Jackson became a foster mother nine years ago to a boy named Joshua. A friend of hers worked at a foster family agency, and told her of a difficult child who needed a stable home. She eventually gave up on Joshua.

"I kept him for seven years," Jackson says, "from when he was two and a half. Then he went to another home. I couldn't take care of him. I called him once in a while, but he didn't seem to care, so I stopped calling. I don't know why I care, but I do."

Difficult children like Joshua, with particular mental health needs, are common in the foster care system. In California, four percent of all Medicaid dollars go to foster children. Foster children in California use forty to fifty percent of Medicaid child mental health funds. Dr. Herbert Schreier, head of Child Psychology at Oakland Childrenís Hospital, says

that the children who get sent to foster homes are often too difficult for their own parents to take care of.

"If a kid is in foster care they are almost by definition a kid with special needs," says Schreier. "Kids who are put in foster care suffer from neglect and abuse from their families, and from that alone they usually will be difficult kids. There are very little services available for very young kids and for parents."

Jackson says that identifying a child's particular needs is especially important, because the foster system is overwhelmed with children and they don't often get the care that's right for them.

Recently, Jackson took Christopher to a specialist in motor skills.

"Christopher is left handed and blind in his left eye. The lady who does his motor skills assessment wanted to try and make him right handed. I go, no, you don't do that. He is clearly dominant on the left side, and I said, no we are not changing it. No we are not going through that."

Ellen Seligman, is a Clinical Social worker at Children's Hospital in Oakland. She says one of the biggest problems with foster care is that kids get moved around as frequently as three times a year and that they don't get to develop a stable relationship with their foster parents.

"Its a very dysfunctional system," Seligman says. "Children shouldn't be moved around. We have a knee jerk placement where we stick kids in homes with no sense of compatibility. It sets children up to be traumatized. We leave kids in a home just long enough to get good and attached and then we remove them."

Haight says that emergency placements can be traumatic for kids. "I mean this is an emergency foster home, and it is the first place they felt safe in a long time," Haight says. "And then they go to another foster home. So I think each time we do this to a child we take a little hunk out of their emotional psyche, a little chunk out of them and they think it is something they did."

Haight's idea is to put kids into an emergency holding area before they are placed in foster care, to prevent mismatched placements.

"I wonder whether some of these children wouldn't be better put into almost like a detention area first, Haight says, "where they are all in the same boat , you know? Because at first a lot of these children wonder what did I do wrong, that I was taken out of my home. They think they are being punished. Children seem to take a lot of the blame to themselves. I have children testify here all the time - you know she wouldn't beat me or put the iron on me if I'd only been a better child."

Abused and neglected children are especially at risk for delinquency. A 1989 study found that adult criminal behavior can often be traced to child abuse. There are also links between foster care and delinquency: forty four percent of young adults who had been foster children were charged with some sort of delinquency, another study found. Experts say many of these kids were abused in households before they ever reached foster home.

But a recent study of juvenile crime and justice in America, "No Matter How Loud I Shout," by Edward Humes, pointed to widespread problems and scandals in the foster care system itself, including foster homes that were abusive, violent, and neglectful. Instead of providing an answer for troubled children, some foster homes made problems worse.

That is certainly not the case in Doris Jackson's home.

On a sunny Thursday afternoon Doris Jackson is standing on her patio, and washing Bruiser, her 150 pound, part-Labrador dog. There is a floral print bow in her neat short hair and gold hoops in her ears. She wears a white tee shirt, jeans, and clear plastic sandals.

Her friend Kim Hayes, 46, a white-haired man who wears hiking boots and faded jeans, pours dish soap on the dogs coat, and sprays it with a garden hose. He also sprays Jackson and baby Robert, who Jackson holds in her free left arm. Jackson is covered in water and soap suds, baby Robert is clamoring for attention, and Hayes is telling off color jokes.

"You don't know how to take care of a dog!" Hayes says.

"Dogs? Yeah, I know how to take care of a dog. You just put them in the backyard and they do whatever," Jackson says.

Although she doesn't put much thought into Bruiser's upbringing, Jackson does know how to care for her kids. She says that although she is attached to them, she never intended to be a single mom, and will be happy when they are adopted.

"The kids call me mom, but I don't think it will be hard for them to adjust (to a new home). Children are veary resilient. I don't plan to ever be out of their life, but I hope the baby gets adopted."

"I think I'm an incredibly lucky human being to rub elbows with the likes of Doris Jackson, who loves children enough to turn her life inside out and to do it," Seligman says.

Jackson admits that it is hard to juggle two demanding children, a tough job, and being a single mom. But she says it is worth the effort.

"I feel like I am helping my community, which will help me in the long run. Maybe I'm crossing the street one day and one of these kids will stop someone from robbing me. Who knows. I think they need a role model like me. I work hard. I like what I do."

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