THE business of taking good care of the most severely abused and
emotionally devastated children in Los Angeles County can't be much like any
other business.
In the first
place, it's not really a business: It's a calling. It's work not all of us
could do even if we were called.
And if you
save one, you find there's an endless supply where she or he came from.
But it's
work the good folks up at Altadena's Five Acres have been doing on the same
site since 1925, and as a county orphanage since 1888.
It turns out
that in their profession, as in others, insights occur that turn into new
ways of doing things around the shop.
"We're
working to get kids out of here faster," Five Acres Executive Director
Bob Ketch said Tuesday during a stroll across the grounds where dozens of
children live and play and go to school as they seek shelter from their
storms.
That plain
notion is part of a rubric loosely called Making Connections that is guiding
Five Acres these days.
During a
retreat, its board and staff realized that, as critically important as the
work they have always done is, they can't protect a child from the world
forever.
In fact,
after a certain point of protection from the ravages that have beset them has
been reached, the longer a child remains in such group care, the harder it is
to establish the kind of foundation we all need for a successful adult life.
Loving as
the staff and volunteers are, it's hard to come back to Five Acres for
Thanksgiving. I mean, I have a strong feeling they'd let you in the door, but
people move on. It's an institution, not a family. Permanence is what's
called for.
So Five
Acres has become more determined than ever to move its temporary charges into
family life as soon as humanly possible.
After what
these kids have been through, that rarely means with the biological parents.
But it very much can mean with grandparents, with aunts and uncles, with
foster parents, with adoptive parents.
It can
happen in so many ways. In one case, two brothers under Five Acres' care have
found their family in the form of a skateboard buddy's mom - she is currently
moving toward taking over their legal guardianship.
Or, for
example, the use of powerful genealogical search engines is making finding
far-flung biological family members easier. One such search turned up 34
family members in New Hampshire for a Five Acres child.
Five Acres
is also turning to the children themselves for help in finding the parents
with whom they were meant to be.
"`Why
weren't we asking them before?' you sometimes ask yourself," Ketch
wondered as we continued to stroll.
"We
didn't always necessarily take that into consideration, sad to say,"
said Cathy Clement, director of development. "But now we're asking, `Who
was the most important to you?' And it comes out."
Hey,
insights happen. Once you have them, they can seem obvious. The key thing is
not to reject the best plans once hatched simply because they are so simple.
Larry Wilson
is editor of the Pasadena Star-News. His column runs Wednesdays, Fridays and
Sundays.
