On Foster Care

This chapter details my stay in County Mental Health. Two male staff members who work there mess with me. One just says inappropriate things to me, while the other physically molests me. I am committed for several months. When I am released, I enter my first foster home. This doesn’t work out. I am hospitalized again for a short time, then I am released to my second foster home. I screw this home up and I am sent to a receiving home.

I screw up a lot at the receiving home before I am interviewed by a man who runs a group home in northern California. I pass the interview. I am sent to a short-term group home, where I stay until I can go north. Both of my parents take me out with them separately for a visit. Within a week, I am sent north on an airplane.

I had two sets of foster parents that I was assigned to. One pair was not good for me, the other was. The problem with the second pair was that my father still had access to me. He came for a visit and saw where I slept. After that I had to run and keep on running.

I felt very bad for the second pair of foster parents that they had the misfortune of being assigned to me. I caused them some heartache. They were genuinely good people. I still wish I could have done some good there, but that was not to be.

My first pair of foster parents thought that my mother being gay would somehow rub off on me and they asked me about that. I felt very protective of my mother during that conversation. I thought that she should be free to love whomever she wished. After a court hearing one day, my father embraced me and kissed me all over in front of the court house in broad daylight. The parents asked me if he always kissed me like that. I said no, which was true. He had never kissed me like that. The parents thought enough to ask me about it, but not enough to report it, as far as I know.

Based on my limited experience, I venture to say that there are both good and bad foster parents, and everything in between. I am not going into a treatise on the foster care system in this country, though I’m sure there are many improvements that could be made in that system. I only have my limited experience to draw from in that arena.

I had much better luck with the group home that I was sent to at the end of this chapter. More of that is to come.