How Prevention Services Could Help Youth Avoid the Foster Care System

"I’m sharing my story because I didn’t speak up then, but I know I must speak up now."
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Fostered or Forgotten is a Teen Vogue series about the foster care system in the United States, produced in partnership with Juvenile Law Center and published throughout National Foster Care Month. In this op-ed, Nico’Lee Biddle, an LCSW, trauma therapist, freelance speaker, and advocate with FosterClub, the national network for young people in foster care, explains how her family’s foster care journey may have been different if prevention services were offered before she was removed from her home.

By all outward appearances, I grew up in a “normal” American family. My dad worked in construction and my mom was a registered nurse. We had a four-bedroom house, a large yard, and a dog. I was a cheerleader with straight-A grades in school. But my family also had problems—our worst being that both of my parents were addicted to heroin.

My experience with foster care began one Thanksgiving when I was 14 years old, when I went to court with my parents after my sister had a fight with my mom and left the house. The judge told my parents that if they didn’t comply with random drug screenings, they would remove me from their care—even though I had food, clothes, and a safe place to live. On the day of the first random drug test, my parents were arrested for falsifying vehicle inspection stickers on our family vehicle (we didn’t have the money to pass the car inspection legally). Thus, my parents failed to appear for the drug test, and I went into foster care.

I remember packing my things in garbage bags a total of four times, once for every time I moved during my first six months in care. I remember crying for four nights at my first group home, and then telling the judge that staying there would be bad for my mental health. I remember missing school for almost an entire month because I had to change districts and didn’t have the right paperwork. Most importantly, I remember feeling as if I had lost everything — my parents, my home, my dog, my friends, and my school.

When I look back now on my family’s experiences, I realize that the child welfare system only saw our family’s trauma and hurt, our dysfunction and abnormalities. They didn’t see parents who raised me for fourteen years, who taught me the values of honesty, education, humor, and compassion. They didn’t see that my family had lost our two biggest supporters within the prior three years; including my grandmother, who died from Leukemia mere months before I was taken into the system. The system only saw a missed appointment, or a positive drug test, and seemed to assume the worst about our lives. The system removed me first, and provided services second — after the trust was broken and the damage was done.

After I was removed, my parents’ addictions only worsened. They didn’t feel like parents anymore, with their youngest child either in a group home or living with family from whom they were estranged. They weren’t allowed in a room with me unsupervised, even though they never hit or harmed me. My parents were ordered to go to drug treatment after I was taken, but when they did go away to rehab or attend appointments, it didn’t seem like it made any difference in how they were treated in court. They lost their jobs and became homeless. Their mental health worsened, and they continued to use drugs to feel better.

Fourteen years later, as an adult, I still feel the effects of a reactive child welfare system. As I create my own adult life and achieve milestones such as weddings, graduations, and trying to grow a family, I am constantly reminded of the preventable losses I’ve experienced. Fortunately, I have a strong support system and a strong faith, which have allowed me to thrive and to give back to the child welfare community. Unfortunately, my parents didn’t have this support, and it eventually killed them after they struggled for years with their addictions, trying to find their way back. My parents’ addictions worsened as I pursued college and other life events they didn’t feel like they could be part of, and they both eventually passed away due to drug-related complications (my mother in 2009 and my father in 2015).

The day I went into foster care changed our lives forever, and I believe it could have been prevented. On February 9, Congress officially passed the Family First Prevention Services Act, as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, and the president signed it into law. This law includes the option for states to use funds to provide prevention services for families like mine, whose children are not being abused or neglected, but whose parents might need some extra support so the children don’t end up hurt or put in dangerous situations. Still, there is a lot of work to be done to implement this law, and there is much more that needs to happen in states and communities for prevention to be the norm and not the exception.

My mom and dad made mistakes, but they were good parents who made me feel loved every day of my life. I miss them, and every day I wish things had been different. If they would have been offered treatment before I was removed, maybe they wouldn’t have ended up in jail, and would have been in treatment sooner. Maybe I wouldn’t have had to switch schools and become part of a statistic of teens in foster care. Maybe they would be alive today, and my father could have walked me down the aisle at my wedding. With better support for them before I was removed, maybe I wouldn’t have spent seven years in foster care.

These days, I share my story because we need the system to change, and we need for workers and judges and attorneys to ask children and parents about their strengths, instead of focusing on weaknesses. I share my story because my workers and judges accepted when I said I didn’t want to be adopted, but didn’t accept that I wanted to go home. I share my story because I’ve witnessed the system repeat the same mistakes with more and more families, years after my own was torn apart. I’m sharing my story because I didn’t speak up then, but I know I must speak up now.

You should speak up, too. Your experiences, both bad and good, matter. Your voice can make a change. The agencies tasked with helping foster children are titled Children, Youth, and Families — and if you are ever in a position where someone forgets that, I encourage you to remind them.

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Related: How Foster Care Works in the United States