Created: 3/28/2007 8:41:23 AM 
By BRENDAN FARRINGTON Associated Press Writer
TALLAHASSEE, FL (AP) -- Department of Children & Families Secretary Bob Butterworth heard a lot of horror stories over dinner this week. They were about foster children who bounced around through dozens of homes and schools, children placed on psychotropic drugs they didn't need, a girl who bathed herself with a cup because the bathtub in her foster home was too filthy and another who was the subject of 11 abuse reports before the agency intervened.
All were told by young adults who survived the foster care system and are now in college or working, unlikely success stories who now want to make sure other children aren't damaged in state care. Butterworth dined with them Monday in a Tallahassee restaurant so he can learn from them and hopefully improve a troubled system.
"Give me advice. You are my advisers," Butterworth said after he sat down. "You really are the experts and I will learn more from you than you will ever learn from me."
For the next 90 minutes, he heard a lot. Casey Browning told him she entered the system at the age of 2 months and stayed in it until two years ago, when she "aged out." Now the 20-year-old has an associate's degree and is working toward another degree.
She told Butterworth that finding permanent homes and "normalcy" for children will go a long way toward helping them succeed. And if they remain in foster care until adulthood, they need to be prepared to be on their own, such as getting a driver's license, opening a bank account or learning how to balance a checkbook.
"We don't know what to do. We don't have the life skills training," she said. "I learned how to do stuff by watching other people."
Butterworth expressed amazement that she and the other 11 former foster children went through what they did and came out as well as they did. "We are definitely the exception. The small exception," said Kimberly Foster, 23, who is a student and youth organizer from Miami.
"What was unique about you? Was it you as an individual? Was it someone that touched your life?" Butterworth asked.
"In most of our cases, we've had at least one adult somewhere in our lives or something that we've held onto throughout our experiences that told us we can make it, we can preserver over our adversity," Foster said. She said for her, it was a volunteer attorney assigned to her.
"When you find someone who cares about you, who doesn't look at you as a case file, a case number, as a statistic, a delinquent, than that captures your attention," Foster said. "You see that there's someone who really cares about you and they encourage you to be what you want to be."
Butterworth, the former attorney general who took over DCF in January, wants to develop a program that connects former foster children with case workers.
"We really do need in each one of my districts a number of young adults who have been through the foster care and adoption process to speak with not only the district administrators, but each and every new case worker. This has to be part of the case worker training," Butterworth said.
Butterworth said after the dinner that he wants child welfare workers to learn more about what foster children go through by spending a day in the shoes of a foster child.
Similarly, he wants to enlist the business community to help foster children and wants to create a mentoring program where business leaders spend time with foster children and then let the children spend a day in their offices.
"That might open the eyes of a lot of people to see that there is a bigger need here than people really think there is," Butterworth said.
The former foster children were in the capital with Andrea Moore, executive director of the advocacy group Florida's Children First, to lobby for bill's related to children and foster care issues.
"I can tell you, just having somebody sitting here listening to something we're saying just means so much to me," Browning told Butterworth. "I know a few of us in here have never had someone actually sit down and listen to us and then try to comprehend and do something about it."
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