Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Pinellas County school board member Nancy Bostock made a couple of anguishing decisions recently. First, after months of trying unsuccessfully to find affordable inpatient mental health treatment for her emotionally disturbed adoptive son, she and her husband Craig are relinquishing custody of the boy to the state so he can hopefully get the intensive care he needs.

The child had been in a theraputic group home, but the state would only pay for 18 months of care. He needs more - he has been violent to Nancy and the Bostock’s fear he will harm their two daughters - but the couple can’t afford the $70,000 a year tab.

On Monday, Bostock stepped forward at a meeting of the state Senate Committee on Children, Families and Elder Affairs and spoke publicly about the devastating situation.

Under the supervision of Department of Children and Families Secretary Bob Butterworth, foster and adoptive care in Florida is better than it used to be - but that isn’t saying much.

Many adoptive and foster families discover almost immediately that the system can be more fractured, neglectful and dysfunctional than the families that produced their scarred children.

And Florida’s limited interest in taking care of throw-away kids wanes when headlines of death and/or abuse fade.

Granted, such care is expensive. Overwhelming. Frustrating. It takes an enormous amount of time, money, community involvement and support to provide for these kids.

Politicians and bureaucrats are not heartless, but they are often spineless when confronted by an electorate that wants its taxes lowered at all costs, be damned the consequences. In the case of some of these kids, the consequences will be dire: a life of dysfunction, drug and alcohol abuse, promiscuity, more unwanted babies, more uneducated, unproductive citizens. Some will end up in prisons, on the streets or worse.

What makes this particular case so unnerving is that it’s so common. Through the years I’ve heard more harrowing stories than I can recount from adoptive and foster parents - most of whom were afraid to come forward because they were afraid of retribution, afraid of losing the kids they love.

Bostock should not have that concern. After all, she is a public figure, an elected official who has not only a tender heart, but political clout.

Taking on a child so troubled came with more problems than the couple expected.

“We naively thought our love and our stable home would be enough,” Bostock told the committee.

It wasn’t.

So now the couple has made what is certainly an anguishing decision.

Bostock can’t feel good about this. She must be humiliated, mortified. But she came forward anyway to try to change things.

The terrifying part of all this is that if someone with political savvy and influence - she is a conservative Republican, by the way - can’t get services for a seriously disturbed child, who can?

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