A number of foster care children who are now adults are working as a group to highlight their individual stories in hopes of improving the state’s system of care.
“We always talk about the kids, and we should, but we have to highlight the parents and caregivers in the solutions,” said Crystal Gailliard, 39, a Dorchester resident and a leader in the Massachusetts Network of Foster Care Alumni (MassNFCA).
“It’s not easy to be a parent,” she said, “but it’s even harder to be a parent or a parental figure to a child who just wants to be loved and doesn’t know exactly what that looks like. We need to shine a light on our caregivers and what it is they need to help succeed and bring children into adulthood.”
May is Foster Care Awareness Month in Massachusetts. Here in the Commonwealth, and across the country, when children are abandoned or don’t have a permanent home, the state places them with families and caregivers, known as foster parents, who look after them on a temporary basis.
Many children eventually get adopted into permanent homes, but many also never find a permanent home and stay in foster care until they are 18 and age out of the system.
That journey can be one of uncertainty, even when they land in a stable situation, as Gailliard did when she was adopted by the Spencer family of Dorchester. Prior to that, she was cared for by a loving foster family in Duxbury.
“I still remember the process of being adopted by my parents in Dorchester,” she said. “I remember crying when I left my foster family in Duxbury and then I remember crying going up the stairs to my home in Dorchester and then crying when I left the visit to go back to foster care in Duxbury.
“I feel my story is so fortunate because I was placed in a loving foster care home that wanted to keep me. They weren’t there for the money and really cared about the kids actually.”
She added: “I was adopted at three and wasn’t in foster care forever, but I always had a sense of being scared that no matter who was in my life, they would leave at some point.”
Now a married mother of three living in Stoughton, Gailliard notes that her birth mother was herself abandoned as an infant—left on the doorstep of a Cambridge family by an unknown person. Later, when her mother got pregnant with her, she was thrown out of the Cambridge home and landed at Rosie’s Place. She eventually had to give up Gailliard to the foster care system.
In recent years, Gailliard has connected with other adults who grew up in foster care. Their alumni network gathered earlier this month at Savvor Restaurant in Boston where they talked about advocating for changes to a system they all lived through, and, in addition, to support those in the system with mental health services, life skills, adult advice, educational support and other mentorship opportunities.
They are particularly interested in the kids in foster care who were never adopted and who “aged out” of the system when they’re 18. Many times, Gailliard said those young adults feel “alone” and like an “orphan.”
“The system says you’re 18, now go out and conquer the world,” she said. “It doesn’t work like that for a child who has been in several homes and hasn’t had stability. They don’t have an example of what going out there and conquering the world looks like…No child should just be a number and that’s what they end up being.”
The network applauded the efforts by the state to make all state colleges free to kids who have aged out of foster care, but members also said they hope that funding for things like clothing will follow kids past the age of 18.
For those that attended the May 16 event at Savvor, and for Gailliard, the message they wish to deliver to those in foster care or who have aged out is that they aren’t alone.
“We are here to help you in any way we can as an alumni network,” she said. “You don’t have to do this life alone. We are a community, and I want to make sure young people in foster care know that if there is something we can help with, we will do that.”
The next MassNFCA alumni networking night will be on Aug. 8 at the Rage Zone in Norwood. For more information on the network, email info@massnfca.org.
