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By Root 256 0

lot of new people were brought in to help straighten things out and to get them running in a better way to actually meet the needs of the kids in the state instead of just shuffling papers--and kids--around. Now, the Tennessee Department of Children's Services has some great people in charge, and I think it will make a huge difference in the kind of care the kids in the system receive. In fact, Tennessee is now one of only six states in the nation that has special accreditation for how it handles children in state custody. Back when Ms. Spivey was handling my family's case, she was also in charge of about twenty others--not twenty other kids, but twenty other families. That was the normal workload for someone in her position. Now, with the new system, a social worker usually has fewer than ten family cases to manage at once. Obviously, that is a huge improvement and makes a big difference in the amount of time and energy they can give to helping each child under their care.

But sometimes a system has to hit rock-bottom before it can be replaced with something better. Sadly, I was a part of the system right before the lawsuit brought all the problems to light, so a lot of the information and records about my life have been lost. What I have been able to find, though, has been amazing to study and jogged a lot of memories I'd thought were gone forever. I've also learned some new things I never knew before about my family and what all was really going on around me when I was too little to really understand it.

CARLOS AND I WERE TAKEN from Coleman Elementary in the afternoon and brought to the home of a woman named Velma Jones, not too far away. It was a cream-colored house with burgundy shutters and a wide front porch. It wasn't very big, but it was clearly the meeting place for the entire Jones family.

Velma, or "Twin," as everyone called both her and her sister, Thelma, was--and still is--one of the most energetic and involved ladies I know. Even though she is older now and has to use a motorized scooter to get around, she is still constantly on the go, doing some kind of community work anywhere that needs her.

Each twin had several foster kids at her home. At Velma's, besides just Carlos and me, there were four boys who I remember specifically, but I can't use their names because of privacy laws. One had bad asthma and it was always a challenge for him to keep up if we were playing outside. Twin also had a biological son about my age named Aaron, as well as a biological daughter, who was quite a bit older than us. Aside from the grown-ups, I was probably the tallest kid of the bunch already, even though a couple of them were several years older than me. In all, there were nine people--seven of whom were little boys--living in one tiny house. In that way, it kind of felt like being at home. But Twin managed to keep everything and everyone in line in a way that was definitely different from anything I'd encountered before.

We had a strict bedtime and chores to do, like washing the dishes and making sure our beds were made and our rooms were clean before we left for school. My new school was Shannon Elementary, just a few blocks away from Twin's house, so we could walk there each morning. It was a redbrick building and looked like pretty much every other school I'd ever attended, but it felt bigger because it was all on one floor. It was kept neater-looking than most of my other schools, but it had kind of a saggy look to it, almost as if it was tired from years of serving the neighborhood.

Twin was strict about making sure that we always went to school. She taught GED classes at the community center, and she was very focused on education because she saw what people had to go through as adults if they dropped out of school when they were younger.

That was tough to get used to at first--getting ready for school every morning. Carlos and I had never had anyone stay on top of us like that to make sure that we were out of bed, finished with homework, and on our way to school in time for the first bell. When we lived