Dysfunctional

That’s how I have to describe this children’s services system.

I thought I hated it when I was a client of it, when I was born and raised in foster homes, residential, career and behavioral – I think now that I see the other side, as an adult – an advocate for youth – I hate it even more now.

It would be incorrect for me to generalize the system too much, I have had the pleasure of meeting case managers and therapists and program managers that are very dedicated to the cause of serving youth in foster care. However, those that turn their nose, that don’t call back, that make a fuss – they are the ones that make the system unsuccessful.

There are times that I feel the need to put my job on the line and stand up and let these ass holes know the effect they have on their coworkers, team members and most importantly, the youth.

Yeah, the kids…

Keandre Jackson.  Does anyone remember her? Shouldn’t she be the lesson?

If you where once a foster youth scorned by the system, please check back soon…I’m going to put together a letter or petition or something and send it to Jeff City or somewhere, demanding that some new policies be put in place. I’ll figure it out.

Case Managers

   If you are considering becoming a case manager for youth in foster care there are a few things you should know first…

1. If you consider your 9-5 just that, maybe this isn’t the job for you. Your kids will need your time and attention, just like if they were your own.

2. If you get annoyed easily, then this isn’t the job for you. Working in this field requires patience with your clients as abuse and/or neglect hey have suffered as skewed their reality and they perceive the world around them in a much different way.

3. If you’re in ut to change the world, just sign up for peace corp or become a legislature. This is a thankless, underpaid job and the youth that you work with aren’t necessarily going like you let alone appreciate you.

4. Know that bureaucracies and red tape are a part of this system. A person going into this field should expect that if you are trying to get something done, it’s often about who you know and what you can offer back. Anyone brand new to the feild will have a hard time getting things done, especially of any of their ideas are innovative and actually make sense.

5. Salaried means just that – if your job demands more than 40 hours of your time, then make sure you cn give more than 40 hours of your time, otherwise you could be leaving an  at-risk youth at-risk.

6. There are foster parents that are in it for the money.

7. Sometimes you need to believe the kids.

8. You’ll need to have a firm command on the school system and the way it functions in order to properly serve your clients.

These are just a few things that come to mind right away. I’m sure I’ll add more eventually.

In preparation

I’m writing this in response to the comment I copied below:

“What were your main concerns were after leaving the foster care system? I work with kids in the FCS, and am interested on how best to prepare them for emancipation.”

I think there is a lot of information about preparing youth for independent living that social service organizations are putting to pretty good use. Those skills such as finding and keeping a job, using public transportation, budgeting and being resourceful are all very important.

The biggest problem with all this, in my opinion, is that a lot of the youth needing to learn these skills are more interested in their friends and social life. All the rest is secondary to them, especially youth in foster care. Since they often do not have a family structure as a support system, they rely on their friends for this, which of course is typical for a teenager, but this is a little more to the extreme.

Even when I after emancipation, I was still pretty immature, so putting my ILP skills to youth was still not as important. What I did was find a group of peers that were also considered “social misfits”and we all worked together (in a family structure) to survive, not always through legal means I might add.

Being in foster care gave me two very important survival skills for this time period in my life, 1.I was used to and comfortable with relying on other that I barely knew for help and resources, yet had good instinct about who was and was not trustworthy and 2.The knowledge that I could skip out on this group of “friends” anytime I needed to, ie. wasn’t getting  my needs met, felt uncomfortable or thought there was something better out there (the grass is always greener).

If any adult working with young people in foster care think back to their young adulthood, try to remember the moments you called your folks for help with bills, ride, food, laundry, anything. Create a foster youth canon text for your foster youth aging out, make sure they have the telephone number of every library, neighborhood center, youth outreach program, employment search out there. If you are the type of adult that gets really involved, give them numbers to reach you. You might get a phone call two years down the road from an emancipated foster youth needing a ride to a job interview and they can;t take the bus cause it’s raining, or help trying to understand how to buy a car or whatever.

