Graded Response 11 - Roberts vs. "As Us Who We Are" (option 1)

The movie and the film presented issues related to foster care in the United States, however the each went about addressing the issues in different ways. The film “Ask Us Who We Are” mainly presented the issues of foster care based on the experiences of the children who have lived through it. In contrast Robert’s book, as far as we have read, focuses mainly on how parents have been wronged by the foster care system. The adolescents featured in the movie all acknowledged that the situation at their home, when they were living with their parents, was not a good situation and environment to be raised in. Essentially they recognized the fact that there were legitimate reasons for them to be removed from their homes and placed in foster care. On the other hand in Robert’s book she has chosen to focus on cases in which children were removed from homes that she seemed to believe were safe and loving homes, the parents were just lacking some resources.

            Another somewhat surprising aspect of the film was that they majority of foster children featured were white. While this may be related to the demographics of the state of Vermont, of which I am not familiar, but seems to quiet to some extent Roberts stance on how horrible foster care is for African American families. The film showed that foster care was hard for children regardless of race. Roberts, states in her book that, “Black children…fare worse under the state’s supervision,” (13). However, in the film both the black children featured and the white children featured both seemed to be harmed to the same extent by their experiences in the foster care system.

            I think that because the film presents more of the children’s perspective, while the book presents foster care from more of the parent’s view, they are both plausible, believable, accounts of experiences people can have in the foster care system. They both show, however, that both the parents and the children’s rights to autonomy are being violated by being unable to make choices to control what is happening in their lives. I believe they just look at foster care from two different perspectives.  


-- Mary S.