The narrative so often heard about group homes suggests that staff are cold-hearted and rules are rigid, leaving the teenagers who live there feeling like they have no freedom and no voice. But that’s not always what foster youth placed in group homes experience.
“It just seemed more like a place where teenagers can actually rehabilitate, rather than just be contained somewhere like a criminal,” Lucero said.
Lucero’s story encourages us to look past the child who might be acting up, talking back or not wanting to engage–to look underneath the damage. Lucero admits she was a tough kid, but watching her now, in her early twenties, soon to graduate from the University of Southern California, you would never know it.
This is her story:
This video was produced by The Storyboard Project, an online documentary web-series created by Mira Zimet and Eric Weintraub.