(un)wanted | Foster Care Documentary [4k] (2017)

[Music] there can be no keener revelation of a society soul than the way in which it treats its children nelson mandela to be honest with you i was just so scared that there's no way i'll stand there so i ran away i grew up in over 20 places foster homes group homes detention centers is she why she leaving why are they here why are they taking her from me being in foster care just it's just a different type of life like you you will want to be around your real family but they don't want you that's a terrible feeling the crisis really involves the fact that we simply have insufficient number of homes [Music] we have about 500 or so foster homes right now but there are on average 2 000 kids in foster care on any given day in milwaukee one-third of all the children in the state of wisconsin that are in foster care come out of milwaukee county we're not growing at the same rate as kids are coming into our system it seems like the older the kids get the less foster parents are willing to take them in so when you're talking kids eight and above it's extremely hard to place a child a few months back i had a conversation with a few people about the foster care crisis and my mind was completely overwhelmed and blown away by the tragedy and the dramatic instances that are happening in our neighborhoods and in our backyards once the juvenile justice and found out my mom had gotten convicted of a crime so she ended up doing a year and a half in prison and when she went there they tried to find a place for me and all the family members that i stayed with for years didn't really want to accept me at the time anymore so they found the foster care there it was a really hard childhood it wasn't a very i don't know how to say it like happy home i mean there were happy times but i think i was a very resilient child we i don't remember how but we went to halo the homeless shelter here in racine and we were there for a good hour and then i was eating dinner and it was time to go to sleep then the front the front door police came and they asked for my biological mom my mom tried to find a place tried to help out but she couldn't but i remember just crying hard you know this tough little kid thought he was tough and now you're being removed from your mother she's going off and you never really knew how much you love your parents until you separate from them yeah there was a lot of abuse in the home and you just kind of have to survive around this time me telling one of my counselors that my birth mom was hitting me and i had like knots in my head like on my head and bruises and the the school nurse examined me called my birth mom in and of course she lied you know she said that that didn't happen and i was sent home and i was given a choice to be spanked by her or george when he got home and either one was bad so i just said do it now and get it over with you know you just got beat up for telling somebody that there was stuff going on at home and i was told i'll leave bruises on your body where people won't be able to see it so next time you tell somebody they won't believe you so they asked for her and she went in there and about five minutes later they started to arrest her she was you know fighting with them and i was crying and very uh upset not knowing what's going on it was 24 hours i was gone where'd you go she's back to the streets how long were you i was on a run stay on the streets for a couple years you know can you what does that mean just staying on the street just living i'm going to cousins houses and police come i leave and i ran away from home and i was gone for two weeks i was gone for two weeks and i lived in my friend's old camper and i ate stale donuts and then i slept in someone's basement of a kid that i met there was there were random people there and a random guy actually raped me in that basement and then i was distraught about why is she why is she leaving why are they here why are they taking her from me and then i was took by a social worker in a car and drove to a person's house that i did not know and to not know where i was and i went to sleep hi how are you good good morning have a seat thanks so when children come into care in racine county we always attempt to make the first placement the best placement when kids are removed from their home it's a traumatic situation and so if we place them in multiple homes we increase their their trauma level and and and their crisis for them so the more homes i have to pick from the better off i am yeah but we struggle and we oftentimes have kids that are sitting here at our office building for hours at a time while we search for a foster parent who's willing to take to them they're losing everything they're losing the home that they've known for how long the parents the they may lose their school friends they may lose the school that they attend depending on where they're placed depending on how long they're placed for there's so many things that there could lose their pet i mean here they're gonna leave and there's a dog there that they see every day and they interact with and now you're telling them that dog can't go with them i remember we came home from school and my sister and i walked in and there was a woman that our pastor's wife and then there was a social worker and my mom wasn't there and there was just um a garbage bag and we were told to fill it with things as quick as we could and to kind of go with them and that you know they had to take my mom to the doctor she wasn't doing well and that we would see her soon i kept being frustrated because i could get them connected with a lot of resources i could get them connected with food share and housing assistance and all of health insurance all of that stuff but at the end of the day i kept realizing that these families what they really needed was they were alone they were socially isolated and unfortunately what i would see oftentimes in my world was these kids would end up where we called upstairs because that was the child protective services unit and so just it was a constant point of frustration there was one young woman in particular that i started working with and getting involved with and at the point that my husband and i became involved with her and started advocating for her it was a little too late in the process we just kept asking like what if what if we would have known her two years ago what if we would have met her sooner what if the community would have been aware of this young woman that was walking amongst them every day and and going to one of the schools there in town and what if somebody would have identified her sooner that's when we started to look at safe families as as something different it's not foster care and foster care