We don't want "your kind" around here

Photograph by Mike Tobias, Port Arthur News



A group of Texas residents appear to be enforcing their own form of segregation, by protesting an all-male group home for elementary-age foster children.

The only "crime" that these children have committed is being abandoned and/or abused by their parents.

They are no more or less likely to cause problems than any other child.

My only concerns are about the all-male staff, and the fact that there will only be two staff members. The staff-child ratio needs to be revisited. Will the children be educated on-site, or (hopefully) attend the local elementary school?

I believe that former foster children should have a voice in the design of group home facilities.

I personally would advocate for both male and female staff members, both male and female residents (with separate sleeping quarters) and definitely more staff members than just two people.

I would also propose creative measure such as:

1. Church members being paired as "mentors" for each child in the group home, after being carefully screened to make sure these adults are safe. A child could spend time in their homes on Sunday afternoons.

2. Proactive community education: In all fairness, after reading through the comments, it does seem that there was a communications breakdown between the church and the community.

When establishing a group home, it is in the best interest of everyone involved - especially the children who undoubtedly feel rejected and stigmatized by these picket signs - to have open and honest communication.

If I were creating a group home, I would present the model at local schools and community meetings. I would strive to answer questions ahead of time, and to keep my answers consistent, regarding:

- How many children would be housed in the facility
- The ages and lack of criminal background
- The qualifications of staff
- The availability of counseling and support

Reading further into the comment section, it appears that community meetings were held and that they did address all of the above questions.

Which makes me wonder why that information was not included in the article, which only quoted sound-bytes from a man who was supposedly an "expert" on group homes... but as it turns out, his only expertise is in juvenile correctional facilities.

Speaking of my previous blog entry...

This postcard was created by a former foster child, as part of the Culture of Foster Care Postcard Project by Foster Care Alumni of America.

Today, I led a workshop for a group of twelve teenagers in foster care. It was the first in a series of four workshops led by myself and three other former foster children designed to give young people a voice and prepare them for the various aspects of life after they age out of care.

The majority of attendees were 16 years old.

One young lady in my workshop raised her hand and asked, “How would you feel if someone came to the place where you were staying and asked her to tell you all about yourself when you had just met her?”

Her desire was for this person — her new caseworker — to be patient and earn her trust in some way, before demanding personal information.

Revealing deeply personal information to strangers or acquaintances is a risky venture. In my previous blog entry (and during the workshop), I mapped out a Circles of Intimacy Diagram that promotes regulating self-disclosure based upon levels of trust.

When you offer deeply personal information to strangers, even if that person is your caseworker, you are making yourself vulnerable to the unpredictability of their response. What you share will them will undoubted wind up in your case file, and depending upon the opinion of the caseworker, what is written might be skewed in various ways.

For the young person in foster care, getting a good social worker is like winning the lottery. Some caseworkers are caring, resourceful and empowering. Others are underpaid, overworked, and overwhelmed.

Most are trained to make instant judgments and to categorize young people. Those labels stay in that person’s case file and can continue to follow them until their file is closed.

1.) What do you think about the pros and cons of case files? What is helpful about them? What do you think about their accuracy?

2.) How well do you think the foster care system is doing at preparing young people to develop healthy relationships as adults?

An accurate description of the stigma of foster care

Changing...Moving...Growing....: Something I wrote about the stigma attached to foster children....

Too eager to label foster children

Photograph of Samara from CBS.com

This weekend, I watched Leslie Stahl's December interview titled: Lost and Found. The topic was reuniting foster foster children with their biological families.

As a former foster child, I watched the interviews with mixed emotions. I began to feel deep concern for the children being interviewed.

There can be a thin line between news reporting and exploitation. I call it 'the Drew Barrymore' syndrome. Most adults learn to define the boundaries of their levels of self-disclosure. But young people are more transparent - and that transparency can make them vulnerable. (Are there any incidents from your life as a teenager that you would not like for strangers to watch on TV?)

The first teenager to be interviewed was 13-year-old Samara, who had been in foster care for her entire life, and felt depressed (wouldn't you?) Every holiday that went by that she didn't have a family to spend with was painful for her.

Samara has recently been reunited with her mother through "Family Finding." They showed a clip of Samara and her mother on Oprah. The mother had a look of joy and rebirth on her face. Why not? She had been given grace; an unexpected gift, a lovely young daughter, a second chance.

But Samara's face was clouded by skepticism. Understandably. Over the years of spending holidays alone, of not having a mother around her, Samara has taught herself not to cry, not be vulnerable.

As the clip from Oprah is shown onscreen, Leslie Stahl comments on the fact that Samara seems to be finding it hard to look at her mother, how she keeps looking away. Stahl attributes it to Samara's "mental problems."

Mental problems? Not necessarily. Too often teens-in-care are pathologized by the "professionals" in their lives.

Try this: Have you ever found it difficult to look at someone whose actions have hurt you? Can it be hard to trust someone who has let you down? Rather than labeling Samara as a troubled young teenager, I see her as a person of strength and courage. She has made the choice to forgive her mother, and their reconciliation will be a process. Life is not a Hallmark movie. The credits have not yet rolled. She is 13 years old and it troubles me that for the first 13 years of her life she has been given drugs and labels, when all she really needed was a family and love.

On to the next two teenagers in this interview, siblings Beverly and Melvin. They were reunited with their father -- only to discover that he was an alcoholic, their mother had died from a drug overdose and that their father has a total of 10 children, none of whom he has cared for.

In their interview with Leslie Stahl, Melvin begins to label himself as "defiant" because of his reluctance to build a relationship with his long-estranged father. But the look on his face, and that of his sister, is not a look of defiance. It's disappointment.

Imagine if you had built up hopes about your long-lost father. How he would come back into your life with a reason for being gone for so long. He was... abducted by aliens... in the Secret Service... stranded on a desert island.

But, all the time he had been thinking of you, right? He had always been thinking of you. In that dream, your father isn't off fathering other children. He's not drowning his sorrows in a bottle.

When dreams die, we feel sadness and anger. We feel disappointment. That is a normal reaction to facing the rift between what is ideal and what is reality. Teenagers are idealists; they want adults to display perfection. It is hard to face our frailty, our humanity.

Melvin listened to his father's promises to "be there for them always" with an impassive expression on his face. That's not mental illness. It's emotional survival. There is a very real possibility that their father will be unable to fulfill his promise to Melvin and his sister, and they will be left alone again.

Source:
Stahl, Leslie. Lost and Found: Leslie Stahl on Efforts to Place Children Back With Their Families. CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes, Dec. 17, 2006.