Overcoming Foster Care

Overcoming Foster Care

 

Tagline – 

 (Still trying to think up one - suggestions welcomed.)

 

SUMMARY – 

Overcoming Foster Care documentary will cover a number of issues kids face in and after the foster care system. 

 

I will do street interviews getting the public’s input, group interviews of current and former foster kids, and one on one interviews of foster kids. I will also interview several foster parents, placement centers, and social workers. It is also very important to interview a clinical psychiatrist to understand the trauma that happens to children in foster care. 

 

Among the issues to be covered are:

 

• How and why kids are entering foster care.

• What life is foster care really like? 

• How many kids there are per social worker’s caseload.

• What is the court process?

• What is life like after foster care?

• Advocacy programs.

• What is the percentage of foster kids that go to college or make anything out of their life?

• How many foster kids end up on the streets, or dead after foster care?

 

TREATMENT/SYNOPSIS –

Is there hope for foster kids? After all, only bad kids end up in foster care, right? That is what people thought when I was in foster care. That I had to have done something to put myself there.  Even if you can get through the different philosophies as to why a kid is in foster care, you still have the treatment of them to consider. Often time the same as their home life, and more than a handful end up with more abuse and trauma than what they left behind when they entered the foster care system.

 

My story is only one story, but it tells some of what foster kids live through, so I will tell you some of my stories so you can understand what life is like for us in and out of foster care, in hopes of you supporting this documentary and telling the story of other foster kids both in and out of foster care. The struggles they have had to live through, the hardships they face daily. Granted some areas like Los Angeles have a bigger network for foster kids but small towns and reservations have little to no funding for foster kids nor any help after they age out. 

 

I am doing this documentary for four reasons:

1. So that foster kids know they are not alone in the world

2. So others can see and understand foster kids and not be so heartless

3. More funding can go into foster care that will actually make the lives of foster kids better. Including but not limited to housing, medical, education, extracurricular activities and help when they age out. 

4. Bring awareness to an Orphanage I wish to start, through my foundation that will be up and running in the future - Goddess Foundation. Or so others can start their own to help foster kids the RIGHT way and not for money. 

 

MY STORY – for reference to the stories you will hear in the documentary. 

 

My story is a hard one for me to tell as I have not dealt with many of my childhood issues as I should have. Also note this is just a summary and the full story is in the book I am writing about the first 20 years of my life. 

 

I was the second live birth of my parents, they did not want kids, but between the drugs and partying, they found time to pop three of us out. Three that lived anyway. My birth mother even told me she tried to end my life before I was born by taking my birth father's mental pills. This was on top of the recreational drugs they did almost daily, according to her and others.

 

By the time I was three, the state took my sisters and me away from our birth parents. My younger sister whom I have never met is said to have been adopted by a doctor and his wife somewhere in Michigan. 

 

My older sister and I were adopted by our biological uncle and his wife because it was the duty of the family to take care of the kids of another family member. The bad part was that the family hated our father. So, we lived the next ten years of our life in a very abusive family. Our extended family treated us like the unwanted stepchild that they had to include in things. Our adopted parents abused us in every way thinkable, including our adopted father raping us from the age of seven until we left the home when I was 13. 

 

Because junior high school would not agree, like the elementary school did that they could punish us any way they wanted to, they shipped us to our birth father. But less than two months with him, he dropped me off at the courthouse, and despite the courts' attempt to keep replacing us with him and contacting our adopted parents. We became wards of the state as abandoned kids.

 

We were promised a better life. But that was far from it. My sister and I were separated and rarely saw each other. This strained our relationship even more than it was. We did not have a strong relationship, because our adopted parents kept a wedge between us, so they could control us better while we lived through the daily abuse. 

 

I lived in over 20 placements between the ages of 13 to 18. Twice children's services rented out a hospital room because they had nowhere to put me. The first time it was great. I was treated well, but the second it was not so great. They found out that I was a foster kid and I was not sick that the state was just renting me a bed. So, the second time they forgot about me, even when it came to mealtime. 

 

The first foster home that I was in at the age of 13 (and a rape victim) of being racist because I would not date 20 plus year-old black man. First off, I did not know what they meant by me being racist and prejudiced. I had never heard of such things. Two, I did not like any old guys or any guys for that matter I had been raped for about 6 years. Third, I did not even realize that there was a difference in skin color until my first girls’ home, where they taught me that I was different based on my skin color. It turns out that I am either too light-skinned or too dark-skinned. Depending on what foster home or school I attended. The great side effect of being mixed blooded.

