Together California

Christian Bale at the site of his new foster care village

The new village in Palmdale California plans to build 12 foster homes, as well as two studio flats to help children transition into independent living, and a 7,000 sq ft community center. The aim of keeping siblings in the foster care system together, and ideally under the same roof. The completion date is sometime in 2025.

From an article in LINK>The Guardian – which notes that after the birth of his daughter in 2005, after being ‘stunned and mad’ to learn how many children were in care in California. He is quoted saying – “Imagine the absolute pain and the trauma of losing your parents or being torn from your parents, and then losing your brothers and sisters on top of that. That’s no way to treat kids. And so, we will be the hub for that. I hope that this village will be the first of many, and I hope that people, Californians and Angelenos, know to come join us in opening our eyes to what’s happening right under our noses. These are our children, and we must help our children.” He adds that growing up, “We were always having other people coming and living in our house who didn’t have homes, etc. That’s just the guy that he was.” (ie his father, David Bale)

He notes that “I had the very unrealistic idea that within one year I’d have created a miniature Sound of Music with kids singing on hills in an endlessly joyful environment. But I discovered no, it takes an awful long time and really well-motivated people. It’s complicated and tough to help kids. It should be a hell of a lot easier than it was but I didn’t flinch for one second.”

In the face of the foster care crisis, Christian Bale is proving that every action counts, no matter how small. His mission to build homes and keep families together echoes far beyond the borders of Antelope Valley. It serves as a reminder that we all have a role to play in shaping a more compassionate world.

Questions for Kinship Caretakers

As a kinship adoptive parent, I have some questions. If you don’t mind, would you please answer one or more of the following questions. If you do elect to answer, know that I greatly appreciate the time and emotional energy you have given to share your information. Thank you for your time.

Who was your kinship caretaker (grandparent, aunt, cousin, family friend etc). Did you stay in one kinship home, multiple kinship homes, started kinship went to foster home etc.
If you were in a foster home while your kinship caretaker was getting approved, what that like for you as a child? Did you know family was attempting to have you placed with them? Did foster families attempt to block you from being placed with family/Fictive kin? Did foster families attempt to separate siblings to meet their desires?
What are some things you wish your kinship caretaker had done for you? What are things you wish they had not done?
What are things you would have liked said to you during your time with a kinship caretaker? What are things a kinship caretaker should be telling the children currently in their care?
What is something that was said/done that sticks with you from your time with your kinship caretaker?
What do you want current kinship caretakers to know about communication with a child and their parents? If court/social worker has ordered limited contact/communication, what can a kinship caretaker do that would not break a court order but still support the communication for a child in their care?
What would you want current kinship caretakers to know? How could kinship care be improved?
If you could speak with state representatives who create laws and policies around kinship care, what would you say? What do they need to know?

One kinship adoptee responds – I’m not going to answer all of the questions but I wanna make 1 thing clear, NEVER talk bad about the biological parents! I was adopted by my maternal half aunt. My mom needed help, she asked her half sister for help, so that she could get back on her feet. When she came back to get me, they treated her like dirt and made her leave. She was pregnant again and they made her feel bad, so she did leave me in their care and they got guardianship over me. For as long as I can remember, they’ve talked bad about my mom. She lived in a rough city, drugs, a mean person, lots of stuff you should never tell a child. I was adopted around the age of 8. My aunt treated me like crap and made it clear her daughter was her favorite and I was nothing more than a niece, even though I called her “mom”. She h@ted my biological mom. My mom overdosed in 2017, I was pregnant at the time and had been in contact with her prior to that. She wasn’t a bad person, she just chose to do things as she felt she had no choice. Her mom passed with heart failure when she was 8 and no one in the family helped her after that, except to take me. At times, I wonder if they had actually helped her, maybe she’d still be here and I would have grown up with her. My life would’ve been better and happier.

One former foster care youth answered 2 and 3 –

2. My experience with my prior placements was mixed. My first placement was okay, my foster mother was a very kind person from what I knew, but it was all very scary because I wasn’t in a placement with all of my siblings and it’s kind of a blur to be honest. I was terrified and felt more out of control than ever without knowing where my siblings were, and having no way to contact them was really hard as well.

My second foster home wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible either. Foster mom burned a cigarette on me and accused me of sleeping with her husband lmao. (I didn’t, just in case anyone is wondering.) Child services worked fast and after my placement with that family they lost their license and are no longer permitted to foster or adopt.

I did know that I was going to be placed with my kinship foster parent. I was the one who requested it after my separation from my family. I was 15 at the time and the oldest of my 4 siblings.

My youngest sibling was in a placement alone, she was only one month old. Her foster parents attempted to move forward with adoption. At that point she had only been with them for a couple weeks, so they were essentially trying to separate her from the rest of her family. They were unsuccessful thankfully.

