A Brave Teen Investigates Her Own Story of Abuse

Autumn Spanne

Teens join the staff of Represent because they want to share their stories. They are motivated by a desire to inspire and speak out on behalf of others who face similar struggles, and in hopes of making positive changes to an often troubled child welfare system. There are many other young people yearning to understand their experiences and share their personal histories in pursuit of justice and reform.

We were impressed by a recent story out of Sacramento, California about 19-year-old Lilly Manning, who recently called a reporter at the Sacramento Bee to help her find out why no one had helped her during the years of horrendous abuse she suffered at the hands of her adoptive parents. From the time Manning was 9, the couple—especially her adoptive mother—turned ordinary household items into torture devices that they used to release their rage and beat, stab, and burn the girl into submission, according to the Bee.

The abuse came to an end when Manning was 15. After her mother stabbed her in the thigh and locked her in a closet for months, she managed to break out and flee the home. But when she called Child Protective Services from a pay phone, she later told the Bee, they told her there was nothing they could do, and referred her to a crisis center for teens. She again reached out for help. Luckily, the crisis center took action. Manning’s wounds—she had 100 scars in all—were treated, and she went into foster care.

The troubling thing is, it wasn’t the first time Manning and her siblings had reached out. The Bee reported that court records showed that police and at least one social worker had visited the home in the past. On another occasion, Manning said, a teacher referred her to the school nurse, who suggested maybe the girl’s wounds were self-inflicted. The kids gave up, until the day Manning kicked her way out of the locked closet. Since then, both her adoptive foster mother and the woman’s husband have been tried and convicted on various felony counts.

But Manning’s journey is just beginning. With the help of the Bee reporter, she has requested her juvenile records so she can start piecing together a past that she’s intent on understanding in order to move forward. Meanwhile, she has started college, and she goes to therapy.

A follow-up editorial in the Bee two weeks after Manning’s story was published highlights the fact that many times, it takes a child’s death to shine a spotlight on the failures of the system since courts and Child Protective Services protect the confidentiality of abused children who survive. As our Represent writers know, it’s not easy to face a difficult childhood and choose to share painful stories with the world. Manning shows great courage in requesting her records and sharing her story with the press in the hopes of helping other vulnerable children by shedding light on a troubled system.

Child Care Cuts Hurt

Autumn Spanne

Kelly, one of Represent’s teen writers, recently wrote about how as a 6th grader she regularly cared for three younger siblings while her mother worked. One day she left her baby sister home alone in her crib because she feared getting in trouble at school for missing an important school trip. After arriving at school she panicked and told the principal. Luckily, the baby was fine.

The following year, Kelly’s little brother went missing while she was supposed to be babysitting. The boy was found unharmed by the police on the roof, but Kelly and her siblings were placed in foster care.

“Sometimes I blame myself—if I did what my mother told me, none of this would be happening and we’d all be together in my mom’s house,” Kelly wrote. “My mom is always reminding me that it’s my fault that we all separated and that we’re not the family she wanted us to be. I know in part it was my fault but in a way all of us have a little bit of fault.”

This Represent writer’s experience illustrates a dilemma faced by thousands of parents who must choose between work and paying for childcare. Facing staggering budget shortfalls, states and counties across the country are freezing or cutting childcare subsidies for low-income families. It’s a trend that child welfare advocates warn threatens kids’ well-being and forces families onto welfare rolls.

A few months ago, Monroe County in upstate New York became one of the latest state and local governments to join that trend by freezing childcare subsidies for low-wage working families, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported. Officials estimate that 1,200 families that would have previously qualified for the subsidy will not receive it this year, according to the story.

And that’s just one county—last year, Washington State cut $51 million from its welfare-to-work program, which provides job training and childcare subsidies for working parents. Arizona, Michigan, and North Carolina are among the other states that have cut the budgets of childcare subsidy programs or restricted eligibility.

Families already receiving foster care prevention services from child welfare departments have been largely shielded from these cuts, but preventive programs also face big reductions. Families that are not receiving sufficient help paying for childcare may resort to keeping older kids out of school to care for younger siblings or relying on other unqualified caregivers, endangering children and putting them at risk of going into foster care.

And for many other families, losing childcare subsidies sometimes means parents can no longer afford to work, turning instead to welfare to make ends meet. As a New York Times story pointed out last year, that’s the very thing that subsidized childcare was designed to prevent during the massive overhaul of the welfare system in the 1990s. But for some working families living below the poverty line, work may prove prohibitively expensive since childcare costs amount to nearly a third of household expenditures.

