Picture Books About Abuse and Complex Living Situations

HELPING CHILDREN TALK ABOUT ABUSE AND COMPLEX LIVING SITUATIONS

The Boy Who Didn’t Want to Be Sad by Rob Goldblatt, 2004. A boy who doesn’t want to be sad anymore decides that the best way to protect himself is to get rid of anything that could make him sad – but discovers that he is closing off his heart to many of life’s joys as well.

Edwardo: The Horriblest Boy in the Whole Wide World by John Burningham, 2007. When a perfectly normal boy experiences verbal abuse from his caregivers, his behavior goes downhill – until the adults in his life remember to look for and recognize his positive qualities.

A Family That Fights by Sharon Chesler Bernstein, 1991. Henry's parents fight often and his father sometimes hits his mother, causing Henry to feel frightened and ashamed. This book includes a list of things children can do in situations of family violence.

Hands Are Not for Hitting by Martine Agassi, 2002. Children who have been abused or witnessed abuse can mimic what they have seen. This book offers alternative solutions for dealing with anger and frustration.

Hope Is An Open Heart by Lauren Thompson, 2010. A gentle reminder that, although hope can sometimes feel far away, it is always there, and that there are people that a child can go to when he/she needs help. 

Is A Worry Worrying You? by Ferida Wolff, 2005. This book acknowledges and addresses the worries of children and helps the child deal with them through problem-solving and/or telling a trusted adult.

The Magic Beads by Nancy Neilsen-Fernlund, 2007. When Lily thinks about what to bring in for Show and Tell at school, the butterflies in her stomach turn to grasshoppers, bunny rabbits, donkeys and buffaloes. She and her mother are currently staying in a homeless shelter, and she doesn't know what to share.

One of the Problems of Everett Anderson by Lucille Clifton, 2001. Everett suspects that his friend at school might be abused, and doesn’t know what to do, so he asks a trusted adult for advice.

Please Tell! A Child's Story About Sexual Abuse by Jessie Ottenweller, 1991. Nine-year-old Jennie's words and illustrations help other sexually abused children know that they're not alone, that it's okay to talk about their feelings, and that the abuse wasn't their fault.

Sometimes Bad Things Happen by Ellen Jackson, 2002. Mentions some of the bad things that happen in the world and presents some positive ways to respond to them.  

Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry by Bebe Moore Campbell, 2003. Annie reaches out to her grandmother for help when her mother acts out due to mental illness.

A Terrible Thing Happened by Margaret M. Holmes, 2000. After Sherman sees something terrible happen, he becomes anxious and angry, but talking through those emotions with an adult proves to be helpful.

Picture Books About Foster Care

HELPING CHILDREN TALK ABOUT THEIR FOSTER CARE EXPERIENCE

A Child is A Child by Brigette Weninger, 2004. After two young frogs are abandoned by their parents, Mama Mouse mobilizes the entire animal community to help care for them.

Aunt Minnie McGranahan by Mary Skillings Prigger, 1999. Based on a true story; when nine orphans came to live with her, Aunt Minnie came up with a solution: "The oldest looked after the youngest, the ones in the middle looked after each other, and Aunt Minnie looked after them all.”

A Father Like That by Charlotte Zolotow, 2007. A boy growing up without a father lists the activities that he wishes they could share, and decides to grow up and become the type of father that he never had.

Foster Parents by Rebecca Rissman, 2011. Describes what foster families are and how they care for children who need help until they return to their original families or move on to a permanent family.

Goodbyes by Shelley Rotner, 2002. Simple text, accompanied by photos, explains that sometimes people live in more than one home, and that goodbyes might not be forever, but might be just “bye for now.”

Kids Need to be Safe by Julie Nelson, 2005. This book is designed to help foster children understand why they aren’t currently with their biological parents, and offer them hope and reassurance.

Let’s Talk About When Your Parent is in Jail by Maureen K. Wittbold, 1997. Having a parent in jail can be one of the reasons that children enter foster care. This book answers many questions that children can be harboring.

Maybe Days: A Book for Children in Foster Care by Jennifer Wilgocki and Marcia K. Wright, 2002. Provides a simple explanation for children in foster care about the processes impacting their lives, and acknowledges the questions for which there is no easy answer, such as: “When am I going home?”

A Mother for Choco by Keiko Kasza, 1992. A motherless bird searches for the right place to belong – and finally finds it with Mrs. Bear, who takes Choco into her loving home and introduces him to his new siblings.

Murphy’s Three Homes by Jan Levinson Gilman, 2008. A puppy who moves from home to home learns that it is not his fault, and finds a family who will love him even if he struggles to obey their rules.

My Dog Is As Smelly As Dirty Socks by Hanoch Piven, 2007. During their time in foster care, children often create Life Books with pictures and stories about their biological families. This book, while not specifically geared towards foster care, suggests creative collage techniques that might work well in Life Books. 

Our Gracie Aunt by Jacqueline Woodson, 2002. Initially reluctant to open the door to a social worker asking how long their mother has been gone, two children find comfort and safety at their Aunt Gracie’s house.

When I Miss You by Cornelia Maude Spelman, 2004. Various situations can cause a child to be separated from parents – for a short or long time. This book is a tool for caregivers to assist children of all backgrounds to share what it feels like to miss someone and problem-solve what to do while waiting to be reunited.

Stay Tuned for Future Blog Entry On Adoption Dissolution

15% of Ohio Foster Youth "Age Out" of Care

According to Table 3: States with largest percent of total exits due to youth aging out (FY 2009):

1,453 Ohio youth "aged out" of foster care in 2009

Wise Words from Karen Pittman

• "Investments in early childhood are essential to preparing the next generation to succeed—but so too are investments in older youth and young adults...

• "In general, we as a nation invest less in older youth, and the investments we make are more reactive and fragmented. What’s more, the data we have about older youth is fragmented; it’s harder to get a coherent picture of who this group is because they straddle multiple systems.

• "We need to do a better job of highlighting the statistics and stories of older youth, and ensuring that our policy recommendations include strategies that address their needs for job training, educational stipends, extended health and social benefits, employer incentives and paid service opportunities.

• "We need, in short, to pull out the stops to be sure that we’re not only investing early but also maintaining those investments to give all young people a chance to be ready for college, work and life by age 21—and successful by 26."

~ Karen Pittman, founder and CEO of the Forum for Youth Investment, dedicating to ensuring that all young people are "Ready by 21" for college, work and life.

Federal Spending On Children Continues to Decline

According to Children's Budget 2011, spending on children in the 2011 federal budget dropped by nearly 10 percent from 2010, falling to 8.4 percent.

Kids' Share 2011 reveals that, if current law remains unchanged, by as early as 2014, the federal government is projected to spend more on interest payments on the federal debt than on programs that benefit children.

Lisa's 11th Wedding Anniversary

I safeguard this blog for foster care-related news, including upcoming trends that can positively or negatively impact foster care youth who are "aging out" of foster care and entering adulthood without family support.

However, I did want to mention -- as a former foster child myself -- that current statistics do not reflect the many survivors such as myself who, with support, were able to successfully navigate the murky waters of adulthood, stay afloat and build families of our own.

Everything I do, as a volunteer for Foster Care Alumni of America's Ohio chapter is to forge new pathways in order to change the odds, and promote available resources, so that more former foster youth can "make it," survive, thrive and establish healthy "chosen families" of their own.

Here's to the future 10th - 11th - 20th - 50th wedding anniversaries for today's young people in/from foster care. It wasn't easy for me to get to where I am today - and I don't wanna be here alone :)

Watching the Teen Job Market Disappear

Trends in the Summer Employment / Population Ratios of the Nation’s Teens 1989 – 2010

According to the Center for Labor Market Studies:

• Teens are at a unique disadvantage: No other age group of American working-age adults has been beset by such a dramatic decline in their overall employment rates over the past four years, or over the last decade as a whole.

• "During the summer of 2000, near the height of the early 1990s-2000 national economic boom, nearly 52 percent of the nation’s teens held some type of job."

•  "As a result of the national economic recession of 2001 and the largely jobless recovery of 2002-2003, the teen summer employment rate dropped considerably, falling to 41 percent by 2004."

• "The next four summers, from 2007-2010, saw the teen employment rate fall steadily and sharply from 42.6 percent in 2006 to 29.6 percent in 2010. Over that span, the summers of 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 each set post-WWII summer lows for teens."

• "There are no signs that teen employment rates will improve this summer."

