Overcoming Foster Care (stage 3)
**All additional funds raised will go to the next stage and festival submissions and paying crew members who volunteered their time for the shoot**
Thank you all for your help. I will be going back out in May.
I am also looking for people to interview in the Los Angeles area, including Nuro Doctors and Psychologist.
This is stage 3 of my documentary Overcoming Foster Care.
Stage 2 - I will be interviewing people in FL, MI, OH, GA, MO, KY, WA, and any in between that I can book during this time. I will be interviewing people who have become foster parents, big brothers/sisters to foster kids as well as former foster kids. I will also try to get some social service agencies and institutions that house foster kids to go on the record.
Production costs – Stage 3 only
Car/SUV rental 21 days $1,243.38
Car Insurance $351.00 (through the website)
Hotels 3 nights $300.00 (will sleep in the car the other nights)
Gas $ 800.00
Sound equipment $100.00 (buy and use on other projects)
2 C-Stands rentals $160.00
Black backdrop $60.00
$25 -
• I will express my eternal gratitude to you on my Instagram @theLuvLeighAn and on the film's social media pages: @GoddessProduct2 on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Just message me your handles that you want to be tagged
$45 -
• Your name will appear in the Special Thanks on the movie’s website
• I will express my eternal gratitude to you on my Instagram @theLuvLeighAn and on the film's social media pages: @GoddessProduct2 on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Just message me your handles that you want to be tagged
$200 -
• Get a thank you on IMDb. The website that tracks all movies
• Receive a digital copy of the movie poster
• your name will appear in the Special Thanks on the movie’s website
• I will express my eternal gratitude to you on my Instagram @theLuvLeighAn and on the film's social media pages: @GoddessProduct2 on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Just message me your handles that you want to be tagged
$3,000 -
• Receive an Associate Producer credit in the film, you'll also get an official IMDB credit
• You'll get an invitation to the private premiere at a theatre in Los Angeles. Meet the cast and crew. (It will be your responsibility to pay for your way to the premiere in Los Angeles)
• This is a 1-hour, virtual conference with the filmmakers! Have a script you need feedback on? Production advice on your film? Or just an idea you want to flesh out? We'd love to help!
• You'll get a signed poster
• Polaroid taken on set with a handwritten thank you from me
• Thank you on IMDb
• Receive a digital copy of the movie poster
• Your name will appear in the Special Thanks on the movie’s website
• I will express my eternal gratitude to you on my Instagram @theLuvLeighAn and on the film's social media pages: @GoddessProduct2 on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Just message me your handles that you want to be tagged
$6,000 -
• Your name will be in the credits! As a bona fide Executive Producer, you will also get an official IMDB credit
• You'll get an invitation to the private premiere at a theatre in Los Angeles. Meet the cast and crew. (It will be your responsibility to pay for your way to the premiere in Los Angeles)
• This is a 1-hour, virtual conference with the filmmakers! Have a script you need feedback on? Production advice on your film? Or just an idea you want to flesh out? We'd love to help!
• You'll get a signed poster
• Polaroid taken on set with a handwritten thank you from me
• Thank you on IMDb
• Receive a digital copy of the movie poster
• Your name will appear in the Special Thanks on the movie’s website
• I will express my eternal gratitude to you on my Instagram @theLuvLeighAn and on the film's social media pages: @GoddessProduct2 on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Just message me your handles that you want to be tagged
This is a documentary that about what it is like to be a foster kid, and the problems we face after we age out of the system.
* More than 50% of us end up homeless when we age out.
* About half of the prison population were foster between the ages of 13 and 18.
* We also have problems socializing and keeping employment after the trauma we suffer in the system.
My documentary will shed like on this BUT also show what is NEEDED to help us function at the same level as those that have families. The programs needed to make sure we know how to look for and pay for apartments and get the mental support needed to ensure we can function in society.
Overcoming Foster Care
SUMMARY –
Over Coming Foster Care documentary will cover the following issues kids face in and after the foster care system.
I will do street interviews getting the public input, group interviews of current and former foster kids, and one on one interviews of foster kids. I will also interview several foster parents and social workers. It is also very important to interview clinical psychiatrists to understand the trauma that happens to children in foster care.