is much needed [Music] hey do you guys have a few minutes for a few questions um but basically there's more kids entering the system there's like this steady increase but there's not enough people opening up their homes so whose problem do you think that is uh probably everybody i think it's everyone's problem i mean honestly even if like i'm i've never been married i've never had children but i want children someday and those children are our generation for future generations so obviously it affects everyone around us how much do you feel like your knowledge level is on foster care from a 1 to a 10 10 being like you know everything one being you know nothing four maybe just awareness people don't know and i think that's a big key is you know knowing that there's a problem an epidemic what what's the deal like what's the problem like why is there such a big not only need but a lack of homes like people simply don't know the need that exists and they live next to these individuals they live next to these families their kids go to school with these kids but when we look at people we just assume that everything's okay and we don't ask the right questions and i think that people think that government's just taking care of it and don't understand that the assistance is needed i think there's misconceptions that foster parents make a lot of money during foster care and simply not true it takes a village to raise a child all of those wonderful you know sayings that that go with it are true because it works i think the prison is good i think the jails are getting packed and i think parents are getting incarcerated i think um [Music] families are addicted to drugs yeah it's that's and that's growing too i know the numbers and uh incarceration is growing kids in juvenile justice all that is growing you know yeah i think all that and then it's a lot of families are in poverty that's growing so i think all that plays a part with each other the drug addiction that is out there is overwhelming the system with children day in and day out approximately 100 children per month are being detained and we need good homes for these kids i think the need to deal with children that are being abused or have experienced trauma is off the charts when you look at the statistics say one out of three to four kids will be sexually abused alone by the time they're 18. then when you look at physical emotional or neglect and we look at a society that's kind of broken down stress and a lot of different internal additions including addictions in the home i think there's a lot more of it going on or even have hit the tip of the iceberg the reason why there's a crisis is simply because people don't realize or know how horrific the situation really is basically that there's not enough homes for children and the actual rate of children entering the system is increasing in some regard society is becoming more selfish in a sense to i got to take care of myself first i think a lot of people feel ill equipped to be able to welcome a child um or a teenager into their home there's i think partially has to do with you know how the media portrays the foster systems all these you know bad kids and stuff not just me but it's also like you know tv shows and stuff all these foster kids are terrible kids and it's hard to deal with them and so it kind of turns people away from it yeah don't you think it's interesting because the kids are the ones that are the victims right in this situation yes but they're the ones that get the bad rap like they're the like horrible children yeah where i'd say it's humanity's responsibility to care for humanity and we'll be stuck at it so i would say it's your responsibility and my responsibility and your responsibilities to figure out how to be advocates um and as i say it i'm humbly aware of the fact that i haven't done a great job in your own words what is foster care oh gosh that's a sacrifice like no other that's giving up your your heart for gosh just the future of a child and a lot of these moms and dads but moms is who i've met um are desperately in love with these kids they really are desperately loved as kids not all but they're desperately loved as kids but they're not in a place right now where they should be raising each other um so many of our birth parents and knowing that so many of them are victims themselves so many of them were raised in foster care they were the kids that people like me 20 years ago took care of and now they're parenting the way that they're parented and other kids are in care when we saw when we discovered safe families it had started in chicago about 15 years ago by a child psychologist he had worked with children and families in the child welfare system for many years and he had kind of come to the same conclusion and he just went home thinking this is ridiculous like this woman came to us and she said i need help but the point at which we can get involved our agency can get involved is the point when that child has already been harmed why wouldn't we want to intervene sooner and catch that family sooner and so so he started safe families for children and it's just been the program itself is is set up similar to foster care in the sense that we do take children into our homes we screen our families the same so they go through background checks and fingerprints and home studies and training but they work as volunteers and we place children temporarily in their homes but it's all voluntary their parents coming to us and saying you know what i need to get treatment for my drug addiction or i'm homeless or i'm i need to get out of this domestic violence situation and then our families will temporarily care for those children it's quite a different model because it's voluntary it's families coming alongside of other families and saying let us help let us be involved don't live in isolation anymore come in and be a part of the community the term foster and foster care foster kids is familiar enough to the average person people like me that we don't actually give it much thought we just think in our minds that it's being taken care of the solution is individuals that actually do something about it that make up what we call society it's each and every one of us recognizing that these children are not just someone else's responsibility that we're the solution not the government not some other agency out there but you and i have a part to play on some level and she had actually been in and out of foster care several times and then she her mother had had a baby brother and the baby was crying and crying in the apartment and a neighbor finally called the police and when the police got there they found her mom passed out she was an alcoholic and the baby had just been screaming and screaming so the