Employment Rates of Teens (16-19) in

Selected Household Income/Race-Ethnic Groups in

the U.S. during the Summer of 2010

Additional observations from the Center for Labor Market Studies:

• "Accounting for race shows even greater disparities in summer teen employment rates. The breakdown by race and ethnicity of teens at work in the summer of 2010 shows about one in ten low-income, black youth and between one in seven and one in five black and Hispanic teens from low- and middle-income families."

• "Yet employment rates over the same span were 40 to 41 percent for white youth in families with incomes in the middle and upper middle income range. This means more affluent white youth were four times as likely to be employed as low-income black youth."

Why the United States Needs College Graduates

According to The Undereducated American, a report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce:

• The United States has been under-producing college-educated workers for decades. From 1915 to 1980, supply grew in tandem with demand. But, starting in 1990, the share of college-educated young people in the workforce rose very slowly.

• The under-supply of post-secondary-educated workers has led to both inefficiency and inequity

• The nation must add 20 million post-secondary-educated workers by 2025 to increase productivity and reverse income inequality, or run the risk of becoming the global leader in income inequality.

Continued Concerns Regarding Psychotropic Drugging of Foster Care Youth

According to the Multi-State Study on Psychotropic Medication Oversight in Foster Care conducted by the Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute:

• The use of psychotropic medications for foster children between the ages of 2 and 21 has risen significantly over the past decade.

• Out of the forty-seven of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia participated in this study, nine states had no written policy/guidelines regarding psychotropic medication use for foster youth.

Read the report to learn more about challenges faced by states, and innovative initiatives that some states have implemented in order to address this issue.

47% of College Students are Independent Students

According to the CLASP fact sheet Yesterday's Nontraditional Student is Today's Traditional Student:

• 47% of undergraduates are independent students
• Nearly a quarter of students are parents, and more than one in eight students are single parents
• 63% of community college students would be unable to attend college if they did not work

Meanwhile according to a brief by CLASP and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, Not Just Kid Stuff Anymore: The Economic Imperative for More Adults to Complete College:

• Between 2008 and 2018 demand for college-educated workers will rise by 16 percent while demand for other workers will stay flat.

• Demand for college-educated workers in nearly half of the states will grow 2 to 3 times faster than demand for high school graduates or dropouts. In six states (IN, MA, ME, MI, MN and OH), jobs that require a college education will grow 5-7 times faster.

• By 2018, nearly two-thirds of the nation’s jobs will require some postsecondary education or training.

According to this report, just as our economy is demanding more workers that have some postsecondary education or training, our traditional source of such workers – high school graduates – is leveling off:

• Over the next decade there will be no national growth in the number of high school graduates.

• Thirteen states (AK, HI, IL, MA, ME, MD, MS, MO, MT, NH, OH, PA, and WV) will have 5 to 10 percent fewer high school graduates in 2020.

Savings Account and College Retention

According to the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis, students with savings accounts in their name — regardless of the amount saved — are six times more likely to attend and remain in college compared to their peers without savings.

I recently created a series of scenarios for foster care youth (independent living activities) in which unexpected events catapoulted them into "crisis mode" -- and, in each scenario, if they had budgeted ahead of time in order to maintain a savings account, this would have saved them money and stress in the long run.

Barriers to Access for Children on Medicaid

According to the New England Journal of Medicine:

"Expansions of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) are designed to extend access to high-quality medical care to all U.S. children. However, evidence suggests that the 37 million children covered by Medicaid–CHIP are less likely to receive specialty care than children covered by commercial insurance."

Access Disparities for Medicaid Children
Researchers have found that medical specialists are more likely to deny appointments to children with Medicaid. Assistants posed as mothers and made phone calls to 273 clinics in Cook County, IL. Only 11% of privately insured individuals were denied appointments, while 66% of the children on Medicaid were denied. 

Disparities were also present in waiting times. At the 89 clinics that accepted both insurances, there was a 42 day wait for a child on Medicaid as opposed to a 20 day wait for those with private insurance. 

Possible reasons for the differences include lower reimbursement rates for Medicaid and more problems with the payment process.

Researchers say that the results are not likely to be unique to Cook County. The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Priced Out: How the Wrong Financial-Aid Policies Hurt Low-Income Students

According to Priced Out: How the Wrong Financial-Aid Policies Hurt Low-Income Students:

• Since the early 1980s, college tuition and fees have increased at four times the rate of inflation—even faster than skyrocketing healthcare expenses.

