As a single mom in Washington, D.C., Latrice worked hard to provide for her daughter. She needed more time, more money. Her work week was 60 or 70 hours long, so Monday through Friday her daughter grew up in daycare. When Latrice worked late, the daycare director took her daughter home. On these nights, Latrice's only choice was to leave her daughter with the director and go to her own empty apartment-no public transportation ran by the director's house.

Latrice felt trapped in her demanding job. Under the pressures of work and poverty, she clung to those treasured moments when she could just be alone with her daughter. Sometimes weekends offered a brief reprieve. Each Saturday, mother and daughter would go to IHOP for breakfast, and then go see a movie, a play, or a museum exhibit.

Intervention of Child Protective Services
Latrice's story takes a bad turn on one of these weekends. Latrice still wrestles with the incident that changed her life. She can't tell the story without unmistakable notes of grief creeping into her voice.

That Friday, Latrice worked late. She was sick, and she needed desperately to see her daughter. She paid her cab driver extra to speed to the daycare center, where she managed to pick up her daughter just before closing.

The next morning, the two followed their usual ritual. They planned to eat breakfast and then see Ice Age. As Latrice drew her daughter's bath, she failed to notice that the malfunctioning water heater was pumping out 170-degree water.

Latrice recalls painfully, "the things that you would normally do as a parent. I don't know what happened, I just didn't do it. I didn't check the water."

Her daughter scalded her foot badly. In a panic, Latrice wrapped her in a blanket and carried her to a nearby clinic. They rode in an ambulance to Children's Hospital, where her daughter received a skin graft.

Alerted to the incident, CPS met Latrice while she was still at the hospital. With security's assistance, they forcibly removed Latrice's daughter from her arms.

"I went home and I just wanted to curl up and die," says Latrice. "My child was the most important thing in my life and I had failed her and I didn't know what to do because they had taken her."

Reuniting with her daughter
The road back for Latrice was a long one. She used her savings and her 401k plan for attorneys. Her job didn't permit her the time off she needed to take the state-mandated parenting classes and therapy sessions, so she became homeless. She found a new, more flexible job, but still struggled to save the money she needed to prove to the state that she was capable of taking care of her daughter.

When she left work, Latrice paid a single fare and rode the subway back and forth across the city, waiting for the shelter to open and thinking about what she needed to do to be reunited with her daughter.

Herself an alumna of care, Latrice knew every day in foster care would affect her daughter. "The only thing that kept me sane was the belief that not seeing my daughter was not an option," she says. "The most painful thing was the thought of her having no explanation of why I was no longer there for her. I thought about the pain she must be suffering, and that kept me motivated."

Latrice struggled with a feeling that the agency was imposing arbitrary hoops for her to jump through. Sometimes she detected a bias against single mothers, or against those who failed to earn a certain income. But because she loved her daughter, Latrice was determined to become the model parent they wanted to see.

"The therapist helped me deal with the emotional numbness I developed to protect myself when I was homeless," says Latrice. "My social worker and therapist were a dream team. They helped me to be a better parent, and to prepare for my daughter to come home. And they were really in my corner, rooting for her to be returned."

After two years, Latrice was reunited with her daughter.

"I honestly believe it all ended up for the best," says Latrice. "Everything led up to something that was more positive. When I scalded my daughter, I know it was an accident, a lapse in judgment. I was under so much stress in my life that inevitably something was going to happen. My biggest regret is that my child had to suffer because of something I was going through in my life."

Living with determination
When Latrice was in care as a child, it was hard for her to understand why her foster parents wanted to help her. If her own family betrayed her, why should strangers care? Their response to her questions helped set her on her life's path. "They told me that they cared for me because they wanted me to be able to care for someone else," Latrice recalls. "And they said they knew I would one day."

Latrice has done extensive work with Casey Family Programs-she has referred youth to the It's My Life National Advisory Team and she has contributed to Better Together.

In August of 2006, Latrice launched the Youth Business Initiative, a program that helps youth develop the social and academic skills necessary to prepare them for their future careers.