Failure is Not an Option for John

By Olivia Giegerich, Foster Care Case Manager

There was a brief silence on the phone as the college advisor paused to formulate her next remark.

“He’s 19 and in foster care?” she said.

Yes he is. John has been in care since he was 14, when his adoptive parents gave him up - a fact far more astonishing, if you ask me, than his circumstances today.

Nearly six-feet-tall, John doesn’t walk so much he strides. A mixed martial arts afficianado, he once fought in the ring as an amateur (for the record, against all remonstrance from me and his support team). He broke a finger but he’ll tell you, with a subdued, sly smile, that he won.

Still, that graceful stride belies an extreme hesitance to communicate his own needs and wants. When I met him nearly two years ago, John verged on a stutter.

Today John is attending community college and nearing the end of his journey through the foster care system.  He’s studying to be an EMT.  Almost 20, he lives on the campus of the residential facility he’s called home for the last three years, his prior foster home just around the corner. He’s entertaining the notion of trading the cottage he shares with a room mate (also in care) for an apartment of his own.

John’s got a lot going for him that, admittedly, most older youth preparing to leave care lack: a positive relationship with a maternal aunt, for one. John’s aunt Mary lives with her husband in a Philadelphia suburb. She visits her nephew as he also visits her.  When her work schedule allows, she conferences into monthly support meetings that help John review the progress he’s made toward his goals. She helps him set new goals for himself. So far, Mary hasn’t felt ready to adopt her nephew, but her involvement alone goes a long way toward keeping him on track to finishing school, finding work, learning to drive and soon, we hope, moving into a place of his own.

John also lacks a lot of the barriers against all my other older clients stumble: criminal histories, mental illness, substance abuse issues. That’s not to say he’s emerged from his experiences unscathed. After all, not one but two sets of parents have failed him.

Failure isn’t an option for John, though. I wish that his college advisor could draw him out a little more. She’d see that John sets the bar high for himself and occasionally dares mighty things. Then maybe she’ll see past the foster care.