[Ms. Jackie]

I lived in foster care for ten years. In spite of the fact that I have met hundreds of other foster youth and former foster youth, I am the only one I know of who had the same social worker for the entire duration of their stay in foster care.

My social worker was awesome. She drove 45 minutes or more to visit me at some of my placements, she filled out extra paperwork to get money for me to do some of the extra-curicular activities I wanted to do and she always told me I could call her at home if I had a problem. That meant sometimes I called her to complain about having to do dishes or clean my room, but she took it in stride and always made me feel like my opinion mattered.

When I turned eleven, someone I had never met decided I should be adopted. I had several reasons for not wanting to be adopted, including the fact that my mom, who is mentally handicapped, would not understand and would think it meant she was a bad person. Also, I was not sure I wanted to be stuck with those foster parents forever. I told this to my social worker and she stood behind me 100 percent.

Doing things like that made her superiors angry. It endangered the thing that is most sacred to them - federal dollars. After she had worked in the system for many years, she made the wrong person angry by sticking up for kids and she was fired.

Being a social worker is a heart breaking job. To this day, the system makes it easier to do what is not in the best interests of kids than to do the right thing. Social workers are just caught in the middle with everyone else, trying to make the best of things.