Girl Called Karen

For their contributions to my growth as a human being and a social worker, I thank Dr. David Harrison, who shaped my understanding of good social work; Mary Groff, who influenced me to go to school; and Shelia Myrick, who showed me by example what real social work is. For their interest, advice, and encouragement, I thank my US publisher, Lyle Stuart, editor Sandra Lee Stuart, and the entire staff of Barricade Books, who demonstrate immeasurable skill and patience.

I
n 1998, two years after I earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Alabama, the Board of Directors of Tennessee Valley Family Services in Marshall County, Alabama, offered me a position as executive director of the agency. It felt as if my whole life had led to that place and that job.

My first experience with the foster care system began when I was twelve. I spent my teen years growing up in a foster home where I had been placed by Catholic Charities. Later in life, my husband, Russ, and I volunteered to foster teens. In fact, two of our foster daughters were residents of the agency’s shelter program before they came to live with us.

I also had experience on the other side of the fence. I had worked for more than four years as a
caseworker for children and family services in the state system. During those years, I was often at Ogden House, the shelter program operated by Tennessee Valley Family Services, dropping off or picking up young people.

When the state hired me to work with children in 1990, my primary qualifications were my education and experience in writing and executing training programs. I implemented an innovative program for foster children in need of therapy. I recruited and trained families to provide specialized care for difficult children. It was then my responsibility to evaluate, place, and supervise the treatment of foster children with a dual diagnosis of emotional, mental, or physical problems. It was exciting, challenging, and stressful.

The longer I worked, the more I recognized that I did not have a solid educational background for working in this area. That’s when I returned to school to become a better social worker.

When I accepted the responsibility of directing the business of Tennessee Valley Family Services, I was faced with two dilemmas. First the local schools had a territorial dispute about whose responsibility it was to educate the youth who came to Ogden House. The board of directors and my predecessor had tried to resolve the issue for more than two years. They had been able to negotiate a temporary reprieve for the school year prior to my arrival. Now the issue was at hand.

Then Morris Dees’s Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit in my name as the friend of a young black foster child who was denied access to two local high schools. It was a scary time. All the major state newspapers and some national publications carried stories about the situation. The local television crew interviewed me, and the story went nationwide. I had not anticipated my fifteen minutes of fame, and it was useful but disconcerting.

The lead attorneys, Michael Cohen and Ellen Bowden, did an outstanding job of securing the educational rights of the children without offending the individual defendants. As is appropriate, the children who reside at Ogden House now go to school wherever it is in their best interest, and the staff members at Ogden House work very hard to cooperate with the schools.

Classroom teachers and local school administrators were always on our side. It was an issue of how funds are allocated that caused administrators to resist taking the children. After the resolution of the suit, there was no animosity on the part of the educators, and I felt the resolution was amicable.

Now I had to turn my attention to our second dilemma. Our licensing agency had made it very clear that the existing shelter was not up to the revised standards for residential facilities. We had been grandfathered in, but that could not continue indefinitely.

In 1999, I began the journey to build a new home. First, I did a lot of research about structures and the cost of construction. As I prepared to kick off a
fundraising
campaign, I received an anonymous donation of $40,000 from a family in the community. The check came in the mail at Christmastime. I was ecstatic. That gift made everything that came afterward possible. It gave me the confidence to pursue the dream.

We found seventeen affordable acres of land within the city limits next to a mobile home park. We made an offer and went before the city building committee to secure a permit to build. There we ran into difficulties. More than sixty people from the neighborhood showed up to challenge us. What we heard over and over again was that we did good work, but they did not want the facility in their neighborhood.

I was attacked personally, and it felt like a mob assaulting me. The building committee turned us down, although according to federal law, they had no right to deny us a permit.

I did not want to go to court again, and I certainly did not want our young people exposed to those people and their animosity. Our children come to us damaged, and it seems very wrong to contribute further to their pain. One older man at the meeting said that he had worked as an engineer, and he promised that he would “dog [us] every step of the way.” I walked away from that meeting a smarter, though less trusting, woman.

With the help of a local family, we ultimately
secured thirty-two acres out in the country. It is a beautiful parcel of property with many options for future growth.

We had a kick-off event and started looking for contributions. During this time, I made two trips to Washington, D.C., to visit with our elected officials and make a plea for funds.

I met with the chief of staff for Richard Shelby, the senator from the state of Alabama. The first time we met, the young staffer was polite but not very encouraging. He was an attractive, courteous young man and the first-time father of an infant. He seemed not to be overly interested in the plight of our homeless youth.