How and why kids enter foster care
What life is really like for the foster youth
How many kids are per social works caseload
What is the court process
What is lifelike after foster care
Advocacy programs
What is the percentage of foster kids that go to college or make anything out of their life
How many foster kids end up on the streets, or dead after foster care
How many inmates were foster kids
What programs are needed to improve the lives of foster kids
Advertisement for Overcoming Foster Care
TREATMENT/SYNOPSIS –
Is there hope for foster kids? After all, only bad kids end up in foster care, right? That is what people thought when I was in foster care. That I had to of done something to put myself there. Even if you can get through the different philosophies as to why a kid is in foster care. You still have the treatment of them.
My story is only one story, but it tells some of what foster kids live through, so I will tell you some of my stories so you can understand what life is like for us in and out of foster care, in hope of you supporting this documentary and telling the story of ten other foster kids both in and out of foster care.
The struggles they have had to live through, the hardships they face daily. Granted some areas like Los Angeles have a bigger network for foster kids but small towns and reservations have little to no funding for foster kids nor any help after they age out.
I am doing this documentary for four reasons,
Foster kids know they are not alone in the world
Others can see and understand foster kids and not be so heartless
More funding can go into foster care that will actually make the lives of foster kids better. Including housing, medical, education, and extracurricular activities.
People will find my Goddess Foundation that will help foster kids or start their own to help foster kids AFTER aging out.
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Norming / storming / etc.
I know foster care is not a normal group, but I found that every stage of my life as a foster kid could be put into these five categories
Norming – I entered the court system
Storming - I fought everyone so I could be my own person. I did not want a family I had already been thrown away by 2 two different bloodlines of my family including my biological.
Forming – learning my place in every foster home, detention center, group home, not always like it, mind you. And even though I did not always perform as if I understood I did and I just disagreed.
Which means I was not able to enter the performing stage. Some foster kids like my sister are able to adapt to whatever environment they are placed in.
Before I became a foster kid, I was very shy, very quiet, never in a million years would I think to talk back to an adult, or anyone for that matter.
Granted I did have my moments where I would tell someone off usually it was a bully picking on a younger kid. But something snapped in me as I crossed from Michigan to Ohio. I was only 13 but I know I would not have to fear someone beating me or forcing me to do sexual acts anymore. Well, it turned out that I was wrong because it did keep happening, but this time I could fight back without fear of my sister being killed if I spoke out against the abuse. The worst that could happen now if I spoke out was being moved from one placement to another
Forming – blending in
Storming – not wanting to change myself
Norming – learning what is wrong and why I should change
Preforming – learning what I can keep from me to stay authentic but change enough to be productive in mainstream society
Adjourning – saying goodbye to the foster care mentality and hello to a brighter future.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Self-actualization – realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth, and peak experiences
Esteem – independence, status, managerial, achievement, responsibility, self-esteem, prestige
Social – belonging, love, work, group, family, affection
Safety – protection from elements, security, order, law, limits, stability
Physiological – air, food, drink, shelter, warmth
Foster kids get
- Air
- Some food and drink
- Shelter – not always safe
Foster kids are not offered
- Stability
- Security
- Affection
- Family
- Belonging/love
- Self-esteem
- Status (positively)
- Realize realizing personal potential
- Self-fulfillment
- Seeking personal growth
- Peak experiences) football games, dances, sports, parties)
Toxic shame
What is my toxic shame?
As foster kids, we develop toxic shame because we have been thrown away one too many times.
But until we realize that there is no shame in our life as a foster kid, we will never get rid of this toxic emotion.
What can be a toxic shame?
· Being a foster kid
· Being molested
· Lack of family and friends’ support
· What makes you ashamed to tell people about your childhood/abuse
That would be a toxic shame.
As foster kids we enter the system - this would be called forming
· We enter a group
We become foster kids
We figure out how the system works, and how we will act
We repeat this every time we move to a new placement. We may never get past this if we move often. This stage is called storming
· When you accept your role as a foster kid and are willing to accept constructive criticism you have entered forming.
· But if we could only go one step further, to performing, we could find peace with being a foster kid, we would shed our toxic shame and we would achieve our personal and professional goals in a timely manner and become productive Americans. Then we can adjourn from being a foster kid
However, this step is not easy to achieve. We have to make an effort to overcome our time as a foster kid.
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Me as a kid
MY STORY – for reference to the stories you will hear.
My story is a hard one for me to tell as I have not dealt with many of my childhood issues as I should have. Also, not this is just a summary, and the full story is in the book I am writing about the first 20 years of my life.
I was the second live birth of my parents, they did not want kids, but between the drugs and parting, they found time to pop three of us out, that lived anyways.
