Foster Care System Badly Needs More Heroes

She was 8 when Mary Miller met her, a redheaded child with fire in her eyes and an emptiness in her heart. She was sullen and, though she would never admit it, scared, skeptical that Miller would be anything more than the latest adult in her young life to let her down.

The latest adult to hurt her.

Miller was a brand-new volunteer advocate for foster children – in Florida, where this story begins, they are known as guardians ad litem; in New Mexico, where it continues, they are court-appointed special advocates, or CASAs.

	More information New Mexico CASA Network Program: 217-0232, nmcan.org Albuquerque CASA: 841-7388, casaabq.com

Ashley, the girl with the red hair, was a five-year veteran of the foster care system by then, removed from her prostitute mother’s care when she was 3. The few nice foster homes she was placed in never lasted long. The worst ones seemed to keep her forever.

Nothing, though, in her young life was forever.

“I felt as worthless as the junk in my trash bag,” she wrote about her rootless, hopeless childhood. “Once again, I was the one being tossed out and thrown away.”

By the time she turned 12, she had been through 14 foster homes, 73 child welfare administrators, 44 social workers, 23 attorneys, 17 psychiatrists and therapists, four judges and countless others who were paid to look out for her best interests.

But only one person actually did that. Only one stopped the foster care shuffle and forced the state to proceed with freeing her for adoption, who made sure she had her teeth checked and her hair cut, who found out and then cultivated what she was good at (writing and sports), who became the constant in her turbulent life, who never let her down.

It was the one who didn’t receive a paycheck for her efforts.

“You talk about the power of one person,” said Ashley, now Ashley Rhodes-Courter, 23. “That one person is Mary Miller.”

I met the two women this week at the Children’s Law Institute, a three-day conference concluding today in Albuquerque for advocates, foster parents, social workers, judges, attorneys and others involved in the child welfare system.

Rhodes-Courter, now a New York Times best-selling author for her harrowing childhood memoir, “Three Little Words,” was about to take the stage as a conference guest speaker, a role that keeps her traveling across the country, though she is never gone for more than a night from her husband in Florida and the three foster children now in their care.

Miller, who moved to Albuquerque in 2007, where she continues to volunteer as a CASA, was about to introduce Rhodes-Courter and have her untold life as a superhero revealed to a packed banquet hall.

At the end of the presentation, both received a standing ovation.

But really, that banquet hall was full of superheroes, average citizens who volunteer their time to assure foster children of their rights and achieve for them a forever family.

“The work is really important,” said Ellen Genné, director of the New Mexico CASA Network Program. “And yet it’s not widely recognized.”

Instead, we fixate on the latest horrific case of child abuse, the drug-addicted and violent caregivers, the misstep of a bumbling and broken Children, Youth and Families Department. And as we wring our hands and shake our heads, the CASA volunteers are busy trying to pull those children from the wreckage.

Overworked CYFD social workers often carry enormous caseloads, but a CASA on average deals with one or two children or sibling group at a time.

These are the people, unpaid and armed with a minimum 30 hours of training, who often do the greater share of an investigation into a child’s life. They are not only the extra sets of eyes and ears – and, on occasion, the thorns in the side of CYFD – but the voice of those children. Quite often, they are the only voice of reason.

Like our superhero, Mary Miller, who not only helped clear the way for Rhodes-Courter to be adopted but has remained a presence in her life, which turned out far better than even she might have imagined when they met 15 years ago.

“The problem is, there are not enough of us,” Miller said.

Statewide, about 550 CASA volunteers are available to oversee the cases of the 1,700 to 2,200 children who are in foster care on any given day.

In Albuquerque, about 110 CASA volunteers serve about 350 foster children, or about half the total number of foster children in the city and Bernalillo County.

Perhaps, instead of wringing hands and shaking heads, some of you are ready to put on your superhero capes and get busy doing something better, something that matters, something that can change a life.

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline Gutierrez Krueger at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal