HOLDING VIGIL:FOSTER CARE
Photo Courtesy of Atharva Tulsi
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Holding Vigil
One result of the overturn of Roe v. Wade will be that many more children will be entering foster care, a system that is already underfunded and overwhelmed. Years ago, at my first job out of college, I saw firsthand how a broken foster care system caused great suffering for the teens under its care.Back then, I worked with seventeen-year-old wards of the state, who had spent most of their lives in one foster placement after another. By the time I’d met them, they had been shipped to a mental hospital, not because they were mentally ill, but because the state had nowhere else to keep them before they aged out of mandated care. My task was to deinstitutionalize them before they got dumped on the curb at eighteen. What did “deinstitutionalize” mean? I had no idea, neither did anyone else. Regardless, at twenty-two, I didn’t hesitate to take on the task.I almost didn’t get the job. Ellen, the dedicated and overworked program director, liked me well enough, but at the end said, “You’re too small. Most of the teens are twice your size. What are you going to do if you get jumped?” Ultimately, they offered me the position. My hunch is no one else applied because of low pay and the high likelihood of being assaulted.On my first day of work, I escorted a sturdy teen named Debbie from one unit to another. A narrow hallway separated the two adolescent wings, with locked doors at either end. The hallway contained no emergency buzzer, therefore no way to call for help. I unlocked the first door, brought Debbie through, locked the door behind us, then took a brisk walk through no man’s land. As I unlocked the second door, Debbie grabbed me from behind and choked me.Realizing I could never overpower her, I used a technique I’d learned as a child when the bigger neighborhood kids came after me. I went limp, collapsing in her arms. That shocked her into letting go long enough for me to push open the second door and rush to safety. Later, an aide told me that walking a patient through the Hallway of Doom was a two-person job.I learned that most of the teens had spent their lives moving through temporary placements: foster homes, group homes and detention facilities. A few had lost parents to accident or illness, but most had families who couldn’t, wouldn’t or weren’t allowed to take care of them. Because of their transitory lives, most were poorly educated and hadn’t acquired even the most basic of life skills, like how to make a meal or wash clothing.Early on, the director assigned a psychiatric intern from Yale to work alongside me. The director asked the two of us to lead a therapy group for the wards of the state. We met in the library–another place with no emergency buzzer. Every session, without treading lightly, Dr. Yale brought up the sore subject of mothers and fathers. This topic triggered the kids, most of whom suffered deeply when they thought about their families. The sessions never lasted more than a few minutes and often ended with yelling, fists flying and sometimes, an airborne chair. One of us would run back to grab an aide who would help wrangle our riled-up therapy group back to the adolescent unit. During his short stay, Dr. Yale seemed to view the kids more as research subjects than people. I felt both happy and safer when he left for his next rotation.My favorite charge, Jimmy, stood more than six feet tall. Straggly brown hair fell to his shoulders, his clothes always appeared grimy and ill-fitting. He looked terrifying but was the saddest and gentlest of all my kids. Having spent his life in short-term foster placements, he never went to school, therefore could neither read nor write. He based his worldview on what he saw on daytime TV. He couldn’t tell time and didn’t know how to ask for street directions without frightening someone. Once, I took Jimmy to a fair.
