From Wade to West (Product Of A Broken System)

by Ralph Thomas West

Overview

From Wade to West: Product of a Broken System is the first book in a trilogy telling the inside story, shedding light on the tragedy that is "the system" and the children that get lost along the way. Children for Profit and Weekend Daddy will continue the author's life story, navigating adulthood, including his frustrating battle for his children within a biased legal system and telling the story of many fathers just like him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781532771316
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	04/17/2016
Pages:	146
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.31(d)

About the Author

Ralph West is passionate and enthusiastic about this book: his life story and beyond. He has been through every stage of the system, including being monitored by Child Protective Services within his own family, removal from that family, placements in program after program, and completing the adoption process, followed by additional out of home placements.

His experience with the system as an abused, neglected child, searching for a reconnect ion with his birth family, facing emotional and behavioral challenges throughout his young life all while navigating through a series of placements led to the writing of this book. His experience as a program staff member, attempting to help youth in situations similar to his own and in that same system, further expands the story told in this book.

Ralph West currently serves as a motivational speaker after 15 years of working in the treatment foster care system. He spent his entire childhood and teenage years in the system he was born into. From birth to eighteen years old, he waded through a system that often failed to protect him, that instead taught him how to work that system, and showed him that the one person he could always count on was himself. His story has assisted programs in soliciting grants and donations. He became the poster child for a program he graduated from as a youth and later returned to work as a young adult.

After fifteen years of seeing procedures from behind the scenes, he recently stepped away from that role. The shift in focus from "the best interest of the child" to the dollar signs they represent to some led him to write this book in an attempt to shed light on the shortcomings of the system.