Ashley Rhodes-Courter Research Paper

“About two-thirds of children admitted to public care have experienced abuse and neglect, and many have potentially been exposed to domestic violence, parental mental illness and substance abuse” (Dregan and Gulliford). These children are being placed into foster care so that they can get away from home abuse, not so they can move closer towards it. The foster children’s varied outcomes of what their adult lives are is because of the different experiences they grew up with in their foster homes. The one-third of those other foster children usually has a better outcome in adult life than the other two-thirds, which is a big problem considering the high percentage of children being abused in their foster homes. Although, the foster care

Ashley Rhodes-Courter was three years old when police came to arrest her birth mother and place Ashley and her brother Luke in foster care. Nearly nine years later, shortly before her 12th birthday, Ashley finally moved in with Gail and Phil Courter, who would become her adoptive parents. At age 21, a recent college graduate, she decided to tell her story in a memoir to ensure that the voices of children in foster care would be heard. The result, Three Little Words, is a remarkable tribute to the strength of the human spirit.

They were immediately moved back to Florida to their new foster house which was not she pleasant. Their new foster home was packed to the brim full of foster kids. The conditions were terrible, and their foster parents screaming lunatics. Ashley and Luke were shortly moved out of that so called home and back to South Carolina to live with Adele. Ashley was sent back to Florida by herself this time. In Ashley’s life time she has been in 14 different foster homes. As well as talking to 44 caseworkers in only 9 years. Ashley at the age of 13, was finally adopted by this lovely

Ashley Wingo was born on January 29th 1996 to Chandra and Randy Wingo, and is the youngest of two children. Growing up as a child Ashley spent a lot of time in daycare which is where she learned that she has a competitive spirit. At two her mother signed her up for ice skating lessons, and at three she took dance lessons which she did not like except for the gymnastics. At four her dad signed her up for park and rec basketball which she loved playing and later that year she was signed up for soccer. One day when her dad picked her up from daycare he noticed that she was a really fast runner and could out run most of the kids at the daycare and beat them in foot races, that when her parents decide to sign her up with the Charlotte Flight track

Ashley is a young woman like many in today’s society born in 1985 to a single, teenage mother. However, her story is a success story. Therefore, she survived, although all odds were stacked against her. Due to her mother’s inability to provide for her, the Florida Foster Care System was her home from the tender age of 3 until her adoption at the age of twelve. During that decade, she resided in 14 different foster homes along with her brother. During this period, her brother and other children endured an abusive life which included beatings with a wooden paddle, starvation, made to drink homemade hot sauce, molestation and verbal abuse which led Ashley and her brother to attend a different school each time their foster home changed. She witnessed the tragedy of her uncle being shot and she experienced her own tragedy when thrown from a moving vehicle.

The author, Nina Biehal, tells of the treatment in foster care and the need for correction in her article, "Maltreatment in Foster Care: A review of the evidence." The author gives many facts about how the government needs to change the level of care provided for the children. This article is more of a constant reminder of how much still needs to change and the level of care offered to children of abuse today. Unlike the article by authors Kristen Turney and Christopher Wilderman, which bases their article on the number of children in foster care receiving mental health care, Biehal gives evidence to support the problems that result from being in foster care. My essay can use this article to paint a picture of the number of children in detrimental conditions and how foster care developed problems with their system to support my argument.

In the memoir Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter, Ashley did an outstanding job at showing me the challenges of foster care that I was not aware of. Throughout the whole memoir, Ashley has difficult things thrown at her that a girl her age shouldn’t and wouldn’t have known how to handle on her own. Ashley was taken away from her mother at only 3 years old, spending almost 10 years inside Florida’s foster care and was shuffled between 14 different homes, some quite abusive, before she was adopted at age 12 from a Children’s Home.

Ashley currently lives with her husband of two years. Her husband is a police officer. She is the oldest of three children (a younger brother and sister who still lives at home with her

Foster children struggle immensely within healthcare and the foster care system. They are not receiving the correct support to help them when they go out into the real world.Within foster care, children and teens can either go into a foster home or a group home. Group homes can prevent permanent and authentic connections, while in foster homes, adolescents experience abuse and they are aware that there is no long term stability. For fifteen years, Betsy Krebs has worked with teens in the foster care

adolescent boy and girls, are physically and sexually abused. CPS claims that among the children who enter foster care, most will

As many as 75 percent of foster kids are abused while in the foster care system. (Promise2Kids) Foster children, taken from inattentive relatives and put in custody of the state, suffer once again in foster care system that was supposed to keep them safe. While being abused by their foster parents, many children are too afraid to tell anyone. Without any trusted adults to speak out for them or listen, they are forced to bear abuse for over periods of time.

Abuse and Negligence from 1993 through 2002 there were 107 recorded deaths. There are approximately 400,000 children in out-of-home care, in the United States. Almost 10% of children in foster care have stayed in foster care for five or more years. The foster system keeps moving kids and they keep moving foster kids to foster homes that are inappropriate for the children. Nearly half of the children in foster care have chronic medical problem. My thoughts on that is half of the children in foster care have medical problems.The cause of that many foster children having medical problems is because of the foster homes that they put these children in. They are put in foster homes that obviously can’t take of a human being and doesn’t care about the kid or kids that they are supposed to keep them safe and take care of

This book is a memoir so it is all about Ashley’s life in the foster care program. Each chapter talks about the hardships she went through at all the different foster homes. Ashley was taken into foster care when she was only three years old. She was in 14 different homes in a total of nine years. She had a brother, Luke that was also in the foster care program with her. They were separated multiple times, but always ended up at the same foster home together. It was not until Ashley was adopted that they were separated for good. Ashley’s mom was in prison multiple times, she was also a drug addict. She had visitation rights, but her visitations were always supervised. At these visitations she always promised Ashley that she was going to turn her life around, and get both her and Luke back. It never happened; as a result, Ashley had a lot of trust issues and a hard time believing people actually cared for her. Ashley was adopted and had a tough first couple of years adjusting to having a family. It wasn’t until about the end of the book where she finally got used to having a real family.

She was adopted when she was 4. She was at a foster home when she was a little kid. This story has a lot of similarities with the story Nicole because both of them are black and have a white family but they don’t care what other people think about themselves. I don’t care if a person is black, white, Latino or whatever I just care about the personality. There are a lot of conflicts between their life's but they don’t have to give up. When you have a problem you got to find a way to get out of it or find a solution to it because it will end.

Ashley Reed was born on a warm Texas morning in June 1984. This blue eyed little girl was a huge surprise to everyone because they were all expecting a little boy. Named after an actress from a soap opera, this bundle of joy grew up as an only child, but shared a lot of time with cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Raised in the country, Reed had a passion for animals and getting dirty. There wasn’t anything that could stop this little tom- boy from jumping in a puddle of mud, climbing trees, or capturing wild horses.