Storyboard Project

Eltuan moved 16 times while in Kentucky's foster care system. He talked to Mira Zimet for the third season of The Storyboard Project.

“Maya Angelou’s book, ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ was definitely that pivotal moment for me,” Sharrica said. “I think about how she responded to the tragedy in her life by turning in.

Think about it: You are taken from your parents, dropped off at someone else’s home, usually with a garbage bag filled with your clothes, told that this is your new home, and these are your new parents and often, this is your new school.

“I told them we were being taken and I didn’t know where we were going and when we were coming back.” That’s how Kaysie, then 14, recalls telling her friends about the fact that she and her siblings were headed to foster care.

“When the social worker came, I lied, I said ‘we don’t get beaten, we don’t have those issues.’ We were trained, whatever happens in the house, stays in the house.” At thirteen, Sixto, in the foster care system since eleven months old, was dealing with abuse from his adopted mother. 

One of the many worries foster youth face as they transition into adulthood is ‘how can I possibly be a good parent when I never had the unconditional love of a mother or father?’

The narrative so often heard about group homes suggests that staff are cold-hearted and rules are rigid, leaving the teenagers who live there feeling like they have no freedom and no voice.

In the four years that Marquis was in the foster-care system in South Los Angeles, he lived in more than twelve homes and went to over fifteen schools. “I felt like a number,” he said.

“I’ve been to so many schools–I don’t have any life-long friends,” admits Angelica, a former foster youth now in her twenties. In this video, Angelica shares her story and her perspective on what it is like to grow up in the foster care system, where she never had a voice and where there was no one who felt obligated to have her in their life.