So, I got a little emotional tonite -- Dracut Weekly Roundtable

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Subject: So, I got a little emotional tonite

Author:
Shawn

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Date Posted: 17:33:05 05/10/04 Mon

May is Foster Care Month

I took the opportunity tonite to give some input at the school committee meeting with regard to foster care and the willingness of foster parents to get involved and help make a difference.

It was a little strange. In the studio, there's nobody there.. so its easy to keep control... its just a couple people having some fun.

At the school committee meeting, there must have been 40 people who were suddenly all staring at me (now I remember all those presentations in school)... and when I started talking about the foster kids, in my mind I kept thinking about specific kids ... of whom the schools and society had already failed.

All that made it hard to keep control (next time I'll go out for a drink beforehand!!! lol), and I could hear my voice start to crack a few times.. but thats a sign that I believe in what I am saying.. and its personal to me.

When I say that 37% of kids who leave foster care never graduate.. to most people that's a statistic, to me its 2 or 3 kids who left my home. When I say that 80% of people who are incarcerated were former foster children, I think about kids i know who are now in jail. When I say that a huge number of kids who leave foster care become homeless.. I can point to number that I know personnally.

Nancy Drolet later told me that she has a lot of input on these issues as well, and Joe told me that he has a relative who was a foster child.. this shows a lot of interest in the issues that I want to make a difference in.

Maybe we could put a roundtable together one night with Nancy, someone from Casey Family Services, a social worker (we have one who lives across from me), maybe even a former foster kid.. and we could have a discussion of foster care issues in the schools...

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Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
Re: So, I got a little emotional tonite	WRT Fan	10:09:10 05/11/04 Tue