Many kids don’t have the fortune to be raised in a loving family. There are many of them out there who don’t have a home at all and move from one foster home to another. The very worst thing about an unhappy childhood is that kids who face rejection by their parents early on will have scars for the rest of their lives.
A heartbreaking story of a lost childhood
This is the story of a social worker who spent many years battling with the broken foster care system and who witnessed first hand, how a boy’s lost childhood eventually resulted in premature death.
‘Nobody loves me. Not even my mother who gave birth to me.’ These were the words of a then seven-year-old Stephen, a fictional name given to protect the identity of the boy who was under her care for many years.
It was yet another time he moved out of his foster home but was one of his toughest because it was a home he thought he found genuine affection in and hoped would stay for a long time. Yet it was not meant to be. Overcome by emotions, Stephen went bitterly at the backseat of his social worker’s Toyota and uttered those soul-crushing, faithful words.
Another victim of a broken system
It would not be the first or the last time he would move from one foster home and into the other. Each time he moved it was not only a defeat for him but a defeat for the foster care system, for the whole society and for all of us.
Stephen’s story continued but would not become any less painful or satisfying. Liz Curtis Faria, a blogger at ‘A Mothership Dawn’ gave her account in an article submitted to Love What Matters.
“Nine-year old Stephen grips his report card in sweaty hands. We’re headed to an adoption event, where we will meet families who want to adopt an older child; families who do not automatically rule out a boy like Stephen with all of his long ‘history,” she writes.
Three years later, the situation barely changes. ‘A family never comes’, Liz writes again. Years after she left the agency, Liz received an email from her old boss in which he notified her that Stephen was: “in DYS lockup after running away from his foster home. You need to adopt him.”
She doesn’t adopt him. Not long after, the story reached its bitter conclusion. At 18, Stephen was shot dead ‘over some foolish dispute’ as Liz put it.
“What have we all done? What haven’t we all done,” Liz wonders.
We won’t go into her account of Stephen’s funeral as it would be too painful but something Liz wrote is worth mentioning.
“Stephen had been wrong, that night in my Toyota. His mother did love him, in her way. She was there, at the funeral.”
No happy ending
Liz concluded her story with these words: “They break, you know. These kids we leave behind. Eventually, they break.”
Our foster care system is not working and it’s something we can’t and shouldn’t ignore. The kids we leave behind today will face a bleak future. Some of them will experience the same sad fate as Stephen. It is never late to change something but he would have to start today.
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