A Lifetime of Change

Final Impressions

2009-05-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

My final impressions from the interviews Ann and I conducted, plus conversations with her along the way are variable, but it is possible to summarize many of the concepts for the future direction Foster Care and aging out of Foster Care that we came across from these four people so very involved with the process.

First and foremost, all of the interviewees and Ann herself speak extensively to the need for greater stability in Foster Care.

All of our interviewees have the same plan in mind, teach children in Foster Care life skills earlier.

Increasing the age at which Foster Care ends also appears to be key to success.

In the end, a combination of stability in placement, longer placement and instilling life skills earlier would go a longer way towards improving the outcomes for Foster Children everywhere. In the end, as I've stated elsewhere on this blog, we as a society need to remember that Foster Children are our children. As such, we need to take better care of them longer, so that everyone has a chance to succeed regardless of where they start from. This video project as presented here is a beginning to what I hope to make a larger, one piece documentary. I hope that anyone who reads this blog or sees these videos and wants to tell me their story would feel free to contact me. Thank you to everyone involved for sharing their stories and ideas with Ann and me.

Work continues

2009-04-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

Ann and I have scheduled to re-shoot her interview in response to the interviews we shot together week before last. I suggested that we re-shoot her interview so that she could enter into a dialog with the interviewees on camera to clarify how what they say is related to her own story.

Be your own best advocate

2009-04-19T15:51:00.000-07:00

We had three very interesting conversations with Tamara Grigsby, Lance Jones, and Jonathan Boyd.

Tamara Girsby is a State Representative for Wisconsin's 18th Assembly District. Her interest in Foster Care comes out of her service on the State legislature's Special Committee on Strengthening Wisconsin Families, and she is the Chairperson of the Committee on Children and Families.

Ms. Grisby brought a fresh and honest attitude to our interview on Friday. She had car trouble before reaching us, and yet did not call to cancel our interview in the midst of her busy schedule. I was very taken with her lack of campaign-style rhetoric in her interview, and her overall genuine demeanor. I found myself wishing I lived one street further east so that she was my representative.

Jonathan Boyd is the President of the State Youth Advisory Council (Their web site is currently under construction, but will be available soon at wi-yac.org) and was in the Foster Care system from "birth to eighteen." Mr. Boyd offered a lot of experience to the interview, and echoed his testimony from his appearance before the Committee on Children and Families:

"... foster children should begin to develop skills for independent living when they are 11 years old so that they are more organized and comfortable when they need to live on their own... these skills include budgeting, employment, identifying funding options for education, and taking care of one’s health... foster parent training should teach foster parents to view themselves as parents, not just paid caretakers. "

Lance Jones is the CASA Program Manager at Kids Matter. Lance was very candid with us, although he was a bit more testimonial in character than conversational (Ann and I made note of his more lawyerly style of answering interview questions) . He brought a lot of experience and a very honest and fair viewpoint to our discussion of the state of Foster Care in Wisconsin.

In trying to come up with the singular message these three interconnected people had, it would be this, in regards to aging out, Foster Parents need to be parents more and earlier. Foster parents need to be taught to prepare children for aging out beginning in the early teens and encouraging them to develop skills that will take them indepently into further education and training as independent young adults.

In this discussion of the State in relation to Foster Care, all three of our interviewees agreed that foster children need support in coming to the most important conclusion: foster children need to know and believe that they can be their own best advocate.

and Ann knows this...

Mobile Post from Jonathan Boyd interview.

2009-04-17T07:36:00.001-07:00

Yesterday's interview with Jonathan Boyd went very well. He was a very good speaker. Ann also stepped right up during the shoot and took the lead several times.

Bumps and encouragement

2009-04-08T12:05:00.001-07:00

Ann and I have been scheduled for three interviews on the 16th and 17th of April. Thanks to Kids Matter. They arranged some very pointed interviews. Ann and I have developed some questions from our frequent meetings, and the plan is to shoot and edit these interviews together.

That's the good news.

On the bad news side, Ann received a rejection letter from her first choice for college. She enlisted me in her appeal process, asking if we could shoot an appeal video.

It turned out to be a good lesson in planning a shoot. Of course, it is always possible to have a lucky shoot, where things work right and everything looks good and your idea executes on video just the way you envisioned it. Luck was not with us though, and the video did not meet the deadline, because neither of us had a real plan. We hadn't had the time.

It did turn out to be a good opportunity to talk about different strategies for making it to your school of choice, and for me to relate other success stories I knew that had similarities. I was surprised to find that Ann didn't know that there we alternatives, and that this first rejection and late appeal was not the end for her. As I said in the first post, it's as simple as saying no one ever thought to help her in this way. Along with that, Ann has a good deal of independence and is hesitant to ask for help as a foster child.

Meetings

2009-03-25T11:16:00.001-07:00

For the purpose of this Blog, my partner, a high school senior, will not be referred to by her real name.

I met Ann in the library on campus. She was introduced to me by Megan Bruzan of Kids Matter Inc. Ann had come up as a good match. I had told my instructor that I would like to create a project that involved a foster child in the production of a video, as both exposition and as a call to others in the same position (about to age out of the system) to tell their story. So now here I was in the campus library. I think that the fact that I couldn't look across the table and keep the label "foster-child" in my mind. This was a young woman. Not a child. She was articulate and very motivated, she told me about her upcoming plans for college application and her desire to attend film school.

Immmediately I was in the very position that Ann has dealt with for the last two years. I have been meeting weekly with Ann since late February. Out of that has come the realization that children aging out of the system face some real challenging, pervasive misconceptions. When most people think of helping "foster children" they don't imagine helping someone negotiate a move from high school to college. Add to that, the attitude that foster children are not achievers. Ann told me that as she has passed through the system, she has always been met with surprise because the implied expectation is one of difficulty and lack of achievement. I think that this is part of the problem that kids leaving the system face. The system isn't as developed at the exits as it is in the maintenance of young people in care. The attitudes towards foster-children is has in many ways lapsed into an expectation of failure. Kids easily pick up on that kind of message, and it often comes from the most well meaning of sources.

About the same time, I had several discussions with someone close to me who is also familiar with the foster care system in regards to aging out. Her stories were a little more difficult, as her job dealt with a higher needs population. However, the transitional need was the same. As people age out, there is a special need for guidance from peers and people that kids aging out can respect, outside the system.

I really feel that this is a matter of consciousness mostly, as there are people who, like me, would volunteer to help someone negotiate this change, were they simply aware of the need. Hence this project as it is developing. Ann and I are working towards two projects here. Her own transition, and the making of a documentary short about her transition to explore some of the challenges she faces, and ask for input from others about their challenges.