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By Karen de Sá
San Jose Mercury News*
Aug. 21, 2005
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Judith Calson / Mercury News |
| Sandra Bradley-Lindsey holds a recent photo of her daughter, Jacqueline DuPree, 18, at Sandra's home in South Central Los Angeles. The two were reunited last year. |
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Drugs and alcohol wrenched newborn Jacqueline DuPree from her mother. So the California foster care system stepped in as a substitute. A parade of professional parents, shelter staff and social workers tried their best; a few made her life worse. Like thousands of other kids raised by the system, she ran the streets, trusted no one, bombed in school.
But there was one thing DuPree knew she wanted. And time and time again, she implored the only steady adult in her life, her counselor of five years, Lesley Capilla:
"Nana, find my family.''
It seemed a simple request from a lonely, desperate girl. For years, no one bothered to see whether DuPree had blood relatives who might do better than the surrogate families who had failed her.
Then a child welfare crusader armed with a hand-held computer and a powerful Internet search engine entered her life. Within weeks, DuPree, 18, was reunited with relatives through "family finding,'' a movement that is spreading nationwide and becoming one of the most promising trends in child welfare today.
In 36 of 37 cases in which the strategy has been tried in Santa Clara County, children either were placed with relatives permanently or, as with DuPree, developed potential lifelong connections with caring adults.
"No one else can take the place of Mom and Dad,'' DuPree said. "No child wants a substitute family. They want their real family.''
'The loneliest people'
Family finding's creator, Kevin Campbell, a vice president at EMQ Children and Family Services, views children who have no family connections like disaster victims: Help is urgently needed and there's not a moment to waste. He calls them "the loneliest people on Earth.''
In Washington state, where Campbell first developed family finding, 253 out of 288 troubled children moved in with relatives within a six-month period in 2003. And the movement is growing. Campbell visits as many as 10 cities a week, from Hollywood to New York City, teaching social workers to track down kin.
"This is one of the most exciting and innovative approaches in reconnecting children and family that I've seen in 30 years,'' said Professor Gerald P. Mallon of the Hunter College School of Social Work in New York, a national expert on creating permanent family ties for foster children.
It begins with a hunt for names in case files, then specially crafted Internet searches that can last less than a half-hour. Once family members are located, social workers try to ease them into taking responsibility for their lost children through carefully scripted letters and calls.
They also ask for names of other relatives and dates of family reunions. Campbell urges social workers not to stop until they have found at least 40 family members for every child. Some find as many as 300.
Urgent message
The message is urgent, involving everyone from neglected newborns to youths like DuPree who face the grim post-foster care odds of homelessness, jail or suicide.
"My mission is to make sure families know where their kids are, and kids know where their families are,'' said Campbell, 41, from the headquarters of EMQ, a non-profit community agency. "We should never raise a child in the public system who all along had a family who we didn't call.''
The premise of his program is so simple, longtime child advocates wonder why it's taken so long for someone to think of it.
It's widely known that children do better with their families than in group care or temporary foster homes. But many social service departments fail to revisit, or search beyond, parents who in most cases are drug-addicted, mentally ill or in prison.
Convinced of the importance of kin, California is one of only two states that pays relatives to be foster parents. Santa Clara County has an entire unit devoted to relatives, with 44 percent of foster youth now living with kin.
But too many of the half-million children in foster care nationwide have no lasting bonds.
Just one lead
In DuPree's case, there was little to start with. The section in her file listing friends or "family supports'' was blank. But one lead existed -- the name of DuPree's birth mother, Sandra Bradley-Lindsey. In October, a team of EMQ staff in training with Campbell seized on it. They were desperate. DuPree had been on the run for three months.
"We literally feared she wouldn't be alive the next day,'' said clinical program manager Julie Hansen.
Campbell believed finding DuPree's family could save her life. So EMQ Facilitator Christie Pfalzgraf crafted a letter to Bradley-Lindsey the same day, asking for help, information and what the mother's hopes and dreams were for her child. Pfalzgraf even enclosed a prepaid phone card.
