Lifetime Movie about Foster Care airs Saturday

by Pam Connell | More from this Blogger

27 Feb 2009 04:59 PM

Tomorrow night (Saturday February 28), the cable channel Lifetime will air an original movie about the foster care system, and more specifically about the dilemma of one teen, raised in foster care (and sometimes abused there), about to turn 18 and "age out" of the system. The teen's name is America, which is also the title of the movie.

I have written a past blog, detailing how teens in foster care are usually literally turned out on the streets on their 18th birthday. Often still in high school, it is a nearly insurmountable task to pay for an apartment, work, finish school, apply for higher education, and all those other things most teens take for granted. This dilemma leaves this particular boy suicidal.

The movie's executive producer is controversial comic and talk-show host Rosie O'Donnell, herself an adoptive and foster mother. O'Donnell also portrays a therapist in the movie.

As you may recall, O'Donnell took on single parenthood by adopting an infant boy and then an infant girl. She then fostered a three-year-old girl. I am not sure if the girl she fostered is the girl who eventually became O'Donnell's third child or not. O'Donnell has recently been the stay-at-home parent of four (her partner Kelli gave birth to daughter Vivianne).

While I take issue with quite a few of Rosie's statements and actions, I must acknowledge that she has been an advocate for kids in foster care, featuring an article about waiting children in nearly every issue of her magazine. She also wrote very poignantly of her foster daughter's reaction to situations which prompted her to think about her birthmother.

O'Donnell was involved with the Home for the Holidays TV Special, which united celebrities to advocate for adoption and promoted adoption, profiling waiting children and finding homes for many.

Years before their turbulent time together on The View, O'Donnell was interviewed by Barbara Walters in a TV show on adoption. I remember that both women acknowledged that while they were sometimes seen as "women who could do it all" (raise children while having high-powered careers), they were very frank about saying that they weren't role models; they fully realized that their finances allowed them to arrange their schedules and hire help so that their kids could be with them. One of them (I can't remember whether it was Walters or O'Donnell) said, "The waitress supporting five kids, she's MY role model."

Check your local listing for the exact time of the Lifetime movie Saturday night.

Learn more about Pam Connell

Pam Connell is a mother of three by both birth and adoption. She has worked in education, child care, social services, ministry and journalism.

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