A Brave Teen Investigates Her Own Story of Abuse

Autumn Spanne

Teens join the staff of Represent because they want to share their stories. They are motivated by a desire to inspire and speak out on behalf of others who face similar struggles, and in hopes of making positive changes to an often troubled child welfare system. There are many other young people yearning to understand their experiences and share their personal histories in pursuit of justice and reform.

We were impressed by a recent story out of Sacramento, California about 19-year-old Lilly Manning, who recently called a reporter at the Sacramento Bee to help her find out why no one had helped her during the years of horrendous abuse she suffered at the hands of her adoptive parents. From the time Manning was 9, the couple—especially her adoptive mother—turned ordinary household items into torture devices that they used to release their rage and beat, stab, and burn the girl into submission, according to the Bee.

The abuse came to an end when Manning was 15. After her mother stabbed her in the thigh and locked her in a closet for months, she managed to break out and flee the home. But when she called Child Protective Services from a pay phone, she later told the Bee, they told her there was nothing they could do, and referred her to a crisis center for teens. She again reached out for help. Luckily, the crisis center took action. Manning’s wounds—she had 100 scars in all—were treated, and she went into foster care.

The troubling thing is, it wasn’t the first time Manning and her siblings had reached out. The Bee reported that court records showed that police and at least one social worker had visited the home in the past. On another occasion, Manning said, a teacher referred her to the school nurse, who suggested maybe the girl’s wounds were self-inflicted. The kids gave up, until the day Manning kicked her way out of the locked closet. Since then, both her adoptive foster mother and the woman’s husband have been tried and convicted on various felony counts.

But Manning’s journey is just beginning. With the help of the Bee reporter, she has requested her juvenile records so she can start piecing together a past that she’s intent on understanding in order to move forward. Meanwhile, she has started college, and she goes to therapy.

A follow-up editorial in the Bee two weeks after Manning’s story was published highlights the fact that many times, it takes a child’s death to shine a spotlight on the failures of the system since courts and Child Protective Services protect the confidentiality of abused children who survive. As our Represent writers know, it’s not easy to face a difficult childhood and choose to share painful stories with the world. Manning shows great courage in requesting her records and sharing her story with the press in the hopes of helping other vulnerable children by shedding light on a troubled system.

Putting Out the Welcome Mat for Children in Court

Autumn Spanne

A New Jersey advocacy group released a report this month criticizing the state for not making more of an effort to ensure that kids are involved in court hearings so that they have a voice in the decisions about their future.

“When children enter the foster care system, caseworkers, attorneys and judges make decisions that will affect their lives for years to come,” said Mary Coogan, assistant director of Advocates for Children of New Jersey and co-author of the report. “Often, these children have little say in these critical decisions.”

Among the reasons cited for not inviting children to court proceedings are concerns that the hearings will traumatize youth. There are also logistical challenges, including transporting children to court and missed school time.

To address those concerns, ACNJ recommends scheduling some hearings after school so that children and their families are better able to participate, and using videoconferencing, audio recordings, and letter writing as alternative ways to make sure youth can communicate their wishes to the court. The group also suggests requiring the lawyers of children in care to regularly ask clients if they’d like to attend court, and making sure they have the opportunity to do so if they wish.

In a system where kids already feel such little control over their lives, the right to speak to the court about their wants and needs is extremely important. ACNJ is right to push the system to offer kids multiple opportunities to be a part of court hearings that have such profound effects on their futures. It’s not just a matter of inviting their clients: lawyers and social workers need to explain and re-explain to youth what happens in these proceedings, how they may be affected, and help them understand how to speak effectively in court.

At Represent, we’ve talked and written extensively about how teens experience court. Many say going to court makes them feel like they’ve done something wrong—they feel unwelcome and as though they don’t belong in the room with all those powerful adults. Many are confused about the purpose of going to court, and the roles played by the judge, social worker, and lawyers. Long waits mean missing school and other important activities, so court feels more like a punishment than a chance to make positive decisions about their future.

