Foster girls get hooked on a Florida fish tale

Diamond D Ranch hosts an outing for about 40 youths.

RICK WILSON/The Times-Union

Ten-year-old Daijah wears a big smile as she fishes Saturday during an outing at the Diamond D Ranch on Jacksonville's Westside.

By Roger Bull

They rode ponies, bounced in a big inflatable bounce house and ate snow cones and lunch. And they fished.

It was fishing that was at the heart of the day. Family Support Services of North Florida brought about 40 girls out to Diamond D Ranch on Jacksonville's Westside for a morning of activities. But it revolved around a book they'd all been given to read: "Jason and Elihu: A Fisherman's Tale."

It's a story set in North Florida of a boy in pursuit of a legendary fish. But the boy and his sister are in foster care, just like most of the girls who came out to the Diamond D Saturday.

They not only met the book's author, who talked to them and autographed their copies of the book, but they met one of the key characters - a miniature horse named Sundance. He posed for photos with them and personally licked a drawing of him when the girls carefully held out the open book in front of him.

That's as close to an autograph as he could handle. He is, after all, a horse.

Family Support Services is a nonprofit group that has the contract in Duval and Nassau counties to manage children and teens under supervision of the Department of Children and Families, instead of their own parents.

That's about 2,000 of them living in foster homes, group homes and with relatives, said Lisa Collins of FSS. The agency has taken some of them on other outings this year: Six teens got scuba-certified, for example. Others went to a surf camp.

In May, the David Garrard Foundation and FSS took a group of kids deep-sea fishing.

But Saturday, it was another group with a different type of fishing.

Becky Foster, who works at Diamond D, said the pond had bream, catfish, perch, koi and "one gator, but he don't come out much."

With a little help

Volunteers and Diamond D employees baited most of the hooks and instructed the girls to flip it out as far as they could from the bank and wait patiently for the float to start moving.

Eleven-year-old Britanni was shy, hiding behind one of the adults. But she did come out long enough to say she caught a few bream and a couple of bass. She's fished before at her grandfather's house, but others were first-timers wanting nothing to do with the flapping fish they pulled out.

While some fished and some rode ponies, others gathered to meet Shelley Fraser Mickle, who wrote "Jason and Elihu." One girl said her favorite part was - spoiler alert - when she found out Elihu was a girl bass. A big girl bass.

The Gainesville author had already written the book, which included a boy in foster care, when DCF contacted her about writing a book the agency could use. So she rewrote it a bit, including adding a sister and a horse named Sundance, who happens to be a real horse owned by Gentle Carousel Miniature Therapy Horses.

That group has 35 other horses, most far smaller than Sundance, that they take to nursing homes, hospices and hospitals. Horses move people in a way other animals can't, said Debbie Garcia-Bengochea, the group's education director.

"There's especially something about girls and horses," she said. "When you're sick, having a horse come into your hospital room really excites them."

Jim Adams, CEO of FSS, said foster care has changed in recent years.

"A few years ago, we were getting 32 new cases a week," he said. "One week, it was 78. If there was any problem in the home at all, like no electricity, the kids were being removed. Now, we're trying to work the other end, we're getting them electricity."

That's reduced the number of children and teens in the FSS system from 3,000 to 2,000 in just two years.

"We never would have had the time or energy for something like this before.