Vol. 2, No. 1 • Fall 1997
Readers Write:
Who Receives Fostering Perspectives?
I am a foster parent calling to find our how somebody could be added to your mailing list for Fostering Perspectives. I think it's a wonderful publication. I also serve as a Guardian ad Litem and would like the offices for the GAL for each of the counties (in North Carolina) to receive a copy. My dream would be that each Guardian would receive a copy because I think it would help us, as we do function with foster parents to better understand where they're coming from and the problems they might be having. Again thanks for a great publication. I think it's long overdue. --Rebecca BurmesterEditor's response: Rebecca, thanks for your kind words about Fostering Perspectives. We have received a number of calls and letters from people who want to know if their foster families, social worker, GAL, etc. is receiving Fostering Perspectives. Here's a concise answer: this free publication is mailed out to all the DSS-licensed foster parents, public child-serving agencies (including county DSS's), and private nonprofit agencies involved in foster care in North Carolina.
The emphasis we place on DSS related people and organizations is simple to explain: funding for Fostering Perspectives comes from the North Carolina Division of Social Services. We recognize that the newsletter would be doubly enriched if it spoke to and reflected back the voices of GALs and everyone else in North Carolina touched by foster care, but our present level of funding doesn't allow us to do this. Until the day we can do this, we will send a copy to GAL offices in each county in North Carolina. Thanks for the suggestion.
Cycle of Society
*Editor's Note: in the last issue of Fostering Perspectives we published a drawing and poem by Lekesia, reprinted below. The following is one reader's response to her questions.
Poem: I so scared for my baby
I love my foster parents by now I am having a baby. I don't know what to do. I want to tell them, but how?
I am in the 10th grade and I am having a baby, but I don't know who the Dad is. I don't want my foster parents to find out that I don't know who he is because they might take my baby from me. I know why--because they say I am not fit for a mother. But I know I am because I got myself into this so I can get myself out. Someone tell me, why? I'm only 15 years old. I can't do this. Please help. Please!
Dear Lekeshia,
Yes, I would love to answer your question! This is called the "cycle of society."
Here is the cycle I am talking about: start with a girl who has been taken from her mother and put in foster care. Move that child 10 or 15 times in five years, and you have a child who has not seen love, care, understanding, or the structure of a family. She doesn't know what life is really all about. She just wants to fit into society at school and to have friends, so she will do anything to get the friendship, love, care and understanding that she deserves. Due to all of this, she becomes a 15-year-old mother.
We need to change our legal system and our DSS system. Our children should be placed in permanent foster homes and parental rights should be taken away within one year instead of letting the birth parents keep using our DSS system for 10 or 15 years. The most important part of this change would be the children. They would be placed in a permanent foster home to grow, be loved, understood, and shown structure in their lives so they can break the cycle and become loving, hard working, understanding adults.
I am not just writing this response to blow smoke--I have been through this cycle. I grew up in an orphanage from the age of 2 until I was 13 years old, then became a foster child. I had 3 foster homes in less than 2 years. I had fallen in the cycle. I didn't understand society, I had no friends, no love, and I thought that life was hell. So I got into the bad scene with alcohol to make friends, trying to find love from other teenagers. What I didn't know at that time was that my mother was a teenage mother with alcohol and drug problems, my father was an alcoholic, and I was a product of DSS.
Some years later I met the person that I would marry, and she started breaking the cycle for me. She helped my stop the alcohol problem and showed me love and understanding. Now I have raised two beautiful children and have a wonderful family. Today my wife and I are foster parents for Thompson's Children's Home. So I know from personal experience that this cycle can be broken, but this takes place in a home, not in a DSS office.
--Dale Boykin, Gaston County, North Carolina
Copyright � 2000 Jordan Institute for Families
