<p>I had a hard time coming back to this thread. When I wrote the thread, I said that I now see myself as an observer of my past, but then when I came back and read what I wrote, I could not read it without crying and had to keep coming back. Maybe this is really just a hard time with me. My own daughter is the age that I was, and we just returned last night from her college orientation.</p>
<p>Anyhow, there are issues with so called “benevolent organizations” that only people who’ve needed them or who are in legal services really know.</p>
<p>One time during that time period, I needed medicine, and was referred by social services to Catholic Charities. So I went there and was given an appointment with a counselor. He seemed like a nice man, and gave me a voucher to get my medicine. During this appointment, he told me he was a former friar and that he’d suffered from polio as a child (his one leg was severely affected but he was able to get around amazingly). Anyhow, by the end of the appointment, he asked me out to dinner.</p>
<p>Although I’d dated some, I left my parents’ home a virgin, and I was a very naive and pretty girl at that point. He was about 30 years old, and I really thought that he was being nice to me. By that point, my mom was coming out of the shelter, starting her life over with a little boy, and she was immediately suspect of him.</p>
<p>He took me out to dinner at Bennigan’s (fancy for me then). He also worked at a homeless shelter, and he gave me some clothes, gave me his home number, and eventually took me out to try to learn to drive, and let me use his shower one time (remember, I had no heat in my apartment). </p>
<p>He was a gentleman during those times, but eventually the day came that he tried to kiss me, which I resisted. Then he went all out and asked me to marry him, which I declined, and our relationship ended. I think what disappointed me more than anything was realizing that he probably preying on me from the beginning, that his intent was not benevolent. Now that I am an adult and a professional, I realize that he breached a lot of boundaries. </p>
<p>In my professional life, I have seen other people directed to charitable organizations who are in danger of losing their children in foster care. These organizations in my area are always Catholic. While they are not supposed to push their dogma, their take on life and how they perceive the actions of the people sent to them is affected by their mindset. </p>
<p>For example, I’ve seen a situation where a woman was the breadwinner, the husband stayed home with the kids. She was smarter, and he had ADHD. One time, their child went to the hospital with an injury, and they called CPS. Although abuse was ruled out (accidental injury caused by equipment malfunction), while investigating, they discovered the husband’s ADHD. They then deemed his children in danger of neglect due to his lack of ability to pay attention (not proven). They told the wife to stay home and take care of the kids or send them to daycare and to make him get a job. They also told them both to go to parenting and anger management (just in case). Well, the parents couldn’t do it. The classes were during the day, so was work, so was daycare. They had these beautiful blond haired, blue eyed infants. Inevitably the foster-adopt parents, two women who were social services professionals began to make allegations. When the little boy got out of the tub, he “presented his bottom to her”. Before you know it, they hadn’t gotten their “plan” completed in 18 months, so their rights were terminated, and these two lovely and “well-qualified” parents got the kids.</p>
<p>What really turned me off was the realization that the charities were not in it for the kids, but for the grants that they receive from social services to put on anger management and parenting classes. Inevitably the parents cannot jump through the hoops that they are given, and then the charities also profit when the children are adopted to people who subscribe to their religious views. </p>
<p>Later, I talked to a DSS attorney about how they took the child from the man based on ADHD, about how many people are labeled with this now, and should they all lose their kids. He told me that if he has his way, he will take them all away, he doesn’t think they should raise kids. I wanted to go home and take a shower after hearing that.</p>
<p>That all said, I do believe that there are people in these organizations that help for the right reasons. But I do not trust the people who run the religious organizations anymore and my view of those charities is permanently tainted. </p>
<p>Another thing to understand is that many people who end up on the streets have justifiable trust issues with the government and these organizations. My 12 year old mother was in foster care because her sister was starved to death and my mother starved as well. After the hospital shaved her head to get rid of lice, they sent her to a home with a locked fridge. One day she sat at the dinner table, and her foster father said “How do you like that dinner? Too bad your sister can’t eat”. As the oldest child, my now 58 year old mother is stunted and traumatized because she still feels responsible that she “didn’t get help” before her sister died. Even worse, that a-hole foster father threatened to grab her boobs when she didn’t behave, and when she was 14, they sent her to work in the fields with migrant workers. 3 days after her high school graduation, they said “Time to go, money runs out”. She begged them to let her stay, she’d get a job, but no dice. After she moved out, they put a new addition on their house with her migrant worker and social services money. And then she met my father…</p>
<p>So children who have been in foster care and have been abused in their foster homes have suffered 3x – once by the failure of their original parents, once by the foster parents who are to rescue them, and again by the DSS office that turns a blind eye. And these people are miraculously expected to “be ok” when they are shoved out the door at 18 when the state money runs out? And they are supposed to trust the government and agencies?</p>
<p>People do not want to accept the abuse that goes on because we all have to live here in this country and depend upon its leaders to make our lives flow. I mean, putting up with our own workplace issues, our home maintenance, and our kids’ tantrums are bad enough. We can’t take on the rest of it. Let the organizations deal with the people who can’t get it together. </p>
<p>And you know what? I’m not saying that people have to see other people’s problems as theirs. think that a little honesty about what really goes on is necessary. This past year, my daughter did a sleep out for the homeless. The kids got nice fridge boxes, blankets, pillows, and they were allowed to come into the school to use the bathroom if they turned in a canned good. Do I really think that they learned anything from that about being homeless? No, I don’t. It’s a nice way to pretend that you are doing something without getting “your hands dirty”. </p>
<p>Real help is doing things like volunteering at a soup kitchen or shelter (although I do think that this should not be done by teens unable to understand the dangers inherent in dealing with these populations). Take under your wing a real person who desperately needs help and who wants to accept it, for example a foster child about to age out who needs someone to be their family. Support expanded programs for foster children aging out of the system. Don’t snicker and make comments about the woman in line with her food stamps. Don’t donate your broken and stained items to charities as a means of telling yourself that you do something. Don’t rent out properties to low income people and populate them with unsafe space heaters and refuse to take care of roaches because “those people are lucky to get what they can”. I could go on, but then again, I probably should just write a book…</p>
Good luck with whoever they place you with!</p>