There are certain thing we can prepare any young person for, but it’s not until they are there themselves that they’ll truly understand what the point of all that training was for and it’s about that time that they’ll realize they don’t actually know everything.

In each of these foster youth canon texts, along with community resources include their birth certificate, social security cards, family health history, transcripts, court document proving that they are independent  persons, immunization records, old tax documents, street guides (teach them how to use it), the name all the the free health clinics, a copy of their most important medical records…anything you can think of that they might/will need as a young adult in this society.

Teaching them to organize themselves is important, but a small plastic file folder/separator thing that they can throw their bills into. I know that I wasn’t nor did I care to be organized until I was in my mid 20’s.

These are just a few things that would have been good for me to have around, but really, even in all my rebellion, knowing that someone would still be there for me no matter what was what I needed…all the material thing I mentioned sure would have helped a lot too, might’ve even kept me out of come trouble. Hope that helps someone.

A personal story…

Since I never was able to really connect with a family while in foster care, the family structure/environment is uncomfortable for me. Which makes the whole holiday time of year a little difficult for me.

So for Thanksgiving day, instead of putting myself through the torture of trying to fit in and play the holiday family day, I’m going to a group home I work at sometimes for teenage girls in foster care that are pregnant or already have children. One girl I know that lives there is 16 and pregnant with her second child and is due December 2nd. She has no where to go for the holiday, so I’m going to her. Yes, a few people have said that that is very thoughtful and kind of me, but in reality, it is not that altruistic. Being in that setting, with other people that have no where else to go, that is my comfort zone. I know I will not feel out of place or intrusive the entire time I am there. Places like that is where I spent all my holidays growing up and they were rarely with the same people for more that one or two years in a row.

I have children now and am happy to spend the holidays with them, but when it comes time to visit  the family they have on their dad’s side, I am unable to participate. Sometimes I feel bad about it, but then I remember, that’s just me.

One of my favorite books is titled Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons. It is about a girl that goes to live in a foster home and so she renames herself Ellen Foster. I like that.

Kansas State Student Database

It is not uncommon for children and teens in foster care to move placements several times in one year, which also means new schools. Often times the previous school will take longer than necessary to send transcripts to the current school thereby delaying the students enrollment and/or placement in appropriate classes and educational support.

For example, I know a young man that required a full day of self contained classes and was developmentally delayed. The school had not yet received the students IEP and transcripts and so this young man was placed in all regular classes with the rest of the student population. As if moving to a new foster home wasn’t stressful enough, having to go through several school days without proper support made the transition a traumatic experience.

A personal example: I lived in a residential treatment center and went to the local public school. It was determined that I was ready to live in a transitional living group home in a new school district. In the RTC, one of my school books turned up missing (not unusual in these types of placements) and that school refused to release my transcripts to the new school until someone had paid for the book. Well after running away several more times and changing to two more school before the end of the school year, my transcripts still did not follow me. Several years later, when I was on my own, I had to prove to the college I was enrolling in that I had taken a college level algebra course in high school and had no way to do this, because alas, my transcripts were still being held hostage. And of course, I did not have the money to pay for that one book.

So finally, one state was brave enough to try something new, to identify a problem and come up with a solution, something that I find amazing seeing as how it is part of the whole, ya know, “system”.

The state of Kansas created a student database, with a focus on foster youth, that school will be able to access the most current up-to-date records for the youth no matter how often they move or where they move in the state.
The organization I work for will be going to the state capital soon talk to legislatures about this awesome database and how much it could help foster youth.

Click here if yo’dlike to read more about the Kansas student database.

Emancipation at 21

So here’s the thing…people who are under the age of 21 should not be emancipated from the foster care system. I don’t care if they think they are ready, I don’t care if they hate the programs, if they are on the run or anything. The fact is, people that age are jsut not ready to be out in the world completely alone.

