Author speaks at CAPS Pinwheel Breakfast

By Jordan Fouts

ELKHART — An author who grew up in foster care says having a court-appointed advocate would have made a world of difference for him.

Child and Parent Services held its Pinwheel Breakfast on Thursday at the Lerner Theatre. The event is a chance for community leaders, advocates and supporters to unite in raising awareness for child abuse prevention, and for people to sign up to host a pinwheel display.

CAPS uses pinwheel gardens to promote awareness of child abuse in April as part of a national campaign. Businesses and individuals can sign up to host a pinwheel garden at bit.ly/PinwheelGarden24.

Andrew Bridge, author of “Hope’s Boy” and “The Child Catcher,” spent 11 years in the foster care system in Los Angeles County. He said of the nearly 400,000 children in the U.S. who live in foster care, more than 11,000 are in Indiana.

He said children in foster care are often socially isolated and lacking in educational opportunities. They often remain trapped in poverty after aging out of the system.

“In school and the community, their lives are more than anything else defined and limited by their status as children in state care,” Bridge said. “One in five will be instantly homeless at the age of 18. Seventy-five percent will have had no meaningful work experience. Between 18 and 24, one-half to two-thirds will have little to no earnings at all. By age 24, as hard as they try, they still won’t have caught up. In fact, their average monthly wage will be less than half that of other young adults.”

He told attendees that it would have made a difference in his own situation if he had a Court-Appointed Special Advocate by his side. The CAPS program screens and trains volunteers who can form a one-on-one relationship with a child and guide them through the court system.

Bridge said it would have given him a person he could trust and someone to talk to about the sadness he was going through. He said a CASA would have pushed for an education plan, therapy and a secure place to live.

“They would have been there to argue that the facility where I left was not the right place for a 6-year-old, or any child for that matter,” Bridge said. “They would have been there to explain what was happening and who the strangers were around me. CAPS would have given me what I needed to feel safe and secure. Last year, CAPS volunteers stood by nearly 450 children in foster care, ensuring that not one faced the system alone.”

CASAs are appointed by a judge to advocate for a child’s best interests, and judges depend on them for information to make well-informed decisions. Bridge believes if he had a CASA who could ask the right questions, his right to stay with family could have been preserved.

“I was halfway through second grade when foster care took me from my mother. We were homeless and hungry. But from the morning when I first was taken, all that any social worker, lawyer, or judge had to ask was, ‘Andy, do you have family?’” he said. “I would’ve answered that I had a grandmother, great uncle and great aunt, along with another uncle and three cousins. And there were others on my father’s side. Had someone asked that, I would’ve gone home.”

Read this article at the Elkhart Truth website here.