Teens Speak Out About Foster Care

For six months, Alexandra’s foster mother locked her in a linen closet for days at a time without food. She did not cry, or scream, or tell anyone. But one day, while pummeling a punching bag in her psychologist’s office, she found her voice.

“They starve me,” the 10-year-old girl said through tears.

Social workers removed her from the home.

Seven years later, Alexandra wants to tell her story to help change the system. On Sunday, she joined 30 teenagers from across Southern California for a two-day Foster Youth Summit begun this year by the Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles as part of a nationwide initiative to help those like Alexandra speak up on child welfare and legal issues. Similar conferences are taking place nationwide this year.

Alexandra and other teens spent the weekend at Occidental College working on their speaking skills in preparation for the summit’s closing event Monday, in which foster youths addressed a panel of 22 judges, politicians and social service providers about the needs of children in foster care. The panel hopes to turn the recommendations into legislation and policy changes.

The teenagers arrived Sunday eager to get their points across. They made lists of problems: Guardians who buy marijuana with money designated for foster children. Social workers who do not return phone calls. Separated siblings who are not allowed to visit each other. Children whose foster families don’t give them prescribed asthma medicine.

Alexandra, who lives in a group home in La Verne with five other girls, came with her own concerns. She will graduate from high school next month and has been accepted to the Art Institute of California in Santa Monica.

She had planned to move out, find a job and begin college in the fall. But she said advisors told her that because she doesn’t turn 18 until November, she won’t be old enough to leave the group home when the semester begins. Alexandra -- an aspiring filmmaker -- was crushed.

On Sunday morning, Alexandra waited for her turn to vent as the summit’s opening speaker, John Hill, chief of staff for Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, addressed the teens.

Hill spent nine years in foster care. His mother walked out on her 10 children. His father was a migrant worker. Hill taught himself to read, studying books under the headlights of his father’s car while sitting in a patch of dirt. He told the teens he had attended 29 grammar schools. When he was placed in foster care, he dreaded holidays. He made Mother’s Day cards in class and left them at school. But he was determined to get an education.

“I kept all of my emotions inside, like some of you,” Hill said.

As he spoke, one girl pulled her sunglasses over her eyes and wiped tears from her cheeks.

“All of us, as kids, are angry,” Hill said. “Use that anger to drive you.”

Alexandra stared at him. She couldn’t believe how far he had come. Not long ago, she was as lost as the little boy he described.

Alexandra was removed from her mother’s Pomona home when she was 8, after police found drugs there. She bounced among foster families. At one home, she said her foster sister beat her up. In her third foster home, she was starved. She has lived in 10 foster homes and 12 group homes. She was prescribed more than 20 kinds of antidepressant medications -- which she didn’t think she needed.

She wanted to return to her mother. But when Alexandra was 14, her mother died of a heart attack. Social workers told Alexandra that her father was dead too. She said she does not believe it, because other foster children have been told their parents were dead, only to find out later it wasn’t true.

Later at the conference, Alexandra joined the teens in a public speaking exercise. The thought of making a speech made her queasy. Still, she was looking forward to addressing the Blue Ribbon Commission on Children. It started this year in partnership with the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care, which is working with similar campaigns in New York, Washington, Texas and Arizona.

“I want people to hear what foster kids want to say,” Alexandra said. “We’re humans.”

She practiced a short speech about her struggles to attend college. Wearing a baggy black sweatshirt, she stood before her peers. When she finished, lawyers stopped her. They told her she has a right to attend college and emancipate, even if she isn’t 18. Alexandra wondered why no one had told her this before.

Other teens voiced similar frustration and confusion over the law and their rights. One girl explained that her guardian takes money that is supposed to go to her and leaves town for weeks.

“She uses it to smoke,” the girl said. “Then I’m like, what am I supposed to eat?”

Another teen talked about being punished at her group home if she refused to take antidepressant medication, even though she found out it was her right to refuse.

By Monday, Alexandra was ready to face the commission. She had so many complaints and requests, including more college counseling and improving conditions in foster homes, she didn’t know where to begin.

California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno introduced other panel members, including Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Nash of the Juvenile Division.

“These are the top players and top policymakers in the state,” Moreno told the teens. “In short, these are people who can actually do something about the problems.”

One by one, students asked for changes: Better contact with social workers, better visitation rights for family members, more training and screening for foster families and group homes.

One student froze and forgot his speech.

Alexandra had written her thoughts down to read aloud. When her turn to speak came, she tossed the notes, saying: “This is supposed to come from my heart.”

She grabbed the microphone and decided to focus on one issue. “When my mom passed away, they put me on a hell of a lot of antidepressants,” she said. “They were always like, ‘Why is she so tired? Why is she acting like this?’ ”

She told the panel that she didn’t need the medicine, and that she gets frustrated when she sees young children in group homes prescribed pills for behavioral problems when they don’t seem to need them.

“That is one of the things you should pay more attention to,” Alexandra said, as the panel members took notes. “Medications are not the answer.”

Her peers cheered and nodded in agreement. Others followed with their stories of taking medicines for bipolar disorder, depression and attention deficit disorder -- conditions they did not believe they had.

Alexandra took her seat and smiled, glad that she had made her point.