{"id":11823,"date":"2018-12-08T18:22:01","date_gmt":"2018-12-08T23:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/?page_id=11823"},"modified":"2018-12-08T18:38:08","modified_gmt":"2018-12-08T23:38:08","slug":"foster-children-have-challenging-road-toward-adoption-being-part-of-a-family","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/projects\/foster-children-have-challenging-road-toward-adoption-being-part-of-a-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Foster children have challenging road toward adoption, being part of a family"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By ISABELLA VACCARO<\/p>\n<p>Jess Shuman knew immediately that the little girl she met tucked away in a downtown Miami caseworker\u2019s facility would someday be her daughter. It was the day before Thanksgiving when the Shuman family first met Zoe, an eight-year-old foster child with long locks and a bulky cast hiding her dainty broken wrist.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_11818\" style=\"width: 364px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/DSC0361.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11818\" class=\"wp-image-11818\" src=\"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/DSC0361-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"354\" height=\"251\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11818\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">At last year\u2019s Miami Heart Gallery, which took place at History Miami Museum last March, Patience, one of many children growing up in the Florida foster care system, poses for photographers (Photo by Isabella Vaccaro).<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cShe was eight years old, but she was the size of a 5-year-old,\u201d said Shuman. \u201cThe first meeting was an hour long, and she literally didn\u2019t say a word the entire visit. So, it was an hour of Zoe just quietly staring at us and us trying to talk to her.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At eight, Zoe was already considered an \u201colder\u201d foster child in the system back in 2014 when the Shumans first found her.<\/p>\n<p>And the energetic youngster, who now thrives in school and plans on becoming a veterinarian one day, was actually classified as \u201cspecial needs\u201d because of her age.<\/p>\n<p>According to Adoptuskids.org, the term \u201cspecial needs\u201d does not refer to a learning disability or mental disorder, but instead refers to \u201cbeing an older child, having a particular racial or ethnic background, being part of a sibling group needing to be placed together as one unit\u201d or just having a \u201cmedical condition.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of course, Shuman and her husband were scared. They were terrified. They had no idea what it was like for a child to be bounced from foster home to foster home \u2013 to never be certain where they might lie their head in a week, a month or a year.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, according to a study done by the <em>New England Journal of Medicine<\/em>on trauma, foster children are five times more prone to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.<\/p>\n<p>Adopting an older foster child is entirely different than adopting at birth \u2013 these older children and teens are forced to make and remake friends at each new school they attend every time they switch foster homes.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/305265628\" width=\"550\" height=\"309\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Click on the video above to view a video package about foster children in South Florida (by Isabella Vaccaro).<\/p>\n<p>They are constantly gauging the personalities and emotions of their new foster families, wondering whether each new set of\u00a0 \u201cparents\u201d will like them enough to keep them around for a while or maybe even adopt them. It\u2019s similar to a game \u2013 and a viciously stressful, taxing and sometimes even perilous one at that.<\/p>\n<p>Shuman does not deny her fear throughout her individual adoption process, but instead has a message for those who are wary: \u201cwe didn\u2019t know what we were going to get into with an older child, but there was no reason to be afraid. With love and care, there is nothing that you can\u2019t work through with a family, so please do not be afraid of adopting a child from foster care.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Zoe\u2019s fairy-tale ending is unfortunately just not the reality for so many foster children in Miami-Dade County. According to Our Kids of Miami-Dade\/Monroe, Inc., the umbrella agency for all childcare services in Florida, there are more than 3,000 kids in Miami-Dade County\u2019s foster care system in need of adoption.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reason why it\u2019s harder for these kids to get adopted is because I think families believe that it\u2019s easier to take care of a little one. The teenagers are the harder ones because they\u2019ve been through some stuff,\u201d said Sandra Camacho, media liaison for the Children\u2019s Trust.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of adopting a child during their tumultuous teen years alone may be a turn off for many families, but potential adoptive parents also have to worry about these kids\u2019 criminal pasts. Daniel Wynne, a Miami-Dade County public school teacher and the juvenile justice liaison for his school district, admits that foster children are \u201cover arrested and over-identified group because they are oftentimes involved in risky behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But is there too much scrutiny over this hapless demographic? Perhaps. According to a report released by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, from 2014 to 2015, only five percent of youth arrests were dually involved children, or children who, at the time, were placed out of their home by the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF).<\/p>\n<p>Movies, television and the mass media have twisted society\u2019s view of foster children into a mutiny of unruly and destructive criminals. And although there <em>is <\/em>a band of law-breaking foster children, it is far smaller than people may think, and the crimes these kids are committing are \u201cpetty crime\u201d like \u201cdrugs and stealing,\u201d according to Wynne.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_11820\" style=\"width: 346px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/DSC0342.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11820\" class=\"wp-image-11820\" src=\"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/DSC0342-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"336\" height=\"227\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11820\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Foster child Matthew sits for a haircut at the 2018 Miami Heart Gallery, just minutes before he got to show off his backflip for the online multimedia exhibit (Photo by Isabella Vaccaro).