“The State is a terrible parent,” said Chelsea Wilkerson, former executive director of Casa Valentina. While some foster parents are nurturing and caring, most are not. Children can be moved abruptly from placement to placement and school to school several times a year. Commonly, they grow through adolescence feeling unloved and insecure. Rarely does anyone guide their education or help them develop a viable path to a career. Most do not learn how to express dissatisfaction effectively or resolve conflicts effectively peaceably. They do not know how to budget money, cook a meal, make a doctor’s appointment, or read a help wanted ad. And at age 18, they’re on their own.
For girls, the problem is especially severe because of their vulnerability to violence and sexual abuse. Girls, more than boys, tend to feel deeply, need to feel appreciated, are nurturers. Not surprisingly, many become mothers when they are still children themselves. But if a vulnerable 18-year-old girl is educated and persuaded to delay childbearing, she will be better able to protect herself and her family. And so Casa Valentina opened in 2005 to provide quasi-supervised independent living for girls aging out of foster care. Twelve young women living in two buildings (in five furnished two-bedroom apartments and two studios) interact with three warm, fun-loving professional staff on a daily basis and gradually gather the skills, insights and emotional maturity that eluded them previously.
While some girls decide to move into Casa Valentina 6 months, a year or more after aging out of foster care, many arrive on their 18th birthday. A staff member picks up the new resident, throws her belongings, often tied up in garbage bags, into the car and drops them off at the two-bedroom apartment she will share with another Casa Valentina girl. Then it’s off to Target to pick out bedding and other basic necessities. For many, this is the first time they have ever been able to select their own sheets and make other choices about what they’d like in their rooms. For many it’s also the first time they’ve had a room to call their own. The day culminates at TG Fridays or Chiles for birthday dinner. The staff is great, but they are strangers, and the girls tend to be tearful and scared.
The girls who choose to live at Casa Valentina must be in school full-time. Some, especially if they are already in college, also hold part time jobs. In addition, they must meet individually with staff once a week for mentoring, and they must attend weekly life skills sessions. So there is imposed structure to their day and their week. But the life skills programming, which touches on nutrition, financial literacy, self-defense, skincare, and more, is the least of what they derive from the Tuesday meetings. More valuable are having supper together before the presentation, building friendships, sharing experiences.
In every facet of life at Casa Valentina it’s personal interaction that makes the biggest impact on the girls’ development and maturation. As a consequence of their frequent moves, the girls are, on average, two years behind in school when they move in. The majority are reading and doing math at elementary school levels. Because of the constant moves and the case workers’ excessive case loads, the girls don’t communicate well, and they lack basic everyday abilities -- how to address an envelope, look for a job in the newspaper, read a unit price card in the supermarket, make a doctor’s appointment. They have needs in every area: activating their Medicaid cards, filling prescriptions, doing the laundry, registering for school, getting a money order or writing a check. Many have not seen a physician or a dentist in a year or more and have untreated STDs. Although Casa Valentina will not accept anyone who uses drugs or alcohol or who has acute psychiatric needs, many also have mental health issues. 
And so, the problems are tackled one by one, one on one. To overcome their academic deficits, the girls have tutors – private school teachers, university graduate students, and other professionals who understand basic adult remedial education. They also attend weekly study halls, where volunteers help the girls complete assignments, write papers, and study for tests.As for life skills, staff takes each girl to the grocery store and the bank, helps her with the laundry, cooking and cleaning. The girl listens as a staff member calls to make her a doctor’s appointment so she will know how to do it next time. When she was in foster care and needed to see a doctor, a case manager made the appointment and a transporter delivered her alone to the office. Now, the same staff person who made the appointment accompanies her to the doctor’s office and advocates on her behalf with the physician and office staff. If the wait is long, the girl might be inclined to have a tantrum or leave. But the Casa Valentina staff models better behavior; she approaches the receptionist to say, “Excuse me. We’ve been here for an hour and a half. How much longer is the wait?” With the staff serving as role model, mentor and instructor, the girls gradually learn how to stand their ground and defend their rights without offending others, navigate difficult situations, express their thoughts and feelings, and deal with the practical elements of everyday life.
It takes about a year for each girl to get stabilized – to do her own shopping, get herself up and to school consistently and on time, make her stipend checks last the full month. After one year, some of the girls move from their two bedroom shared apartment into one of the studios, where they live alone. Almost all move on after two years.
Two year resident Kalisha*, now 24, is ready to move out. In foster care from age 11, she dropped out of high school at 17. “Moving around affects us in school,” She said. “We’re scared. We don’t know anyone and we become a loner. It made staying in school too difficult.”
At 18, when Kalisha aged out, she lived with a cousin for six months. When that didn’t work out, she took a place of her own. But she quickly recognized she needed guidance and support. Since moving into Casa Valentina, Kalisha has graduated from high school and is now studying at Miami-Dade College. Although math is difficult for her, she aspires to a degree in accounting. “Math helps you do things in a smarter way,” she maintains.
Outcomes for Casa Valentina residents are well above those for other former Miami-Dade County foster youth. Sixty-eight percent earned high school diplomas, compared to 39%[†]. Ninety two percent delayed childbearing, compared to 66%. Fifty-four percent were employed while attending school full time, compared to 31%.
Casa Valentina’s statistics have steadily improved, and Chelsea Wilkerson, the former ED, believes the trajectory will continue. She readily acknowledges that Casa Valentina has suffered its growing pains, in part because the staff had little research to build upon when planning the venture. Just 25 years old, the field of independent living offers no evidence-based best practices. So the first five years were marked by trial and error. The board initially thought they could partner with Charlee, which provides care for youngsters up to age 23 who are in or have aged out of foster care, to provide the support services residents needed. But they quickly learned that Casa Valentina residents needed much more intensive care than Charlee could offer. Another problem: The girls were having trouble coming to terms emotionally with the enormous change taking place in their lives. Their adjustment improved dramatically when the staff adopted the Andrus Foundation’s Transitions Framework, which helps people distinguish characteristics of their former situation from those of their new situation and adapt their feelings and behavior accordingly.
So successful has Casa Valentina been that, in partnership with the Camillus House and Our Kids, it opened its first residence for boys in April 2011. The eight-apartment building houses a program modeled on Casa Valentina’s. In addition, although girls may not be pregnant when they move into Casa Valentina or stay on there if they become pregnant, Casa Valentina recently expanded its program to accommodate young mothers. The first family, an 18-year-old and her eight-month-old daughter, moved into Casa Valentina in December. Also, Casa Valentine is working with the University of Miami to study the long-term impact of their program.
Budget for Casa Valentina is approximately $500,000, 80% of which comes from grants.
Casa Valentina
2990 Southwest 35th AvenueMiami, FL 33133-3410
(305) 444-0740
www.casavalentina.org
