“Fostering independence: Cook County Circuit Court’s innovative hearings serve as bridge between troubled kids exiting state care and making leap to adulthood”
For her 21st birthday, Chrystal Williams gave herself a present. She put Chicago, where she had lived in 20 foster homes, behind her. She said goodbye to bad influences and hard times. She picked up a map, closed her eyes and pointed.
Which, she says, is how she eventually ended up as a preschool teacher in a city with palm trees.
A lot has happened to Williams in the year since the Tribune chronicled her journey through the Benchmark Permanency Hearings, a pioneering Cook County Circuit Court program that provides guidance to foster kids who are “aging out” of the system into an uncertain future. She got her new job, she says, when she saw a help-wanted sign at a preschool in her new city, which she doesn’t want named — she wants to leave her past behind.
Her son, Maurice, 2, was placed in her class — “I’m his mother and his preschool teacher!” She has an apartment, a phone and a new sense of life’s possibilities: “This world is so huge. I want to see more. I don’t want to limit myself.”
Although she remains critical of her experience in the foster-care system overall, she has high praise for the Benchmark program: “They helped me become the person I am today. I couldn’t be me without their help.” And she remains a major fan of former Judge Patricia Brown Holmes, who conducted Benchmark’s informal one-on-one hearings when Williams was living in Chicago.
“I think she brought the best out of me,” Williams says.
Williams was saddened to learn Holmes had left the program. But, informed that Holmes’ decision was based, in part, on a desire to open doors for other African-American women at major law firms, Williams rallied.
“Knowing Judge Holmes, I knew there was a background to it, because she was always lecturing me about doing the right thing and trying to stay focused,” Williams says.
“And that’s why I left [Chicago, in part] too: Like, go where it’s better for me. ‘Cause there’s no jobs in Chicago, not good ones, anyway. Out here, there’s plenty of opportunity.”
