As one who lived within the foster care system for eighteen years, I hope I might be considered an expert on what we needed as foster children.

I make these statements not from a textbook, but from
my own life experience within the foster care system.
I am addressing those of us that were considered
"society's throw away kids" at birth due to being
children of unwed mothers or those who through no
fault of there own ended up in the system.

Also, please bear in mind, I am speaking of the
"system" and NOT foster parents. Foster parents, in
the vast majority of situations are good, kind and
caring people willing to open their homes to the
unwanted.

I became a child of the foster care system immediately
upon my birth. Though I was placed for adoption at
birth, I was not the healthy, blonde haired, blue eyed
baby everyone wanted back in 1950.

I spent the first year of life in the hospital nursery
where I was born and at the home for unwed mothers my
birth mother spent much of her pregnancy.

I then began the merry-go-round of eleven foster homes
in ten years. Three of those moves were back and forth
to the same foster parents for a total of six and
one-half years.




2/7/50-8/10/50 Providence Hospital Nursery
8/10/50-1/19/51 Sarah Fisher Home Nursery

1/19/51-7/11/51 Foster Home #1

7/11/51-9/10/51 Foster Home #2

9/10/51-2/20/52 Foster Home #3

2/20/52-8/1/52 Foster Home #4*

8/1/52-12/11/52 Foster Home #5

12/11/52-11/26/54 Foster Home #6*

11/26/54/-1/26/55 Foster Home #7

1/26/55-8/12/55 Foster Home #8

8/12/55-5/4/56 Foster Home #9

5/4/56-5/17/60 Foster Home #10*

5/16/60-7/22/60 Juvenile Detention Center awaiting new
foster home

7/22/60-4/16/61 Foster Home #11

4/16/61-6/4/68 Boys Town, Nebraska

6/4/68 Adult: released as a ward of the court Wayne
County, Michigan


*same family three times


All I wanted as a child was a place to call home; a
family to love me enough to want me as their son!

What was wrong with me? Why didn't anyone want me?
Will I never have a family? These were just a few of
the questions that would haunt me throughout my
childhood and beyond. I did not realize that the
problem was not me but the "system" itself.

I did not need any type of therapy or behavior
modification program. I just needed love and stability
in my life. The "system" failed me in providing me an
opportunity for that.

Today, many of the kids in the "system" have a wide
variety of special needs. Those needs have to be
addressed. However, those will not bring success until
the children have been given the basics. By basics I
don't mean simply shelter and food. To me the basics
are a stable home life and not the merry-go-round of
moves, knowledge that someone actually gives a damn
about them, self-worth and most importantly, the
ability to trust those responsible for them!

For those in charge of the "system," please,
please...you MUST change your course of action. There
are too many kid's lives at stake. Their success or
failure may depend on what happens to them in their
early years.

We don't ask much...just one family...not eleven!

I am one who made it, despite the "system." When they
realized they had failed me they sent me to Boys Town
Nebraska, where I spent seven and one-half years,
until I graduated high school. It was the longest
period of stability in my young life. It allowed me to
get an education, to grow and mature. Since then I
have received a college degree and have had a
successful business career.

I don't think of myself though, I think of those who
may not make it. I realize, had it not been for Boys
Town, I could have easily ended up in prison or dead.

I hope this helps some understand foster children and
perhaps maybe those kids who might be having problems
today may be the result of the lack of stability,
nurturing or love in their early lives.

Please, don't give up on them whatever you
do...PLEASE!...their future depends on you!



© 2004 Lawrence P. Adams
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED