Ceremony brings attention to plight of foster children

David Kihara

Friday, April 8, 2005 | 11 a.m.

Brittany Carter, 16, stood at the podium inside the Clark County Family Court atrium and calmly described how her mother's new husband would allegedly beat her, how she fled her home and became involved in drugs and how she eventually found her way into the county's foster care system.

Carter was one of three current and former foster kids who explained the situation that led to her foster care experiences -- and the services provided in foster care -- at a ceremony at Family Court.

The ceremony, the sixth annual Light of Hope Ceremony, was organized to bring attention to the dire need for adequate foster homes for the county's foster children.

There are approximately 1,800 kids in Clark County's foster care system. The increase, which has been attributed to both the rapid growth in the area as well as the burgeoning crystal meth problem, has overwhelmed the county's department of family services.

The ceremony was sponsored in part by the Court Appointed Special Advocacy program, a program that pairs men and women in the community with foster kids. The "CASAs" work to advocate for the foster child and provide reports to the Family Court.

Carter said her life before going into a foster care placement was miserable. She could not live with her father because he had a record of statutory rape, which left her mother, who had divorced her father and become "selfish."

One of her mother's boyfriends hinted that he would molest Carter, and her stepfather kicked her and her brother on the night he married Carter's mother, Carter alleged.

She delved deep into drugs and eventually wound up in a drug rehab facility for six months. Carter said that afterwards, when she was placed in a supportive foster home, she "began to feel normal."

"The foster care system is a very good system," she said. "They took me out of holes I was in and allowed me to grow up."

Family Court Judge Gerald Hardcastle, who is directly involved in abuse and neglect cases, said the authorities have a serious duty to improve the lives of youths coming into the foster care system.

"We promise that when we remove the children from homes, we need to improve the lives of those children -- it is a responsibility," he said, speaking at the ceremony.

The county's foster care system, however, has recently come under intense criticism.

On March 23, William Grimm, the senior attorney with the California-based National Center for Youth Law, discussed bringing legal action against the Clark County Department of Family Services because the agency allegedly has not provided adequate services and has too many infants staying at its emergency temporary shelter Child Haven.

State legislators have also examined the child welfare system and found faults, mainly in the state's foster care agency's tendency to separate siblings and place them in separate foster homes.

Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-LV, recently introduced a bill that would keep siblings together in foster care.

Since April 2004, 476 siblings have been separated in Clark County's foster care system, Buckley said. Washoe County's has separated 224 siblings in foster care and the remaining rural counties have separated 77, she said.

"We have an increasing number of siblings separated in foster care each year, Buckley said. "When a child loses everything, the loss of a sibling is almost too much."

The availability of placements for all foster care children has become a growing issue with the rapid increase of youths going into the system. From 2003 to 2004, for example, the number of children going into the foster care system in Clark County has increased by 29 percent.

The number of foster homes has not kept pace with the growing number of children being placed into foster care, meaning that siblings are sometimes separated to get the child out of temporary shelters.

But there are situations when siblings and even families are kept together in foster care. Lynne Jasames, now 34, entered the Clark County foster care system at the age of 14.

Speaking at the ceremony at Family Court, she said her mother was addicted to drugs and often neglected her and her sister.

Jasames entered the system at the age of 14 and left it at 18. During that time she gave birth to three children. Even though she wasn't particularly fond of the foster care system in the county during the 1980s, she was glad that the system allowed her to keep custody of her then-infants during her stay in foster care.

"I actually did better in foster care because of my children," Jamases said, adding that she is now working for the Department of Family Services. "When things got hard in my foster placement, I endured it. I would endure anything to stay with my children."