The moment the letter landed in Bradley-Lindsey's South Central Los Angeles home, the gregarious 47-year-old grabbed the phone.
"Jackie DuPree! That's my baby! I almost couldn't believe what I was reading,'' she recalled. "I said 'Wow, God be working some real miracles out here.' ''
Although the state had written her off, Bradley-Lindsey had come a long way since her heavy drug using days, when in 1987 she turned newborn baby Jackie over to a friend. Four years later, the friend died and DuPree landed in state custody.
Her tour of the foster care system meant endless upheaval. DuPree was neglected by an adoptive mother and abused by two foster brothers. She spent countless nights in group homes and at the San Jose children's shelter, often arriving in handcuffs in the back of police cars.
Relatives aren't always an alternative. Often drug-addicted or poor, they may not be willing or able to open their homes. But the support they provide can be far simpler: a birthday phone call, an occasional card.
"There might not be a placement, but there may be a Thanksgiving dinner or a photo album,'' said Aaron West, a Santa Clara County deputy district attorney who represents children in foster care. "If family finding surfaces a photograph they've never seen, it's given that child a part of their soul they would have never had.''
Early results show dramatic changes for foster youths who connect with relatives. They run away less, do better in school and are less likely to be hospitalized for mental breakdowns, according to Santa Clara County and counties in Washington and Illinois.
Paul Ronningen, director of children and family services for North Dakota -- which has one of the nation's best child welfare systems -- believes family finding could eliminate 500 of his 1,000 foster care cases in three to five years. And Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Len Edwards, in a speech to the U.S. Supreme Court late last year, said: "It is my dream that the expanded use of family finding will literally dry up the foster care system.''
A changed woman
Weighing such a dream, EMQ staff flew to Los Angeles within hours of contacting Bradley-Lindsey by phone. Once there, they found a clean and sober woman, working as a security guard, who was desperate to reunite with her daughter. Because DuPree's last name had been changed, her mother had not been able to find her.
By Dec. 9, DuPree had been located and a meeting arranged. Bradley-Lindsey flew to EMQ's Campbell headquarters for a tear-filled reunion.
"I didn't believe them at first -- none of them -- about finding my mom,'' DuPree said. "I touched her face to make sure she was really there.''
Throughout the day, the pair discovered a lost part of themselves. DuPree met a sister she never knew she had, and learned she got her powerful singing voice from her mother. They sang "Stand By Me'' together. They shared a meal at Red Lobster; both love the biscuits best.
Before she left, Bradley-Lindsey removed her gold heart necklace and placed it on her daughter. DuPree has yet to take it off.
Social workers relish these reunions as much as youths and families. But a significant culture shift is required before family finding takes root in social service agencies. Caseworkers have to consider options beyond waiting for a mother to complete rehabilitation. They have to track down fathers and paternal relatives -- often left out of the picture entirely.
After six months in family finding training, Alameda County social workers found "durable, lifelong connections'' for 40 youths. But there was a "depressing side'' for social workers as well, said Randy Morris, an Alameda County program manager. "They feel they've been a part of a system that has perpetuated these youth being estranged.''
Family finding is not expected to put social workers out of a job. Relatives, like foster parents, often need ongoing support to take in deeply troubled youths.
Family is a new discovery for DuPree. Although she does not plan to move in with her mother immediately, she now knows 20 of her relatives. The family spent their first Christmas together and their ongoing contact has had a powerful impact.
Almost immediately, she stopped running away. She graduated from high school last fall. This month she was formally emancipated from the foster care system and landed two jobs.
And she's experiencing the complexity of blood relations. DuPree says her mother can be "nosy,'' and "mushy.'' She nags her daughter to call more often.
"Sometimes I'm happy that they found her, and then I'm mad about why she gave me up,'' DuPree said. "I don't talk about it with her, and when she brings it up, I change the subject.''
Her search for a place in life is farther along, but not complete, DuPree said. "I'm kind of trying to figure out who I am. Because I'm still not really sure.''
* Reprinted with permission from San Jose Mercury News/Knight Ridder Digital.
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