Here in New York City and elsewhere in the country, there have been some promising efforts to try to include youth in the process. In Queens, Teen Space is a special area of Family Court reserved just for teens in foster care. It’s a comfortable, teen-friendly environment that offers snacks, comfortable seats, and friendly staff who can provide advice and resources on everything from jobs to college to navigating the court system. Teen Space peer advocate Taquan Pugh wrote about the program for Represent in our winter 2010 advocacy issue.

In Illinois, Human Rights Should Trump Religious Bias

Virginia Vitzthum

Not for the first time, religious beliefs are clashing with laws governing foster care. The latest battleground is Illinois, which signed a same-sex civil-union bill into law this year. The bill, which took effect June 1, gives gay couples most rights that spouses have, including parental and adoption rights. The state can shut down adoption and foster care services receiving federal assistance if they discriminate against gays and lesbians.

The Catholic Charities foster care agencies want to make sure this doesn’t apply to them, so they have filed a lawsuit demanding clarification. Fearing that they could be forced to place foster children with gay parents, three dioceses – Peoria, Springfield, and Joliet – suspended all adoption and foster care services by Catholic agencies while they await clarification that the law will not force them to place children with anyone unmarried. Though the Catholic Conference of Illinois estimates that Catholic agencies place about one-fifth of all foster children in the state, part of the Catholics’ defense is that gay or unmarried couples could just go to one of the other Illinois agencies.

Catholic Charities hope for an exemption rests on a clause in the law forbidding interference with or regulation of religious practice. They assert that the Catholic belief in the sanctity of man-woman marriage gives Catholic agencies a loophole for legal discrimination against gay couples (and unmarried straight couples). That belief, they say, trumps the law and its extension of rights.

Everyone’s entitled to his beliefs, but not to deny rights to others. Much of the world has renounced legal discrimination against women and racial minorities. Illinois, among other states and nations, has figured out that it's time to allow LGBTQ people the basic human right to a family. “But my god says gay people don’t deserve families” is no longer a reasonable defense of prejudice and exclusion.

Take it from the people that both sides in Illinois say they’re protecting: youth in foster care. Our writers, some of whom were raised in quite homophobic environments, just want good parents and don’t care if they’re straight or gay. Take it from Dominick, a straight boy whose adoptive dream dad is gay. Take it from James, who in a 2009 Represent article, calls state laws against unmarried foster parents “a shame” and sensibly suggests, “I believe that if people would take their minds off of politics for just a minute, this world would be a better, more comfortable place for foster children. Next time a state considers a law like this, I believe there should be a vote from the kids to find out how we feel.”

Being a Normal Kid

Virginia Vitzthum

A study by the National Center for Youth Law finds, not surprisingly, that extracurricular activities benefit teens in foster care immensely. Among the gains researchers found are improvements at sticking with tasks, following instructions, interacting with authority figures and peers; increased independence, leadership, confidence; and decreased feelings of worry and isolation.

Helping foster teens into extracurricular activities seems like a no-brainer: a relatively easy, low-cost strategy to address many of the problems they face. Using the resources of their school, they can develop skills that will help them in college and the workplace. They can bond with their peers on a specific project, getting them past the awkwardness of explaining their home situations. And they can make connections with caring adults that may last into young adulthood. A basketball coach or band leader or chess club adviser can change a teen’s life, both by nurturing talents and thus building confidence, and by simply being a reliable adult she can turn to after she ages out.

We asked some of our teen writers about their extracurricular activities, and they hit on all these points. One Represent veteran does or has done drama therapy group (through his foster care/adoptive agency); poetry club and Global Kids, which teaches leadership skills (both through his high school). He says he gained “better communication skills, plus skills in the things they taught. You meet new people and you learn things you could learn in school but didn’t realize you wanted to. They made learning interesting.”

A new writer here says she joined the Positive Peer Group and the Positive Leadership Group in her high school. “I got a sense of responsibility. It kept me out of trouble, brought me closer to the others, and built character,” she says.

A third staffer works on his high school’s yearbook. He does a little of everything --editing, format, layout, deciding what goes in. “I like brainstorming with people and finding solutions to problems, coming up with categories. I like that everyone is committed and disciplined; it’s a team effort.” He adds, “I’m learning Photoshop, which could help me in a lot of jobs.”

