Peeking into the life of a foster child

Peeking into the life of a foster child
By: Heidi Zhou

Part One: Every year, more than 10,000 children become wards of the state after suffering major episodes of abuse and neglect. These children grow up knowing they’re different, but that's no excuse to look away from them.
Ryan Dollinger became a ward of the state when he was 12-years-old.

"When you look at any other parents and you look at their children, you relate it back to how that child was raised as to how they have become. If they go out into the world and they're great people, you say they had really good parents, or if this kid robbed that store over there, you'd say it's probably the parents. As a child in foster care, my parents were the government," Dollinger said.

On the surface you’d say the government did well. Twenty-three-year-old Dollinger is a junior at Lamar University.

But, dig a little deeper and you'll find the scars from foster care.

"I can remember my first night, kneeling on the side of my bed all night, praying and crying because I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know where I was. I remember praying to the Lord, take me out of this. Please, just save me," he said.

Dollinger’s first stop in foster care was at an emergency shelter in Houston. The facility has since been closed due to safety violations.
"I remember a man. I still to this day, when I smell his cologne, I cringe. There were instances he pushed kids down the stairs," he said.

For more information:
• Find out why Jaime's House was shut down by CPS.

• View the state inspection reports for Pathfinders, the residential treatment facility in Dripping Springs.

His next stop was 200 miles away at a residential treatment center in Driftwood.
"We lived in a place with no walls, no electricity,” Dollinger said.

Against the recommendation of his child advocate, he lived there for more than a year.

Child Protective Services finally moved Dollinger to a group foster home in Orange. There, he aged out of the system at the age of 18, but not before his foster father issued his words of wisdom.

"I remember being told, 'Ryan, you are going to be a criminal. You're going to be homeless, you're going to end up selling yourself on the street,'” Dollinger said.

He said since that day, his mission has been to prove his foster father wrong.

Studies show, in the system, people like Dollinger are rare.

One in four foster children aging out of the system have been homeless since turning 18. Another one in four has been in jail.

Some have questioned whether Dollinger’s story was indeed a success.

“We can always, always, always improve,” CPS Assistant Commissioner Audrey Deckinga said.

Deckinga is also asking the same question of about 27,000 other children in the Texas foster care system.

Child welfare experts are working to redesign the whole system.
"I think we are all, for the first time in a long time, on the same page, seeing the same problems, and really working toward the same solution for children and families,"Deckinga said.

Those experts have given themselves until December to come up with a solution, then they'll ask lawmakers to take it up.

The catch is, the redesign can’t cost a penny more than what CPS already has in its budget.

"I think they can be smart about how we spend the money that we have. [We can] spend it more wisely with better outcomes. I think if they do that, it will be a win, win," Rep. Patrick Rose, D-San Marcos, said.

But this isn't the first time foster care has been,"overhauled." That was the word used to describe reforms in 2005 and again in 2007. In 2009, more reforms weren’t even taken up due to the Legislature’s division over the Voter ID bill.

"You look at all the problems at once and you get overwhelmed, like not in my lifetime will I be able to help change all of this," Dollinger said.

CPS officials say they can tackle one problem at a time.

Throughout the series, we’ll explore issues like caseworker turnover, how foster parents are paid, aging out of the system and kids going unadopted.

We’ll also bring you more stories from Ryan Dollinger’s siblings, other wards of the state, foster kids raised on your tax dollars, who still deserve a chance for a better future.

Biography: Ryan Dollinger
By: News 8 Austin Staff


Ryan Dollinger was born in March of 1987. He entered foster care in 1999. Child Protective Services placed him at an emergency shelter in Houston called Jaime's House.
"I was the one that called CPS, and I said, 'You know, this isn't the best thing for me and I told them where they needed to go to find it,' and they found it," Ryan said.

Ryan said the situation was traumatic.

"No one ever explains to you what's happening, at least not in my case, and you're scared. You're 11 years old, and with strangers, you're just like OK. In a way, you want to know what you did wrong. In a way, you want to know what's next," Ryan said.

Ryan recalled his experience at Jaime's house.

"I remember we were in the van and one of the kids didn't do what he wanted. I remember he turned around and punched him, like just swelled him. I turned around and was like, OK. I remember being a quiet kid, taking it in, trying to understand it," he said.

In 2000, CPS moved Ryan to Pathfinders, a residential treatment center in Dripping Springs.

"We were made to work a lot. I remember if you got in trouble, you got a mark, and three marks equaled one hour of work. Work could be anything from cutting wood to mowing the grass. We were forced to use the restroom outside. There was a five-gallon bucket on top of a pipe that went into the ground, and that's where we used the restroom. There were three walls around it," Ryan said.
Ryan said he wishes he could do something about the center.

"Now that I know what you're supposed to live like, it makes me mad. Not angry to the point of where you can't function, but a point where you know this place is still open, and you want to do something. It really kind of hurts in a way, because why would you make someone else live that way? How could you make children, who by no fault of their own are in their system, run around and live like in a third-world country?" Ryan said.

In 2002, CPS moved Ryan to a foster home in Orange, and in 2005, Ryan aged out of foster care.

"Some people may look at me and say, 'We did really good.' But how many other Ryan Dollingers are out there that are homeless or going hungry, or because you didn't take the time to teach them job skills? How many kids not going to college because no one told them they could, or didn't finish high school because no one pushed them to? Thousands," Ryan said.

In 2007, Ryan began classes at Lamar University.

Jaime's shelter is now closed due to safety violations.

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