{ SHIFT+CONTROL } { CHILDREN AWAITING PARENTS }
A CONVERSATION BY LAURI MCNIGHT
Gina Domingo, 36, biker and former foster youth has a story to tell. A story which may not be well known. She wants to spread the message that foster youth are kids who need families, who need support and have a voice that needs to be heard. So Gina has begun to speak out about her own experiences and the impact the foster care sys-tem had on her life.
people who have taken her “under their wing” and sup-ported her, but disclosed that she wishes she had an adoptive family to give her long term stability and unconditional love and support that she never had. We know that every child in foster care has a unique experience, but there are certain commonalities shared amongst most all of them. Because of Gina’s own experiences, she under-stands
We first learned of Gina when she contacted Children Awaiting Parents’ (CAP) Ex-ecutive Director Lauri McKnight. After seeing the agency’s mission to find foster youth a forever family, Gina was extremely excited and passionate during our first connection. She shared some of her personal experiences and why she and motorcycle groups like the Kendaia Kingz, are committed to helping CAP youth. THE EXPERIENCE Gina was 9 years old when she first went into foster care. The victim of an abusive sit-uation, Gina went through multiple placements and had even been hospitalized and in several group homes in addition to foster home placements. Gina stated she had some good experiences and some not-so-good experiences. Of the handful of foster homes, there were some she believed truly loved her. “But I just couldn’t handle that” she says, thinking the families really loved her as their own. Gina moved through the system with a constant desire to be adopted. She expresses that over the years, she had 128
ROCHESTER WOMAN ONLINE : MAY/JUNE EDITION 2021
the emotions that youth experience such as feeling alone, helpless, like a com-plete outcast from the rest of the world. Unfortunately, like many of her foster peers, Gi-na’s experiences taught her that if her own family did not want or could not take care of her, what makes her think a stranger would.
THE IMPACT Lack of permanency impacts youth in the foster system through their teen years and into adulthood. Children do not just become healed once they leave the system. The impact stays with them. For Gina, the lack of stability had the biggest effect on her--not having that loving, forever family. “I am still that same girl who moved with trash bags up until my most recent move as an adult when I used actual boxes.” That is what chil-dren like Gina learn moving from home to home in the system. The lack of support im-pacted her entire life – she became what we now know as “one of the statistics.” Of the youth who age out of foster care without a support system, 20% become homeless, pregnant or incarcerated in the first 18 months. For Gina, this included becoming a teen mom, and eventually becoming a young mother to five children, without the stabil-ity of longterm relationships. Youth who have been frequently moved through the sys-tem often have attachment issues and struggle to build and maintain long term rela-tionships. For Gina, “always having to make sacrifices that she should never have had to make, would have been different if she had a solid family. And Gina is passionate about sending a strong message to teens today. She wants them to know what she would say to her 15-year-old self if she could...”I would say let someone love you (Gina), be-cause you deserve it. You don’t have to do this alone just because