By the time I was three, the state took my sisters and I away from our parents. My younger sister whom I have never met is said to have been adopted by a doctor and his wife somewhere in Michigan.
My older sister and I were adopted by our biological uncle and his wife because it was the duty of the family to take care of the kids. The bad part was that the family hated our father. And so, we lived the next ten years of our life in a very abusive family. Our extended family treated us like the unwanted stepchild that they had to include in things. Our adopted parents abused us in every way thinkable, including our adopted father rapping is from the age of seven until we left the home when I was 13.
Because junior high school would not agree like elementary school did that, they could punish us any way they wanted to, they shipped us to our birth father. But less than two months with him, he dropped me off at the courthouse, and despite the court's attempt to keep replacing us with him and contacting our adopted parents. We became wards of the state as abandoned kids.
We were promised a better life. But that was far from it. My sister and I were separated and rarely saw each other. Which strained our already rocky relationship from the sexual abuse we suffered together.
I was in close to one hundred placements from the age of 13 to 18. Twice children's services rented out a hospital room because they had nowhere to put me. The first time it was great I was treated well, but the second time they forgot about me even when it came to mealtime.
I was in foster homes that accused me as a 13-year-old rape victim of being racist because I would not date 20 plus-year-old black men. First off, I did not know what they meant by me being racist and prejudiced. I had never heard of such things. Two I did not like any old guys, third I had been rapped for 6 years by an older guy, why would I want to date an older guy.
That was my second foster home.
Placements did not get any better. I was free labor for all of them. One family owned their own company and after I worked my summer job (which I did not get my paychecks, to this day I do not know where there are at) I had to go to their company and work, then go home and clean the house. If I tried to hang out with friends (not that I had many) they called the cops and said I ran away. When I finally said I was not going to work for free for them, I was still forced to just sit there all summer.
I had another foster mom try to kill me, by overdosing me on meds. I had come to her after the other foster parents would not believe that I was sick, and while everyone else was gone the foster mom took out in the middle of winter and left me in the car with no coat or blanket and would not even run the car so I could have heat. When we got back to the house, she demanded that I clean her house if I was not going to go to school. I was sick and told her no and went to bed. She came in there yelling and threatening me. She even picked up a large glass picture frame and held it up over her head ready to bring it down on my head.
I told her she better think twice before hitting me with that because she will be in jail for a very long time.
She froze long enough for me to roll out of bed and through the door. Barefoot in the snow, I ran to the closest neighbor’s house out in the country, which was a family of hers. The wife was the only one home and let me in to call my work and tell her what happened. But my foster mom called the house and threatened the lady if she let me stay there. So, she kidded me out in the freezing cold. Snow up to my knees I walks into the woods where the kids from the two families had a fort, and that is where I slept until I heard the cars and commotion. When I came out my temporary worker was there and the foster father. He begged me to stay. I told him no, that his wife is unstable, and I was afraid of her.
I ended up in the hospital with a temperature of 104%; that is hard to fake. That foster mom did send me an apology letter as if that would make up for it.
Group homes here are no better. My first one was nice mostly, the second one was not so much. on my 14th birthday I got in trouble because I would not do other girls’ chores. They were giving her a birthday cake and singing her happy birthday, and I would not join in. this made everyone mad. Then staff told me I was to do her chores because it was her birthday, she did not have to.
I told them that under that logic I should not have to do my own chores, and I did not. I even pointed out how crud it was that they are giving her a birthday cake and gifts and not me when it is also my birthday. I got into trouble and wrote up. No one seemed to care or understand the pain and hatred I felt. Both because of what was happening and because I finally realized no one would ever care about me. I would always be left out of everything.
If the workers at the group home did not like you, they allowed the residents to beat on you, and it would be a long while before they would intervene.
And I was not always liked, because I did not act like others. My mental compacity was stunted in many ways, while still acting older than others. Also, I lost my fear when I left Michigan. Maybe it was the fact I was not around my sister, and no one could threaten her life to keep me quiet. To this day I do not fear death, there is nothing anyone can do nor say to break me. I already broke and I am still alive. Anger is the only emotion I felt anymore. Even today I lack logical human emotions. I find no logic in them.
Foster kids go into the system looking for a safe healthy place to live, and they often come out more damage than when they went in, causing social issues. Society does not want to deal with them and throw us away, just like everyone did when we were kids. Most foster kids vanish on the streets, getting involved in drugs and prostitution.
