'PROBLEM' FOSTER CHILDREN DESERVE SPECIAL EFFORT.

Byline: Earlleen Lloyd Local View

I was a foster parent for the county of Los Angeles for more than 26 years. During those years I worked with a group called The United Friends of the Children, trying to find children at MacLaren Children's Center that I could work with in my home.

I have raised almost 100 teen-age girls. Some were placed directly from their homes; some I accepted from group homes and MacLaren and even Camarillo State Hospital.

The girls I interviewed at MacLaren Hall were supposed to be the ones with the most potential to make it outside the hall. Yet the MacLaren girls were so damaged by their own families and previous experience while outside the system that all my efforts failed, and I found I couldn't work with them in my home.

Many of those I tried to work with from MacLaren ran away and ended up in another institutional setting rather than MacLaren, but usually with another short stay at MacLaren while a suitable group home was found.

The children who end up at MacLaren Hall for extended periods of time are not at all typical of regular foster children. Some are fire-setters, others sexual predators, some have dual diagnoses such as manic depression and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, while others have strong gang identity and behaviors that places a foster home and other foster children in danger. Many have been in multiple placements and run away consistently or have behavior that ends the placement.

MacLaren Hall functions often as the place of last resort.

These children's families often don't want them at home or don't care enough to change their abusive behavior.

There are more than 64,000 children in foster home placement in Los Angeles County and more than 60 percent of these are already in relative care.

I don't believe that closing MacLaren will solve the foster care problem. The problem is very complex.

I believe that first we must respect the need for good parenting enough to start educating our children from the first grade in parenting skills. We rely too heavily on the parenting skills of parents to teach children. This no longer works.

We now have the results of generations of poorly parented children who are miserable parents.

Next we need to face the fact that drug addicts make very poor parents.

Many of the foster children who come into the system are from one-parent homes where the lone parent is a drug addict. We have generations of children now born and damaged prior to birth by drugs.

I confess I don't know how to undo this damage and protect future children.

Foster parents as a group are generally very dedicated to helping children, however, they can be burned out by these very difficult children. We need professional foster parents to work with many of our foster children - parents who have been trained and educated in the various skills and services needed by these special children and are paid appropriately for their services.

Most people cannot imagine how hard it is to live with children who at age 6 kill pets or at age 4 sexually act out with other young children.

This doesn't mean that all foster children are so disturbed. There are only a few, but these few often end up in MacLaren Hall. We have mentally disturbed homeless on our streets now because we closed the mental hospitals. If we close MacLaren Hall, we will end up with these children living under bridges and on the streets as prostitutes and worse.

Family preservation can work with families that are workable. But it is not a cure-all for the foster care system. It will not eliminate MacLaren Halls.

It is worth trying, but we can't put children back into homes where they are exploited, tortured and killed by disturbed and dangerous parents and stepparents. Nor can we return them to homes where their parents use every dollar they can beg, borrow or steal to buy drugs rather than food, clothing and shelter.

Please look at the whole picture, not just what makes a biased point.