<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Wynne says that even after a child has committed a crime and is adjudicated to commitment \u2013 a supervision program lasting for six to 12 months depending on the severity of the child\u2019s crime \u2013 there is still a high level of uncertainty in that child\u2019s life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTypically, the kids who come out of commitment programs and returning to dependency situations, their home settings are completely up in the air,\u201d said Wynne. \u201cOftentimes what will happen is the kids will go to the office of the guardian [the DCF worker in charge of that child\u2019s security] and sleep on the couch in the office for the few days until they get a place to go. So, it\u2019s really an onerous setting for the kids. They finished the program, they got out and then they don\u2019t even have a place to go. They don\u2019t know where they\u2019re going to end up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It seems some foster children are susceptible to an avalanche of negative events in their lives. Trauma in their fosters home can lead them to commit frivolous crimes which can end them up sleeping on a couch in the DCF, essentially homeless.<\/p>\n<p>It is not surprising that families would rather adopt a newborn baby to sculpt from scratch, without the psychological and sometimes physical baggage older kids often carry.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are many too many instances of physical and sexual abuse in foster settings, especially when they\u2019re dealing with teenagers,\u201d Wynne said. \u201cI certainly think that that would create a lot of reasons why the kids would be hardened to dealing with adults, because it\u2019s a really perilous situation for these kids. I don\u2019t think anybody who doesn\u2019t work with these kids on a regular basis has any sense of how perilous it is for them. It\u2019s a terrible situation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But one man believes foster teens are inherently good, despite the bad rap many acquire during their years of foster care. William Presswood, a Homestead High School teacher and single father of five adopted sons, began his journey with the Florida childcare system over 10 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>After deciding to foster one of his own students, Presswood was inspired to help as many children as he could, fostering more than 100 children over the years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany of the kids we get have been told they are victims of circumstance or they\u2019re not going to be able to do certain things,\u201d said Presswood. \u201cI think that\u2019s been the greatest gift for me \u2013 that I can look at a child and see there\u2019s so much more than the circumstances they came from, and that they have the potential to be so much more than other people maybe believe they can be, including themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Saunter into the front door of the Presswood\u2019s home and it won\u2019t be long before you run into a motley crew of brothers fighting each other for a sole Xbox controller. The boys, each hailing from a different family and much different foster care experiences, are bonded by the security of finally having a family and a home. Presswood gave them that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe moving around part \u2013 well, I would say the worst part about that is you really don\u2019t know what you\u2019re getting into,\u201d said Lawrence Presswood, the oldest of the Presswood boys. \u201cYou don\u2019t know where you\u2019re going, you don\u2019t know how far you\u2019re going, you don\u2019t know who you\u2019re going to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And crossing his arms defensively, Lawrence\u2019s brother, John, piped in \u201cit\u2019s always a surprise box.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lawrence admitted that while he was failing his classes during his tumultuous tour through foster care, his academics took an upturn after Presswood adopted him and helped him pursue \u201cvirtual school, night school\u201d and \u201csummer school\u201d until he \u201ceventually passed.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_11819\" style=\"width: 360px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/DSC0349.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11819\" class=\"wp-image-11819\" src=\"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/DSC0349-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"236\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11819\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Since last year\u2019s gallery, Tamara, who sits for hair and makeup, is currently in the process of becoming adopted (Photo by Isabella Vaccaro).<\/p><\/div>\n<p>And Presswood\u2019s personal mission to help the youth of Miami-Dade County is one of the many positive outcomes of an organization called the Miami Heart Gallery.<\/p>\n<p>Every year, the Children\u2019s Trust holds an event dedicated to taking photos and videos of older, harder-to-place foster children and teens and posting them to an online gallery, in hopes that families will read about these kids and become inspired to adopt. Presswood adopted four of his five sons from these Heart Galleries.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have had a success rate over the past few years \u2013 over half of the children who have been featured on the Miami Heart Gallery have been adopted, and that\u2019s a big difference,\u201d said Camacho, the Children\u2019s Trust media liaison and Heart Gallery coordinator.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve had teachers and people who have adopted that have mentioned the bond that they create with these preteens and the few years that they have with them,\u201d Camacho continued. \u201cAnd then they go onto college and they truly depend on these families for the rest of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The stigma surrounding the adoption of \u201colder\u201d foster children could be just that \u2013 a stigma. In reality, the process can actually be rewarding and, oftentimes, life-changing for both the adoptive families and the foster child. Besides the material advantages these children are awarded, like free tuition to any Florida state university and Medicaid benefits, they receive something much more valuable \u2013 stable adult role-models and, finally, a source of love to rely on for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By ISABELLA VACCARO Jess Shuman knew immediately that the little girl she met tucked away in a downtown Miami caseworker\u2019s facility would someday be her daughter. It was the day before Thanksgiving when the Shuman family first met Zoe, an &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/projects\/foster-children-have-challenging-road-toward-adoption-being-part-of-a-family\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":3284,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"sidebar-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11823","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11823"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11828,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11823\/revisions\/11828"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reporting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}