Here’s an example of why, true story:

A young couple came to my work today seeking shelter, claiming that they were homeless. They were both 18 years old and did not have a place to sleep that night. Someone in my office sat them down with a resource book to call shelters around the area. There was nothing available to them that evening. The young man’s boss finally agreed to let them stay with him, but reluctantly so. I doubt when this young man asked to be emancipated that he had any clue that he would be homeless. Of course he thought he was going to have a place to stay. To make it worse, the girl that was with him mentioned that together they had 2 children and that both of them were deceased. WTF, who in their right mind thought that this was a person ready to be released into the world?

That kid had no idea that he was part of that 50% statistic.

Aging Out Stats

I just wanted to highlite a few of the statistics I have written in the margins.

50% of people that had been in foster care become homeless at some point in their lives.

30% of foster youth graduate from high school or obtain their GED before they are emancipated or age out of the foster care system.

I talked to a woman that runs a teen homeless street outreach program that told me that 30% of the youth they find living on the streets that they being to the youth shelter had been in foster care at some point in their lives.

These are just a few. I am personally very curious about the percentage of foster youth that receive disability services. I think we will find that a very high percent of foster youth having learning or behavioral disabilities and require special education services and vocational services. There’s more too, but I have to get off the computer now.

Entitlement

Foster youth often have a strong sense of entitlement that shows in their behaviors, especially if they’ve been instituationalized. This often comes from abuses they have suffered intheir lives and as a consequence, having to live in states custody. Yes, the initial abuse is no longer occurring, but for a teen living with the stigma of being a “foster kid” and not having the very nice clothes, the ability to hang out with friends or have freedoms that other teens may have, they begin to feel like they are “owed” even more. Why are they treated this way, when they were the victim in the situation. Some teens prefer to go back to the abuse so they are able to live, at least superficially, a more normalized life.

 Of course, everything I write is a generalized. I meet teens in foster care everyday that are humbling examples of the human spirit. When I encounter one of these youth, I am just so amazed and know that there is something very unique about them.

I feel like getting past the sense of entitlement is crucial so that a teen can progress in their life and learn to be responsible self advocates. I know that in my situation, I overcame this with age. I was an exception in that I lived in foster care my entire life…my joke was, “The state of Missouri is my mom”, so the sense of entitlement came from the idea that I did not feel as if my faux mom was taking care of my properly.

I also feel like allowing teens in foster care to have more control over their lives is important, the expectation must be that they will make several huge mistakes in this process, it is only natural for foster youth to subconsciousy sabotage their placement (a subject I will elaborate on, eventually).

ILP and TLP programs work with this idea in mind, but I feel their expectations of the youth are sometime too high.

Foster Culture, wah?

I was in the foster care system for 18 years of my life before I was emancipated by a judge on my eighteenth birthday. In that 18 years, I lived in countless foster homes, residential facilities, group homes, transitional living programs, hospitals and even juvenile detention. Running away was just part of who I was a teenager and demanding to be moved for little or no reason was standard.

I am now an adult and work with older foster youth. There are many things that have come to light through this job. The dysfunction of the foster care system, the subculture of foster youth and even the grave statistics that they face when entering adulthood.

Through this blog, I will retell my own stories and those of people I lived with while in care, enter injustices as I see them, statistical facts and mostly, information about the subculture of foster youth. The last for the important reason that it is a subject I have never been able to read about and one that I am very much a part of. People that have lived in foster care think differently, relate to others differently and survive differently.

I will say this, I am not a writer by nature. I am going to put it down in the most real way that I can and hope that it all makes sense.  Word.

Run

 

In a panic, S ran to the sliding door balcony of her bedroom. She went out onto the porch and looked down. The porch was on the second story and she knew that her only way out was to jump. It was the only way at that point and once she jumped she couldn’t turn back. The rock collection she loved so much was spread out all over the porch, rocks that she’d been collecting for years. Some were just pretty, but some reminded her of other places and people. They were her only photographs and the only way she had to remember everyone and everything.