3. Honestly I do feel like despite their shortcomings, my kinship foster parents really did try. They seemed to have good intentions but they were misguided and ill prepared to say the least. I wish they had thought more about it, choosing to foster my siblings and I. I’m thankful to them for doing it, but if you can’t handle that kind of responsibility you shouldn’t take it on. In the end it made me feel like nothing short of a burden and a waste of precious time that I didn’t deserve staying with them.

I wish they loved me like I wanted them to. I wish they had the patience, or the time. I wish they tried harder, not to be “perfect parents” but to be good listeners.

I wish they didn’t assume my traumas because they took parenting classes, and did the bare minimum learning about trauma. I wish they didn’t push me out of my siblings lives because they disagree with my lifestyle (I’m a queer woman. I would understand if I was struggling with something that wouldn’t be safe or healthy for my siblings, but I’m literally just queer and they hate me for it so.)

Also # 7 – I want kinship caretakers to know how important it is to not be discouraged by learning curves. The youth in your care will pick up on it. We all know that these situations can be tough to navigate. And it’s okay to be human, to make mistakes. It’s okay to slip up, and it’s going to happen a lot. But don’t let that be the children’s problem. If you slip up, make it known and apologize. Ask the youth in your care about how they feel, what they think, and how you might be able to help them. Communicate your views with them to the best of your ability, in an age appropriate way of course. But don’t ever overstep their boundaries unless it is absolutely necessary.

You Don’t Have To Age Out to Qualify

Today’s Story –

I was in foster care from the age of 5 until 9. I was adopted at 9. But I moved back in with my biological family and mom when I was about 10 or 11. Then, I was back in foster care from age 16 to18. Even if I had only been in foster care that once from 5-9, I would consider myself to be a former foster care youth. I remember my social worker clearly. I remember being moved from house to house because my older siblings fought to keep us all together, even though my brothers were “trouble makers”.

I remember one home making us shower outside with the water house instead of using the bathrooms inside to shower. Then, eventually being separated from my brothers, while my older sister and I stayed together, until they found another placement that would take all of us.

All of that happened to me in the first year of foster care.

Then, when they found the placement that would eventually adopt me. But one of my brothers was molested by a grown up, the family had adopted as a child. That led me to want to move back in with my biological family – after the adoption was finalized.

I don’t think it takes aging out to be considered a former foster care youth. I get how being adopted as an infant doesn’t really give you the voice to speak as a former foster care youth, mainly because while it involves trauma, these aren’t experiences you can describe first hand because you don’t actually remember them.

I’m not going to tell someone how to identify themselves. If foster care was some part of your own story, it’s just a part of it. I’m not going to say you are wrong for identifying however you identify.

Three Identical Strangers

In the 1960s, a research project into identical siblings, placing them separately for adoption into different classes (poor, middle and wealthy), was done for the purpose of determining the impact of financial resources on their outcomes. Back in the 1930s to 1950, Georgia Tann had a similar thought – taking babies from poor families and placing them into wealthier homes would lead to better outcomes for the children.

My mom was one of those babies. She was adopted in 1937. Both of her parents were very poor and struggling to survive the Great Depression but they were exploited by threats from Georgia Tann that her close relationship with the Juvenile Court judge in Memphis would support any removal of children she suggested. Sadly.

So, in the 1980s, when these young men were 19 years old and began attending college, they discovered that they had been separated after birth into different adoptive families. Even the adoptive parents didn’t know there were other genetically identical siblings. The triplets accidentally found each other when two of them enrolled at the same college and found the third when he saw the story on the news. After the three siblings reunited, they became media darlings for awhile and even met their original biological parents.

It is not entirely a happy story and a suicide trigger warning is justified. The two surviving triplets carry the DNA, the history, the pain, and the heart of their deceased brother. As the three boys entered adulthood each of them dealt with mental illness and psychiatric care.

The carelessness of the adoption agency that gave the boys away turns out to be something far crueler and more deviously deliberate than possibly imaginable. It is a shockingly true story but not unlike other psychological research from that era. Ethics were just not on the radar yet. People were treated like lab rats.

One woman, now much older, who was involved with the research study is blasé about the whole thing saying it was exciting to mess with people’s lives and noting what’s done is done.

The children who were the study subjects involved will not have access to the findings until 2065, by which time they will likely not be still alive. This is because our own government funded this study.

This program does show how strong genetics truly are. Being separated at birth results in life long trauma. All adoption agencies exist to make money. The program suggests that some of the adoptive parents would have happily taken all three boys, if they had known the truth, at the time.

One of the scientists involved in the study interviewed for the program kept laughing, saying inappropriate things, none of what happened was funny. He said there’s probably at least four people (probably many more) who have no idea they are twins or that they were part of a study.

Currently one of the brothers practices law, the other sells insurance and investments. One of the two is (or soon will be) divorced. These kinds of mental health and relationship impacts are quite common among adoptees.

Which leaves me with two questions (I have not seen, only have read about this program) – Is science worth keeping secrets and being immoral to accomplish unbiased research ? And how much of who we are is Nature and how much Nurture ? (That second one I’ve been looking at for 20 years.)