Tending the Orchard for Foster Kids : Despite some failures in the system, many continue to work toward successes in rearing neglected and abused children.

Recently, I found myself gazing at the tapestry of an orchard that led me to reflect on the fruits of our labors. Social work is a field full of pain and poverty, of violence and victims. In my own position, I find daily satisfaction in recognizing foster parents for their admirable work. I urge them to tell everyone about the lasting rewards of foster parenting. What was different about the feeling I had that day? What kept me from remembering that 45% of the youths who graduate from foster care become homeless within 18 months? What kept me from focusing on the two-thirds of the prison inmates who were once in foster care? Instead, my emotions kept drawing me to the orchard scene.

SAFE, Southern Area Fostercare Effort, was honoring successful former foster youths at a luncheon at an elegant hotel where tapestries line the walls.

In a stately dining room, the rich food and opulence stood in striking contrast to the meager meals and drab motel rooms the young honorees had known as children. Occasionally a tear spilled on damask linens as it was related how they overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Here was Patti, who had lived with her drug-addicted mom and a parade of abusive father figures. At 15, Patti gave birth to a four-pound medically fragile baby. Two weeks later, Patti’s mom died of a drug overdose. In foster care Patti completed high school and medical assistant training in two years. She had another baby and tried to preserve a family for her children but finally found the courage to leave an abusive situation. Supporting herself and her children, Patti has never been unemployed or sought welfare assistance. Consistently giving her children the nurturing she never knew as a child, Patti refused to repeat the pattern.

Abused, abandoned, neglected, molested, exploited and tortured--any one of these conditions is sufficient to bring a child into the foster care system--Melissa suffered all of them. Melissa had little schooling and turned to drugs and gangs. Concerned foster parents guided Melissa from passively watching cop shows on TV to actively volunteering in the Explorer program for youths interested in law enforcement careers. The only female to complete the training, Melissa rose to the second-highest rank of lieutenant. Melissa is pursuing college studies to become a police officer.

Orange County Supervisor William G. Steiner presented an award to a middle-aged stockbroker who accepted it for his foster son, Michael. Mike declined to be present because he was busy working as a counselor for disadvantaged children at a camp in the Sierra where he turned his own life around. When Mike was a baby, his birth father left. His mother tried to numb her pain with alcohol and neglected her son. Living with her in dingy warehouses, at times with only raw spaghetti to eat and dirty clothes to wear, Mike shuttled in and out of foster care. His mom died when Mike was 14, leaving him alone in the world. Back in foster care, Mike fell into a spiral of lethargy and truancy that tested the patience of his foster dad, a foster father who refused to give up on Mike, Attending college to become a psychologist for children, Mike now leads a peer counseling program for foster children.

Certainly, these young achievers richly deserved the accolades, the money, the congratulations from the governor, the baskets heaped with gifts. But my reaction was not to any one personal achievement but rather an awareness of a cooperative, cumulative achievement that created its own vivid, woven scene.

I had heard inspiring stories about foster care before, but this time I saw a tapestry woven around many figures, who all played a part tending this orchard. I wanted everyone who becomes disheartened by the failures of the system to see this weaving that was so real you could almost smell the blossoms.