Almost half of all foster care
youth end up in jail within two years of aging out of the system. First
Place for Youth has figured out a housing and support strategy to keep
these young adults out from behind bars and living on their own.
Moments of stability were rare during Pamela
Bolnick’s childhood. She repeatedly witnessed her father beat her
mother, a Venezuelan immigrant diagnosed with schizophrenia. Bolnick’s
mom eventually left her abusive spouse, fleeing to the Bay Area with her
two kids. When she stopped taking her medication, the county child
welfare department stepped in and placed six-year-old Bolnick and her
younger brother in foster care. Her mother resumed treatment for her
mental illness, and for two short years, retained custody of her
children. After another relapse, Bolnick and her sibling were
permanently removed from their home.
Bolnick was placed with her godparents in Richmond, Calif., an East Bay city then known for its notoriously high murder rates.
Toughened by her childhood, she excelled at El Cerrito High School,
impressing teachers in her Advanced Placement classes and filling her
schedule with softball games and dance rehearsals. By senior year,
however, she felt her foster family was pressuring her to move on. “All
this time, I looked at them as being my own family. I did everything
that you’d expect of a child, going to school, not getting into trouble,
applying to college,” Bolnick says. “I came to see it as a business
transaction: them being paid [by the government] for taking care of me,
and me getting the benefit of being a child in their custody.”
Disgusted, she left and spent the summer living at friend’s house.
Shortly afterwards, she enrolled at Holy Names University in nearby
Oakland Hills.
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