Contents
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Part I: The Early Years
1. That Awful Night
2. The Parents of My Parents
3. My Parents
4. Heartbreak
5. A Funeral and a Wedding
6. New York
7. First There Were Six and Then There Was One
Part II: Learning and Getting Stronger
8. Marriage and Divorce
9. The Six of Us
Part III: Reframing for Success
10. Capturing Resilience
11. My Self Has Value
12. Someone in a Child’s Life
13. Playfulness
14. A Spiritual Connection
15. Learning and Creativity
16. Problem Solving with Reasonable Perseverance
17. Positive Reframe
18. Prescription for Personal Resilience
19. Prescription for Social Resilience
Epilogue
Prescription for Resilience
Copyright
For their contributions to my growth as a human being and a social worker, I thank Dr. David Harrison, who shaped my understanding of good social work; Mary Groff, who influenced me to go to school; and Shelia Myrick, who showed me by example what real social work is. For their interest, advice, and encouragement, I thank my US publisher, Lyle Stuart, editor Sandra Lee Stuart, and the entire staff of Barricade Books, who demonstrate immeasurable skill and patience.
In 1998, two years after I earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Alabama, the Board of Directors of Tennessee Valley Family Services in Marshall County, Alabama, offered me a position as executive director of the agency. It felt as if my whole life had led to that place and that job.
My first experience with the foster care system began when I was twelve. I spent my teen years growing up in a foster home where I had been placed by Catholic Charities. Later in life, my husband, Russ, and I volunteered to foster teens. In fact, two of our foster daughters were residents of the agency’s shelter program before they came to live with us.
I also had experience on the other side of the fence. I had worked for more than four years as a caseworker for children and family services in the state system. During those years, I was often at Ogden House, the shelter program operated by Tennessee Valley Family Services, dropping off or picking up young people.
When the state hired me to work with children in 1990, my primary qualifications were my education and experience in writing and executing training programs. I implemented an innovative program for foster children in need of therapy. I recruited and trained families to provide specialized care for difficult children. It was then my responsibility to evaluate, place, and supervise the treatment of foster children with a dual diagnosis of emotional, mental, or physical problems. It was exciting, challenging, and stressful.
The longer I worked, the more I recognized that I did not have a solid educational background for working in this area. That’s when I returned to school to become a better social worker.
When I accepted the responsibility of directing the business of Tennessee Valley Family Services, I was faced with two dilemmas. First the local schools had a territorial dispute about whose responsibility it was to educate the youth who came to Ogden House. The board of directors and my predecessor had tried to resolve the issue for more than two years. They had been able to negotiate a temporary reprieve for the school year prior to my arrival. Now the issue was at hand.
Then Morris Dees’s Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit in my name as the friend of a young black foster child who was denied access to two local high schools. It was a scary time. All the major state newspapers and some national publications carried stories about the situation. The local television crew interviewed me, and the story went nationwide. I had not anticipated my fifteen minutes of fame, and it was useful but disconcerting.
The lead attorneys, Michael Cohen and Ellen Bowden, did an outstanding job of securing the educational rights of the children without offending the individual defendants. As is appropriate, the children who reside at Ogden House now go to school wherever it is in their best interest, and the staff members at Ogden House work very hard to cooperate with the schools.
Classroom teachers and local school administrators were always on our side. It was an issue of how funds are allocated that caused administrators to resist taking the children. After the resolution of the suit, there was no animosity on the part of the educators, and I felt the resolution was amicable.
Now I had to turn my attention to our second dilemma. Our licensing agency had made it very clear that the existing shelter was not up to the revised standards for residential facilities. We had been grandfathered in, but that could not continue indefinitely.
In 1999, I began the journey to build a new home. First, I did a lot of research about structures and the cost of construction. As I prepared to kick off a fundraising campaign, I received an anonymous donation of $40,000 from a family in the community. The check came in the mail at Christmastime. I was ecstatic. That gift made everything that came afterward possible. It gave me the confidence to pursue the dream.
We found seventeen affordable acres of land within the city limits next to a mobile home park. We made an offer and went before the city building committee to secure a permit to build. There we ran into difficulties. More than sixty people from the neighborhood showed up to challenge us. What we heard over and over again was that we did good work, but they did not want the facility in their neighborhood.
I was attacked personally, and it felt like a mob assaulting me. The building committee turned us down, although according to federal law, they had no right to deny us a permit.
I did not want to go to court again, and I certainly did not want our young people exposed to those people and their animosity. Our children come to us damaged, and it seems very wrong to contribute further to their pain. One older man at the meeting said that he had worked as an engineer, and he promised that he would “dog [us] every step of the way.” I walked away from that meeting a smarter, though less trusting, woman.
With the help of a local family, we ultimately secured thirty-two acres out in the country. It is a beautiful parcel of property with many options for future growth.
We had a kick-off event and started looking for contributions. During this time, I made two trips to Washington, D.C., to visit with our elected officials and make a plea for funds.
I met with the chief of staff for Richard Shelby, the senator from the state of Alabama. The first time we met, the young staffer was polite but not very encouraging. He was an attractive, courteous young man and the first-time father of an infant. He seemed not to be overly interested in the plight of our homeless youth.
The following year, I met with the same young man, who now had a toddler in the home. He had many parenting questions