Giving foster children a voice

By Tiwanna Gifford

Eighteen — the most significant age in a young person’s life. It’s less reckless than 16, more easily remembered than 21. It’s exciting. It’s exhilarating. But most of all, it’s freeing. For foster kids such as me, though, that freedom is coupled with a very real fear that on the morning of your 18th birthday, in every sense, you will be on your own.

Luckily for me, I woke up on my 18th birthday in my college dorm room. As I blew out the candles on the birthday cake my roommates bought for me and read a card one of their mothers sent, I couldn’t ignore the fact that my life would never be the same. If I thought things were hard before, they were about to get a whole lot harder.

I’ve been a statistic from the moment I was born. Born to a teenage, drug-addicted prostitute and an absentee father, whom I later learned is serving a 10-year prison sentence for armed robbery, I lived in the projects of Columbus and suffered abuse at the hands of several family members — all before landing in foster care at age 8. Numerous case workers later, I started to realize that while the foster care system saved me from a life better left to the imagination, the system is flawed. Frankly, most foster youth go on to suffer one or all of the very circumstances the system tries to “save” us from — homelessness, lack of education and financial hardship.

I’ve been struggling with this reality since I graduated from Spelman College in 2009. Last year, I made the decision to become an AmeriCorps member to work with impoverished members of my community and to gain a different perspective on the field of social work than what I had experienced as a foster youth. The experience also gave me the chance to earn scholarship money to put toward my graduate education. There are federal- or state-funded programs to aid foster youth in college, but none for graduate school.

I have been accepted into New York University’s Silver School of Social Work master’s program, and I am studying to take the LSAT for law school admissions in December. I plan to become a child’s advocate attorney with a focus on foster youth.

But because I must depend on a stipend to survive, having the funds to actually relocate to New York City has been an uphill battle. The latest chapter in the saga? I have no one to co-sign a loan for me, so I am now $15,000 away from covering my expenses at NYU. This is yet another result of my former status as a ward of the state.

It is vital for foster youth to have a voice within the system so that when decisions are being made and legislation is passed, the resulting system meets our needs. I have worked with the “Raise Me Up” Campaign through the Casey Family Programs in order to increase community awareness of the issues with foster care. I have also worked with the EmpowerMEnt group, which is a small group of current and former foster youth who meet with members of Congress, city leaders and other influential figures in the community to bring about reform in the foster care system. I am dedicated to helping effect change.

While I don’t have a problem with being a statistic, I no longer want to be a negative statistic. I want more than anything to be one of the few who made it. But even more than that, I want to be one of the ones who remembered to reach out to help someone else.

Tiwanna Gifford, 22, lives in Atlanta.