Foster Child

With the dedication of a drill sergeant, Lillie McCoy inspects her grandchildren each morning for cleanliness and clothing choice: No baggy pants, exposed underwear or reversed shirts are allowed.The eldest must clean the kitchen. Bedtime is 8:30 p.m. on the dot. Fighting and loud arguments are not tolerated. When they aren't sleeping in their bedrooms, they must remain within her sight."I've raised my share of kids. I know the games," she says firmly.McCoy can't afford to be some indulgent grandmother who hands out lollipops and lemonade.

WHAT a difference a full treasury can make! The latest deficit drama for the city schools is smoothed over when the city finds extra funds (partly from unused snow removal money) and when brimming state coffers make it hard for legislators to deny extra funding for the state's most underfunded and overburdened school system.But money isn't everything. Good procedures -- working smarter, if you will -- can make a big difference, too.Case in point: In the past three years, there has been a sharp rise in the number of foster children who have been adopted into permanent homes -- from 376 in 1994 to about 600 in 1997.

Saying that prison probably would not stop Anthony Ayeni Jones from ordering contract murder, federal prosecutors asked jurors yesterday to sentence the convicted East Baltimore drug lord and killer to death."

Life can be complicated for average teen-agers raised by two parents in a stable home. It becomes anguishing for foster children who are constantly shifted from home to home.Last night, 200 foster care teens were honored by the Baltimore City Department of Social Services for their tenacity and perseverance in overcoming obstacles during much of their adolescent lives.Sinora Dabney, 18, has been in foster care for six years. She had waited for years to be rescued from an abusive environment, but social workers had told her they could do nothing because they had seen no signs of physical abuse.

A 19-year-old woman pleaded guilty in Howard County Circuit Court yesterday to having sexual contact with her 11-year-old foster brother.The woman, who initially was charged with second-degree rape, pleaded guilty to a third-degree sex offense. She faces a maximum sentence of 10 years. Sentencing is scheduled Aug. 15.The incident occurred in the spring of 1995 when the woman was a foster child at a home in Savage. Court documents show that the woman was playing a game of "Truth or Dare" with her foster brother when the contact was made.

State Del. Elijah E. Cummings, most likely the next U.S. congressman from the 7th District, took the podium last Wednesday to talk before a group assembled at the Laurence G. Paquin School. But he wasn't there seeking votes.He had come to talk about adoption -- adopting black boys, specifically, who are in foster care the longest and are the hardest to place, according to state Secretary of Human Resources Alvin C. Collins. Cummings had come to talk of the need for adoption and used a boyhood friend named Gerald as a parable.

BOISE, IDAHO -- ''Somebody Needs You'' was the small headline over two columns of type on page 6 of the B section of Sunday's edition of the Idaho Statesman. There were 37 short paragraphs on the page, and these were the first four:''Living Independent Network Corp., a nonprofit working with people with disabilities, needs a 486 computer to run new software. Call Crystal . . . ''''Special Olympics needs volunteers to be sports partners, to coach and to organize. Times are flexible . . . ''''Volunteers . . . are needed to act as impartial reviewers in the case-review process for abused children in foster care . . . ''''Frail elderly male, low income and legally blind, needs an electric razor and vacuum . . . ''Then there was a woman with three children who needed wood %% for the winter; a disabled woman, housebound, who needed any kind of used computer to do some bookkeeping work at home; a 12-year-old boy, a foster child, who needed cleats and money for a school fee to play football this season; and a 3-year-old girl, another foster child, who wanted a rag doll with yarn hair for her birthday.

To the 400 children who lived in their home over the past 50 years, they are Mom and Pop Rayman -- patient, kind and understanding. To the neighbors, they are the caretakers of Maryland's children.Dorothy and Elmer Rayman believe they are fortunate to have the best job in the world.The Raymans -- she's 71, he's 66 -- have welcomed children ranging in age from infants to teen-agers into their rambling six-bedroom rancher on Creek Boulevard in Pasadena. And they've added onto the house several times.

"You play the cards you're dealt. And LaTonya Crawford was not dealt a very good hand."That's how defense attorney John L. Calhoun described the 16-year-old Dundalk girl charged with killing her 20-month-old son two days before last Christmas.It's a painfully accurate description, according to testimony of detectives, medical examiners, social workers and school officials -- a picture of a foster child who became a mother, then a murder suspect -- a child charged as an adult.Though a jury acquitted her on Oct. 23, LaTonya is still not free.

The boy was a high school student, hyperactive and troubled, when he came into the state's foster-care system. At risk in his home, he needed a place to live, but he also needed special treatment that Maryland's foster-care system could not provide.So the state sent him to a private institution in Virginia, at a cost of $97,800 a year. He became just one of the about 125 foster children annually whose special needs -- usually severe emotional problems -- force them out of state, at costs ranging from $40,000 to nearly $100,000.

