Fostering Hope : Teens Mark End of County Wardship With Scholarship, Fun

Some day, Jennifer Glover would like to play the flute again. For now, though, armed with the promise of a college scholarship and a gym bag stuffed with soap, a towel, an alarm clock and some coupons for McDonalds, the 17-year-old is preparing to face the world.

Jennifer, who lives in Los Alamitos with her uncle’s ex-wife, said she has been a ward of Los Angeles County since she was 14, when social workers discovered that she and her siblings had not attended school for a year.

On Wednesday, she was one of 175 teens invited to a ceremony at Universal Studios to celebrate their emancipation, or release into adulthood, from the foster care system.

“I’m kinda nervous,” said another foster teen, Taza Duran, “but in a way I’m not.”

After a tour of the theme park and a lunch of hamburgers and barbecued chicken, many of the teenagers were presented scholarships in a short commencement program.

In all, about 800 young adults are being emancipated this year. Many of them were taken from homes in which drug or alcohol abuse hampered their parents’ ability to care for them and more than 500 of them are receiving financial aid for college under a new county program that uses private donations.

The idea, said Peter Digre, director of the county Department of Children’s and Family Services, is to provide a cushion to young people who will suddenly be released into a harsh and unyielding world.

Besides the scholarships, he said, the former foster children participate in an independent living program, which teaches them skills such as balancing a checkbook, working out a food budget and applying for a job.

“They are emancipated fully at 18 or 19, and they are completely destitute,” Digre said. “If they lose a job, they run the risk of being homeless.”

Jennifer hopes to attend Cypress College in January, but she’s not sure what she wants to study. The only thing she ever enjoyed doing, she said, was playing the flute when she was in junior high school.

Kym Franklin, also 17, lives in the Antelope Valley with the latest in a string of foster families. She said she likes her current foster mom better than previous ones and is on her fifth social worker in a few years.

When the county stops paying for her room and board next month, she’s going to have to find an apartment. She hopes to share a place with her cousin, who is also under the county’s care.

Kym wants to be a social worker. She plans to work her way through college as a beautician, so she’s enrolled for the fall at Lancaster Beauty School.

She also wants to be a mother. Her eyes light up at the thought of it. She says she’ll do things differently than her own mother did.

“I raised my brothers and sisters from the age of 8,” she said. “My crew calls me their mother. It’s just in me to be a mother.”

Duran, who lives in Palmdale and will graduate from Desert Winds High School in the fall, tries not to think about his mother.

“If I thought about it, it would really mess me up,” said the soft-spoken 18-year-old, who was first taken out of the family home when he was 5. “I’ve just got to worry about how I’m going to make it myself. Long as I make it, then I can help other people.”

Duran wants to be a father and a building contractor.

“I want to learn how to build houses,” he said, “so I can build my own house.”

That way, he figures, he’ll have a home.

Joel Smith, who left home when he was 14, wants to join the military and maybe become a Navy Seal. His older brother, a police officer who, as a teenager, also ran away, took Smith in until he was eventually adopted by a friend’s parents. He marvels at the strength that he and his brother, with whom he is again living, have found to carry on.

“Everyone tells me we should have come out pretty bad considering our background,” the 19-year-old said. “But we came out pretty good.”