I can make it, she thought ot herself. She swung one foot over and straddled the rail. Shit, I forgot to close the door, they’ll know how I got out if I left it open. She swung her leg back over and slid the door shut. Back over the rail. Hold on tight. Squat down, hang on, just hang on. Her feet were dangling now from the balcony; she figured her feet were only about ten feet off the ground. This isn’t far; I’ve jumped further from trees. And S let go. She landed on her feet in a squatting position and her head flung forward and her hands landed in front of her keeping her head from banging into the ground. Crack. She knew here neck was messed up, but it was OK for now.

She looked in both directions and stood up close to the house. Siding, blue house siding. Luckily this house was in the middle of the woods, so there were no neighbors to see her in action, to see the dramatic display. She stood tight with the house inching her way along and listening for anyone that might be looking for her, so far no one. As soon as she made her way around to the front of the house there was no way to go but down the driveway to the road. But no one can see me, no one can know that I’m even gone yet. I want them to just find me gone in a few hours, I want them to worry and I want them to feel bad about how they treated me.

S made a run for it, down the driveway as fast as she could. Her neck felt weird, but it was OK for now. She was fine. She looked back at the house through her mad run, no, no one’s looking out yet, I can make it, I got this. Finally, the winding driveway opened up to the road. It was just about dusk and S straitened herself up and looked both ways down the road. What now?

That was always the question. Well, just start walking. This was not the city. If someone was walking along the side of the road in these parts it looked weird or suspicious. There were no sidewalks or crosswalks. If you saw someone on the side of the road, it usually meant their car was broken down. Or maybe that no one liked them enough to give them a ride to go where they needed to go, or worse, they were so poor that they just couldn’t afford a car. You couldn’t survive without a car in this country hick place.

S walked for a little while and noticed the next door neighbors drive heading up a hill, it was less than a quarter of a mile down the road from Patty and Carl’s house. Well, it’s not like I can forever sleep in the woods, I might as well go up and ask to use their phone. The thought of wiping her ass with leaves grossed her out a little and she was convinced to take a chance.

She started up the steep winding driveway towards the house. There were a few lights on and an old pick up truck in the driveway. Shingles were at the edge of the roof of the garage, just waiting for wind to hit em from the right direction ot free them up enough to fall to the ground. It was kind of a dump, but S didn’t care, hopefully they’d help her and not call the police or worse Patty and Carl. At this point a night in jail was tolerable, but going back to that house was out of the question.

Paint was falling off the door and she could smell weed. Even though she’d never smoked pot, she knew its flavor. She knocked lightly and immediately heard rustling around inside and whispering.

“Who is it”, a voice from inside demanded. It was a woman’s voice.

“Um, it’s your neighbor, my name is S”

“Who”

“S, my name is S. I’m your neighbor”

The door flung opened, “Can I help you”. A middle aged woman stood at the door. Looking a little drunk and suspicious. She wore a house robe and slippers and was obviously not happy about the unannounced visit.

“I’m sorry to bother you, I just was wondering if I could use your phone really fast”, S said. She couldn’t offer too many details, since she was now an official runaway, but at the same time was asking to go inside someone’s house that didn’t know her. Really she should’ve been more scared, but she wasn’t.

“Where’d you say you lived?” said the woman.

Just down the road a little bit, we moved in down the road about 6 months ago, in the spring.” S wasn’t sure if she was gonna buy that and was worried that the woman was gonna start asking more questions.

The woman squinted at the thin, pale girl that stood in front of her, she was pretty, but her eyes were sorta red, like she’d been crying. She noticed scraps on the girl’s palms.

“My name is Shirley; you can come in for a minute, just to use the phone.”

“Thanks”

S made her way in the door and could still see the left over smoke from the weed. It scared her a little, that she was in someone’s house that she didn’t know, that did illegal drugs. Shrew it, I’m a runaway, this is just gonna be the life I have to live from now on, rolling with other criminals, that’s just how it works.