• The average low-income family must contribute an amount nearly three quarters of its annual household income each year just to send one child to a four-year college. That’s after all sources of grant aid are taken into account. 

• After exhausting all sources of grant aid, the typical low-income student must come up with over $11,000 a year to attend a public or private nonprofit college.

•  Meanwhile, middle-class and high-income families contribute amounts equivalent to just 27 percent and 14 percent of their yearly earnings, respectively.

College Results Online
The U.S. Department of Education's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) enables you to create your own group of colleges to compare their graduation rates and related information.

Petition: Protect the vulnerable, not the rich. Don't cut programs that help kids.

Link to sign petition.

Stay tuned for future blog entry on "Hidden Rules"

Our Role in Overcoming Mediocrity

Mediocrity says: "Let's just keeping doing the things we've done before, regardless of whether or not our efforts are effective."


It's up to us, as advocates, to suggest creative, innovative methods that can actually make things better.

I would argue that mediocrity is the primary cause of:

• Insufficient investigation of reported child abuse that allows further abuse, and even fatalities, to occur
• Abuse of children within foster care placements, including residential facilities 
• Fatalities of children within foster care placements, including residential facilities
• Lack of preparation for adulthood for transitional youth
• Lack of supportive resources to support young people after they "emancipate" from the foster care system

It's not that certain people in power are "evil;" it's simply that they are tired, worn-out, and disillusioned.... The road got bumpy, and they ran out of gas, out of passion, out of vision, out of steam.

They have, apparently, lost the fire that ignited their desire to make a difference in this particular area in the first place.

But we foster care alumni don't have that excuse: "This isn't an assigned task we are trying to accomplish, it's the life we have worked hard to live - and the journey that we each took in order to get there."

For foster care alumni,  surviving during and after foster care is incredibly personal to us -- and we need to channel that energy and direct that passion towards making things better.

It will require personal discipline on our part: When we see a person in power that is just mired in apathy, we might (frankly) want to yell at them.

But - when it comes to "advocating without alienating," we who strive to strategically share know that yelling just closes other people's ears.

Imagine something that you, yourself, are just SICK of doing. That's how they feel about their work -- the difference is that we know that it's incredibly important.

How can we convey that message without accusing them or attacking them? (Accusing and attacking WON'T work - they'll just build up walls in their hearts and minds against us).

Perhaps, we can be gracious enough to stand back and let them respond to our story, and appreciate the fact that it has reinvigorated their work.

Maybe we can cheer them on in their newly renewed desire to make a difference, rather than condemning them for the past.

One young man in Ohio is so powerful in terms of his voice and his passion, and so diplomatic in terms of his dealings with other people that I have nicknamed him: 

"The Foster Care Evangelist."

While sharing his personal talents and positive energy, this young man has reignited the passion of caseworkers who were previously described as being "apathetic" and "worn out" -- but whose passion for making a difference has recently been "born again."

His example taught me something new.

It kicked me out of my mediocrity when it comes to 'just doing the things we've done before.

His patience and perseverance reminded me of how we each CAN and WILL and MUST make a difference.

2011 Ohio Poverty Report

The Ohio Department of Development has released their 2011 Ohio Poverty Report which notes that approximately 1.7 million Ohioans, or about 15 percent of Ohio's population, are categorized as poor.

The report indicates that between 1999 to 2009, approximately 539,000 more Ohioans fell into poverty.

Another resource to be aware of is 2011 State of Poverty in Ohio series, published by the Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies and prepared by Community Research Partners.

National Governor's Association Report on Foster Care, Transition to Adulthood

The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices released a 2010 report on The Transition to Adulthood: How States Can Support Older Youth in Foster Care, which provides states with strategies for supporting foster youth as they age out of the foster care system and transition to adulthood.

The Table of Outcomes for Foster Youth Compared With Youth in General, on page 4, is a particularly helpful tool for advocacy.

Health Care Needs of Youth "Aging Out" of Foster Care

Did you know that:

• Each year 26,000 youth emancipate from foster care on their 18th birthday and often lose critical Medicaid health coverage?

• Former foster youth experience Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at six times the rate of their peers in the general population, and twice the rate of veterans returning from war?

• Only 57% of former foster youth have health coverage at ages 23 and 24 --- as compared to 78% percent of their same-age peers without a foster care history?

Beginning January 2014, Medicaid eligibility will be extended to cover children formerly in foster care who are under the age of 26.