6/27/2023 0 Comments Foster care success story![]() And, a few years later, her adoptive father passed away. ![]() While Robin was in foster care, her adoptive mother relinquished her parental rights. You look forward to seeing your caseworker.” Just getting me out of my environment for a short period was enough of a break to keep me mentally stable. ![]() She would come pick me up or bring me shoes. I called whether I was crying, angry, or had something good to share. “My KVC caseworker was always there for me. One woman was her caseworker for two years. Her KVC caseworkers were a consistent, encouraging presence in her life. She said she would check on Robin the next day, and she did. Though she was experiencing a nightmare and crying, a KVC worker sat with her, was kind, and even made her smile. Robin clearly remembers that night of reentering foster care. Her adoptive father said he was coming back for Robin and would get a lawyer. “ would kick me out of the house, then call me in as a runaway. Robin was 14 years old, and reentered foster care, this time with KVC Kansas. “When he left, she put me back in foster care,” she said. Her parents separated, and her father moved back east when she was 13 years old, leaving Robin with the adoptive mother who didn’t treat her well. Due to bullying at school, Robin started skipping school, getting in trouble for truancy. Her father received the liver transplant but remained very sick. The cross-country move, her father’s serious health problems, and regular marriage and family challenges put immense stress on the family. “We moved to Leavenworth, Kansas when I was 12 years old.” As a Black girl in a white adoptive family and new, small town, “I definitely had culture shock,” she said. “I had only heard about Kansas from the Wizard of Oz,” said Robin. He desperately needed a liver transplant, and moving to Kansas gave him a better chance of receiving one. Robin’s adoptive father contracted Hepatitis C before it was curable. Tragically, there was more turbulence ahead. But the experiences planted seeds of doubt about her own worth. Deep down, Robin knew that all children deserve a loving family regardless of their behavior. Yet the comments had been hurtful and confusing. Her foster mother used the possibility of adoption as a discipline tool, promising to reward the kids with adoption for good behavior and threatening to not adopt them as a punishment if the kids behaved badly.Įventually, the couple finalized their adoption of Robin and her brother. Robin recalls she was very close with her foster father but did not have a good relationship with her foster mother. Robin and her brother closest in age to her were cared for by a foster family. But in the 1990s, very little funding and programming existed for foster care prevention.Īt the age of three, Robin and her siblings were removed from their mother’s custody for their own safety. This federal law allocates millions of dollars to mental health and substance use treatment services to help families like Robin’s remain safely together. Her mother struggled with substance use, putting the family on the radar of child welfare professionals.ĭecades later, in 2017, advocacy by nonprofits including KVC and others led to the passage of the Family First Prevention Services Act. But Robin’s time with her mother and siblings was short-lived. She was the youngest of four children at the time. In 1988, Robin was born in the historic city of Philadelphia. Read how Robin took control of her destiny, choosing to defy the statistics about children in foster care rather than be defined by them. She was also inspired by an adult role model in her life, a single mom who was a nurse. Despite many heartbreaking experiences, her KVC case workers were a consistent support to her. She was adopted, but the family was not able to stay together. This began a long and difficult road for Robin. When Robin was just three years old, her mother’s substance use led to her and her siblings being placed in foster care for their safety. ![]() Nevertheless, I Persisted: Robin’s Inspiring Success Story
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