Children of the System
Tyler Vinciguerra
Community Integration Specialist
by Richard Bermack

Community integration specialist Tyler Vinciguerra was in and out of the foster care and delinquency systems from the time she was eight until she was 18. “Things were not good back then when I was a kid, as far as getting assistance,” she states. Now in her late 40s, she wants to give her clients what she didn’t get.
Vinciguerra’s parents were emotionally and physically abusive. She was hyperactive and had learning disabilities, such as dyslexia. She had a lot of behavior problems as a child. In the middle of one final fight with her mother she locked herself in the bathroom and demanded her mother call the police and have her taken away. She spent her 18th birthday in juvenile hall.

“Social workers would listen to what I had to say, but then they would do what they wanted. They had the attitude that you are a kid and they knew what was best,” Vinciguerra explains. When asked what she would have liked that she didn’t receive, she states, “More understanding, and independence, and less institutionalization.”
Like many kids with childhood behavioral problems, Vinciguerra blossomed as a young adult. She studied early childhood development in college and worked in an experimental school and in drug counseling programs for adolescents. “Helping others helped me understand my own process,” she states. “We now work on building up the clients’ strengths rather than focusing on their weaknesses. I went from being introverted to extroverted.

“I love helping people and knowing I’m making a difference in their lives,” Vinciguerra states. “I’ve had clients with behavior problems who have made 180-degree changes. I’ve seen them go from where whenever they would get angry, all they could do was hit walls and walk away, to where they can now get their feelings across without taking it out on property or other people. And that is after only seven or eight months. It is a long process. You don’t see leaps and bounds. You see little steps with lots of regression. But you can see the process over the long run. I see them getting jobs and interacting with the mainstream, so that they feel they are part of the normal society. We are giving them a life. It makes the clients feel good that they are accepted. I treat people the way I like to be treated. I treat clients with respect and don’t make them any less than I am.”