Name: John LeVan
Birthdate: September 29, 1961
Email: jblevan1@verizon.net
Thorndale, PA

Education/Employment:
BA Social Work West Chester University
Foster Home Finder - Chester County Children, Youth and Families

YAB involvement/ Care Experience: President of the Board of Trustees for the Coatesville Area Public Library – Board member for the George Washington Carver Urban Science Alliance
Friend of YAB – Primarily raised in the system.
Southeast

At the age of one, I was placed into the Mennonite Children’s Home formerly located in Millersville PA. I was in and out of foster care and the children’s home many times until the age of five. After leaving the Mennonite Children’s Home in 1966, my three siblings and I were reunited with our mother. I stayed with my mother for the next five-years. During those years we moved three times and I changed schools three times.

On Friday, August 6, 1971, I moved again, changing schools for the fourth time in one year after being placed in the Topton Lutheran Children’s Home in Topton PA. I remained in the custody of the Children’s Home until June of 1979, but during those eight years I moved another nine times, changed schools twice more and went through eight caseworkers.

The experiences of growing up in foster care and the feelings of fear, worry, loneliness, confusion and depression that are associated with the realization that next year, next month or next week you will be on your own transcend time. When I aged out of the foster care system in 1979 at the age of 17, I felt all of those feelings and more.
My grades in high school were very poor and my SAT’s (taken twice) were 730 and 720 respectively. (I often wonder if I am the only person to ever do worse on their SAT’s the second time around.) Because I did so poorly in school and on my SAT’s I was told that the only way I would be accepted into college was if I succeeded in a six-week summer “Ability Development Program” (ADP) offered at one of the “state” colleges. Although I needed to pass two classes in order to be accepted, my main reason for wanting to go to college was simply to assure that I would have a place to live.

Fortunately, I passed two courses and was accepted into Kutztown College for the fall of 1979. However, within two years I was homeless and had failed out of school. While homeless, I broke into churches at night to sleep and stole food to eat. Like so many foster children before and since, no one had prepared me for life after care.

Not surprisingly, without guidance or help from anyone, things took a turn for the worse once I was on my own. It took several years for me to get back on my feet. By the end of 1985, seven years after leaving the foster care system, I was able to raise my grades to a 3.1 average and graduate from West Chester University with my degree in Social Work.
Ten years later, in September of 1995, I got married. In 1998 I was hired as a (case manager/worker) for the Chester County Department of Aging. Six months later I was promoted to supervisor. One year later I transferred to my current position as Foster Home Finder for the Department of Children, Youth and Family’s. In May of 2000, four months before I turned 40, my wife gave birth to our son, who recently turned nine while vacationing in Disney World.

Although the turnaround described above is quite dramatic, I cannot tell you that it took place because of any one person or any specific event in my life. For me there was no single or simple answer that can account for how or why I made it. Rather, it was a combination of factors, including having great friends/supports who never gave up on me, a stubborn will to continue, a desire to learn, a fear of failing, courage, the time to find myself, of course a bit of luck and more, which is why I believe that in order to reverse the trend of failure amongst our graduates; we need to come up with ways of providing as many answers as we can for those who have been, those who are being and those who will be discharged from care.