children were taken away and they were placed into another home one by one they let the three children go and sophia was the first i was ironic that they lived right around the corner from us and i'll never forget the day the caseworker showed up with her this cute little girl with her braids and this big huge smile and just came skipping into the driveway you walk into somebody else's house you don't know them they don't know you you don't know where you're staying and at the time you're just sort of adjusting um it really is kind of messing with your psyche and your peace of mind and you're always on edge and you're always on guard and i think that's a hard thing for a lot of people who don't go through that to understand because if you've always had the comfort of parents or of a home or something then you don't understand what it's like that you could possibly just be moved into split seconds her mom came to us one day and asked us if we would adopt them if she terminated her rights and we said yes so it's about a year and eight months later we adopted both of them and made them legally ours that's the one credit that i can give my mom even i'm not particularly close to her is that she understood that flaw and understood that she couldn't take care of us and understood that they could do a better job so she did ask and then yeah she's very heroic of her there's a there's a lot of stigma that's wrapped around foster kids you know i read some comments um what if these kids have been abused what if they abused my kids well i was abused and i never abused anyone i just needed affection and love and a good safe home him he was seven and he was adorable and he kind of stole my heart totally but there's this big question of like what would cause someone to do this like what would cause someone to inconvenience their life especially you being a single woman having a career all of those things you mean to to bring another life into your life i feel like that's why i'm here that's my purpose one of the reasons why those of us who are fostering stay foster parents is because fostering isn't what we do it's who we are it just becomes who we are what do you think having been in foster homes what do you think is the number one thing that a kid that's entering a foster home what does he need security knowing that they can come home to a home every day knowing that it's food every day knowing that they can go to sleep every day clothes will be washed and be clean every day just the the little but big things you know yeah they're little things i look at my kids i'm like you don't have to worry about any of those statistically the ada told me that i would amount to nothing right i told you that yeah and statistically i should not be caring for kids i should probably we'll be either be dead or on the streets drug addict prostitution it blows my mind that i am being used to help children heal in all types of ways my mom and dad are amazing people they could have had a son and a daughter and then they've been done and their life would have been just fine exactly it really would have and i wouldn't i i just i always said i wouldn't i wouldn't have kept me and i think that's the biggest act of love is when and that's just what i've been recognizing just how much they did do that i didn't see him from this day forward this child shall be known as jalen k-a-y-l-i congratulations i feel like somebody wants to be with me that someone wants to be there for me take care of me be a parent that i've never had before it's helped me learn how to love her people like she's loved me i believe in the people of the southeastern wisconsin area i believe that we have the capability we have the compassion and the heart space to take care of our children [Music] the ones that are unseen and forgotten and unwanted it's up to us to like to to help them and give them a voice and believe them believe them when they're telling us their stories and do we really abandon children and not provide them the love and support and care that they need is that really what kind of community this is is that what kind of society we live in the answer is no we don't do that but our response generally is somebody else is going to do that for me and what i'm telling you is some of those folks need to turn around and say maybe i need to provide some of that care and support too these children lives are worth it their lives are worth the love the blood the sweat the tears that we pour into it so it's a short window in a child's life where you can make a complete difference and change the trajectory of their entire adult life people do care but people don't know what's going on with their neighbor next door it's very important to become involved because you care about what happens in your city the more involved we get as a community and supporting the foster parents the foster children we will start to see positive impact we'll see those numbers change so instead of seeing 50 of inmates in a prison having been touched by foster care the hope is that number will drop the hope the cost of a foster child aging out of the system that costs the taxpayer that number should drop we should start to see things reverse and thus giving hope to the situation we don't want perfect people we're not looking for anybody to be perfect because if they were none of us would be foster parents right we just need people or parents we just need people who are willing to say yes i know that people in this community if they're aware of a crisis will rise to meet that crisis and figure out a way to solve it they're not statistics they're kids that have futures and they should and they should have a hope for their future these children deserve to be loved these children deserve to be cherished these children deserve to have food on the table every day and a parent to come home to and someone to love them and someone to miss them they deserve that and if you have it in you to do something good why would you choose not to do it society as a whole is a family and that we make up that family and it says we recognize that these are our children that people like you and i will begin to rise to the occasion and recognize that we're the solution you and i have a part to play on some level [Music] hey me yes [Music] [Music] [Music] diamonds [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: joeytalks

Views: 228,868

Keywords: foster care, foster care film, foster care movie, film about foster care, movie about foster care, kids in foster care, foster parents, children in crisis, foster care documentary, foster care movies, foster care films, documentary, foster documentary, foster care placement

Id: RV9xZW3ghP4

Length: 25min 55sec (1555 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 30 2017