By TONYAA WEATHERSBEE, The Florida Times-Union 09/24/07

When addicted and abusive parents steal their children's joy, people like John Wagener help them recoup some of it.

And for children whose lives tend to be tangled between court hearings and foster homes, every bit of their childhood that is recovered helps them to connect with the kid inside; the kid that is often lost beneath the uncertainty.

"Once, during the Christmas holidays, I took two gifts to two little girls I was representing," said Wagener, who has been a guardian ad litem - a volunteer who serves as an advocate for children who have been removed from their homes because of abuse and neglect - for four years.

"I told the children 'This is from the guardian people, because we want you to have a good holiday.' The next thing I knew, the 6-year-old went out of the room, then she came back with a bracelet of colored paper, handed it to me and said, 'This is for you - so that you can have a good holiday, too.

Yet guardian ad litems do much more than help abused and neglected children scavenge bits of their childhood. They spend a few hours each month with one or two children, listening to them and talking to their caretakers.

They speak for the children in court, and provide insight to often overburdened state caseworkers on what may be in the child's best interest.

One guardian, in fact, was able to stop a child from being placed with a distant relative who, unknown to the caseworker, had been convicted of intentionally burning a minor.

But in Northeast Florida, far more children are struggling to hang on to their childhood and their sanity than there are guardians.

About 3,300 children in this area are in dependency care, said Wagener, who also is board president of Voices for Children of the First Coast, a support organization for the ad litem program. But there are only 233 active guardian ad litems available.

At least 800 are needed, he said.

Wagener and his organization are trying to fix that. Next month, they'll be holding an all-day scrapbooking event - call (904) 630-1200 for more information - to raise money to help the children they look after.

Children like a little boy who had AIDS, and wanted a bed that resembled a race car. Or children like the high school senior who wanted money to buy a yearbook.

Wagener said he hopes that event helps them do more than just raise money. He hopes that it will help them raise an army of volunteers - because that's what they really need.

In fact, that's what we all need.

When I listened to Wagener describe the children he encounters, children who have begun their lives by seeing the worst of life, it made me understand why so many grow up struggling to know the difference.

How many children who, after seeing their crack-addicted mother trade sex for drugs, wind up having to unlearn that's not the primary way that men and women are supposed to interact?

How many children who, after seeing their parents spend more time behind bars than at the dinner table, begin to think of jail as less of a punishment and more of a change of address?

And how many children who are forced to take care of home because their parents either can't or won't - agonize over their lost childhood by acting out?

Probably quite a few.

No one should expect guardian ad litems to be miracle workers. Guardian ad litems help abused and neglected children see what a normal childhood and a normal life looks and feels like. They also help them understand that they're worthy of such a life.

Unlike them, though, too many people see such kids as throwaways. And that's unfortunate.

It's unfortunate because many of those abused and neglected children, like all other children, will ultimately become a critical part of our social infrastructure. The only question is whether they will be shaped into beings that will build it up, or become sociopaths that will tear it down.

They'll tear it down by either descending into criminality, or by becoming their parents; the irresponsible ones that everyone screeches about.

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/092407/new_201706904.shtml