This story is fiction. Several of the incidents, pivotal to the plot are, however, real. The most important theme of the story, although generally represented through analogy, is the Child Protection System both national and local.
I must tell you this. I am not objective. In the forty years I worked as an Elementary School Principal and the five years our family served as a foster home, I have never met a Child Protection Worker in whose care I would want my own child. I'm sure there must be some. I just have never met them.
I have five biological children, all adults and all successful and happy. Of our seven foster children, I know of the current status of only four. Three of those four have been in correctional institutions, one still is. All of them had been shuttled from foster home, to biological home, back to foster home and even while in foster care, at the whim of the worker, children were often moved to another foster home because "the child was becoming too attached" and "the family must be restored." In most cases the biological parent was addicted to drugs or alcohol, was mentally unstable, was abusive, or was neglectful. In the most meaningful sense of the word, no family had ever existed.
The caseworkers I knew had a real problem with truthfulness: to the child, to me as a school principal and/or foster parent and to the judge. Most were slothful (in spite of their claims of overwork) and all were obsessed with their power. They did things to me and to our foster kids if my objections became too vocal.
I have not sanitized either the language or the facts. The language is vulgar and the facts shocking. A major reason that society does not rise up in anger at the manner in which foster children are treated in this country is that the media cannot get the story or it sanitizes the story. They clean up the language and tone down the facts. We don't live in an intrinsically cruel society but people can't fix what they do not know about.
Again, the abuse to the children and the attitudes and most of the behaviors of the caseworkers in this story are real. They are, however, set in a fictional flow.
As mentioned, this is not a pretty story. It has been a very difficult story to write. If sexually explicit language or events will offend you, please do not read this story. If, however, you would like to know how badly many foster children are treated, you can get a glimpse from some of the events in the young lives of our foster sons.