Growing Up in the Care of Strangers: The Experiences, Insights and Recommendations of Eleven Former Foster Kids [Perfect Paperback]

Waln K. Brown (Editor), John R. Seita (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 22, 2009

Growing up in placement takes a toll, not just on the children and adolescents but also on the professionals charged with their care. Judges, policymakers, administrators, probation officers, psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, caseworkers, social workers, foster parents, house parents, guardian ad litem, CASA volunteers, child welfare advocates, educators and program staff make critical decisions that can affect a child s life forever. The more attuned they are to what helps or hinders the development of these vulnerable young people, the more likely they are to make the appropriate decisions required to promote positive placement experiences and healthy adult outcomes.

The purpose of this book is to provide child welfare professionals insightful feedback from former clients who grew up in juvenile justice, foster care, orphanage, adoptive and mental health placements. What makes this book particularly instructive derives from the authors credentials. They are college-educated adults who masterfully intertwine their childhood stories with mature perspective and their own professional expertise.

The other audiences this book hopes to reach include youth in placement and students who plan on entering careers in child welfare. Children currently in care need to know that others have experienced childhoods as bad as or worse than their own, that they survived and how they did it. Students preparing to work with troubled or dependent young people should learn about a side of life they probably have not experienced before they make decisions that may adversely affect these at risk youth. Sometimes a wide abyss separates theory and reality.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book is a must read for all persons charged with the responsibility of ensuring 'the best interests' of children in the foster care system. The stories provide valuable insights that can form the basis of a much-needed restructuring of the child welfare, juvenile justice and mental health systems. The question is, will the 'experts" have the courage to listen and act on the information?" --Judge Ernestine Gray, Orleans Parish Juvenile Court, New Orleans, Louisiana, current President of the National CASA Board of Trustees and past President of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges

"Recounting in detail the abuse, neglect and loss experienced in their own lives, eleven diverse adults who have lived in foster care, residential care, and kinship care share reflections that will challenge and inspire clinicians, students, and policy makers. The writers' ability to describe and reflect upon the pain, trials, and harm that they each suffered is courageous. Sharing their stories is an act of generosity and hopefulness." --Dr. Gary R. Anderson, Professor and Director of the School of Social Work, Michigan State University, and Editor, Child Welfare

"This book is the opus of the resiliency movement, penned by talented researchers and practitioners who overcame turbulent childhoods. The authors are the ultimate experts on reclaiming troubled children - they speak with the moral authority of having experienced both sides of the helping relationship. These powerful insights must be the centerpiece of all credible 'person-centered' and 'evidence-based' practice and policy." --Larry K. Brendtro, Ph.D., President of the Circle of Courage Institute; Co-author of Deep Brain Learning: Pathways to Potential with Challenging Youth; Founder, Reclaiming Youth International and Executive Editor, Reclaiming Children & Youth

Product Details

• Perfect Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: William Gladden Foundation Press; First edition (July 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0982451008
• ISBN-13: 978-0982451007
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #93,097 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Waln K. Brown was born in York, Pennsylvania, October, 1944, a "surprise" child of ill-matched parents who did the "right thing" and got married. For the next 11 years, they fought constantly, creating an unhealthy environment that adversely affected Waln emotionally and behaviorally. Rejected by his father for "ruining his life," and confused by his mother's obsessive-compulsive disorder of washing him in her "crazy clean" solution of Lysol and ammonia, Waln began a pattern of acting out that led to placement in an orphanage, juvenile detention home, state psychiatric hospital and juvenile reform school. A terrible student who spent eighth grade in special education and failed the ninth grade, Waln earned an A.S. degree from York College of Pennsylvania, B.S. from the Pennsylvania State University (summa cum laude) and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He held positions with the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the National Center for Juvenile Justice and the Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago. Waln is the CEO of the William Gladden Foundation, and the author of over 230 books, articles and popular publications about youth and family issues. To learn more about the William Gladden Foundation and Waln's latest book, "Growing Up in the Care of Strangers: The Experiences, Insights and Recommendations of Eleven Former Foster Kids," visit the website and blog below.

Web site: www.williamgladdenfoundation.org/
Blog: http://careofstrangers.blogspot.com/
Associated Network at Yahoo! News Network http://www.associatedcontent.com/user/831098/waln_brown.html

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting read, November 22, 2009

By 

Richard D. Wynn - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Growing Up in the Care of Strangers: The Experiences, Insights and Recommendations of Eleven Former Foster Kids (Perfect Paperback)

I approached this fascinating book as I would a book of short stories. I read one author's story and then reflected on it. The next day, I consumed another author's chapter and pondered it. Each of the eleven stories differs from the others in what the authors experienced growing up, as well as their insights and recommendations for improving the child welfare system, thereby retaining my interest throughout. Over the nearly two weeks that I took to consume these riveting and revealing mini-memoirs, I was privy to a world so foreign from my own childhood that I cannot imagine how my life would have turned out, had I been forced to grow up in a system of care that lacks empathy, common sense and forward thinking. The authors are "heroes", in every sense of the word, and their willingness to give of themselves to change the broken system of child welfare is inspiring.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read for those who work with System's Kids, October 29, 2009

By 

Jim Doncaster (Pittsburgh) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Growing Up in the Care of Strangers: The Experiences, Insights and Recommendations of Eleven Former Foster Kids (Perfect Paperback)

Growing Up in the Care of Strangers chronicles the lives of eleven individuals who refused to let their turbulent pasts determine what they would become. Abuse, neglect, abandonment and loss are the discordant themes in the lives of these authors--systems kids all who have grown up and embarked upon systems change--but hope, resilience, recovery and kindness ultimately triumph for each of them. The book is essential reading for those who would understand the failings of our alternative care and child protective service systems. But the book is more inspiration than indictment, more a celebration of the indomitability of the human spirit than a condemnation of the systems that failed them. As a mental health professional and a former treatment foster parent, I recommend the book to all who work with systems's kids. In the organization in which I work, we are making it a "must read" for all of our staff and parents in our treatment foster care programs.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Growing up in the care of strangers, October 14, 2009

By 

Richard Klussman (Marin County, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Growing Up in the Care of Strangers: The Experiences, Insights and Recommendations of Eleven Former Foster Kids (Perfect Paperback)

As a physician who has worked with and treated many troubled children and adolescents from fractured and severely dysfunctional families, I am most heartened to have read this book chronicling the first hand accounts of these courageous victims of neglect and abuse during their most formative years. This compilation of individual struggles within well-intended, albeit ineffective, systems continues today and too many innocent and viable youths fall through the cracks due to bureaucratic mismanagement, missed diagnoses and benign neglect. Dr.Waln Brown clearly understands the magnitude of this shortcoming in our society and I will be highly recommending this book to my colleagues and patients.