Alexandria's Testimony

Hello, my name is Alexandria. I am 21 years old, and I have entered eight different placements, including Foster Care. I have been working with the Juvenile Law Center, Youth Advocacy Program, as part of their Juveniles for Justice program for three years, and I have been an active alumna for one year. The reason I continue to work on issues youth face is because I was a youth who had issues. Now, I am an adult still trying to fix the damage the system causes. I believe that we don't need generation after generation to fall apart due to a broken system, so it is important for us to share our testimonies to fix the damaged system.

Before I even walked into the courtroom, my worker told me I was not going home. They did not tell me how long I was staying.  They stated that I wasn’t going home. That was a lot for me to think about so fast, because it happened before I even walked in and theN,- when I walked into court, I didn’t even understand what they were saying. They said that I would be with my brother at an “on-grounds school” because he was placed a week before me.  My mom started crying. I figured I was being sent to placement because of the things that were going on at school- a school I didn’t even want to go to because I knew what would happen to me if I went there. Before I entered the justice and foster care system, I was living at home and going to Edison, my community high school, but the school had a bad reputation. I knew that if I went to that school things would not go well. It had a lot of police and was a really chaotic environment with little to no structure. We didn’t have a principal for about 2 months, or any support or programs. I didn’t feel comfortable showing up to school, I felt like there was no point of me going to school because I wasn’t learning. It wasn't safe, and was so unorganized in class. I remember my teacher gave me an assignment to complete that already had all the answers filled in. I told my mom I wanted to go to a better school that had more structure and more after-school programs so I would have a better experience, but I was sent to Edison instead. Instead of help, or the court asking me why I didn’t want to go to school or what was happening at school- I was sent to placement. 

When I got to the placement it was freezing, I didn’t even know the name or location, how long or where or even the real reason why I was placed. The second day at the placement, there was a “house meeting” with two groups of youth housed at the placements and a big fight broke out. I didn’t know what was going on. I was supposed to be meeting a staff member who would be assigned to me but I didn’t meet her until a week later. I should have met her within 24-48 hours. I wanted to talk with someone at the facility to know why I was placed, and why I did not get a warning. I kept thinking, did I get sent to placement, because my siblings went to placement, am I being sent here as a warning? I couldn't understand why they sent me when I had never been in trouble until I went to Edison. 

Being in placement kinda destroyed my life. It destroyed my education. I didn’t get proper education and none of my credits transferred. Being in placement feels like you're in a “halfway” house for children. Placement is what made me feel like I was a delinquent. No one offered me support from my community to go to a good school, the court should have given me support to stay home and offered to help me get into the right school I wanted to get into, not sending me to an unsafe community school. If our community had support for youth I wouldn’t have felt like I had to make certain choices to protect myself. I went from having to defend myself in school, to defending myself in a placement, just to go back home on my own and have to deal with the effects of all I went through before placement and while I was in placement. That is too much to worry about as a child. If I was offered support at home I would have only had to worry about what a child should have been worrying about: how I was going to finish out my classes at the school. 

I was a kid. I deserved better. We all deserve better. We deserve someone really fighting for us and for all youth in placement to have a local Philadelphia Ombudsman office to be a place where youth can go, to have someone on their side. Someone who we could have gone to who worked outside of the placement, and outside of the system. The least people can do is give youth an alternative. You all dont know what it’s like to feel scared not knowing where you are going, and that you're going to be in placement. We deserve chances to get alternatives. We deserve support. We deserve to be offered programs, better schools, and resources. We deserve something better than being put away. This is why I support Philadelphia having a local Ombudsman office in Philadelphia. 

Thank you. 

Banner photo credit - Eskay Lim via Unsplash