From her native Barbados to Brooklyn, Mayflower Hill to a U.S. Air Force Base in England, Janice Bispham '76 has made some big leaps in her life. But few compare with her move from the military to "the real world" of cocaine-addicted babies, absentee parents, children who know sex abuse as both victims and perpetrators.

This is the workaday world Bispham now inhabits in her job with the Florida Department of Children and Families. A mother of two teenagers and veteran of childcare work in the military, Bispham still was bowled over when she went to work in Ft. Lauderdale in 1995. "Because of the drugs, it's so intense," she said.

The drugs are cocaine and crack; the innocent victims are children. The problem grows exponentially as children of drug addicts become drug addicts themselves. The numbers are overwhelming, not only on a state and national scale but in the number of folders handed to Bispham her first week on the job: 40 cases, 80 children.

"You had to hit the road running," she said. "There was no such thing as training weeks on end. You had a couple of days and then you were on your own."

Bispham found herself as the rescuer of children who did not want to be rescued and as the conscience of parents whose own had been clouded by drugs. A single mother with two children of her own at home, she was responsible for many more. "There were nights you'd be in the office at nine o'clock at night and you have a two-month-old in your arms with no place to go," she said.

Now she spends her days trying to make sure those children have a place to go. Leaving her job "on the street," she joined the licensing arm of her department and now acts as a liaison between the state and the private agencies that run foster home programs in Florida. Bispham also is involved in training of foster parents, the demand for which is never ending. "If you want to move here, we'll sign you right up," she said.

The challenges for foster parents are formidable. Some children in state care were born addicted to cocaine. Others have been exposed to sex and sex abuse and become child abusers as children. Others have a blend of emotional problems that can defy diagnosis and treatment.

"I could not be a foster parent," Bispham admits. "They tell me I do really well with the bad teenagers but I wouldn't want them in my house every day."

But many people do. They undergo records checks by the FBI, complete training and bring children into their homes, forming bonds with the kids even with the knowledge that they probably will go away. Bispham says some foster parents have had hundreds of foster children over the years. "I'm like, 'You must have a big heart because how much could you have left?'"

She said she gets discouraged on occasion, has days when she finds her work depressing. But then parents get their lives together, or a child is taken from a dire situation and placed in a loving one. And in general, Bispham feels she is making a difference. "I don't have [foster] children in my home, but I'm always trying to make sure children are safe and there's some place for children to come to," she said.

And the bottom line is, someone has to do what Bispham does. "These are the children," she said, "that end up under the bridge."

--Gerry Boyle '78