Ashley Rhodes-Courter was three when her childhood came to an abrupt end. The daughter of a struggling teenage mother, her life had been blighted by fecklessness and her parent's regular brushes with the law.
But when social services stepped in to take the little girl and her younger brother Luke away, she found herself shuttling between foster homes while her mother fought to prevent her children from being adopted.
After more than a decade of living with carers, including several convicted criminals, she was finally adopted and, now 29, says she is furious that it wasn't allowed to happen sooner.
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New life: Ashley Rhodes-Courter is now married and an adoptive mother-of-one as well as a foster parent
Adoption: After spending a decade shuttling between foster homes, she wants to see more adoptions
Ms Rhodes-Courter has also told of how she was left 'demoralised' by her experiences and says more needs to be done to vet carers, pointing out that she herself was made to live, in one instance, with a convicted paedophile.
'I moved 14 different times during the nearly 10 years I was in foster care,' she says angrily, speaking from her Florida home.
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Share'Most of my homes were overcrowded and almost 25 per cent of my foster parents were, or became, convicted criminals. Needless to say, I was not placed in the most desirable of circumstances.
'While in care I was beaten, went hungry, and was generally neglected. Luckily, I was the kind of kid that learned how to stay out of trouble.
'But many of the other children were not as lucky. My brother was almost killed in one foster home and the abuse stories I heard from my foster brothers and sisters are almost unspeakable.'
Although adopted in 1998 by the kindly Courter family, she remains furious about what happened to her and says that adoption should be made easier - and should happen sooner.
'I should not have been in foster care for as long as I was,' she says. 'They should have done more to place me with a suitable relative, or I should have been available for adoption much, much sooner.
'Instead, the courts kept giving my mother more and more time to get her act together until a volunteer advocate for my case came forward and convinced the courts to terminate my mother's rights.
'But by that time, I was already nine years old and had nearly grown up in the system.'
Difficult: In 10 years, Ashley lived in 14 homes with carers that included convicted criminals and a paedophile
The author of a successful 2008 memoir, Three Little Words, Ms Rhodes-Courter has also thrown herself into campaigning for the rights of children in care and says better vetting for would-be foster carers is essential.
'All children should be protected,' says the foster mother of 20 and adoptive mother of one. 'In the United States, every citizen can report child abuse.
'That abuse will be investigated by law enforcement and if it is found that the child is not safe in their home, the child will be removed.'
But although police are quick to intervene in abuse cases, what follows afterwards can leave the child even more damaged than before.
'In most cases, foster families would be the better than a group home since they are supposed to be more "normal",' she explains.
'Children that grow up in group homes or facilities can become institutionalised and have difficulty functioning in the real world as teens or adults.
'But the reality is that many children end up bouncing home to home, relatives are not always located or searched for properly and sometimes they go back to their families only to return to foster care again.
'I think the Government need to support child welfare initiatives and make sure we get help for foster parents, social workers, and agencies with a view to keeping children and families safe.'
Video courtesy of University of Southern California
Happy ending: Ashley with her adoptive parents Phil and Gay, her husband and their small children
But it is finding a way to get more children out of care homes and into loving adoptive families that remains her overwhelming passion and she cites her own appalling upbringing as a good example of why change is needed.
'Finding a forever family was scary for me at first,' she admits. 'Most people think adoption is a happy occasion but I was terrified that it was too good to be true and that it would fall apart.
'I had seen so many kids be "un-adopted" and sent back into foster care. I had been rejected by so many foster families and I didn't expect this home to be any different.'
Despite her fears, her adoption by Phil and Gay Coulter - both of whom are on the receiving end of a paean of praise in her memoir - proved to be the making of her.
'I think my life would be very different if I had never been adopted,' she says, frankly. 'I always loved school and had a drive to succeed but they introduced me to a world that I never would have known.
'I like to think I would have made good choices but my life would have been infinitely harder and probably not as successful.
'Simply having stability and not having to worry about where I would sleep, whether eat, and knowing I was safe allowed me to thrive. For the first time in my life I got to travel, have slumber parties with friends, and participate in school activities.
'Children who do not find families often become homeless, teen parents, have abusive relationships, or get arrested and don't lead productive lives. That easily could have been me.'
- Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes Courter, £6.99, is published by Ebury
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