Home again after foster care

When wards of the state reach 18, some exit the child-welfare system and return to the families they left long ago, a study shows

By Ofelia Casillas
Tribune staff reporter

August 6, 2006

After 15 years as a ward of the state, Shantaye Wonzer had been through 16 foster homes and two residential treatment centers. She had slept on a porch in one home and in a kitchen chair at another.

So Wonzer decided to return to the family she'd been taken from as a toddler.

Now Wonzer, like dozens of other former foster children, is charting a new, still undefined relationship with her birth mother, whose drug habit years ago had made Wonzer a ward of the state.

"I never thought I would be, but I'm here," said Wonzer, 18. "And I'm trying to make the best of it."

In Illinois, foster children who reach age 18 can choose whether they want to leave the system, or remain a part of it until they are 21.

The University of Chicago Chapin Hall Center for Children recently surveyed 386 such teens. One hundred and six had left the system. And of them, more than a third had returned home to live with their biological families, sometimes to the very parents who had neglected them.

Despite entering the child-welfare system because of abuse or neglect at home, most of the youths in the study had stayed in touch with their relatives. Most reported feeling close to one or more family members, particularly grandparents, siblings and biological mothers.

"It's surprising from the standpoint of general public perception and even to people in the system," said Mark Courtney, the center's director.

Kendall Marlowe, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, said his agency has not "taken a systemic look at what happens to children leaving care," but he said the Chapin Hall study is "an important first step" in helping his agency to better understand these youths.

But returning home isn't necessarily a panacea, said Cook County Public Guardian Robert Harris.

"You have nostalgia of what life was like before, or what it could have been," Harris said. "Sometimes it's a rude awakening."

Many older teens--say, those home from college--struggle to balance parental support and their desire for independence. Former foster kids find that typical awkwardness multiplied by old wounds and the distance of years apart.

Longing for family

Erik Farley, 21, found a short stint living with his mother to be much different than the dreams he harbored while they were separated.

As Farley tells it, his odyssey began when his mother was working long hours, leaving him and his brothers alone.

Farley ended up with foster parents in Geneva. After they became his legal guardians, they moved to Virginia and, later, New York. But he always longed for his family in Illinois.

"You know how you look up at the moon and wonder if they are looking at the moon too? That's what I would do," Farley said. "The nights when the moon was beautiful, I'd look up and wonder if they were looking."

One month before he turned 18, Farley drove 16 hours home to his mother. But once he arrived, he longed for independence.

"I didn't have that same love that a child has for his mother because we had grown so distant," he said.

"She was my mother, and I loved her for that. She carried me for nine months. She was really strong when I was little. I respected her and loved her that she had raised me as best she could."

Tenesha Adams, 22, felt she had no option in June but to move in with her grandmother--though she soon made an even more drastic choice.

After entering foster care at age 15 because of physical abuse by her stepfather, Adams lived in shelters, a North Chicago residential facility, then an apartment on the South Side supervised by caseworkers.

She tried to keep that apartment after she left foster care but was evicted because she couldn't pay rent. In June, the Northwestern Memorial Hospital office assistant moved in with her grandmother in Gary.

The transition was difficult because Adams also has a 3-year-old daughter.

"I feel weird right now. It's an adjustment," Adams said at the time. "I didn't have a choice because I don't have anyone else that has offered."

By July, she had grown so tired of the commuting time and costs, Adams decided to move to a shelter in Chicago. She plans to move out of the shelter in November and try to find her own apartment again.

As a DCFS ward, Shantaye Wonzer estimated she lived in about 16 foster homes and two residential treatment facilities.

This spring, when another foster mother asked Wonzer to leave after three years of mounting disagreements, Wonzer decided to return home.

In late May, Wonzer, moved into her grandmother's dim North Side apartment.

When she walked inside, Wonzer found the home filled with her childhood pottery. New chocolates had been stocked in the drawers and, on a shelf as decoration, she saw a familiar stuffed rabbit in dusty, pink ballet slippers.

The objects not only reminded her of childhood but told her that her family--who had kept in touch with her through the years--hadn't forgotten her.

On a recent evening, Wonzer sat at the kitchen table between her grandmother and her 41-year-old mother, who, with her perky brown ponytail, could pass for Wonzer's sister.

Restoring relationships

Wonzer said she has forgiven her mother, a waitress, and is attempting to forge a new relationship.

"I love her, but I don't like her because of everything that has happened," Wonzer said. "She is my mother, but I don't think of her as a mother. I don't look to her for motherly advice. She is kind of like a friend. But on the other hand, I don't want her to think of herself as that. Our relationship is quite complicated, actually."

Wonzer's mother, Lisa Heath, said she is also trying to strike a balance as mother and friend to the daughter she is so proud of.

Wonzer's grandmother, Judith Heath, 67, who works for American Airlines, said the years since Wonzer left feel "almost like there has been no time at all."

The grandmother and mother are helping Wonzer prepare for college--she leaves Aug. 19 for Bradley University in Peoria, where she will get both state and private scholarships. She will be the first person in the family, her grandmother believes, to attend college.

"She's our baby right now, and that's the way it should be," said Judith Heath.

"Here's our center," she said, gesturing to Wonzer, who was sitting between her mother and grandmother, "right here, with us around it."

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ocasillas@tribune.com