The Florida Department of Children and Families recently recognized the importance of after-school activities and appointed a “Normalcy Czar”
to ensure that kids in care have as much access to “age-appropriate enrichment, extra-curricular, and social activities” as possible. The czar will work with foster parents, biological parents, caseworkers, and “community partners” of the DCF to ensure that foster kids get the same chances as kids with parents to develop in after-school programs.

Here are features and resources associated with the Florida plan.
The teen normalcy plan in particular illustrates how normalcy is a two-way street built on a foundation of fairness. If you do your chores and your homework, then you can have a cell phone, go to the prom, or have sleepovers with friends. If a kid’s never had such consistency, these mundane rites can work magic. For teens who don’t find that stability at home, being part of the yearbook staff or drama group or soccer team can bring steadiness to their lives.

Michigan's Modest Proposal

Virginia Vitzthum

State Senator Bruce Casswell of Michigan proposed an ingenious cost-savings measure for the progressive state’s budget in late April. Children in foster care could only buy clothes from second-hand stores like Goodwill and Salvation Army.

We applaud the senator’s thrift and wonder if it could be extended to other child care expenses. For example, do foster children really need new food? Restaurants and stores throw out tons of mostly edible food every night. Foster children could learn a valuable lesson in economy and resourcefulness if they were responsible for procuring their own gently used meals from dumpsters after closing time.

Besides clothing and food, shelter is another big expense. Some foster parents have taken the initiative on creative solutions to defray the cost of housing. But can we afford to leave that up to individuals? Perhaps Michigan should require any foster parent to keep taking on foster children until the amount of rent or mortgage has been exceeded.

A foster child wastes valuable resources forging her own identity; better to keep using what’s there in the home. Truly efficient foster parents hand down their own sexual identities, religions, and prejudices to the children in their home, as many Represent writers have found.

Finally, parenting itself can be efficiently outsourced without leaving the foster home. By the time they’ve reached double-digit age, kids are certainly capable of taking care of younger children. There’s plenty of hand-wringing about a shortage of foster parents; perhaps we ought instead to be applauding and even mandating such creative ways of sharing the child-rearing burden with teens in care.

Casswell’s proposal suggests a broader question than his own “Why do they need new clothes?” Their parents fell down on the job, so why should youth in care get to be children?

Even Clean, Charlie Sheen’s Not OK

Virginia Vitzthum

Charlie Sheen’s very public crack-up came to a crescendo just as our addictions issue was going to press. Even if you didn’t want to hear about him, you may know by now that over the last 20 years, Sheen has been in and out of drug treatment and rehab -- and has repeatedly threatened and assaulted women, including his wives and girlfriends. Earlier this year, Sheen went into rehab yet again, but resumed heavy cocaine and alcohol use when he got out. His behavior became increasingly erratic and threatening. On March 3, his children were removed; on March 7, he was fired from his TV show. It’s what people in AA would call “hitting bottom.”

Sheen passed a series of drug tests in early March, so he was “clean” as the public watched the flurry of TV appearances and homemade YouTube videos featuring his disordered, paranoid, and grandiose rants.

The question of why and how this sad spectacle has become entertainment (and why a batterer is a folk hero to so many) has been covered in plenty of other blogs. We were more interested in how his behavior reflects his years of alcohol and drug abuse and possible mental illness.

Kim Sumner-Mayer, Ph.D., LMFT, is a family therapist with years of experience treating people with active addiction, those in recovery, and their families. She works at the Center on Addiction and the Family at Phoenix House in New York City. Her interview about addicted family members appears in our latest issue. We asked her to comment how Sheen’s behavior fits in with her understanding of addiction and mental illness -– and how they interact.

“It is very difficult to know how much of Sheen's behavior is caused by his addiction, and how much his addiction may be a response to mental health problems,” she said. “Many people troubled by mental illness self-medicate with drugs and alcohol in order to manage their symptoms, leading to addiction on top of mental illness. It's entirely possible that his addiction is masking/medicating underlying mental health problems.”

Sumner-Mayer said the way Sheen has presented himself in public during the past month might signal a withdrawal-induced hypomania, which is common when cocaine abusers abruptly stop using, even if they don’t have pre-existing mental health problems.

