Growing Up in the Care of Strangers: The Experiences, Insights and Recommendations of Eleven Former Foster Kids
Growing up in placement takes a toll, not just on the children and adolescents but also on the professionals charged with their care. Judges, policymakers, administrators, probation officers, psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, caseworkers, social workers, foster parents, house parents, guardian ad litem, CASA volunteers, child welfare advocates, educators and program staff make critical decisions that can affect a child s life forever. The more attuned they are to what helps or hinders the development of these vulnerable young people, the more likely they are to make the appropriate decisions required to promote positive placement experiences and healthy adult outcomes. The purpose of this book is to provide child welfare professionals insightful feedback from former clients who grew up in juvenile justice, foster care, orphanage, adoptive and mental health placements. What makes this book particularly instructive derives from the authors credentials. They are college-educated adults who masterfully intertwine their childhood stories with mature perspective and their own professional expertise.
The other audiences this book hopes to reach include youth in placement and students who plan on entering careers in child welfare. Children currently in care need to know that others have experienced childhoods as bad as or worse than their own, that they survived and how they did it. Students preparing to work with troubled or dependent young people should learn about a side of life they probably have not experienced before they make decisions that may adversely affect these at risk youth. Sometimes a wide abyss separates theory and reality.
Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Riveting read,
This review is from: Growing Up in the Care of Strangers: The Experiences, Insights and Recommendations of Eleven Former Foster Kids (Perfect Paperback)
I approached this fascinating book as I would a book of short stories. I read one author's story and then reflected on it. The next day, I consumed another author's chapter and pondered it. Each of the eleven stories differs from the others in what the authors experienced growing up, as well as their insights and recommendations for improving the child welfare system, thereby retaining my interest throughout. Over the nearly two weeks that I took to consume these riveting and revealing mini-memoirs, I was privy to a world so foreign from my own childhood that I cannot imagine how my life would have turned out, had I been forced to grow up in a system of care that lacks empathy, common sense and forward thinking. The authors are "heroes", in every sense of the word, and their willingness to give of themselves to change the broken system of child welfare is inspiring.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
A Must Read for those who work with System's Kids, By Jim Doncaster (Pittsburgh) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Growing Up in the Care of Strangers: The Experiences, Insights and Recommendations of Eleven Former Foster Kids (Perfect Paperback)
Growing Up in the Care of Strangers chronicles the lives of eleven individuals who refused to let their turbulent pasts determine what they would become. Abuse, neglect, abandonment and loss are the discordant themes in the lives of these authors--systems kids all who have grown up and embarked upon systems change--but hope, resilience, recovery and kindness ultimately triumph for each of them. The book is essential reading for those who would understand the failings of our alternative care and child protective service systems. But the book is more inspiration than indictment, more a celebration of the indomitability of the human spirit than a condemnation of the systems that failed them. As a mental health professional and a former treatment foster parent, I recommend the book to all who work with systems's kids. In the organization in which I work, we are making it a "must read" for all of our staff and parents in our treatment foster care programs.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Difficult but true!, By
This review is from: Growing Up in the Care of Strangers: The Experiences, Insights and Recommendations of Eleven Former Foster Kids (Perfect Paperback)
Even though I work in Child Welfare at the state level, and advocate for children who come into the "system every day, this book still managed to touch my heart. Each author describes a different yet difficult experience growing up in (and out) of foster care. These individuals are not describing something that happened to someone else. They are describing their own lives. The resiliency of these "children" who endured abandonment, abuse and neglect at the hands of adults is evidenced in the adults they grew in to. Whether you work in human services or not, read this book! You will be touched and uplifted by how these individuals make the best of the cards they have been dealt.
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