To the End of June : The Intimate Life of American Foster Care (9780547999531) by Cris Beam Page A

she’ll take all the time she needs to express precisely what she intends. “It’s the implementation that isn’t working—and that’s what causes the slow destruction of a person, a kid, as he goes through the system.”
    For Lowry, what child welfare needs overall is more oversight—to make sure everyone is just following the rules. “There are no magic bullets,” she said, answering a question I’d asked about some innovative new programs I’d read about. Her office walls are a sunny yellow, and all around are oversize black-and-white photos of the kids her organization has served—some smiling, some desperately grave. “There are nuances to programs and so on, but really we just need to implement the basic modes of social work: providing services, making individual decisions, following a case through.”
    For Lowry, a situation like Allen and Tom’s would require a good social worker, doing what she’s paid to do: provide Tom with rehabilitative services and then, if he relapses, do the extra legwork to find out where Allen was previously placed. But Tom and Allyson had been through their slice of the system too, and they didn’t trust it. Tom listened to Allyson’s fears, she said, about his potential relapse. He worried that Allen could get placed with some random family instead of the Greens. So by the end of that year, Tom became the generous parent in the King Solomon story. He decided to sacrifice the baby to a safer circumstance, rather than risk sacrificing him altogether.
    â€œTom came to his senses,” Allyson told me over the phone several months after we all met on the porch. Her relief was palpable. “Tom has had this trust issue; he hasn’t trusted people, but he started to trust us.” While Allyson was watching Tom, she said, Tom was watching the family. “He’s seen how we’ve been with Charles, that we adopted him but he still sees his mom, and that he could still see Allen if he was with us. He knows that the best thing is for Allen to stay with us. He’s already talked to the court.” Tom had agreed to sign over his rights and do an open adoption.
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    It was almost a year before I saw Tom again. He had continued to visit Allen and play video games with the other Green children and eat Sunday dinners with everybody, but our paths had never crossed. Allen continued to make progress with his anger and impulse control; Allyson said he never hit the other children anymore. He was also gentle with his baby brother, Anthony, whose HIV status had recently reversed without any drugs. Allyson called it a miracle.
    In the carport, baby Anthony was practicing his walking. Allyson had made a barricade of plastic lawn furniture to keep him out of the driveway, and she gently scooped him up each time he tumbled. Allen, who was four, was stomping on an empty Capri Sun packet to propel the straw into the air.
    I asked him what he called his game.
    â€œBalloon Blaster!” Allen shouted, without missing a beat.
    Once the straw landed on the dirty ground, Allyson told him he couldn’t stick it back in his mouth to re-inflate the juice pack. Allen pouted.
    â€œYou’ll have to throw it away,” Allyson said.
    Instead, Allen climbed to the top of a dirt mound in the corner of the carport, left there after some construction. He fell and scraped his hand, and started to cry, holding it out for Allyson to kiss.
    â€œWhat happens to children who don’t do what adults tell them?” Allyson admonished, delivering her boo-boo kiss.
    â€œThey fall down,” Allen said miserably, examining his tiny scrape.
    As Allen ran inside to find something new to play with, Allyson watched him admiringly. He was tall for his age, his limbs long and rubbery; his face was already losing the chub of babyhood and taking on the serious, almost adult lines so curious in children. “He’s so creative; he