“Many of his behaviors -- his amped-up, high-energy presentation; lack of sleep; pressured and voluminous speech; the superiority complex; the paranoia and belief that others are out to ‘get him’; severely impaired ability to accurately assess others' intentions toward him and perceptions of him -- all of these are common during withdrawal-induced hypomania,” she said.

But without the care of mental health professionals who can assess both substance abuse and mental health issues, it would be impossible to know whether mental health issues have contributed to Sheen’s unraveling. Sumner-Mayer cautioned, however, that negative drug tests do not measure a person’s well-being.

“A person can be dry for a long time and engage in many of the same thought, behavior, and relationship patterns that existed while using. Recovery requires a commitment to biological, psychological, social, and usually spiritual changes that accompany greater wellness and mental health.” It’s a process, she added, that can take months or even years of effort -- “not a ‘status update’ that one attains in a matter of days.”

And that’s assuming that you succeed in remaining abstinent. Sumner-Mayer says that about a third of all people who try to stop using a drug, by themselves or with a program, are able to stay off it for a solid year. (If they go to treatment, chances are much better.) Another third of people eventually make it a whole year with no using, but they relapse one or more times along the way. And another third relapse repeatedly.

It simply isn’t easy to stop, even if you realize that your job and your family are at risk. Charlie Sheen, meanwhile, broadcasts to the world that he is “winning” – and nobody seems to be correcting him. He’s surrounded himself with sycophants and enablers, and the constant media attention further signal him that he is OK. He’s not OK, and he’s giving the dangerous impression that you can “fix” addiction and mental illness quickly.

Child Care Cuts Hurt

Autumn Spanne

Kelly, one of Represent’s teen writers, recently wrote about how as a 6th grader she regularly cared for three younger siblings while her mother worked. One day she left her baby sister home alone in her crib because she feared getting in trouble at school for missing an important school trip. After arriving at school she panicked and told the principal. Luckily, the baby was fine.

The following year, Kelly’s little brother went missing while she was supposed to be babysitting. The boy was found unharmed by the police on the roof, but Kelly and her siblings were placed in foster care.

“Sometimes I blame myself—if I did what my mother told me, none of this would be happening and we’d all be together in my mom’s house,” Kelly wrote. “My mom is always reminding me that it’s my fault that we all separated and that we’re not the family she wanted us to be. I know in part it was my fault but in a way all of us have a little bit of fault.”

This Represent writer’s experience illustrates a dilemma faced by thousands of parents who must choose between work and paying for childcare. Facing staggering budget shortfalls, states and counties across the country are freezing or cutting childcare subsidies for low-income families. It’s a trend that child welfare advocates warn threatens kids’ well-being and forces families onto welfare rolls.

A few months ago, Monroe County in upstate New York became one of the latest state and local governments to join that trend by freezing childcare subsidies for low-wage working families, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported. Officials estimate that 1,200 families that would have previously qualified for the subsidy will not receive it this year, according to the story.

And that’s just one county—last year, Washington State cut $51 million from its welfare-to-work program, which provides job training and childcare subsidies for working parents. Arizona, Michigan, and North Carolina are among the other states that have cut the budgets of childcare subsidy programs or restricted eligibility.

Families already receiving foster care prevention services from child welfare departments have been largely shielded from these cuts, but preventive programs also face big reductions. Families that are not receiving sufficient help paying for childcare may resort to keeping older kids out of school to care for younger siblings or relying on other unqualified caregivers, endangering children and putting them at risk of going into foster care.

And for many other families, losing childcare subsidies sometimes means parents can no longer afford to work, turning instead to welfare to make ends meet. As a New York Times story pointed out last year, that’s the very thing that subsidized childcare was designed to prevent during the massive overhaul of the welfare system in the 1990s. But for some working families living below the poverty line, work may prove prohibitively expensive since childcare costs amount to nearly a third of household expenditures.

Draconian cuts to state budgets are inevitable in this economy, but childcare is not the place to scrimp. It is far more expensive and disruptive to put working parents’ children in foster care than it is to subsidize day care.

Fewer Choices for Older Teens

Virginia Vitzthum

A bill introduced in Virginia’s state Senate would take away the option of independent living “as a goal” for foster children ages 16-18. The Senator who introduced the bill, George Barker of Alexandria, is himself a foster parent and says that he thinks that adolescents should be placed in families when possible because “families are very important.”

