Dayton Daily News Library

Kids get help on road
to self-sufficiency

Programs teach basics of living alone

By Debra Jasper Dayton Daily News
Published: Monday, September 27, 1999
Sidebar to Part 2

CINCINNATI - When Cassandra Watts was 8, she tried to kill herself by jumping in front of a car.

Then things got worse.

Watts said child-protection workers removed her from her family only to put her in a system in which she was raped, overmedicated, placed with uncaring foster parents and ignored by caseworkers. To escape, she took drug overdoses, stabbed herself in the chest, cut her wrists and jumped off a church roof.

"I felt so lonely. I didn't want to be in foster care anymore," Watts said.


JAN UNDERWOOD/DAYTON DAILY NEWS
THE LIGHTHOUSE PROGRAM has eased the difficult journey of Cassandra Watts, 19, through foster care.
But Watts believes she is one of the lucky foster kids.

Three years ago, Hamilton County placed her with loving foster parents in Lima. She stopped trying to commit suicide. She made friends and started studying for classes. And last year, she was accepted into an independent-living program run by Lighthouse Services for Youth in Cincinnati.

At 19, Watts now has her own apartment and just finished her first year at Cincinnati State Community College. "My life has really changed," she said. "I had a counselor who told me I wouldn't graduate from high school. But he was wrong."

Each year, 20,000 to 35,000 foster kids such as Watts turn 18 and "age out" of the foster-care system. Officials across the country say well-run independent-living programs offer one of the best solutions for helping youths learn to live outside of foster care. In these programs, kids learn to manage money, find apartments and get jobs before they lose their government support.

"With regular kids, if their car breaks down, they have the opportunity to go back home for help," said Nora Vondrell, director of an independent-living program operated by Daybreak, Dayton's shelter for runaway youths. "With these kids, we're it. We're all they've got."

Wendy Kidd, a Daybreak social worker, said mastering life skills can be tough for teen-agers from the best environments, much less those from dysfunctional families.

"It's a trick to teach them to pay their (electric) bill because, when a kid is 16, buying Nikes is more important," she said.

Teens having problems page the Lighthouse staff at all hours, said Mark Kroner, the agency's director of self-sufficiency. One boy called at midnight to ask if the hamburger that had been in his refrigerator for four weeks was any good. Another, during the first week in his own apartment, called to say he spent his food allowance on concert tickets.

Social workers try to help these kids solve their problems themselves, Kroner said. "We're not going to let them starve, but we don't give them more money. We'll give them peanut butter, apples, things like that, but we also ask them, 'What are you going to do?' '

Kids who have been through the program say learning to answer that question is harder than they imagined. Leah McBride, now 25, said Lighthouse helped her get her own place her senior year in high school.

"The fact I had to pay my bills and if I didn't the phone would be cut off eventually sank in," she said. "After I paid my bills, I normally had $10 to $15 left each month."

McBride said she was taken from her abusive home at 12. Separated from her three sisters - one who committed suicide - she was placed in two foster homes before getting her own place through Lighthouse.

After getting a 5-cent-an-hour raise working at a day-care center, McBride realized college was her best chance of escaping poverty. Now she's majoring in criminal justice at Northern Kentucky University. Earlier this year, she addressed a Lighthouse conference on independent living. Dressed in a crisp suit, with her hair pulled back in a bun, McBride looked like the defense attorney she plans to become.

She attributed much of her success to the program.

Counties across Ohio refer youths to Lighthouse, which screens for those who appear ready to try being on their own. The agency - which charges $55 a day per kid - helps them find their own apartments, helps pay the rent until they get on their feet and monitors them until they are ready to leave care.

Lighthouse oversees about 50 kids ages 16 to 19. The agency gives them about $60 weekly as an allowance and puts $15 into savings accounts, which the teens are given when they leave care.

Even with the help, it's not easy being on your own, McBride said. But it has one big advantage: "Nobody can abuse me."

Kroner said 600 foster kids have been through Lighthouse's program and most left with a place to stay, a small amount of savings and a job. There are no long-term statistics, however, and Kroner concedes many don't manage as well as McBride.

"We get calls from kids who say things like, `Mom moved in and cleaned me out,' or a kid gets kicked out and says he didn't get it until he spent a night under an overpass," Kroner said. "What we can say is that 75 percent of our kids have a potentially stable place to stay, and if they play their cards right, they will do OK."

Social workers say helping foster teens come to terms with their pasts is a tougher challenge than helping them plan a stable future.

Regardless of the family dysfunction, Patrick Nelson, a psychologist at Lighthouse, said most teens who leave foster care will return to their biological families, at least temporarily. Independent-living staffs must try to teach kids how to best deal with their families because family bonds, even destructive ones, are strong.

To drive home his point, Nelson asked the teens in one conference session to talk about their families.

"I may never be going home, but they are still my family and you need to respect that," said one 15-year-old boy.

Another boy was angry because his caseworker would not let him attend his brother's funeral in Chicago. His brother was a gang member. "So what you're saying is those of us who work with you need to make it possible to stay connected?" Nelson asked.

The boy nodded.

A young girl in the group started to get emotional. "I would like to be able to see my mom. She's come so far. She'd actually be able to handle me now if I wasn't so bumpy," the girl said. "I'd like to visit with my family alone, instead of having it supervised in some place I don't know where we are at, some supervisor's office. That's not family time, sitting in some place with two chairs and a table."

"People want to make sure you're safe," Nelson told her, but the response made her angry.

"I've never been physically unsafe with my mom," she said. "I'm not just a hermit crab and I don't want to be treated like one either. I don't want my cage cleaned out."

Experts say such anger and conflicting emotions are common, but Daybreak's Vondrell said teens with the right guidance can and do recover.

Take Cassandra Watts. She has her own modest apartment, where she spends her time studying and reading mysteries and romance novels. She's doing well, but each day is a struggle.

"Living alone is hard," she said, looking around her unkempt, dimly lit apartment. "I don't have a lot of places to go. I don't do a lot of things."

Like so many teens who leave the system, Watts turned to her family despite its problems. The oldest of 12 children, she pointed to pictures of her half brothers and sisters, most of whom live in foster care or with an aunt. A week earlier, she had learned her mother was pregnant with her 13th child. The news made her furious, then depressed.

But Watts didn't deal with the pain by slitting her wrists or overdosing on drugs. Her counselor talked her into spending the night in a hospital.

"If it wasn't for the (independent-living) staff, I probably would have done something stupid," she said. "For a long time, I blamed everything in my life on what my mom did to me. But I realize I can't do that anymore. It's my life, and I have to take control over it."

Main Story:

Foster home turns into party house
Former residents say teens had little supervision in foster-care program
By Debra Jasper and Elliot Jaspin Dayton Daily News
Published: Monday, September 27, 1999 ; Page: 1A

Sidebar:

MANY FOSTER CHILDREN SLIP THROUGH CRACKS AT AGE 18
Governments have little follow-up on what happens when kids are on their own
By Debra Jasper and Elliot Jaspin Dayton Daily News
Published: Monday, September 27, 1999 ; Page: 5A

Part 3:

Trading at the child-care bazaar
Governments, agencies and parents haggle over the price of caring for kids.
By Debra Jasper and Elliot Jaspin - Dayton Daily News
Published: Tueday, September 28, 1999 ; Page: 1A


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