Past struggle now serves advisory board member well

LUMBERTON — Desiree Belinfanti says she has learned to navigate by trial and error the maze of programs available to foster children through the state Department of Youth and Family Services.

She's had help, especially from her foster mother and Alicia Bullock, head of Aftercare Programs for Family Service, and Belinfanti, 19, wanted a way to share the things she's learned with other teenagers in the same boat.

Belinfanti is vice president of the 6-month-old Burlington County Youth Advisory Board, which the state Department of Youth and Family Services has called a model organization.

The board meets once a month and has hosted seminars on resume preparation, public speaking and networking. Singer-songwriter Vivian Green has talked to the group about the music industry. Next month, a spoken-word artist from Philadelphia will address the group.

“I'd like them to learn the skills that make them independent and responsible adults,” she said.

The board has chosen Belinfanti as its Outstanding Advocate of the Year. Bullock said the honor was well-deserved.

“She not only donated her time, she's been active with recruiting other youths and telling them about the benefits of self-advocacy,” Bullock said. “She took something not so positive and made something great. That really helps when it comes from another youth.”

Belinfanti is now a student of fashion design at the Art Institute of Philadelphia, but her early life was a struggle. Belinfanti said her mother was an alcoholic and a drug abuser, so Belinfanti had to be the responsible adult for herself and her younger sister.

The strain of running the household and going to school eventually became too much, and the girls were placed in separate foster homes when Belinfanti was 16.

Her sister now lives with their mother in North Jersey, so Belinfanti doesn't get to see her very often, but she called foster care a positive experience.

“It wasn't that bad for me because I had a supportive foster parent,” she said. “She advocated for me. She spoke up for me a lot over the years. Now I've learned to speak for myself.”

She first got involved with the advisory board when it was still a regional entity covering Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties. She stayed with the Burlington County board because she became close to Bullock. Bullock is also a case manager for On My Own, a voluntary program that helps young people transition from the foster-care system to adulthood, and she's an adult advisor to the youth advisory board.

“What Desiree has learned and is teaching her peers is that there is a way to work through the system to get what you need,” she said.

The core mission of the board is to serve as a liaison between DYFS and foster children under the agency's care, but when the state reorganized its system of youth advisory boards to make them county-based instead of regional so they could be smaller and more responsive, she saw a perfect opportunity to impart some of her hard-earned wisdom to other young people in foster care.

“We wanted to include life skills,” she said. “You can talk about things that are going on in your life.”

E-Mail: JASON HARRIS