Known circumstances of death/serious injury:
The client has an opportunity to go into Independent Living. Independent Living is a program that places foster children in their own apartments. It is care without care.
The client has a little bedroom in a foster home with white walls and a little white bed. The little white bedroom is in a little white house with framed pictures of smiling children on the mantle of the fireplace. The client can’t tell who the children are, if they are their foster mother’s biological children or ones apprehended into care. The children’s faces are lively and the client can’t remember ever being that happy. The client rejects this little home by rejecting invitations to dinner, pork chops and mashed potatoes, taco Tuesday night, pepperoni pizza delivery. They eat after everyone is finished, scraps like a dog but self-imposed. The client rejects movie nights and the laughter downstairs. They stay in their little white bed, trying to read The Bell Jar and they don’t get very far in the short book.
The client cannot place any feeling in the moment. A decade later, in therapy, they will figure out why they run away from the little white house, why the smoke from a morning smudge by a beautiful woman with many children is so frightening. The client only knows what they know then. The client is sixteen and wants to live on their own so they can destroy themself in peace. They want to be alone.
The client has no time for learning the names of other children in these homes. They don't remember a single name from anyone during their stay in foster care. No child, no foster parent, no respite worker. The client wishes they remembered the name of the foster mother who smudged them. The client will call her “Sylvia” for the purpose of this memory.
Sylvia is a tall woman, with warm skin and warmer eyes. She lives in an area of Winnipeg with all the rich hippies, a street lined with elms that will lose their leaves in a few short weeks. The client loves elms, their crooked branches like sheepish smiles, and they see trees reflected in Sylvia’s brown eyes. Sylvia’s hair is braided the week the client spends in her home. The braid looks strong, a long lifeline down her back. Her hands prepare sage in an abalone shell every morning and the children of the house line up to be cleansed by the smoke. The client lines up too. The smoke is a phantom that enters the client’s nostrils and throat. The smoke is possessive but releases as fast as it holds. This ceremony is the only time the client lets themself breathe deeply in the home. To inhale completely and close their eyes while the smoke washes over them. They make themself vulnerable to other people’s gaze, to other people’s hands, to their judgments. In other homes, those judgments come with consequences, underwear and books and homework thrown in the backyard because the foster parents think the client is dirty or undeserving of comfort and care. In Sylvia’s home, the smoke from sage and sweetgrass and cedar tempers fear and the client is allowed to hide in their room as long as they want. They hide like a prey animal or a feral cat. The client still wants to leave.
Years later, the client will find out Independent Living isn’t an option for people in care anymore. A friend tells them It’s abusive and neglectful. How can a sixteen-year-old, especially one that is high needs, live safely on their own? The client is high needs, volatile, a liar, self-destructive. They walk around Winnipeg in fishnet tights and no jacket in November. Cops stop them on their bike and ask if they’re running crack. The client punishes themself by throwing up dinner every night. The client has learned to reject help, learned to make decisions that actively harm themself by watching their mother do the same. The client has been apprehended from their mother and hates their social worker. The client hates knowing they’ve become commodity more than child. They are a paycheque every two weeks from Child and Family Services to whoever has chosen to house them that month.
The client takes six calls from landlords that week at Sylvia’s house. Six men who seem suspicious of the mechanics of an underaged person living alone on their property. But the guaranteed rent from Child and Family Services sways one of them and the client signs a lease shortly afterwards. Sylvia continues to try to include the client in the activities of the house. An outing to Dairy Queen, a drive to Assiniboine Park in a giant minivan, a walk around the block. The client stays in their room.
Current whereabouts of child if the critical incident is a serious injury:
The client rejects being taken care of by anyone but themself. But the client isn’t good at it. They live in a little studio above the Greyhound bus depot in Winnipeg. They hear sirens and smell exhaust through their windows. They are sixteen and get their wish. They are alone.
When they move in, the client has two garbage bags of belongings. The client’s social worker gets them a twin bed from a charity that donates beds to people in need. The client buys a black futon from Wal-Mart with the money they make working at a vegan restaurant in the Exchange District. They lay naked on the futon in the summer heat and pick at their nails, stripped and sore. The client feels so lonely.
They haven’t hung anything on the walls. The client’s kitchen is always dirty. They never do laundry.
The client adopts a little calico kitten who sleeps on their neck. They name the cat Aunt and then Babydoll once Aunt doesn’t stick. The cat is half-feral but warms up to the client soon enough. The cat is the only reason the client stays alive some days, knowing not many people would have the patience to tame her. The client drops out of high school even though they spiral into despair when alone. Solitude is so different from loneliness. The client doesn’t notice until there is no choice but to be alone, even with a little cat.
Independent Living is a choice that’s not a choice because a foster child belongs to no one. The client doesn’t even feel like they belong to themself. They get a small stipend from the government for rent and groceries, smaller than a foster parent gets when they have children in their care. They are expected to survive on eight hundred dollars a month. They do.
Additional relevant information about the child or critical incident, including any other children living in the home:
The client regrets. Independent Living doesn’t last very long. The client is too unstable to be on their own and so they bounce around from home to home until they age out at twenty. Six months later, Sylvia’s home doesn’t have any bedrooms left when the client requests to go back. Instead, the client is placed in group homes with one-to-one respite workers because their eating disorder has launched wildly out of control. They watch reruns of Friends along with other children that people don’t care to have in their homes and the night shift respite workers fall asleep on the couch even though they’re not supposed to.
At seventeen, the client wonders if they are a child. They have grown up too fast and not at all. They paint themself with red lipstick and take photos in their underwear, body checking and looking at the angles of their face trying to figure out what they really look like. They rejoice at the times their baby face looks more angular. The client wonders if they can arrange themself to look just old enough to buy cigarettes without being ID’d. They wonder if they can fool everyone else too.
The client acts out. Stays out all night, drinks too much, hurts themself by any means necessary. Everything is a weapon. The client calls their respite workers stupid bitches to their faces, and they look placidly on, unaffected. The client wants to be loved but can’t let themself be vulnerable enough to take it in. The client, as an adult, thinks someone must’ve loved them but wonders if anyone even remembers their name. Did the client love anyone in foster care? They think the answer is no. The client feels hard to love and every time they act out it is a test. Love me, the client says to everyone, to anyone, even though I don’t deserve it. Love me, even though I push you away. Love me even though I don’t trust you. Love me even though I don’t love you.
The client didn’t know that love is symbiotic and alive. The client didn’t learn this until they were older. The client ages out of foster care and they move to Montreal and then Vancouver. They feel displaced, even now that the client is no longer a client. They try to get their file from Child and Family Services but they get the run around from their agency and so they give up. They remember and that’s enough.