Similar reasoning led New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) to close its supervised independent living program (SILP). ACS’s reasoning sounded a lot like the Virginia senator’s: The official ACS statement said the decision to close the housing program “is related to a belief that most youth can be best served in a family-based setting. It can be a difficult to transition to independence as an adult, and we believe that a youth should have a family to support him or her throughout each of their lives.”

Well, sure. A good foster family—any supportive adult—that will remain in the child’s life after she ages out is ideal, and child welfare agencies should do everything possible to ensure that every young person leaves care with caring, supportive adults who will stick around. But did anyone consult any of the 1,000 children in Virginia that this law would affect? Are the older teens in care finding those ideal foster families? If not, how are they learning the skills they need to survive on their own once they leave care?

Some writers here at Represent have been in foster home after foster home in New York City without finding that long-term support, and many of them would like to cut their losses and prepare themselves for life after care. Samantha Flowers describes being forced back into a foster home from an independent living placement after ACS closed the SILPs. She allows that her foster mother provides some support, though Samantha can’t be sure that support will continue past her 21st birthday. In her too-brief time in her own apartment, “I realized I could do what I needed to do to survive and that I could walk the walk of independence.” Do we really want well-meaning adults’ wishful thinking to take away foster teens’ chance to prove themselves?

Some foster parents don’t teach the teens in their homes to cook, open a bank account, or write a resume; and a once-a-month Independent Living class isn’t always sufficient preparation either. It might be better for young people to encounter these obstacles before they age out and still have the support of the foster care system.

Recommendations for NYC Youth Aging Out

Virginia Vitzthum

Child Welfare Watch, a policy research publication based in New York City, has released recommendations for young people aging out of foster care. They’ve dedicated a special double issue of their quarterly journal to this subject because youth are aging out into extreme poverty at the same rate as 10 years ago, despite concerted efforts to ease that transition. Part of that is due to the recession, which has led to cuts in preventive services designed to keep families from entering the system.

The recommendations were generated and debated by the child welfare experts on CWW’s advisory board. They are directed at NYC’s foster care system, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), which oversees different foster care agencies. These recommendations, based on interviews with young people in care and with child welfare experts, could, however, apply to city and state systems across the country. Below are the recommendations as written, plus a brief explanation.

· Foster care agencies must base their work with teens on the principle that preparing for adulthood is fundamental to adolescent development. (Children’s Services must supply older teens with more career, education, and other skills training.)

· ACS must create enforceable standards and adequate funding for foster care agencies to ensure that young people are connected to meaningful assistance even after leaving foster care. (Regulations are very vague now, which means that kids fall through the cracks; recommendation is enforceable standards for six months to a year of family or individual assistance after aging out at age 21.)

· The mayor, city council, and ACS should provide funds to hire young people as peer advocates in nonprofit agencies and government. (Successful former foster youth should be sharing their stories and their information!)

· ACS and foster care agencies should put far more resources into strengthening families – including families to which young adults will likely return. (Even if birth parents have had their parental rights terminated, they should get support if the child goes back to them after aging out, which often happens.)

· ACS and its foster care agencies should provide comprehensive sex education and family planning services to teens in their care. (Family planning programs should include information on birth control, sexuality, and abortion.)

· ACS should take steps to stabilize housing for young women before and after childbirth. (Planning to keep mother and baby together needs to start earlier.)

· ACS should place young mothers in the same home as their babies. (Young mothers now are punished for things like missing curfew by having their babies taken away. Keeping families together needs to be a higher priority, including finding foster homes that will take mother and baby together.)

· Agencies and ACS should make school attendance and graduation a top priority for teens in foster care – including teen parents. (Too often, teens, especially teen mothers, are pushed toward getting a GED rather than finishing school.)

· The city should restore the supported independent living program and create more supportive housing for young adults and young parents leaving care. (New York City closed its supportive living programs, apartments where foster teens could practice living alone, with a staff member available to help. This was an important step toward independence, and many teens want this option back.)

· The state office of mental health must create better options for young adults with mental health challenges. (Supportive housing providers in particular need more training on how to deal with foster teens with mental health diagnoses.)