Shirley led her into the front room where the furniture was still wrapped in the plastic that it originally came in, but it looked out of date. Stains covered the ugly green carpet and beyond the marijuana funk, a nursing home dog cat type smell invaded her senses. Her eyes welled up she gagged. She knew if she made a face that would seem rude so she played it off nicely by explaining that she’s had a little bit of a cough that’s she’s trying to get over, but don’t’; worry, it’s not contagious. What a nasty ass smell she thought. Gross. Funny enough, there were no animals in sight.

Shirley took the girl down the hall from the living room into the kitchen where there were two men sitting at a brown fake wood kitchen table. Playing cards, empty beer cans, half eaten ship bags cluttered the table.

“Mike, Alan, this is S, she’s our neighbor, she’s come to use the phone, she said she’ll only be a minute.”

“Neighbor, we’d ne’er had a neighbor visit us ‘fore have we, Shirls” Said the fatter one with the camouflage cap on his head and mostly red plaid shirt. He smiled at he strange girl and she could see his teeth were yellow and his very front tooth was sticking out.

Yuck, more rednecks.

“No we haven’t, that one is Mike he’s my husband, and that one is Alan, he just never leaves,” Shirley said in a half joking voice.

S walked over and picked up the phone. 555-4857, she always could remember phone numbers, it was a gift.

“Hello”

“Hey, Sam, it’s S. Can you come get me?”

“Where the hell are you” said the voice over the phone.

“I’m at my neighbor’s house, you know, Patty found out about us sneaking out and tried to ground me from ever having fun so I left. Can you come get me? Maybe your mom will come.”

“She’s not gonna come get you, she told me I can’t hang out with you anymore. I guess Trina’s mom found out we all snuck out and called my mom and Patty. So they all said we can’t hang out with you, they think you’re trouble.”

‘Me, it wasn’t even my idea. It was Trina’s big freakin plan; did you tell your mom that? I didn’t even want to go,” the tears in S eyes were about to burst.

“Well, Trina’s been my best friend forever, I couldn’t get grounded from hanging out with her, plus her sisters gonna have her license soon and will be able to drive us around and I’ll get to hang out with Scott more often.”

Her hanging out with Scott also meant that she was gonna get to hang out with Derrick. Derrick had been S’s boyfriend since they snuck out almost a week ago. Derrick was in the 8^th grade and he was the cutest kid in school. He was a skater boy and always wore long baggy pants and had short hair with long bangs. That night they kissed, it wasn’t her first kiss, but it was the first one where she didn’t feel as scared.

S was defeated; she had no one else to call. All she could do now was make sure that Sam heard it in her voice. “Ok, that’s fine. Well chances are, I won’t be seeing you at school tomorrow, and I’m not going back there.”

“Well then where are you going?”

“I don’t know, I’ll disappear from Cedar Hill Middle school just as easily as I appeared. I gotta go, it was nice knowing you”

Click. She hung up knowing she made the impression that she wanted to make. She knew she wasn’t going to ever see Sam again.

She turned around and realized that her conversation wasn’t private. All three of the rednecks were not hiding the fact they were listening in to every detail.

Mike sniffed, adjusted his hideous hat and took a swig of beer. “Well honey, it sounds like you’re in some trouble, huh? Wanna beer?”

“No thanks.”

“So you’re one of those girls that live at Patty and Carls huh? They’re some high fallutin type of folks aren’t they, They own that furniture store in town and all,” Shirley sounded kind of bitter. S wondered if these rednecks were gonna be her allies.

“Yeah, they do and their daughter owns the beauty shop in town too, although she hardly works there that much, she mostly stays home to take care of her kids and just checks in at the shop a few times a week. Are you guys gonna call the police?

“Do you really think we want the police here? Shit no. And if those folks you live with think you’re over here you better get on, we can’t have anyone disturbin’ us up here.” This was the first S heard Alan speak. He’d been quiet, not even to say hi, but S could feel his eyes all over her, she couldn’t tell if it was curiosity, suspicion or lust. A man’s lust was sorta a new thing for her, men, older men, started paying more attention to her lately. She’d come to despise them. If she felt or heard anything other than a fatherly tone of voice and smile, she hated them.

