Shelly’s Story

Imagine the puzzling nature of child care through a child’s eye.  Shelly’s story illustrates what America’s children face every day.

Shelly was removed from her home because she was being abused by her father.  Many of you know girls just like her.  The 15-year-old was failing in school, using marijuana, ran away repeatedly, and was defiant toward authority.  She had no one to love her; you could see it in her eyes.

Shelly became a ward of the state and a judge ordered her over-worked case worker to find a placement for her late on a Friday afternoon. Working from her cell phone while driving between appointments, this social worker knew Boys Town was her best option.  But she already placed two children here in the past month.  Her supervisor told the social worker to not send any more because of budget concerns. In spite of her judgment that foster care was not appropriate, the social worker sent Shelly to one of her best foster families - one she could really count on.  

Within days, Shelly’s anger and frustration peaked.  She refused to go to school, stayed out all night, hit one of the foster parent’s natural children, and, when given consequences, tore up her bedroom, using the glass from her broken mirror to cut her arm.

She was taken to the emergency room and then to an adolescent psychiatric unit before coming to Boys Town’s Long-Term Residential program.  In the costly process, Shelly destroyed one of the state’s best foster families.  They quit. 

This sad story epitomizes what is wrong with our current fragmented system of care - a system you know all too well.

Imagine how different her story could be six years from now when we have linked our services together to provide an integrated continuum of care:

Shelly would immediately be placed in a Residential Treatment Center, Treatment Group Home or Short-Term Residential Center for an evaluation of all the environmental factors which lead to her need for care.  A team of people would come to her aid, creating an individual treatment plan and placing her in the right level of care, which for her was our Long-Term Residential Program.  As Shelly improves her behaviors, she moves down the continuum of care to Treatment Foster Care or even is allowed to go home to her mother, who has taken our Common Sense Parenting® classes and removed the abusive spouse from her life.  Shelly learns skills at each level that are useful at the next level and would help her throughout her life.  Shelly’s mom also knows to call our Hotline if she ever needs help and has Common Sense Parenting and other books from our Boys Town Press.

• While in our care, Shelly receives the best medical care she has ever known.  She finds out she is among the 10 percent of children whom we discover has an underlying medical condition and she has the ability to access the medical services she needs to get help.

• Shelly begins attending a school which uses our FAME^® reading program and Well-Managed Classroom model to help bring her up to grade level and succeed academically for the first time in her life.

• Shelly also receives life-long benefits from the moral and spiritual elements of our program, working to become a person of character with a strengthened prayer life and religious practices.

In addition to Shelly’s success, the caseworker is able to help more children like Shelly. She trusts our services are able to do the right things for her supervisor and her foster families, producing successful outcomes in a cost-effective manner.