Published: May 02, 2008 11:53 pm            

ASSUMING the ROLE

4-hour journey is eye-opener for locals to see what a child experiences when removed from their homes

CATLETTSBURG — Being escorted onto a bus by a burly state trooper and then carted like cattle to office after office is a bewildering experience even for grownups.

Imagine what it’s like for a child.

There are about 45 educators, elected officials, attorneys and social workers who no longer have to use their imaginations, because on Friday they boarded buses under the watchful eyes of troopers and spent the next four hours seeing first hand what children in Boyd County’s foster care system go through when they’re removed from their homes.

Orchestrated by the nonprofit foster care advocacy organization For Jamie’s Sake, the afternoon was an awareness-building exercise designed to bring to life the confusing and fearsome experience foster children go through every day.

“Everything is new for them and they’re overwhelmed,” said Lea Ann Gollihue, executive director of For Jamie’s Sake. In fact, when organizers did a dry run of the exercise Gollihue herself was somewhat befuddled, she said. “And I knew what was happening.”

Participants, each of them provided with a new name and age as though they were children themselves, were shuttled from their starting point in downtown Ashland to the state Department of Social Services for initial processing and then to Hope’s Place, where physicians talked to them about physical examinations given to all children upon removal from their homes.

Then the buses stopped at Crabbe Elementary School, to denote that children in the foster system typically are uprooted from their classrooms and find themselves in new schools among strangers.

The experience was enlightening, said Geri Willis, coordinator of the family resource center serving Crabbe, Hatcher and Hager elementaries. As an educator and social worker of some 17 years experience in Ashland schools, she saw a side of the system that was new to her.

Under law, teachers and other school workers are obligated to report evidence of neglect or abuse, so Willis has seen her share of pupils plucked from school. And there it often ends, because privacy regulations shroud the rest of the process. “We don’t always find out what happens afterward,” she said. “We don’t see the whole picture. This allowed us to see the process.”

It’s one thing to hear about the process and another to walk in the steps of children, said Sherri McCarty, a stay-at-home mother. “This puts a face on the child. You hear about children and numbers, but this personalizes it.”

Being at Hope’s Place, which provides services in child abuse cases, was upsetting because it brought to mind the abuse some children undergo, she said. And at the end of the afternoon, she reflected that her harrowing make-believe experience was just a shadow of what foster children suffer. “They don’t just wrap it up after a few hours,” she said.

A system set up to protect children has paradoxically made it difficult to publicize the need for improvements, according to Boyd District Judge George W. Davis. Foster issues are handled under the district court system in Kentucky and all proceedings are undertaken behind closed doors to maintain children’s privacy.

Davis would like to see more transparency in the system, at least at the later stages when allegations have been substantiated. “If it were more open, I think there would be an outcry from the public to provide more for these children.”

For now, Davis is pleased that Friday’s exercise opened some eyes. “This was a wonderful opportunity for the community to see what goes on behind the scenes,” he said.

The consciousness-raising doesn’t stop with the afternoon’s participants. Organizers want and expect them to spread the word among their associates.

That’s just what Willis, for one, is planning to do. Teachers sometimes get frustrated with a system under which they have to file reports but don’t see results. “This showed us all the players,” she said.

McCarty said she is interested in the Court Appointed Special Advocates, a cadre of volunteers who take on cases of foster children to represent their best interests across the system.

Just talking to friends and neighbors would help, by generating more understanding and sympathy for foster children, Gollihue said.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.

        

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