 

Placements did not get any better. I was free labor for all of them. One family owned their own company and after I worked my summer job (from which I did not get my paychecks, to this day I do not know where the money went. I never got to spend it.) I had to go to their company and work, then go home and clean their house. If I tried to hang out with friends (not that I had many) they called the cops and said I ran away. When I finally said I was not going to work for them for free, I was still forced to just sit at their shop all summer. 

 

I had another foster mom who tried to kill me, by overdosing me on meds that I received because I ended up with 104 temperature while in the care of another foster home when the foster mother of that home did not believe I was sick and made me sleep in the back seat of her car without a coat or blanket in the middle of winter in Ohio while she hung out with friends. 

 

When we got back to the house, she demanded that I clean her house if I was not going to go to school. I was sick and told her no and went to bed. She came in there yelling and threatening me. She even picked up a very large glass picture frame and held it up over her head ready to bring it down on my head.

 

I told her she better thinks twice before hitting me with that because she will be in jail for a very long time if she did. 

 

She froze long enough for me to roll out of bed and dash through the door in my room that led outside (they turned their patio into a room). Barefoot in pajamas, I ran in snow up to my knees to the closest neighbor’s house out in the country, which was her brother’s house. The wife was the only one home and let me in to call my work and tell her what happened. 

 

But my foster mom called the house and threatened the lady if she let me stay there. So, she kicked me out in the freezing cold. I walked into the woods where the kids from the two families had a fort, and that is where I slept until I heard the cars and commotion about trying to find me. When I came out my temporary worker was there and the foster father. The foster father begged me to stay. I told him no, that his wife is unstable, and I was afraid of her.

 

I ended up in the hospital with a temperature of 104 degrees; that is hard to fake. That foster mom did send me an apology letter as if that would make up for it. But the next foster mom was suicidal and often told me how she wished she lived in the woods alone. And tried to kill me with my pills from the ER. When I locked her out of the room, she called the Social Worker. I had to explain how she was killing me. The worker just gave me the meds to take myself, not caring.

 

Group homes were no better. My first one was nice mostly, the second one was not so much. I got in trouble because I would not do another girl's chore on her birthday. They were giving her a birthday cake and singing happy birthday. I also got in trouble because I would not join in. This made everyone mad. I even asked them how it is fair that on my birthday they make me do someone else chores while watching them give her cake and sing to her when they are not doing it for me. You see that day was also my 14thbirthday. My first one in foster care.

 

I asked them under that logic should I do my own chores and hers. I even pointed out how crude it was that they are giving her a birthday cake and gifts and not me when it is also my birthday. I got into trouble and they wrote me up costing me a level. No one seemed to care or understand the pain and hatred I felt. Both because of what was happening and because I finally realized no one would ever care about me. I would always be left out of everything.

 

If the workers at the group home did not like you, they allowed other residents to beat on you, and it would be a long while before they would intervene if they did at all.

 

And I was not always liked, because I did not act like others. My mental capacity was stunted in many ways, while still acting older than others. Also, I lost my fear when I left Michigan. Maybe it was the fact I was not around my sister and no one could threaten her life to keep me quiet. To this day I do not fear death, there is nothing anyone can do nor say to break me. I already broke and I am still alive. Anger is the only emotion I feel anymore. Even today I lack logical human emotions. I find no logic in them, and it interfered with work and making friends.

 

Foster kids go into the system looking for a safe healthy place to live, and they often come out more damaged than when they went in, causing social issues. Society does not want to deal with these issues and throw us away, just like everyone did when we were kids. Most foster kids vanish on the streets, getting involved in drugs and prostitution.

 

A few try to make something of their lives, and they give it a good fight. But they often give up, leaving kids behind that now have to enter the same system that damaged them. A few of us make it look like we are making it. We hold jobs just long enough to pay some bills, some of us will even go to attend college. Only two percent of foster kids will attempt college, even less will finish. 

 

Maybe if people understand what is happening and how to help, more foster kids will have a fighting chance to become productive citizens.

 

MY COMPANY –

 

Goddess Productions is a registered film company in Atlanta Georgia. I am looking to give dual enrolment in California and Georgia. The company is new and has produced the student films I made while attending Los Angeles City College Film School. 

 

In the near future, my other parent company Goddess Foundation will be up and running. With that company, I hope to have orphanages in all states and funding to help foster kids after they exit the state’s care. An extended family. 

 

Extra money earned by Goddess Productions will go into Goddess Foundation, once it is up and running. 

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