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    America's Youngest Hostages
    America's Youngest Hostages
    America's Youngest Hostages
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    America's Youngest Hostages

    By Ian Keldoulis

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    About this ebook

    In the turbulent 1960s, a renegade Capuchin friar set out to end the foster-care-to-prison pipeline. His actions inspired a community, sparked a movement, and built an enduring grassroots organization. For over fifty years, the Downey Side adoption agency has been rescuing our neediest children from the nation's blighted foster care system.

    This David versus Goliath story continues today. America's Youngest Hostages looks inside the system from the points of view of social workers, parents and foster children themselves. With half a million children held hostage by a system designed to perpetuate itself, this book is a call to action for ordinary Americans.

    All proceeds from the sale of this book support Downey Side's mission of finding permanent families for hard-to-place children in foster care.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPaul Engel
    Release dateJul 22, 2019
    ISBN9780999657249
    America's Youngest Hostages

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      Book preview

      America's Youngest Hostages - Ian Keldoulis

      Contents

      Preface

      Author’s Note

      Foreword

      One: A Life Sentence

      Two: Welcome to the Machine

      Three: One Angry Young Priest

      Four: Community in Motion

      Five: Inside an Adoption Agency

      Six: Trying to Adopt: Hostage Negotiations

      Seven: The Belly of the Beast

      Eight: Some Solutions

      About this Book

      Acknowledgments

      About the Author: Ian Keldoulis

      Father Paul Engel

      Downey Side

      Downey Side Album

      Preface

      This book was born from two contradictory emotions: celebration and frustration. 

      Downey Side, an independent adoption agency, has been working tirelessly to find permanent homes for America’s neediest children for half a century. The origins of this book lie in the celebration of the agency’s golden anniversary. With over seven thousand success stories, there is a lot to be happy about. 

      However, Downey Side sadly finds itself fighting the same problems today as it did back in 1967, when the agency was founded. The foster-care system hasn’t evolved. At any given time, approximately half a million American children are suffering in foster-care limbo. It is a self-perpetuating monster that fails daily to serve the best interests of children. Our foster-care system is designed to fuel the large US pipeline of child institutionalization. We would like the system to disappear. 

      The goal of this book is to generate awareness about America’s Youngest Hostages and to inspire systemic change that frees them from a broken system. To do this, I have drawn from Downey Side’s extensive experience in child services. Together with the agency, we are channeling our frustration into the energy needed to help foster-care children find a better way. 

      Real change is long overdue. Reforms to the foster-care system can’t happen at a glacial pace because we are dealing with the lives and futures of children. Urgent reform is needed. 

      We chose the title America’s Youngest Hostages because it provocatively describes the true situation of many children. The book was written to educate average Americans, people who probably have no knowledge of child welfare services. To end the deplorable foster-care system, regular folk need to hear the message of this book. We hope more will be enraged enough to take action. 

      We also want the book to encourage other adoption agencies and child advocates to work together on this massive problem. If this book inspires more partnerships and collaboration, that will be another reason to celebrate.  

      Author’s Note

      I’m not an expert in child welfare. So, why have I written about foster care? Well, the tremendous work of the Downey Side adoption agency, a small organization with an outsized passion, has inspired me. 

      In short, I wrote the book because I wanted to fight with David against Goliath. The foster-care system is huge. It determines the lives of about half a million children. By contrast, Downey Side has a few small offices scattered across a couple of states. Downey Side alone would never have the means to empty the foster-care system through adoption. Yet the overwhelming odds has never stopped them from trying. Every child out of the system is a child saved.  

      Father Paul Engel’s passion to save children and his animosity toward the foster-care system has kept him fighting for fifty years. As the founder of Downey Side, Father Paul is still hoping for that miraculous sling-shot hit between the eyes that will take the system down.  

      Under Father Paul’s leadership, Downey Side has remained a classic grassroots organization. It has stayed true to its mission of finding permanent families for the most intractably stuck children in foster care—older children, sibling groups, and children with difficulties. 

      Writing about Downey Side’s story is important to me. If people wait for this huge problem to solve itself, nothing will happen. The hard-working Downey Side community of families and supporters is not waiting. I have experienced their joy and sense of purpose. They have inspired me to write about a very troubling topic. 

      Father Paul is also inspirational. Although I’m not a religious person, or perhaps because I’m not, he has had a big impact on my life. Our politics often don’t align. But we have found common cause across political lines, and that feels like an important act. If people can’t come together to help children in dire need, what does that say about us?

      This book doesn’t claim to have all the solutions to the problems of child welfare in America. It does, however, show how a small organization with ton of passion can inspire a community. And if community after community becomes concerned, change will happen. It will happen in a way that people can readily understand and see for themselves. 

      The huge problem of foster care reaches into the heart of how we understand family. The recent debate over immigration has drawn attention to the harm that family separation causes children. Yet, the same thing is happening to hundreds of thousands of American children every year under the auspices of foster care with very little media attention.  

      Foster care has to end. If this book can shine a light on the terrible suffering hidden all around us, then it will be a success. If it inspires people to take action, it will be a triumph.  

      Foreword

      I see the hand of God in my journey. He seems to have worked through Father Paul Engel, a man who changed my life. Without him, I never would have become a Capuchin friar or a special education teacher. I never would have spent three decades serving people in Guam.

      That’s because Father Paul found a permanent home for me when I was young. And that family stability was my foundation.

      Perhaps I had a positive effect on him too. I was the first person he helped escape institutionalization. Would this young priest have founded Downey Side adoption agency and helped thousands of children break free from foster care for more than half a century if I hadn’t come along? 

      My biological father was a religious and educated man, a pharmaceutical salesman who had briefly studied medicine. But everything fell apart shortly after he had a sixth child with my mother. She left us. My grandparents were elderly and couldn’t help. All of this was too much for my father to handle. He tried his best, but under the strain he reached for the bottle. I was about three-years old.

      Uncertain of what to do, he brought all of his kids to the Brightside orphanage. The orphanage immediately split us up and housed us in separate buildings. When that approach failed, my two oldest brothers stayed with my father, my two sisters went to an aunt, and my youngest brother went to a family known by my father. I bounced around.

      Eventually, I went back to my father and oldest brothers. We

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