On My Way Home: A Memoir of Kinship, Grace and Hope

ISBN-10: 099142851X
ISBN-13: 9780991428519
Series: On My Way Home
Language: English
Published: 2014-02-01
Author: Sharon L. McDaniel

Description

As a young child, your sense of time is focused on the present, living from day-to-day. Sharon McDaniel was only 6 years old when she was removed from the care of her young, widowed father, separated from her brother and sister and forced into the child welfare system. She ended each day wondering, "Is this now my home?" until aging out of the system 11 years later at age 17. Despite the pain of her situation, she credits kin in helping her become strong enough to survive the harsh realities of life in the foster care system in the 60's and 70's. Out of high school and emancipated from the system, she finds herself still searching for home. As a lover of learning, she turns her attention to Penn State where her calling as a pioneer in child welfare begins. Her entrepreneurial spirit and determination began in the 80's as a young caseworker fresh out of college. At every corner, she was challenged to confront the system as a young African American female in a world of male-dominated administrators. In the early 90's, her efforts were set on establishing a child welfare agency solely dedicated to kinship care services - something most thought was unachievable. Her pioneering spirit and faith led her to leverage her own home so she could finance the start-up of her own agency, providing kinship-specific services for children and families growing up in the system as she did. On My Way Home is a revealing story, taking the reader on a "home to home" journey. This intimate story demonstrates the need to extend kinship status beyond blood and marriage to fictive kin ties if we are truly committed to family preservation and giving children their own sense of home.