My daughter has recently become friends with a girl who has had a tough life. Let’s call her Sarah. In a very short time the two seem to have become fairly close. I’ve met Sarah several times, and from what I’ve seen I really like her. She seems like an incredibly good kid whose biggest “crime” is to have been born poor and not picking the right parents. She is serious about school (currently getting 2 A’s, 2 B’s, and a C). My daughter is also serious; she is our top concern. Before all this happened, Sarah was just a new friend and my daughter had been spending a lot of time at her house, studying. Not 100% studying, I am sure, but my daughter was getting done what needed to be done (and she has straight A’s, for the first time in her life, lol). She broke my heart yesterday when I offered her a bowl of soup, and she told me she wasn’t hungry. I insisted that she take a taste and then decide, which she did and then agreed to have a bowl. I think she said no because she was being polite since we hadn’t officially invited her to dinner at that point.
Sarah’s background is unusual, to put it mildly. She has been living for the past seven months with the pastor (and his wife) of her church (not ours, we are “fallen UU’s”, lol), who volunteered to take her in to help her and the family out. Apparently her father has been involved with many women and now is living in a teeny, tiny trailer (we’ve seen it, the outside) with her three younger brothers (who don’t all have the same mother). “Sarah” had been living there too until she got the offer from the pastor. There are also 3 older brothers, one living abroad and two living in a nearby city (and having problems paying the rent). The mother has mental issues and is in prison now. Pastor is apparently very rich, which is beside the point but really bugs me; my daughter had been spending a lot of time over at their house, told me with stars in her eyes that it was the nicest house that she had ever seen (and she’s actually seen some pretty nice houses).
Long story short, on Sunday the pastor was approached by an ex-boyfriend of hers (19 month relationship). Apparently the pastor has his eyes on this boy to take over the pastor-ship of the church, and had thought the boy and Sarah were going to marry. But the boy is upset that Sarah called things off, and so approached the pastor out of spite and revealed certain dirty laundry about her. “He told them I had partied,” alcohol was involved, no drugs, I don’t know if anything else. Pastor freaked, has a position to maintain; had been upset that Sarah wasn’t going to church as much as he wanted her to. Decided to kick Sarah out without getting her side of the story. Dropped Sarah off at Dad’s trailer the same day that he talked to boyfriend, without talking to Dad. Just dropped Sarah off. Apparently pastor’s daughter had an abortion at 17, pastor did the same thing to his own daughter, just kicked her out. Tough love.
We met Dad, he is a cook, seems like a nice guy who hasn’t been the most responsible person but is trying to be a somewhat responsible Dad. Sarah is on good terms with him and her brothers, the primary issue seems to be poverty rather than anything else.
Anyhoo, when Sarah got kicked out my daughter asked us if she could stay with us because she had no other place to go. Our response was, what?, we wanted to know more information. Sarah has spent two nights with her Dad back in the trailer. We are living in Silicon Valley in one of the better communities, but not the most prestigious ones. However, our schools are admired so fraud happens to get kids who don’t live here into the schools. Sarah’s Dad actually lives somewhere that qualifies her to go to a “better” high school than ours, so the issue is not that she want’s to go to DD’s school, it’s really that she doesn’t have a good living situation.
Hubby and I have a strange financial situation. We are currently house-rich and cash poor. We do have enough to allow Sarah to live with us, and by that I mean house and feed her. But we’ve been struggling ourselves to change the “cash poor” situation, and are worried that if we take her in we will get sucked into much larger expenses (such as medical, and clothing, and geez louise I don’t even know what else). Older engineers, age discrimination, yada yada yada.
So my question to this wonderful community is: What resources do you know about that we/Sarah might be able to take advantage of? For example, I think she’s been going to a free clinic for healthcare. I think she should be eligible for something called CHIP (in CA it gives all kids access to health insurance?) Would she/we be eligible for foodstamps in order to help with the expenses? That kind of thing. Could we/should we look into becoming foster parents? Are there huge downsides to that we should know about?
I think Hubby and I want to say yes, the fickle finger of fate seems to be pointing at us. But at the same time, we were not really looking for this at all, we’re kind of struggling ourselves, and don’t want to push our own family over the edge by doing so. I’m especially interested in hearing about resources in Silicon Valley that might be available to us. I’d also like to hear your advice on “you really should think about this or that before you say yes (or no)”. I mostly want to listen, and ask questions as necessary to understand better if I need to. I’m not really looking or able to engage in discussion the way that I normally would do for a more normal diary.
Thank you for reading and whatever advice you can share with me.