In what now seems like a distant past, I was a Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) with the Alaska Court System. My caseload was pretty much troubled teenagers from North Slope villages. Most had been in state custody on and off throughout their lives and now were old enough to truly express how those years affected them. It was not pretty. These were children who had already been damaged by their parents and, to some extent, by a state system that kept giving them back to those parents instead of working on a more permanent solution.
All of this is to Continue reading →