Graduation Day

Today is a major milestone and moment of pride that I wanted to share. As you may know, I have been serving as a volunteer for the San Francisco Court Appointed Special Advocate Program (SFCASA) since 2001. As a CASA, I work one-on-one with a child in foster care. I get to know her caretakers, physicians, teachers, therapists, lawyers, family members, social workers — everyone in my child’s life. We spend time together each week, doing fun activities as well as working on life skills and other needs. An important part of my role as a volunteer is to ensure that the court acts in the best interest of the foster child that I am working with.

There are over 1,800 foster children in the city of San Francisco alone. I serve as the voice for one of them. I’ve been working with the same child since I was first sworn in by the court in 2001. She was 9 years old when we met; she will turn 18 this July. She is a sweet-natured, beautiful girl whose resilience never ceases to amaze me.

Today she will earn her high school diploma.

Graduating from high school was not inevitable for my child. She has lived in 15 foster care and group home placements since entering the system at age 5. Until high school, she changed schools at least once per year as a result of her placement changes. As her CASA, I quickly became the single consistent adult in her life, a role I take very seriously.

I also became her educational surrogate – holding legal rights for her education – when she entered 9th grade. During her first semester of high school she was disengaged, emotionally stressed, and became truant, leaving campus everyday for hours and wandering the city. During that time, she went AWOL from her group home for more than 7 days; to this day, no one knows exactly where she was during that time. Any academic concerns we had were pushed aside: our only priority was keeping her safe.

As an educational surrogate, I had a steep learning curve to climb in advocating for my child’s educational rights to an IEP and to specialized services. She eventually qualified for special education under the category of Emotional Disturbance, which brought access to resources but also stigma attached to the label. I am grateful to the SFCASA staff as well as my Facing History colleagues and especially Jack Weinstein for helping me navigate a complicated system of acronyms and school bureaucracy, to make the best decisions I could make for my child. I know I made some mistakes along the way, but I am confident that my advocacy has made a real difference.

Throughout the entire process I have often contrasted my CASA child's experience with my own high school experience. I had 'real' teenage concerns, including coping with my mother's cancer and moving across the country in between my sophomore/junior years, but mostly I worried about getting good grades, making varsity on the cheerleading squad, and wondering if any boy I liked would ever like me back. For my child, caring about grades and college-readiness has often been sidelined by thinking about where she will live next, why her family hasn't come for her.

I am immensely proud of my child for sticking with her education, when there were many times she could have given up - many young people faced with similar circumstances do. She has dealt with challenges in her life that most of us cannot fathom. She lives with uncertainty at almost every turn.

I don’t want to sugarcoat reality – or to suggest that graduating from high school is the golden ticket that will ensure a successful transition to adulthood. It *is* a huge accomplishment, but the challenges will only intensify as she emanicipates from foster care.

Her current foster placement will end on her 18th birthday. She craves freedom and independence, which is understandable both as natural teenage stuff, and as a rebellion against the 'system'. She wants nothing to do with 'programs' and 'services' that are available to former foster youth, such as transitional housing, college scholarships, job assistance and placement. But she lacks many of the basic life skills needed for successful, independent adulthood, so there are greater risks for her to leap out on her own. Her cushion to fall back on doesn't exist the way it did for me, or for many of us. Her imagination of what her life can be remains limited, even as those of us in her life have tried - and will continue to try - to expand her sense of what is possible.

Among other big questions about her future (college? job?), we are in the midst of a heated debate about where she will live next. I am advocating strongly against placement with her biological mother. Though I never thought I would side *against* family reunification, this is not the first time in my role as a CASA that I've been forced to question what I thought I knew about my own beliefs. The issue of living with her mother is complicated, and could be the subject of its own post, but I will just say here that it raises many questions for me.

My formal role as her CASA will also end upon emancipation from foster care, but I will continue to support her to the best of my ability. I believe that every child deserves at least one person in her life who commits to love her and to be there, simply be there, unconditionally. I am proud to be that person for my CASA child, and that won't simply end on her 18th birthday.