“Sorry, are you gonna call Patty?”

“You really just need to leave and find somewhere else to go, what exactly happened over there anyway, did that stuck up crab ass hit ya or something?”, Shirley asked. S could tell she wanted details, she wanted drama, she wanted Jerry Springer. If she gave it em, they’d help her.

“Now Shirls, leave the girl alone, you come over here, Katie and sit down, sure you don’t want a beer,” Mike’s honey darling sweetheart voice bothered her. She didn’t bother to correct him on the name thing.

S walked over to the table and tried to choose a smart seat, a get-a-way if necessary seat, or a seat that wouldn’t imply anything. All these types of things, the things that aren’t spoken with words, the ones that are spoken with your body are the most important. S was nervous enough that she knew she had to be careful of her actions, especially when it came to the rednecks, especially redneck men. Alan was trying not to look at her, and so she made sure not to look in his direction. She focused on Shirley as much as possible. The kitchen felt dark; there were chickens on the walls. The wallpaper was full of chickens pecking and chickens clucking, the metal relief decorations were chicken, the potholders were chicken, and it kinda smelled like chicken. Chickens were dirty animals. “I like all your chicken stuff, Shirley. It feels cozy, like a place that would be nice to have a thanksgiving meal.”

Shirley squinted her eyes again when she replied, “I’ve been collecting chicken stuff for 10 years, if you look on top of the cabinets above the stove, Mike had a real chicken stuffed for me about 2 years ago. I think it kinda completes my collection.” She proudly gazed aound the room, her kitchen, her joy.

Gross. Tacky. “Well I think you should keep collecting your chicken stuff. You still have more wall space over there in between those hen and rooster pictures and you can still fit some stuff above the cabinets. And do you have chicken plates? What about chicken dish towels?”

Shirley just stared at her for a minute, her cheeks were hollowed in and eyes were half open, like sunlight was getting in them. S didn’t know if she’d gone too far with the schmoozing or if maybe Shirley could hear the subtle sarcasm in her voice. Either way, she wanted her to hurry and say something. Shirley looked at Mike and back at S and back at Mike and said,” Well Jesus Mike, that’s a good idea, don’t you think, I could get chicken dishes. Where do you think I could find something like that?” she asked in S’s direction.

“Jesus, that’s why you can’t put ideas in this woman’s head, then she wants to do stuff, like decorate.” He chuckled at his joke, “let’s figure out what the hell we’re going to do with this little girl first before ya’ll start talking decorations and shit.”

Alan looked up from his beer bottle, Bush, and perked up when it came to the topic of S’s interest. Say something little girlish, say something little girlish.

“I’ve been collecting rocks since I was really young and I just always keep my eye out for a good rock, as long as I’m always alert, I find one when I’m least expecting it. I have a great rock collection.”

“I figure if I took her over to my house, she could sleep in Alex’s room and tomorrow she could stay with Jen and the kids and figure out where she’s gonna go from there”. S wasn’t expecting Alan to speak up so suddenly, she wasn’t sure how to react. Please don’t make me go with him, he looks at me funny, don’t you see it, he’s all gross and he looks at me funny.

“That’s nice and everything, but who’s Jen?”

“Oh, that’s Alan’s wife and they have 3 kids. 1, 2 and 3, all boys. Alex is the youngest; he still wakes up at night. That’s a great idea, she could help out Jen with all them boys tomorrow, damn, she needs a break. I’d go over there more but those kids get on my damn nerves, no offense Alan.” Shirley said.

“No shit”, Mike concurred.

How does this shit happen to me?

“It really would be OK; Jen’s a real nice lady.”

“Well OK, I guess that alright”

Mike could tell S was reluctant, “You know we’d have ya stay here except this is probably one of the first places they’ll come to look for ya.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I’m a leaf, I blow in the freakin wind.