Sharing Love Helps Mend Young Lives : Troubled Teens Aid Abused Babies

It’s certainly not the best of circumstances for falling in love.

Ann is 16 years old. Over the past eight months, she has lived in one foster home and two group shelter homes, and two weeks ago she was placed with Florence Crittenton Services of Orange County, a residential treatment center in Fullerton for troubled adolescent girls. Ann won’t talk about why she no longer lives with her parents, except to say that she had a “problem” with her stepfather and ran away from home.

Mickey is 2 1/2 years old. He doesn’t talk much yet, but those familiar with his background allege that he was physically abused by his stepfather. Mickey was placed in Orangewood Children’s Home in Orange last June and remained there until a month ago when, because of overcrowding at Orangewood, he and three other toddlers were sent to Florence Crittenton.

And that’s where Ann met Mickey one night last week.

“I’m in love with him,” enthused Ann, holding Mickey on her hip and giving him a kiss on the forehead. “He needs love and I need love, so we can give each other love.”

It’s a unique arrangement: the girls of Florence Crittenton, many of whom have been sexually or physically abused, helping the staff care for babies and toddlers from Orangewood who also have been abused.

They give one another what they may never have received before: love and affection.

“It’s a very nice interchange with the girls and the babies,” said Agnes Trinchero, director of Florence Crittenton Services. “When the Orangewood babies come to stay with us, the girls discover a tremendous feeling of being protective: They feel, ‘Poor little child with no father or mother.’ Some of these kids (from Orangewood) are living out some of the problems the girls have been through.”

And receiving affection from the children, Trinchero added, is important to the girls: “It’s someone to love and love them back without question. And the babies come in frightened and respond quickly when they get this special attention.”

Over the past year, the girls of Florence Crittenton Services, who range in age from 12 to 18, have helped take care of 22 infants and toddlers from Orangewood. (The names of the girls and toddlers in this story have been changed.)

The cooperative arrangement between the two agencies was established last spring when the 170-bed Orangewood Children’s Home began experiencing overcrowding in its nursery and toddler cottages.

“The bottom line is that there is a critical shortage of foster care homes in the county, particularly for children under 5,” said former Orangewood director Bill Steiner, who is now executive director of the private Orangewood Foundation. “For example, we have 66 children under the age of 5 awaiting foster care placement today.”

In addition to Florence Crittenton, Orangewood also places infants and toddlers on an as-needed basis with Child or Parental Emergency Services, a private agency in Santa Ana.

“Most of these toddlers, and even the babies, are coming from high-risk situations where they’ve been abused or severely neglected, and they tend to need a high level of care,” Steiner said. “We feel Florence Crittenton is doing an excellent job of taking care of our children. We’re encouraging Agnes to expand her program and take more babies and toddlers.”

Florence Crittenton Services, however, has room to take in only four Orangewood children at a time. In fact, Trinchero said, Florence Crittenton has outgrown its 58-bed facility and is looking for a larger site.

The girls are placed at the residential treatment center for a variety of reasons, according to Trinchero: Some have psychiatric or psychological problems that stem from abuse at home; others have reacted to problems at home by getting into trouble with the law and have been placed by the courts; still others have been removed from their homes because, she said, “they were in life-risk situations because of the physical and sexual abuse they have suffered.”

In fact, Trinchero said, 70 to 80% of the girls have been physically or sexually abused, or both. “It’s almost the same story as the babies,” she said, describing the “chaotic, hurting (home) environments” in which the Orangewood children have lived.

Trinchero said one toddler came to Crittenton with cigarette burn marks on his arms. Another had been left in the car while his mother went from bar to bar. And with others, Trinchero said, there is evidence of sexual abuse. “You can tell because they’re frightened, and they don’t want you to touch them,” she said.

When young children are brought into shelter care, their needs often are basic:

“They just want to be held,” said Lynda Oswald, head teacher of the infant day-care center at Florence Crittenton. “They always come with a little bag of toys” and not much else.

Trinchero added that the children also frequently arrive at the shelter showing signs of poor nutrition, and they may be suffering from lice, ringworm, scabies, diarrhea and ear infections.

Because about a third of the girls at Florence Crittenton have their own children with them or are pregnant, the program includes classes in parenting skills and practical experience in the staff-supervised nursery. So it was only natural when the Orangewood children began arriving a year ago that the girls without children of their own would be allowed to help out.

“The girls are assigned a child to kind of take under their wing,” said Trinchero, “and that child becomes a special little friend.”

The girls who volunteer to help with the infants and toddlers “just enjoy children,” Oswald said, noting that often it is “the girls who are kind of on the outside--the lonely ones--who latch onto these kids.”

In the process, the toddlers get very attached to the girls. Trinchero said one little boy says, “Mommy, Mommy” to every woman who comes through the nursery door. “He hasn’t found someone steady enough,” she explained. “He sees a role of some kind, but not a person.”

The girls spend 3 1/2 hours a week with the young children in the staff-supervised nursery, where they do everything from diapering and feeding to playing and singing songs to them.

In addition, the girls spend an hour each evening in what Trinchero calls “one-on-one time” with the children--bathing them, playing with them and simply holding them.

“The important thing is they (the children) bond with one person who can spend so much time with them,” Oswald said.

And just as the babies benefit from the love and attention they receive, so do the girls.

“They feel very needed and rewarded by these children,” Oswald said. “The girls have such low self-esteem, and it is maybe the first time they have felt needed.”

“So many of these girls have been in placement so long,” Trinchero said, “that they feel, ‘at least I’m looked on as one who is competent,’ and that gives them great pride.”

Marie, 18, has lived in group homes for the past two years--ever since, she said, “My mom kicked me out of the house.” (She had a problem with drugs, was arrested for burglary and spent time in Juvenile Hall). Marie has been at Florence Crittenton for five months and has been helping with the Orangewood children for the past two months.

“One day,” she said, “I went on a walk with the new children, and I kind of got attached to a little boy.”

That was 2-year-old Jessie.

“I always wanted to have a little boy, and it’s like, there he was,” Marie said. “I give him a bath, play with him, talk to him, and I try to help him learn things.”

Marie said she has encouraged the quiet little boy to talk to the other children and be more social. And, she said, she has noticed a difference.

“The first few days he cried when I left,” she said, “Then he became more social with the kids, and after a while he didn’t cry at all.”

Of course, there inevitably comes the time when the child must leave.

As at Orangewood, the infants and toddlers stay at Florence Crittenton Services until they are reunited with their parents or until a suitable foster home is found or they are relinquished for adoption. The length of stay, Trinchero said, has ranged from under a month to four months.

But after developing such close attachments with the little ones, it’s not easy to say goodby.

“It’s excruciating when these children leave,” said Trinchero, recalling one 3-year-old girl who clung to Oswald and kicked and screamed when her parents came for her. “I’ve told Bill Steiner, ‘I don’t know how you stand it.’ ”

There are some benefits to the partings, however.

In acting out “with emotion and tears” the hurt of saying goodby to the children, Trinchero said, the girls often are able to express their feelings of anger and hurt at having been abandoned by their own parents.

Marie acknowledged that when little Jessie leaves, “it’ll be hard on me. I think it’ll be hard for him too. . . . But I think what we’re doing now together is helping him gain trust in people.”

Ann thinks that the toddlers from Orangewood will gain something else from their experience with the girls at Florence Crittenton.

“Love--because they don’t have their parents and they need love, and I don’t have my parents . . . ,” she said, turning to Mickey. “We’re in the same boat together.”