Also saw that it is on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle download. Listed as a 5 star player so to speak. Looks interesting, my daughter also a UCONN grad is a family therapist for a non profit in Worcester, MA. She will never run out of clients, the bad part is John Q. Public will be paying for these poor kids as they try and break the cycle.
Breaking the cycle is tough. The foster daughter of mine and her older sister, also fostered with us for a brief time, are managing reasonably well. The younger sister, now 29, is a true survivor and a wonderful person - not saying that her sister isn;t, but we remain exceptionally close with the younger woman. She married, has a son, finished community college and went on to get a medical assistant license. She is joining my wife and me along with a social worker who first introduce that daughter to my wife, as work shop presenters at this year's annual conference of Connecticut's largest foster and adoptive parents. The theme is pathways to success.
In the course of trying to spread the word about my book, I've been in touch with hundreds of anti-abuse and foster care advocacy groups and individuals across the country. Almost every state has a foster care alumni group whose aim is to help foster kids transition into productive adulthood. There are also umbrella national organizations for alumni and for a few other organizations aimed at transitioning foster kids to a productive adulthood, including college. Connecticut DCF has a college grant program that gives any child who moves directly from foster care into college and without going back to the birth family an amount equal to the cost of attending Central Connecticut State. They can go to any college in the country. Some colleges are doing outreach programs to foster teens.
Unfortunately, the numbers are not very favorable in terms of the percentage of foster kids who "make it" as adults. One of the problems is that a lot of foster parents give up when the state puts obstacles in the way or is not responsive. We made ourselves pains in the rear, which unfortunately is what a foster parent sometimes needs to do. Many caseworkers are wonderful, some are awful, and all have too many cases. Anyway, I think the reality of the majority of kids who go into foster care and are old enough to understand, is that they want to please the foster parents because they want stability if nothing else. All are damaged psychologically in some way. The demand, sadly enough, is greater than the supply of foster parents and caseworkers.
I don't know if you or your daughter are interested in the book, but the feedback I've had from social work and child psych professionals has been favorable for, what it's worth. Your daughter does important work. I'd love to know how she feels about the current trend in state DCF organizations to make family reunification a principal of the foster program. It's often been a goal, but it now has become a driving theory.
Thanks. I actually turned down 41 P5 offers because there's no place like the BY, and besides, I didn't want to see you guys whine about how UConn whiffs on all the major Connecticut talent.