses. To ensure these projects have longevity, Margarita continues to build connections with government entities to replicate the workshops and programs of Fundacion Sentido on a national scale. In addition, Fundación Sentido shares its methodology with the public world and other organizations to expand the coverage of the Protection Service. This has the potential to inspire and motivate other organizations to raise and work on preparing for and transitioning to independent living.

The Foundation has also brought the voice of young people to public spaces. For example, young people living in the Transitional Houses have created a space where they interview public figures, like constituent candidates in relation to issues that affect them as young people.

Through these strategies, Margarita has raised public funds for programs for children before they turn 18, that focus on preparing them for an independent life, allowing the replicability of her model in all Sename centers. She has also pushed the Social Ministry to begin a public tender and receive bids to begin creating more transitional houses, where Fundacion Sentido shares their impact model, elevating the importance of these centers as a way for transiting efficiently into their future life. Today, she is working directly on a pilot program of a Transitional House that in four years will graduate 64 young adolescents, in order to create a standardized program that has the materials, platforms, records, and necessary monitoring process documented so that other collaborative organization can replicate the model in future transitional houses.

Margarita has devoted herself to always pair her direct on-field approach with studies and investigation, in order to become an expert on the subject of preparation for independent living. She has been leading a multi sectorial approach where she mobilizes both civil society and the public system. Today Margarita is widely known as an expert on Sename and children at risk. Her work with the government has changed the way Sename is perceived and legislated, and the direct impact with her organization on the children in and out of Sename is especially notable. One of her main attributes is her capacity to work within networks geared towards transition homes and the foster system. She is well-versed and passionate for her cause and exudes that enthusiasm to individuals from the government, private, and public sectors. Through creating systemic change via public policy, she will not rest until there is a system change to better the lives of these children.

Margarita has always been interested in social inequality’s impact on vulnerable children. As a young school going girl, she participated in every social activity that was connected to vulnerable children. At university, she studied education and participated actively in the Student Center, which at that time was very active in political participation and fighting for civil rights.

After her studies, she went to work at a public school where for the first time she was directly and constantly approached by boys and girls who were exposed to multidimensional poverty and human rights violations. This was a turning point in her personal and professional path. After this experience, she entered the Skill Life Program where she was trained in detecting possible sexual abuses and exploitation in children and adolescents. Eventually, she decided to start her own social organization focused on boys and girls in foster houses. She began to meet with people in the field who could provide insights into key issues. At first, she focused on the lack for spaces for recreation, training, and personal development which led to boredom and depression. She began designing workshops in social communication and marketing, and from there, to accounting and executive management course for foster care youth.

But Margarita decided to go broader and deeper. She decided to focus on fully supporting foster care children in their household, their safety, and their emotional stability. Margarita considers herself a lucky woman to work in what she likes the most and to be lucky enough to meet all the young people, to learn from their resilience on how to survive and get ahead despite all the obstacles and pains they’ve been exposed to. She puts it simply “not many people have the possibility of working on what they want and less on the possibility of changing lives. I hope to continue dreaming, investigating, improving, influencing, and impacting the most vulnerable children and adolescents in my country.”