Beyond the Bench 2009

          So, I recently had the opportunity to attend Humboldt County's Beyond the Bench 2009: Our Youth - Creating the Future, (follow this link for a local story on the workshop). At first it was a bit nerve-wracking as one of their attempts at encouraging collaboration was to have different county departments have a specific color tag, and for no two tags of the same color to be at any one table. I understand why it's a cool idea, but I am an awkward human being and was happy to find a bit of a loophole by sitting with interns from other agencies and with my friend Rochelle, from HCTAYC. By far the best parts of the day for me were, firstly, "In Their Own Words", a video comprising of various former foster youth telling the story of their time in the system, what worked and what didn't, and what they think the system needs to better help future foster youth. The only aspect of this I struggled with was the way it was followed up by one of the speakers saying something along the lines of that it was important to hear the opinions of these youth, even if we know they just don't understand. She basically compared it to her daughter thinking she was mean for being strict about something, and later down the line realizing mom was right all along.

Empowering, right?

          Really, I think I understand where the speaker was coming from. We had some foster parents in the room who would be presenting soon, and it was important to not make them feel like they were there to be accused of being abusive, or greedy, or whatever else many of the foster youth had experienced, but this is one of those uncomfortable moments that will stem from attempts at honest airing of grievances with the system, and it's important to not take this personally, but to take it as a challenge to improve, without invalidating the complaints of others with "Well, I don't do that", nor to invalidate the good works of others with a simple "Well, no one's ever done that for me". As HCTAYC presented later, and gave many simple, valuable, tips and tricks for incorporating and valuing the input of youth, Rochelle said it best: Don't tokenize. Don't bring in other groups just to pat yourself on the back and say "we're so open-minded", because having an open door is Not the same as having an open mind.