Unconditional Commitment: The Only Love That Matters To Teens, Page 2

Then I point out to them that, every time a foster or adoptive parent attempts to return a child for a behavior committed we are "re-everythinging" them. We are re-abusing, re-abandoning, re-hurting, re-traumatizing, re-victimizing, re-rejecting, and re-neglecting the child.

Every person who comes forward to help a child must come to this work with an unconditionally committed permanency mindset. If they are going to be foster parents, they must commit to the child's permanency future. The number one permanency plan is for the child to return home. And until that goal is achieved that child needs one placement and one placement only. Anxious children invariably do things that upset foster and adoptive parents. Can you begin to imagine what feels like to have someone give you up as a child, every time you did something they did not approve of, particularly if it was during the most difficult period in your childhood? This happens to teenagers in care every single day as a matter of accepted and common practice -- that we professionals perpetuate and endorse implicitly or otherwise.

Often, teenagers are in foster care because they have no one planning for their permanency future. They may have goals of adoption but most often they have goals of independent living. Both goals may mean, if the child does not get into a permanent family before discharge from foster care, he will run a high risk of being alone in the world and becoming homeless after discharge. Way too many of these youths live in congregate care facilities, particularly group homes. They may be taught skills but if no one unconditionally commits to them before their discharge, their hopes for a brighter future are drastically reduced.

Very often the system takes a half-full approach to teens in foster care and attempts to find conditionally thinking, traditionally prepared foster parents for them. Intake workers across the land make the same mistake when they call traditionally prepared foster parents for a teen. They make "the deal." "Try it and see if it works out." The implication being that if it does not work out the child will be removed. Can you imagine if you had to live under those conditions when you were a teenager? Can you imagine if you had the equivalent of child welfare capital punishment inflicted on you every time you caught an attitude, came home late, got caught smoking a cigarette, or broke even the most basic of rules? I knew a teen kicked out of his home for washing his sneakers in the washing machine. I knew another teen who got kicked out of two houses: one because he flushed the toilet at night and the other house because he did not. In one house, the father woke up at 4 a.m. in the morning and no one dared disturb his sleep. The other house found it disgusting that this same teen did not flush the toilet at night. Both houses kicked him out for this utterly minor offense. This happens time and time again because we do not imbed the unconditional commitment philosophy in our preparation of these families.

We have dehumanized teenagers in our care. We have treated them like disposable garbage. And we have to stop it. Kids should not have to grow up in institutions, but equally, they cannot grow up in conditional homes. You Gotta Believe, the agency that I founded, makes it a practice of teaching each and every one of our families how important unconditional commitment is. We will only approve prospective families who agree to practice this form of love. Every time we place a child that child is placed forever.

We support families through their hard times after kids are placed. And we are there to constantly remind them, that if this child's adolescence is handled in the right way, the child will have a family for life -- and the family will have the young person in their family forever. We teach each family to treat every child they accept as if he or she is the child who will bring them their last glass of water. Having practiced for over 15 years in this field, I know of at least three placements where the child that we placed was the child who did so, even over the dying adoptive parents' biological children.

We have to stop accepting that teenagers in particular are not worthy of permanency. We have to continue to recruit only unconditionally committed, permanent families for every teen in our care who could be discharged to no one. If we don't we will continue to perpetuate what we did to another group of human beings in our Country's history. In an article written in the November 2000 issue of Harper's Magazine "Making the Case for Racial Reparations," there was an eerie quote about the condition of slaves who found themselves set free:

Think about this. In 1865, the federal government of this country freed 4 million blacks. Without a dime, with no property, nearly all illiterate, they were let loose upon the land to wander.

Willie E. Gary

It was so eerie when I read this because 135 years later we do the exact same thing to tens of thousands of predominately African American and Latino children in our care every year. We discharge them without a dime in their pockets; without any property; and rarely with a high school diploma, so they might as well be illiterate. And without an unconditionally committed permanent family in their corner they are simply being "...let loose upon the land to wander."

We absolutely can do better for our kids. All we have to do is believe there are enough people willing to offer them unconditional commitment and then go about the good work of bringing those families into the process. It is far easier to find these families than you think. But you can only do this if you first believe it is possible. The choice is yours. Choose to believe. You gotta believe! Our children's futures depend on it.

Anyone interested in contacting the writer of this article, Pat O'Brien, executive director of You Gotta Believe! The Older Child Adoption & Permanency Movement, can e-mail him at ygbpat@msn.com call him at 1-800-601-1779 or write to him at 1220 Neptune Avenue, Suite #166, Coney Island, N.Y. 11224. Pat would be very interested in sharing ideas with you about how you might find homes for every teenager in your care.

© Pat O'Brien, executive director of You Gotta Believe! The Older Child Adoption & Permanency Movement

Credits: Fostering Families Today Magazine