Foster Care Book and Upcoming Movie

“Three Little Words”.

“Shuffled through 14 foster homes for nearly a decade of her youth, author Ashley Rhodes-Courter knows what it’s like to rise above years of abuse and neglect.

The New York Times best-selling author will share her success story at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the Sturtz Theater at Jefferson Community College, 1220 Coffeen St. Having been maltreated as a child, Mrs. Rhodes-Courter, 28, said she wants to give hope to children who share similar experiences. She teaches them that it only takes one dedicated foster parent or adoptive family to change their life.

Empowering foster children and engaging community members to become foster or adoptive parents, she said, is one of her presentation’s objectives.

“I was horribly abused,” she said from her Florida home Wednesday. “I was placed in homes with people who had problems with alcohol, drugs and pedophilia.”

As a child, she found it difficult to understand why her mother — a single teenager — gave her up and placed her in worse conditions, she said. Mrs. Rhodes-Courter was in foster care by age three.

Without well-informed, passionate foster families, foster children may prolong a cycle of violence or mental illness as they age, she said. “In good foster care programs there are trainings offered each year,” she said. “Every child in foster care could be a therapeutic child. We need so much wrap-around.”

Mrs. Rhodes-Courter bemoans preconceived notions of what foster children are like: full of emotional, mental and physical ailments.

“They hear horror stories, but these kids are just victims of circumstances,” Mrs. Rhodes-Courter said.

She was one of them.

“Mostly, they just want someone to listen to them,” she said.

People who haven’t heard her story or cannot attend the presentation may read her memoir, “Three Little Words,” which chronicles her foster care experience. A major film based on the memoir and starring Reese Witherspoon and Amanda Seyfried will be released later this year.

“Foster care is a very complicated social issue,” Mrs. Rhodes-Courter said. She hopes her presentation, book and the movie will foster a broader understanding of the child welfare system and how crucial it is for these children to feel loved. “We can’t let kids linger in the system with no resolution,” she said.

She said she has learned from her experiences and now gets to prove naysayers wrong.

“People said, ‘You’ll just be a hooker like your mother,’ or ‘Don’t even think about college,’” Mrs. Rhodes-Courter said. “I was adopted when I was 12 by a wonderful couple and they helped me realize my dreams.”

She received a master’s degree in social work from the University of Southern California. During her undergraduate studies, she received several honors, including Glamour magazine’s Top Ten College Women. She currently serves as National Child Welfare Ambassador for the American Humane Association, among other national and international board positions.

Her dream is to continue helping children who have experienced similar childhood moments as hers. To that end, Mrs. Rhodes-Courter and her husband, Erick Smith, have fostered 22 children in the past four years.

The couple is taking a hiatus, as they are preparing for the birth of their second biological son in August, she said. They have a biological son Ethan, 1, and last year adopted a 2-year-old boy they had fostered.

Her presentation is sponsored by community organizations and businesses, among them the Watertown Daily Times and the Children’s Home of Jefferson County.”

 

Best-selling author to share foster care story May 28 at JCC[Watertown Daily Times 5/22/14 by Rebecca Madden]

REFORM Puzzle Piece