The following year, I met with the same young man, who now had a toddler in the home. He had many parenting questions and expressed greater interest in the issues facing young people in our country.

Six months later, I received a call from the local office of Senator Shelby informing me that we were to receive $573,000 to build the new shelter. I screamed in delight.

The whole construction process was infinitely more complicated than I had ever imagined. Starting with environmental surveys right on through the interior finishing, I learned more about the construction business than I’d ever wanted to know. Thank goodness, I had one very dedicated board member who helped me every step of the way.

The most devastating point in the process was when the bids were opened and the lowest bid was $200,000 higher than we anticipated or had money to cover. We gave up many of the finer amenities in order to get within striking distance. One of my board members bought and gave us a small home and four acres abutting our property to facilitate the access.

When we had to move our building plans into the countryside, we incurred close to $50,000 in additional expenses for providing utilities.

There were many challenges. I am, after all, a social worker, not a building project manager.

In March 2002, we moved into our new building. It looks like a home, not an institution. It has a great big front porch with wide-bottomed rockers. The rooms are bright and cheerful and welcoming. No brick walls or tile floors. It is a home.

At the agency’s annual dinner in October 2002, the Board of Directors of Tennessee Valley Family Services presented me with the template of a bronze plaque that reads, “This is the house that Karen built.”

Today the plaque is mounted above the fireplace so that everyone who enters the home can see it.

The “house” symbolizes my life up till now – that unique structure with its secret rooms and closets, its tremendous family room, the narrow twisty staircase with its half-built safety rail and almost-safe landing, the rooms for learning and growing, the sociable
veranda that’s great for people watching and neighboring, the long corridors that don’t go much of anywhere, and the capacious kitchen with the counter that sweeps like a stage across the family room.

What an incredible array of events has taken place in my time on earth! That evening when my board of directors recognized my achievements by unveiling the bronze plaque may well have been the highlight of my professional career. It capped a life that ran the gamut from an idyllic early childhood to the shocks of sexual abuse and desertion to acquiring skills of resiliency.

I have given birth to three children, accumulated three more through marriage, and nurtured two foster children. They have produced eleven beautiful grandchildren. Only two actually carry my DNA, but they are all my grandchildren.

Long after my children were born, I got a B.A. and eventually my master’s in social work. I moved from taking in people’s ironing to becoming the first woman supervisor in a cake-mix factory to surviving the emotional stresses of a dedicated social worker.

This book is rich with case histories culled from my professional colleagues and my observations and studies in my chosen field.

You could say that these life experiences, good and bad, have offered diversity so unusual as to enliven and authenticate my observations. I have written as candidly as I could, mistakes and all, though no tome could be big enough to include all of my blunders.

I have told my story because I think it illustrates some of the most important skills embodied in resilience. There are people who come by it almost instinctively, like the young book publisher who was frustrated by his company’s profit-and-loss statement. So he canceled his appointments, left his ever-ringing phones, walked across the street, and sat alone quietly on a park bench for two hours. When he went back to the office, he put changes into effect that transformed his struggling young business into a thriving, growing, prosperous company that became a legend in the publishing world.

There was nothing magical about it. He had simply stopped viewing publishing as it had been traditionally conducted. He took a long hard look at each of the operations of his company, studied them in a new way as if he had never considered them before. Without realizing it, he had used Element No. 7, the ability to reframe, which I have described in my chapter called “Capturing Resiliency.” That’s how he worked out a more efficient way of running his firm.

Other people have no idea what resiliency is, where to get it, or how to incorporate it into their daily lives.

But we can all learn. I was lucky enough to see how my accomplishments came about and how to keep building on successes as the years go by.

So can you. There are guidelines here.

I have identified in Part III the seven factors that contribute most to resilience, and I devoted an entire
chapter to each component. I have observed from my research that these elements can be taught to adults and children alike. I recommend them to anyone who is searching for help in guiding young lives beyond tragic beginnings. And they are a wonderful aid to all those adults and adolescents who are looking for more and better choices in their own lifestyles.

I wrote this book especially for foster parents, therapists, social workers, child-care counselors, house parents, clergy, project counselors, law enforcement professionals, teachers, and all those men and women who care about our children and our civilization.

Does anyone need to be told that our young people are our future? Personal resilience and societal responsibility are yoked for the advancement of humankind.