Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

Even though I work in Child Welfare at the state level, and advocate for children who come into the "system every day, this book still managed to touch my heart. Each author describes a different yet difficult experience growing up in (and out) of foster care. These individuals are not describing something that happened to someone else. They are describing their own lives. The resiliency of these "children" who endured abandonment, abuse and neglect at the hands of adults is evidenced in the adults they grew in to. Whether you work in human services or not, read this book! You will be touched and uplifted by how these individuals make the best of the cards they have been dealt.

As a former foster care child, I greatly appreciate and admire the authors of this book. Each author writes with honesty, integrity and a truth that should not be known by any child. For those children currently in care, this book will inspire and comfort. For foster care alumni, it brings an immediate kinship feeling to these wonderful people. Truly Inspirational!

Jennifer Flamini
Foster Care Alumni
Founder of The Face of a Foster Care Graduate Campaign and
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I happened to pick up and read this book and found it to be an excellent and eye opening look at the struggles of young people growing up in some very unhappy and terrible circumstances. I would highly recommend this to anyone from teens and kids to parents, to health care professionals. At times chilling and at other times sensitive and caring. Great job!

This book made me angry, but not at the authors, who I consider role models; rather, my anger is directed at a system of "care" that seems so "uncaring" that it puts the physical and emotional health of its young clients at risk. Removed from their homes by the court for abuse, neglect or other problems, the foster care system shuttles them from one placement to another and then another, sometimes putting these frightened and vulnerable kids in the care of foster parents who should not be permitted to raise even a goldfish. This book is a wake-up call to all Americans concerned about the welfare of foster children. That these eleven authors managed to overcome their difficult beginnings and go on to become "successful" adults is a testament to the human spirit. How they did it, and the insights and recommendations they individually and collectively describe for improving the foster care system, is what makes this book the keystone around which to build a child welfare system worthy of the title foster "care."

Ruth Godfrey
Baltimore, Maryland

Why do America's abused, neglected, orphaned and abandoned children continue to suffer for want of an appropriate foster care system? The authors of this iconoclastic book know why: because the broken child welfare system largely excludes its alumni from the decision making process. Instead, most of the professionals who design and administer the foster care system base their practices on the assumptions of well-meaning people who haven't had to "grow up in the care of strangers." To me, at least, this is as ludicrous as a panel of men designing and running a program for pregnant single mothers. How could they possibly know how best to serve the special needs of this group, if they have not experienced being female, pregnant and facing the stark reality of rearing a baby on their own? This is an important theme the foster care alumni contributors to this book emphasize repeatedly and with authority. More than just pointing out this obvious omission of experiential perspective, each author, candidly and courageously, delineates her or his insights and recommendations for reforming the foster care system, based on their personal experience as a former foster child. This "insider" knowledge disclosed by alumni who are now college-educated child welfare professionals, researchers, trainers, professors and advocates is what makes this important book so unique, enthralling and instructive.

This is an inspiring first-hand look into the lives of eleven resilient adults who experienced the foster care system. I work daily with youth who are aging out of or have already aged out of foster care. I know so many individual stories and have many rich examples in my head, but it is essential to have these stories captured in writing so that the invisibility of this population can diminish. Thank you to each and every one of the authors for their insight and for allowing their story to be read by all.

This book is a must read for professionals and paraprofessionals working with children living in foster care or dysfunctional families. In each chapter, a different author chronicles the memories of a painful childhood and reflects on the experience of growing up in (and out) the foster care system as part of his or her life's journey. The narratives reveal how the conditions of childhood can affect individuals well into adulthood. Despite overcoming painful and traumatic events by parents or caregivers, the authors share how the effects of child abuse and neglect, as well as being "raised" by the state, leaves lasting scars. This book challenges the reader to come to terms with the fact that we live in a society where everyday children are harmed by their parents, and, as a society, we haven't figured out how to respond...to families "in trouble"...or to children who need to be loved and nurtured, despite becoming state wards. I suspect that the reader who feels a balance of compassion and inspiration after reading this book would likely be a good candidate for being a foster parent or foster care professional.