Joel’s Story
“When I turned 18 and was told I had to not only find, but also furnish, my own apartment, I completely panicked. It wasn’t finding my own apartment that worried me, that part was surprisingly easy. My issues were with finding and buy everything I needed to survive on my own.”
Jason’s Story
Jason wouldn’t have made any ‘most likely to succeed’ lists in his early teens. He was doing drugs when he had a life‐changing experience that left him with a firm decision—he needed to challenge himself. At 16, he turned his back on drugs and focused on studying math and martial arts. Math, his weakest subject, became a testing ground for him. He succeeded using the teachings of martial arts, focusing and breaking down obstacles. In 2004, he won a Bell Canada Computer and Communications Award at the Bay Area Science and Engineering Fair and later entered McMaster’s elite Engineering Physics program.
Brittany’s Story
Brittany is 19. She’s on extended care and maintenance today, but she’s been with the Halton CAS since she was five. She quit school at 16, and supports herself, but she’s thinking about making some changes as she reaches her twenties—finishing high school is one of them.
John’s Story
John was five and his sister nine when they were taken from their abusive mother. Asked about his experience, John says there has been one shining light, his case worker, Lisa, who always gave him the motivation to do more.
Mandy’s Story
At nine, Mandy was the caregiver to her two younger sisters. Police and child protection workers took them away from her mother and she went to live first with her uncle on her family reservation, Wikwemikong, on Manitoulin Island, and later in foster homes. Some turbulent, unhappy years passed as Mandy struggled with drugs and rebellion, and worse. At 17, when she realized she wasn’t going to graduate from high school, she made some dramatic changes. “It was determination not to fit the stereotype that turned me around. I just had to prove it to myself. I quit cold turkey,” she says.
Bianca’s Story
Bianca remembers being involved with various CASs very early in life as her mother moved around a lot. First she was under a protection order, then she was a society ward. She stayed with a friend of the family, then there was foster care with several pairs of foster parents. Today she’s at university. “I’d like to think that I would have gone to university no matter what happened, but I did have a lot of support from my foster family.”