Читать книгу If You Love Baltimore, It Will Love You Back - Ron Cassie - Страница 16
ОглавлениеSouth Baltimore
West Randall Street
June 30, 2010
5. Friend of the Court
Jerry Lawler met Ricky, then 13, shortly after he’d been removed from his latest foster home and placed in another residential institution. “His foster care mother basically said, ‘I can’t deal with him anymore,’” Lawler says.
A volunteer with the Baltimore nonprofit CASA, acronym for Court Appointed Special Advocates, Lawler was assigned to Ricky by the Baltimore City Family and Juvenile Court. He was supposed to get to know Ricky, floundering seven years after being taken from his mother because of neglect, and serve as another set of eyes and ears in his life. He would represent Ricky’s interests in court hearings, the educational system, and the medical and social service communities.
A clinical psychologist by profession and father of two grown children, Lawler was nonetheless nervous before their first meeting.
“I think all the volunteers wonder, ‘What if I can’t relate to my kid? What if they don’t want to see me? What if they yell at me or get pissed off at me?’”
Ricky didn’t yell or get angry. He barely spoke.
“He was guarded. Withdrawn. No swagger. Just ‘I’m not going to tell you anything,’” Lawler recalls. “I’d ask how he was doing and he’d say. ‘Okay.’ I’d ask if he wanted to go to McDonald’s, ‘Okay.’ Want to go to the Inner Harbor? ‘Fine.’
“It was six months before we’d be driving somewhere that he’d tell me what he’d done the previous night. Another six months before he’d tell me anything he was feeling,” Lawler continues. “This was a kid who’d learned not to trust people because they’d let him down so much.”
Foster kids often move from placement to placement with few belongings, even photos of their siblings and families of origin. However, one possession Ricky allowed Lawler to view offered insight behind his silence.
“He kept a compiled ‘book’ of himself, awards from completing different programs, and he had family pictures in there,” says Lawler, adding Ricky’s had 16 various placements since entering the foster system, including stays with five different sets of foster parents. He had pictures of each foster family, two dogs he loved at one home. A professional picture of himself as a baby, pictures of his half-siblings, his grandmother. And a photograph of his mother, a heroin and crack addict, and North Avenue prostitute.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Lawler says. “He’s proud of her, believe it or not. He wants her to get clean—to be a mom—and be with her more than anything.”
The honorable David B. Mitchell, then Administrative Judge of the Juvenile Division of the Baltimore City Circuit Court, established CASA of Baltimore in 1988. The program, operated by the University of Maryland School of Social Work before becoming an independent agency, pairs volunteer advocates with foster children in crisis. Today, CASA volunteers impact the lives of more than 200 children each year. Children’s names in this story have been changed to protect their anonymity.
Opening a thick, three-ring binder on his South Baltimore kitchen table, Lawler points to meetings with ever-changing Department of Social Services caseworkers, group home supervisors, school counselors, therapists and family involved in Ricky’s life. CASA volunteers learn the child’s history in order to build a relationship. Lawler files status updates and make recommendations at court hearings as necessary. He shows up for important events.