SUMMARY: A new investigation by the Associated Press and FRONTLINE finds allegations of physical and sexual abuse for some migrant children who are moved into government-funded foster care after they are separated from their families. Jeffrey Brown talks to the AP’s Martha Mendoza about details of the allegations, who oversees the foster homes and why additional lawsuits may be forthcoming.
SUMMARY: Mohamed Bzeek has become somewhat of a local hero in Los Angeles, taking on a life mission that few others would consider: as a foster parent who cares solely for terminally ill children. Special correspondent Gayle Tzemach Lemmon meets Bzeek, a former Libyan immigrant who depends on his Muslim faith as he juggles intensive caretaking and heartbreak, as well as his own battle with cancer.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now the story of a good man on a quiet and heartbreaking mission, one many people would never consider undertaking.
He worked for years in obscurity, until recent notice brought this remarkable man and his story to light.
From Los Angeles, special correspondent Gayle Tzemach Lemmon brings us this profile.
MOHAMED BZEEK, Foster Parent: What are you doing?
GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON, special correspondent: Mohamed Bzeek has become something of a local hero here in Los Angeles recently.
MOHAMED BZEEK: I am not an angel. I am not a hero. It's just what we are supposed to do as a human being.
GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: In 1978, Bzeek, then a former marathon runner, came to the U.S. from Libya to study engineering. He met his wife here in the U.S., and became a citizen in 1997.
But, today, he is a different kind of champion. His distinction? He is the only foster parent in this city of four million who cares solely for terminally ill children.
What happens if you get sick?
MOHAMED BZEEK: Father doesn't get sick day.
GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: It is not a glamorous job.
MOHAMED BZEEK: You have to do it from your heart, really. If you do it for money, you're not going to stay for long.
GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON: Over almost three decades, he and his wife cared for scores of children. Ten have died in his care. Most of the children he's taken recently are born with terminal illnesses.
Sometimes, they are abandoned or born to parents with drug addiction. Once they enter the foster care system, the county works to connect them with foster parents like Mohamed. The memories of the children, he says, still live with him every day.
James Turner had a chance at a “forever family” when he was 8. Placed in foster care at 18 months, Turner was nearly adopted by a Jamaican family he’d been living with, after bouncing between 17 other foster families in the Orlando, Florida, area before the age of 5.
But then he learned it would mean moving with the family to Jamaica.
“I would be leaving not only my school and the neighborhood that I grew up in, but also now my country, and I was old enough to know the different countries. So I was like, there is no way, you know, there is no way I could do that,” said Turner, now 19.
Turner didn’t realize right away that decision would mean he’d be separated from the only family he’d ever felt part of. But it soon became clear.
“As soon as I saw the mother with saddened eyes as she was packing my bags I [knew] I made a wrong decision.”
After moving between still more foster homes — some violent, according to Turner — he was living exclusively in group homes by the time he was 12. After the frequent moves, many adults with varying degrees of caring and compassion coming in and out of his life, and some cruel treatment, Turner is now on a mission to change the foster care system for the better.
But first he must get through one of his greatest challenges thus far: college.
Turner has already achieved what few foster children have: going straight from graduation to a four-year college, in his case Florida State University in Tallahassee. He is studying both business and film; business to learn how to improve the child welfare system, and film so he can tell his own story on the big screen.
He is no longer looking for a forever family in the traditional sense, though he does plan to marry and have children one day. Right now he feels he has created his own.
“To me, what a forever family is, is whatever you make it,” Turner said. “Every kid that was in foster care, every kid that I could relate with, they are my family now, they are adopted into me and I’m adopted into them.”
PITTSBURGH — At 13, Lafayette Goode had to face a situation that, for most children, is unimaginable. He had no place to call home.
“I got kicked out of my house,” Goode said. “That was the hardest thing I ever had to deal with because I couldn't believe my mom was really trying to kick me out at this age. I'm so young, where am I going to go?”
Goode was among the roughly 400,000 young people in foster care in the U.S. at any given time, according to David Sanders of the Casey Family Programs, an organization working to improve foster care across the nation.
“I think, often times, we forget that, to get into foster care, they were abused or neglected probably to a level that is quite significant,” Sanders said.
Those personal traumas, coupled with the fact that many often move from home-to-home and school-to-school, has led to grim educational outcomes for foster youth nationally. Only about half finish high school and of that group, only 20 percent go on to college. Fewer than one in 10 of those students actually earns a bachelor's degree.
Goode, now 19, is proud to have graduated high school on time and plans to enroll at a trade school this spring. He credits the help of Allegheny County's Youth Support Partners, including Justin Quast for helping him reach those milestones navigate the difficult and often confusing world of foster care.
Youth Support Partners like Quast are young adults who were, themselves, involved in the child welfare system, but have since been trained to become peer-to-peer mentors and advocates for young people currently in foster care.
“He's close to my age [and] we understand each other,” said Goode. “As soon as we met we just clicked.”
“We feel strongly [that], if you've been there, if you've walked in their shoes, you are much more effective and can relate,” said Marc Cherna, Allegheny County's Director of Human Services.
Creating Youth Support Partners for foster youth is just one of the many changes Cherna has made in his 20 years with the county in an effort to improve lives and outcomes for children in the system. He also created Educational Liaisons, which makes sure that foster youth are not only staying in school, but succeeding by getting them tutoring or other supports when needed. They also help with credit recovery, scholarships, university applications and take high school seniors to visit college campuses.
In addition to creating those positions, Cherna's reforms have included reducing caseloads, increasing family support to keep youth in their own homes and schools when appropriate, and collecting data to determine which programs are effective and where investments should be made. Allegheny County's efforts to improve the lives of foster youth are considered a national model and Cherna often visits cities around the country to share what has worked in his community.
But he remains realistic, acknowledging there is much more work to be done.
“I've been doing this work for over 40 years and if there was a magic bullet we wouldn't be talking about it today,” Cherna said. “This is very complex work. There is no easy solution.”