Draconian cuts to state budgets are inevitable in this economy, but childcare is not the place to scrimp. It is far more expensive and disruptive to put working parents’ children in foster care than it is to subsidize day care.

Fewer Choices for Older Teens

Virginia Vitzthum

A bill introduced in Virginia’s state Senate would take away the option of independent living “as a goal” for foster children ages 16-18. The Senator who introduced the bill, George Barker of Alexandria, is himself a foster parent and says that he thinks that adolescents should be placed in families when possible because “families are very important.”

Similar reasoning led New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) to close its supervised independent living program (SILP). ACS’s reasoning sounded a lot like the Virginia senator’s: The official ACS statement said the decision to close the housing program “is related to a belief that most youth can be best served in a family-based setting. It can be a difficult to transition to independence as an adult, and we believe that a youth should have a family to support him or her throughout each of their lives.”

Well, sure. A good foster family—any supportive adult—that will remain in the child’s life after she ages out is ideal, and child welfare agencies should do everything possible to ensure that every young person leaves care with caring, supportive adults who will stick around. But did anyone consult any of the 1,000 children in Virginia that this law would affect? Are the older teens in care finding those ideal foster families? If not, how are they learning the skills they need to survive on their own once they leave care?

Some writers here at Represent have been in foster home after foster home in New York City without finding that long-term support, and many of them would like to cut their losses and prepare themselves for life after care. Samantha Flowers describes being forced back into a foster home from an independent living placement after ACS closed the SILPs. She allows that her foster mother provides some support, though Samantha can’t be sure that support will continue past her 21st birthday. In her too-brief time in her own apartment, “I realized I could do what I needed to do to survive and that I could walk the walk of independence.” Do we really want well-meaning adults’ wishful thinking to take away foster teens’ chance to prove themselves?

Some foster parents don’t teach the teens in their homes to cook, open a bank account, or write a resume; and a once-a-month Independent Living class isn’t always sufficient preparation either. It might be better for young people to encounter these obstacles before they age out and still have the support of the foster care system.

Recommendations for NYC Youth Aging Out

Virginia Vitzthum

Child Welfare Watch, a policy research publication based in New York City, has released recommendations for young people aging out of foster care. They’ve dedicated a special double issue of their quarterly journal to this subject because youth are aging out into extreme poverty at the same rate as 10 years ago, despite concerted efforts to ease that transition. Part of that is due to the recession, which has led to cuts in preventive services designed to keep families from entering the system.

The recommendations were generated and debated by the child welfare experts on CWW’s advisory board. They are directed at NYC’s foster care system, the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), which oversees different foster care agencies. These recommendations, based on interviews with young people in care and with child welfare experts, could, however, apply to city and state systems across the country. Below are the recommendations as written, plus a brief explanation.

· Foster care agencies must base their work with teens on the principle that preparing for adulthood is fundamental to adolescent development. (Children’s Services must supply older teens with more career, education, and other skills training.)

· ACS must create enforceable standards and adequate funding for foster care agencies to ensure that young people are connected to meaningful assistance even after leaving foster care. (Regulations are very vague now, which means that kids fall through the cracks; recommendation is enforceable standards for six months to a year of family or individual assistance after aging out at age 21.)

· The mayor, city council, and ACS should provide funds to hire young people as peer advocates in nonprofit agencies and government. (Successful former foster youth should be sharing their stories and their information!)

· ACS and foster care agencies should put far more resources into strengthening families – including families to which young adults will likely return. (Even if birth parents have had their parental rights terminated, they should get support if the child goes back to them after aging out, which often happens.)

· ACS and its foster care agencies should provide comprehensive sex education and family planning services to teens in their care. (Family planning programs should include information on birth control, sexuality, and abortion.)

· ACS should take steps to stabilize housing for young women before and after childbirth. (Planning to keep mother and baby together needs to start earlier.)

· ACS should place young mothers in the same home as their babies. (Young mothers now are punished for things like missing curfew by having their babies taken away. Keeping families together needs to be a higher priority, including finding foster homes that will take mother and baby together.)

· Agencies and ACS should make school attendance and graduation a top priority for teens in foster care – including teen parents. (Too often, teens, especially teen mothers, are pushed toward getting a GED rather than finishing school.)

· The city should restore the supported independent living program and create more supportive housing for young adults and young parents leaving care. (New York City closed its supportive living programs, apartments where foster teens could practice living alone, with a staff member available to help. This was an important step toward independence, and many teens want this option back.)

· The state office of mental health must create better options for young adults with mental health challenges. (Supportive housing providers in particular need more training on how to deal with foster teens with mental health diagnoses.)