WHAT ARE WE DOING WRONG?

When I became a volunteer CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) I was surprised to learn that most children in the foster care system eventually repeat the histories of their failed parents.  Even more surprising, many social welfare professionals expect them to do so.  I found such pessimism difficult to understand, I suppose, because I was a foster care child with a different history. 

My biological father, from the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, dropped out of school in the 4^th grade.    From ages 14 to 31 he was out of prison only long enough to sire five children.   His younger brother and sister also spent time in the Ohio criminal justice system.  My biological mother was from a working class family and dropped out of high school in the l0th grade.  In addition to me and my three siblings, four of our cousins ended up in the county orphanage.  

Did I or did my siblings repeat the failed histories of our inadequate parents?  Not one member of my family, my three siblings, our nine children, or our 13 grandchildren has ever been arrested or ever been in foster care.  Of our nine children eight earned college degrees from such institutions as Wesleyan University, Tufts, and Cornell.  Six earned graduate and professional degrees from the Air Force Academy, Georgetown University, the University of Virginia, the University of Texas, and Ohio State.   Our experience suggests that under the right conditions, the same or similar genes can lead to dramatically different results. 

The right conditions for us are described in the second half of my book, Children of the Manse.  I compare our lives before and after we arrived at the manse (the Luchs residence) in a chapter called “The Honeymoon.”  

“We had never been in such comfortable, spacious surroundings, eaten such good food, or slept in such pleasant rooms or beds. We had privacy for the first time I could remember, and our own closets and dresser drawers for our new clothes and new shoes. We could talk at meals in our turn and, incredibly, second helpings of food were available just for asking. We had a bathtub where, if we wished, we could bathe alone rather than having to stand in group showers as at the children’s home. Our lives were suddenly full of excitement and beauty — carpentry tools, whole rooms and boxes full of books, field trips to the country and free and noisy romps through the woods, music lessons, a delightful neighborhood of people and buildings to meet and explore, a large back yard to play in, and a friendly red-brick school on a university campus three blocks away. We were beginning to make new friends. While unending tedium filled our hours at the children’s home, we were now involved in a stimulating round of activities that never seemed to end. Janey would later sum up our first years in the manse and the surrounding neighborhood with, ‘What an exciting place to be a child!’”

I describe how Evelyn Luchs (our foster mother) restored our physical health and took on the much more difficult challenge of repairing our psychological health.  If I were designing a home for neglected foster children, I can hardly imagine a better environment than Fred and Evelyn Luchs provided for the four of us. 

Unfortunately there are not enough foster moms with the qualities and background (a teacher trainer who had studied psychology) of an Evelyn Luchs.  The reality appears to be that the adopters in our society today are from the upper middle class, want babies, and often look abroad to find them.  Most foster care, however devoted, is not provided by that segment of our society.  There seems to be growing consensus that as currently designed, a troublesome percentage of foster care is failing.

          Alternatives for Placing Abused Children   

If we were doing it right, there would be different kinds of placements for children in foster care.   I paint a grim picture of county orphanages in Children of the Manse.  It might surprise my readers that for some children I could recommend a children’s home.   I have read memoirs of graduates of children’s homes, mostly supported by religious organizations, with highly trained personnel, small living units, nutritious and abundant food, excellent sports training facilities and first-class medical care --- everything my county orphanage lacked.   I think an ideal children’s home for some children would resemble a residential boarding school.  Moreover, I believe there are children who would respond well to residence in a residential military school. 

My point is we ought to fit the program to the child’s personality and needs and not place all children in the only model of foster care we seem to have.   If this proposal seems too expensive, our current foster care system is also expensive, and the total cost to society of not breaking the chain of failed life histories from generation to generation is surely even more so.