Child Focus helped mom overcome foster care challenges

As she hugs her infant daughters this Mother’s Day, Jetta Galler knows they are receiving a better start in life than she had.

Through her own formidable determination, and help from her friends, she is making sure that happens.

The 21-year-old married mom just received her EKG certification from the College of Southern Nevada and has a job interview scheduled for Monday at University Medical Center. Daughters Evelynn and Abbygael will know the love and care Jetta didn’t receive from her own mom.

Jetta and her brother Carl were abandoned by a drug-addicted mother at an early age, raised for several years by an overwhelmed grandparent, then separated and sent to a series of local foster homes in a storyline that has become all too common in Southern Nevada. Drug-addicted parents breed failure and dysfunction into their offspring, and it takes a mighty, collective effort to lead them in a healthy direction.

With each disruption in her young life, the odds of Jetta emerging with hope for a positive future grew longer.

That’s where Child Focus came in.

The local organization is devoted to filling gaps in the foster care system. It helps young people in foster care with services ranging from a scholarship incentive program to the operation of the summertime Camp to Belong Nevada, which brings together siblings separated by circumstance and the system. The scholarships give children hope. The camp offers respite and the innocent joy that so often eludes them.

Jetta built a scholarship fund, was mentored during tough times, maintained a relationship with brother Carl through Camp to Belong, and even received help with rent after she turned 18 with the assistance of Child Focus.

“They’ve helped me out in a lot of ways,” the young woman says. “They actually used to help me with my rent once I aged out of care. I wouldn’t have been able to get by without all the help they’ve given me.”

Life’s odds weigh heavily against foster children, Child Focus Executive Director Ellen Lloyd says.

Nearly half of children in foster care won’t finish high school. More than 40 percent of America’s prison population lived in foster care. Half the homeless children on the street were in foster care, and girls from the system are three times as likely to become pregnant as teenagers.

Jetta knows all about the odds and is beating them. While in foster care, she took part in the Child Focus scholarship incentive program and accrued $6,000 toward her education after high school.

“Being in foster care, I wanted to go to college, but of course I didn’t have parents saving up for me,” she says. “It’s really nice to know the money was guaranteed to me, to help me better my life so that I can better my kids’ lives.”

Sounds logical enough. Almost easy, in fact.

It’s anything but simple, Lloyd says. Broken homes often mean broken lives.

“Jetta is unusual,” Lloyd says. “We have so few teenagers who really have a goal once they age out of foster care.”

Most were too busy trying to survive and cope to look ahead.

Although Jetta is proud of what she has begun to accomplish, she says there’s no secret to being an exception to those grim statistics. She received help along the rough road, and she has maintained what might politely be described as a chip on her shoulder. She lets no one tell her she can’t do something she sets her mind to.

“I’m more of a person who, if you tell me I can’t do something, I’ll do it to prove you wrong,” she says.

Adds Lloyd, “Jetta is a great success story. She is what we strive for. In our view of the world, she’s a successful, independent adult.”

And perhaps more importantly, this determined young mother is a role model for her own daughters.

John L. Smith’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.