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Before
a roomful of important adults, foster kids and graduates of the system
talked about being put on powerful psychiatric drugs and undergoing
"treatment" when what might have helped more was a chance for a regular
life with sports and clubs and jobs. Friday's
day-long legislative meeting drew a number of state officials,
lawmakers and advocates, and focused on how to improve Alaska foster
care. In
May, a group of foster care youth and those who have aged out came up
with eight ways to improve the system. Among the identified problems:
Overprescribed psychiatric drugs. Too
many foster children are prescribed psychiatric drugs, the kids said.
They are labeled as disturbed, defiant or anxious when in reality they
are just reacting to the trauma of their broken families and the
difficulties of living in state custody. Candice
Tucker remembered when she first went into foster care two years ago,
at age 15, because her mother couldn't take care of her. "I
was freaking out because I had just gotten into care. I was having a
hard time so they thought I needed residential," Tucker, now 17, said. For her, the treatment center helped, but she questions all the drugs doctors put her on. "There
are natural things in life that stress you out. You get depressed. You
get sad or you get angry or anxious. They are natural emotions. I feel
being in foster care and being on as many anti-psychotics and
anti-depressants that I've been on -- they see me for a week and they
assume that's the way I've always been," Tucker said, her voice soft
but her manner open. Later she explained that she's shy, but wants to
make life better for other foster children if she can. Now,
as she's preparing to start at the University of Alaska Anchorage in
January, Tucker wants to ease off the powerful medications. "I need to have my mind with me. I need to be alert," she said. Slade
Martin is 20 now, but he spent 15 years in Alaska's foster care system
and shuffled through, by his count, 21 different foster homes,
emergency placements and treatment centers. He once was treated at a
local psychiatric hospital and said every kid there is put on
psychiatric drugs. The kids want the medications cut back and think that will help them focus better on school and function better in the world. "I don't think meds are always the best option," Martin said.
A NEED TO BE NORMAL
Counseling
is traumatic to some kids -- telling your story to one stranger and
then another, said Becca Shier, now 18 and a UAA student in social work
who has been in foster care nearly six years. Some,
like her, will never open up. Instead of making them feel like
something is wrong with them, Shier told the legislators, why not get
them involved in extra curricular activities so they can be part of a
regular school experience? "So they could be normal." Teens
in foster care too often end up in treatment centers because the state
has no other home for them; they are the "foster homeless," Shier said.
Martin said he spent 2 1/2 years at an Anchorage treatment center
because no foster family would take him in. "Some crazy people up in
there," he told legislators. He
said he was "diagnosed with everything under the rainbow" but doesn't
think anything was really wrong with him. Other kids stabbed people and
punched holes in the walls and were scary, he said during a break. Tammy
Sandoval, director of the state Office of Children's Services, said
later that she was taken with what the youths had to say. The idea of
kids spending months or years in residential treatment centers for lack
of a family is troubling and she wants to look into the matter. But the fact is, the state doesn't have enough foster homes, especially for teenagers, she said. Sandoval said she planned to discuss the medication issues with the state's director of behavioral health. The
foster kids and alumni at the meeting are especially articulate and
successful, said state Rep. Les Gara, an Anchorage Democrat who grew up
in foster care in New York state and was one of the main organizers of
Friday's session. Foster kids too often struggle in school, end up
homeless and are unemployed as young adults, according to studies
presented at the meeting. The
kids who spoke Friday have been finding their voice through an advocacy
group called Facing Foster Care in Alaska that now numbers about 140
statewide, said its president, Amanda Metivier, who at 24 helped
organize the conference and is weeks away from graduating from UAA with
a social work degree. She'll
be one of the first to graduate on a special tuition waiver
specifically for foster kids. The foster care group wants all foster
kids to be offered that benefit. Now just 10 foster kids a year get
that at UAA. At
their May meeting, they also agreed to push for Medicaid health
benefits to age 21, Medicaid-paid braces, and money to help older
foster kids live on their own. But
state Sen. Johnny Ellis, an Anchorage Democrat at the meeting, said
even sympathetic legislators may have trouble getting new programs into
the state budget with the recent dramatic drop in the price of oil.
Find Lisa Demer online at adn.com/contact/ldemer or call 257-4390.
Highlights of meeting
• OCS CASEWORKERS: Current authorization is four short of the number recommended in a 2006 study. But 25 positions are vacant. • Trouble with turnover:
One-third leave every year. There are signs that is improving, said
Tammy Sandoval, OCS director. Training for new hires has doubled, from
two to four weeks, and OCS is moving to allow flexible hours and
telecommuting, she said. • Churches to help:
So far, six Anchorage churches -- Anchorage City Church, Abbott Loop
Community Church, Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, Crosspoint
Community Church, Faith Christian Community and ChangePoint -- have
banded together to help improve foster care. They want to recruit 200
new foster families by 2012 and form a private agency that will find
other ways to help. • INFORMATION: Find out more about foster care, including how to become a foster parent, at hss.state.ak.us/ocs/FosterCare/default.htm