The Children We Left Behind

Adam Coleman talks about the forgotten foster children in his new book

My friend Adam Coleman of Wrong Speak has recently written a powerful book called, The Children We Left Behind that weaves his own personal experience as a boy who was abandoned by his father with social commentary on how children are often not the priority of the adults who are supposed to take care of them. He believes this is one of the root causes of many of society’s ills. In Adam’s words: “Nearly every major social problem in the West can be traced back to our declining appreciation for the nuclear family structure and our failure to plan for families properly. Our culture has shifted from prioritizing sacrifice for the benefit of innocent children to catering to the fleeting desires of the adults who bring them into the world.”

The Children We Left Behind is a book about pain and grief, but also about resilience. Adam has become a successful author, commentator, and father despite a challenging childhood that included homelessness and a stint at a mental institution. The book also highlights other individual stories of triumph. Adam and I struck up a friendship years ago because he heard me publicly share some of my experience as a social worker and our perspectives aligned. We talked about the early days of my career when I visited families in the NYC projects. I observed that most fathers were absent and the mothers often projected their distain for men onto their sons. Adam and I both noticed that the mothers were put on pedestals and there was a deep imbalance in the families without the fathers present. We also talked about the intense grief and pain these women experienced of losing sons and nephews to street violence and gangs. I didn’t know all of Adam’s personal history at the time, but now he has chosen to tell the world. As part of his book, Adam highlighted the foster care system and challenges children who are left to the foster care system face. He interviewed me about my professional experience at group homes, including at a locked residential facility in San Jose, California. It was called Starlight Adolescent Center and it has been subsequently shut down since I worked there in 2008.

From Adam’s book:

While many of us are familiar with state-funded foster homes run by families and group homes operated by foster care employees, what hides in the darkness are high-security facilities that house the most anti-social children in our society.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger, a licensed clinical social worker, was one of those social workers who worked in one of these environments, where every interaction she had with a child required a door being unlocked and locked behind her in fear of the child escaping and harming the public.

“I was a social worker in Northern California. The jobs I worked at with those with foster kids were in San Jose, California. I had two jobs directly with the foster care system and then other ones that were peripheral because I was at schools.

They put them in group homes, and they would live 6 or 7 kids in a house, and there would be counselors there around the clock. And then I was the social worker at the group home. I would manage the cases, sort of like a case manager, and counselor.

There was one job that was a medium-range [security] and then there was another job I had, which was much more intense, which was a locked facility. That [facility] had the worst behavioral kids within the state of California.”

When talking with Pamela, it was the first time I learned of the existence of this locked-down facility which based on description, sounds like an unofficial jail for foster kids who have severe behavioral problems due to severe cases of childhood trauma.

In this facility, their behavior is so erratic that even underlying issues get confused with the typical out-of-control nature of the children who were incarcerated.

“In that locked facility, there were some kids that were really damaged. There was this one girl, who turned up dead in her sleep because she had a tumor in her brain and nobody knew it.

We all just thought she was she was so messed up from how much trauma she had. Her behaviors were so erratic and just completely unpredictable.

She would get violent all of a sudden, and we just thought it was because she was so physically abused in her life and everything she went through.”

Unfortunately, these children grow up in an environment where abusive and manipulative tactics are all they know. When they engage with each other, many habitually utilize these anti-social techniques against other children.

The weakest children are taken advantage of in various ways and if they are severely lacking in cognitive abilities, they not only get eaten by the wolves in foster care but the streets as well.

“I remember this one girl who was taken advantage of by the other kids. So, there was this almost abuse among the kids. We think of the adults abusing the kids, and of course, that's where it starts from. But then it cycles to the peers.

She was not cognitively advanced. I remember when she aged out, she looked very old, older than me when I was in my early 30s and she was 17 or 18. She just looked older and then emotionally, she was probably, I don't know, 10 or 11. She seemed emotionally really young.

They let her out, and then she just went straight into the hands of the sex traffickers. And then I heard from somebody that she had been killed.

I don't remember her whole story, but I know she had sexual abuse in her past. These kids were severely abused.”

That young woman’s circumstance of unfairly entering the world only to be taken advantage till the day she died is tragic but more common than we want to recognize.

Where do we think these young people will end up when they age out of the foster care system without a genuine social circle or financial support?

The streets are always calling the names of abandoned children who have no place else to go.

The parts of towns and cities you avoid going to are where many of these children land when they become adults, quickly learning that survival depends on whether they want to live a life running from victimization or become victimizers themselves.

Human depravity exists around the corner near all of us, but we have the privilege of never looking in that direction and confronting our sensibilities.

The crevices of Western society feature adults who never had what you took for granted and were easily disposed of when the childhood clock ran out.

They were discarded and told to figure out how to flourish in society without instructions on how to do so with years of unrelenting psychological baggage weighing them down.

How do you have the mental fortitude to overcome crippling obstacles when every adult you’ve encountered reinforces your insignificance and leaves you behind?

Adam is right, that facility was like an unofficial jail and ironically, many of those kids often bounced back and forth between that facility to juvenile hall. However, they weren’t safe without the locks. Adam wrote the locks were there to protect the public, but in more cases, they were to protect the children from themselves or from predators. I honestly don’t know what the best solution is. However, I felt a strong connection to those kids and my colleagues also cared about them very much. There were many problems with that program, but there weren’t simple solutions. Ultimately, these children were left behind by the families who should have taken care of them. Some did succeed, despite being given a crappy deck of childhood cards. Nevertheless, as Adam concludes, if we strengthen the family, we strengthen society.

*To read more about what happened at that locked facility, read my blog entry about it from 2008. The article from April 9th, 2008 that prompted that blog essay by The Mercury Times is: San Jose center for teens closing abruptly.

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger is a licensed clinical social worker. She completed her MSW in 1999 from New York University. She has a variety of experience in schools, group homes, hospitals and community-based organizations. She has dedicated herself to educate parents and embolden other mental health professionals to challenge the ideological capture of her profession.

Pamela is the author of A Practical Response to Gender Distress: Tips and Tools for Families. (available on Amazon).

For more detailed information on how to empower yourself as a parent and navigate the mental health field, see the Parents' Guide to Mental Health.

Coming Spring of 2025, A cute rhyming children’s book about self-acceptance: Froggy Girl.