They sounded a lot like teenagers. Excited chatter. Plenty of laughs. An occasional disagreement.

South Carolina: Conference focuses on foster care

But within many of their worlds were stories of estranged siblings, premature motherhood and probation officers.

"I hope they're taking advantage of this. When I was in foster care, I was real hard-headed," David White said, glancing at the hundreds in the banquet room at Seawell's restaurant.

White was among the participants at Friday's Independent Living Conference. The event — put on by the Department of Social Services — brought together many of the youth in statewide foster care along with foster parents and case workers. For many of those youth, it was a time to look forward — for White, a time to look back.

The 19-year-old C.A. Johnson High School graduate spent 16 years in some form of foster care or another. He's now a bartender at a Charleston country club, but on Friday he joined others serving up encouragement for those now in foster care once they leave "the system."

Participants got some well-received words of wisdom from a very notable former foster child as actress Victoria Rowell shared some experiences from her 18 years in foster care.

The Columbia Urban League had worked for nearly a year to bring the soap opera and prime time star to Columbia after Urban League president, James T. McLawhorn Jr., and some staff members met Rowell in Los Angeles and learned of her mutual involvement in foster care.

"I'm not going to sit up here and say it was pleasant all the time because it wasn't," Rowell told the 400-plus at Friday's gathering. "But I think a lot of times we think that no one really cares, but people really do."

Teresa Kizer is one of those people.

The child care provider for Palmetto Place home in Columbia brought along several of her students to the conference, hoping to help prepare them for what's ahead. "I hope they will be able to receive the tools they need once they are out of the system," Kizer said.

Mary Williams, DSS' director of human resources, says if past results are any indication, they will. Williams noted that many of those formerly in the state's foster care system had gone on to finish college, find meaningful employment and own their own businesses. "It's just achieving their dreams," she said.

10 June 2003

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