A few try and make something of their life, and they give it a good fight. But often giving up, leaving kids behind that now must enter the same system that damaged them. A few of us make it look like we are making it. We hold jobs just long enough to pay some bills, some of us will even go to college. Which is 2% of foster kids will attempt college. Even less will finish college.
Maybe if people understand what is happening and how to help more foster kids, things can get better for them, and they will have a fighting chance to become productive citizens.
I will collect interviews for two documentaries.
Overcoming Foster Care ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8914548/reference ) - will shed light on the long-term trauma that we face during our time in the system and after we age out. I will also cover the lack of programs to help foster kids survive after.
I will list the programs that need to be created to help ensure that we do not end up on the street (over 50% of foster kids end up homeless) or in prison (50% of inmates were foster kids) or end up dead.
Less than 2% of foster kids attempt college; that is lower than minorities in poor communities.
Most people believe that it is the child’s fault that they end up in the system. A system where they are abused and treated as free labor in the homes and at the foster parents’ jobs.
I want to explain to people what it is like being a foster kid and the issues we face when we age out and how they can help (including governments) to improve our chances of being productive citizens after we age out.
The other documentary I will be collecting interviews on during this road trip is
The Victimless Crime ( https://pro.imdb.com/title/tt8914558/?ref_=nm_filmo_filminprod_2 )
The way the laws are written people get more time for using or selling drugs than someone that rapes a child. With this documentary, I hope to change the laws so this is not true, while also pointing out how we can overcome this trauma with help from others. So, it does not affect us our whole life.
Which any rape does, especially when it happens to us when we are so young.
About me -
I was born to drug addicts that did not want kids and soon lost custody of my two sisters and myself. My older sister (my younger adopted to someone else) and I was adopted by our birth fathers’ brother and his much older wife. We lived through every type of abuse one could think of including being raped from the age of 7 to 13. When they shipped us to our birth fathers to keep my Jr. High School from reporting them for abuse when my swim teacher has seen burses on my back.
I did not live with my birth father long before he tried burning me (while burning my bedding) alive because I wanted to go to sleep at 3 am for the school bus at 5 am (he lived in the country).
The courts finally took me as a foster kid and soon after my older sister joined the ranks of foster kids.
My first foster home wanted me to sleep with a man in his 30’s to prove that I was not a racist. I did not even know what that word meant. But I did know I did not want to have sex. But this would not be the last abuse I would live through.
I was used as free labor both in the home and at one of the family’s businesses after I got done working my summer job. I never saw my paycheck from my first two summer jobs (I started working when I was 16). It was the older foster kids’ job to care for the younger ones while cleaning the house. And if we did not go to church, we had to do what most people call spring cleaning every Sunday.
Even though we had to cook the meals, all the cupboards and frig were padlock. The evidence was on there, but the social workers never believed us. Or the parents would lie and say we were stealing food. But I was used to going without meals from my time with my adopted parents.
Mental and physical abuse is not the only abuse that we serve. Foster kids on average move 8 times, I moved over 25 times from 13 to 18 when I aged out. This transferred to adulthood. But it took me years to learn that the reason I move every three months or that I cannot keep a job and have no friends is because of my childhood. Both in my adopted years as well as my foster years.
I did not like what I saw when I did an enteral evaluation of myself. It has been hard to fix the trauma I have lived through. And I do not want others to live through this their entire adult life.
So, I decided to start this project where I can help current and ex foster kids overcome being a foster kid, faster than it took me, so they can hope for being more than a druggy, a prostitute, homeless, or in prison. Think they can only live a low-level life because foster kids do not make it in life. Always feeling unloved, feeling that sex is the only way to get love. Or worse never get into a relationship in fear of being hurt or having a kid that gets raped by your partner.
Besides this fundraiser, I am also selling stuff on Etsy to help fund these two film projects and my short films to showcase my writing and directing skills.
You can find out more about me and my projects at the following links.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3617523/?ref_=tt_rv
https://luvleighan.wixsite.com/goddessproductions
https://luvleighan5.wixsite.com/luvleighan-clark
https://luvleighan.wixsite.com/goddessproductions/over-coming-foster-care-documentary
https://luvleighan.wixsite.com/goddessproductions/the-vitcimless-crime
https://luvleighan.wixsite.com/goddessproductions/shorts-1
https://twitter.com/Goddess_Product2
https://www.instagram.com/theluvleighan/
https://www.facebook.com/LuvLeighAn
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Over.Coming.Foster.Care/