Anthony and Iris Thorpe adopted their first child nearly 16 years ago, a 6-week-old girl whose mother had been given a diagnosis of HIV-positive. With two other children of their own, the couple figured that the infant made their family circle complete. Since then, the circle has ballooned, with 48 foster children, five adoptions and one foster child whose adoption is in the works. The Thorpes, of Port Deposit, have opened their arms to infants and toddlers from Baltimore who make up some of city's most disheartening child statistics: the offspring of drug-afflicted, HIV-infected parents.

The Maryland Department of Human Resources has agreed to pay out $1.5 million to care for a Baltimore boy who suffered irreversible brain damage after he was abused by another child in the foster home where he was placed by the city Department of Social Services. The boy, Brandon Williams, who is now 5 years old and still unable to speak or walk, will receive an annuity of $80,000 a year for life to pay for his medical care, according to attorneys. The state has also agreed to pay the family $580,000 and guarantee that the boy will receive Medicaid assistance even though the annuity would have rendered him financially ineligible.

Rachael stretched out a sheet of holiday wrapping paper and plopped a toy on top of it. She took a pair of scissors to the beige paper covered with wreaths and then began to wrap. "Sometimes the corners are tough to get just right," said the 13-year-old, whose last name is withheld to protect her privacy. She was determined to get it just right because the gift was for a foster child. And Rachael knows full well how much such a gesture can mean -- she is a foster child herself. "Sometimes foster kids need help, and not a lot of people are willing to give it," she said.

At first, Ilene Shaheed's decision to become an adoptive parent was as much about filling a personal need as improving a child's life. Her youngest was in college. She felt lonely in her suddenly empty nest. By the time the infant girl she adopted turned 6, she was ready for another child. This time, she chose to foster two little girls. Then another. And another. In all, Shaheed, of Pasadena, has fostered at least three dozen children - she's lost count - over the past 25 years. One of Shaheed's foster children is among the success stories featured in a radio spot the Anne Arundel County Department of Social Services will launch in coming weeks as part of an ambitious recruiting campaign.

For a couple in their 40s, Lola and Don Durham have built an enviable nest egg: about $325,000 in investments, a Virginia home worth $375,000 and two Navy pensions. "I grew up dirt poor and still live a pretty simple life," said Don Durham, 44, who works in human resources for a state hospital. "Our kids think we're boring. We don't go out to eat, we do our own yard work, change our own oil in the cars. You see people in our income range buying a lot more, but we never had that thought process where we had to have a lot of toys."

WHAT'S THE difference between placing a ward of the state into foster care or with a guardian? One placement is a way station for a child who at least temporarily cannot live at home; the other is a permanent home. The state requires foster care families to pass rigorous tests and background checks, performed by the Department of Human Resources, yet demands no such tests for guardians. The judges use their impressions and wisdom to decide the permanent placement. It isn't enough, as the life story of Ciara Jobes shows.

Piles of Playskool toys and a booster seat in primary colors sit in the dining room of Nicole Lever's home in Glen Burnie. But a toddler hasn't used them since August. The foster child who lived there for nearly 17 months was taken from the home by county social services officials while he watched Sesame Street, after genetic tests showed that Lever's then-husband had fathered a child by the couple's other foster child, a teen-age girl. And while Lever was not implicated - her former husband has since been convicted of child abuse and left the state - she remains frustrated in her attempt to adopt the toddler.

Piles of Playskool toys and a booster seat in primary colors sit in the dining room of Nicole Lever's home in Glen Burnie. But there hasn't been a toddler using them since August. The foster child who lived there for nearly 17 months was taken from the home by county social services officials while he watched Sesame Street, after genetic tests showed that Lever's then-husband had fathered a child by the couple's other foster child, a teen-age girl. And while Lever was not implicated -- her former husband has since been convicted of child abuse and left the state -- she remains frustrated in her attempt to adopt the toddler.

A West River foster mother who was pursued by the Department of Social Services for child neglect at the same time she taught its classes for new foster parents has won a legal battle to have her name removed from a state database of neglectful parents. Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Michael E. Loney upheld Friday an administrative law judge's decision that cleared Peggy Minner of wrongdoing. But she said she still feels victimized by the neglect accusations. "I am not relieved," said Minner, a foster parent for nearly six years.

When 8-year-old Erica first came to live with Sherry Hulett, she refused to consider her room her own. She wanted Hulett to sleep on the floor to keep danger away. When Hulett adopted Erica, she wanted to change the girl's name to Elizabeth, but Erica wanted to keep her name. Social workers and counselors were available to help with these issues when Erica was a foster child. But after she was adopted, mother and daughter felt largely on their own. Thanks to a 1997 law pushed through by President Clinton, which gives states incentives through resources to facilitate the adoption of children from foster care, more kids in Maryland and around the country are being adopted.