Did I Make It

Casey Giddens, Beyond the System Writing Contest

All my life has been the foster system, ages 4 until the age of 21 when I decided to try to move states with my boyfriend. That did not end up going well. We were maybe there for a month in total before we decided things were not going smoothly. My service dog was attacked and I ended up paying 700 plus dollars on vet bills so I was ready to leave because I was not going to risk my sanity and my service dog. So we moved back to California, got a trailer, put it on his parents property, and we ended up living there for 3 years as two people, a dog and 4 cats. Life was going smoothly before the move with the programs I was in and you might be wondering why I didn’t reapplying for THP+. I had already turned 22 at this point and the waitlist was almost 3 years long so I would maybe have a few months of aid if I was accepted. I pulled up my pants and decided it was time to be an adult and stop relying on my past. I started attending Butte College in person again and graduated in 2023 with my AA in Social and Behavioral Science. That was an experience I walked the stage with my service dog and have many memories with the Inspiring Scholars at Butte. Then I decided that wasn’t enough so I went on to Chico State to get my Bachelors in Social Work. Most of my internship I was involved with foster youth since that is my passion and I have the shared experiences that are often spoken about. I do not want to live in a world where we give up on these kids because I was one of them.

My last foster home was a very relaxed home so they were okay with anything and it was a weird comparison to other homes. I had started staying over with my boyfriend before I turned 18 because the foster home only had 2 rooms for kids and she was trying to get her little girl to stop sleeping in the same room as the foster parent and she told me that they were going to add another room to the house but if you want to sleep at your boyfriends that's fine your almost 18. So I did that meeting with social workers at the foster parents house so they didn’t think anything of it. I was a Sacramento County youth when I was placed in Butte County in 2016 so the aid programs for the counties are different. I had my last meeting with my social worker and she told me that someone would be in contact before I turned 18 so that they can help me. I ended up having to call my old social worker and bother them for months because my birthday came and went and then months started to go by so I was without aid for 3 or 4 months at 18 with nowhere to go if my boyfriend's family hadn’t taken me in. By the time I got in contact with my old social worker I was also Incontact with my ILP worker trying to get into the Butte County aid programs since they were more beneficial and on time. Before the switch my social worker had to drive to meet me here and he knew that it would take 1 hour and 45 minutes and would ask if he could meet with me at Butte College. That was fine except he was always late and I would either have work or a class that he would impede on doing this so I wanted to switch to Butte County Services because I felt like an afterthought. Butte county has great services for Foster youth, more realistic in the money they give for bills. In 2018, I was getting only 1000 a month from Sacramento County but when switching it was an option of 1600 or just enough to pay bills so you can put some away for a savings account that you get when you exit.

Moving on, I just graduated with my Bachelors in Social Work on May 17,2025. I did in fact walk that stage with my service dog as well. Having always gotten jobs with foster care connections I am dealing with a whole new experience as I am applying for jobs. I have had three interviews but none of them are foster care related and it kinda bums me out since I am so familiar with the system. I am excited for this next step on my journey but I still don’t feel like I have made it. I am a graduated foster youth from a CSU but I still feel like the little 16 year old girl who came to Butte County 9 years ago. I am a first generation student and I should be proud of myself. I hope maybe when I land a job it will start to feel real because I have accomplished a lot….I think? Right? I just wish I could tell myself life will start getting easier but all I see right now is bills and the fact that my paid internship ended and now I have a check for the month of June so I am instacarting like crazy to stockpile some cash for when I don’t have a paycheck. I have applied to almost 30 jobs and only have had three job interviews which is great but only one of them was one I was kinda interested in. But isn’t this the struggle for non-foster related people? I am a graduate. I am a foster care graduate. I am a first generation graduate. I did it. But why does it feel like my world has ended almost? Like I am so used to going to school and through the rhythm of waking up, going to class, doing homework, internship duties, and now what? Did I do enough? I keep thinking I didn’t. I do plan on going back within the next five years to do the one year Masters program for social work. Maybe then it will feel like I did enough?

I wrote this at the age of 16:

I am my own hero. The reason I am my own hero is because I have always had to be the one to save myself from the terrors of life. Some would say that fate is the reason all of the bad things happened to me. I think my life has a lot of irony in all the trauma that has happened to me. I have often struggled to see the beauty in life so when I saved someone from suicide I realized how stupid it was to not want to live. Being able to live and enjoy the warmth of the sun is a blessing because some people can’t even get out of bed to feel the sun. I am often told by other people that I am a badass. It is a grandma figure who is telling me that they look up to me and it often makes me feel uncomfortable because I think how should an elderly person think I am someone to look up to when I haven’t even reached my twenties.

We are always told that the ones who survive are the fittest. But I am not sure that is true. What if it is the ones who are used to taking the beatings? When I was younger I was abused a lot and I grew used to it because I didn’t know that it wasn’t supposed to happen to a child. I was used to it but my little sister wasn’t. They started to go after her so I would push her in a different room and take her beatings so she wouldn’t know what it was like to be hit by the person who was paid to take care of you. You see the foster system the parents get paid $923 to take care of you for a month. I can tell you this we never saw a dime. I lived in a group home for about three years and a lot happens in a group home most of it is never good. You don’t always have a choice with what happens to you or with what will happen to you.

When you are faced with things that scare the adults that are supposed to take care of you, you have to sometimes face it for them when there is a life involved. I remember the day where I was forced into a position to save a girls life because she wanted to end it. We had a bathroom that weren’t allowed to have locks on them so there was a drawer we would pull out to prevent someone from coming in. It was pulled while this youth had taken rubber bands made for the wrist and had got them around her throat. I was able to get in and cut it off but her face was so purple. She was barely breathing and she had been passed out for a while now. I was so scared that after I cut the rubber band rope from around her neck I kept her head in my lap until she regained consciousness. This was a brutal experience. So some say I am hero but I was just placed at the right place at the right time. But since I have to pick a hero I would be my own hero because I have gone through hell and survived to live a life and help others.