Bills' Ray Davis, mental health organization advocate for foster children

Yahoo

7 days ago

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — During this Mental Health Awareness Month, WIVB News 4 is highlighting an organization that puts a focus on helping kids in the foster care system.
has a variety of programs including a peer support group for young people who may be struggling, referral services for counseling, and pro bono legal services for people struggling with a mental health diagnosis. They also oversee the 'CASA' program, Court Appointed Special Advocates, which focuses on foster children.
On a recent Tuesday night, Bills Running Back Ray Davis got involved. Davis has been very open about his journey in foster care, and homelessness, himself.
'We have to understand, it's ok to ask for help,' Davis said. 'It's ok to want help. It's ok to apply that advice to be able to get where we want to go.'
Davis said he was nervous at first to tell his story of bouncing around five high schools and feeling very little love from the adults around him. Then it hit him, this is his purpose, to impact others, sharing his experience. He said it's a purpose higher than winning football games.
'(My purpose is) to be able to provide what I went through, and provide a blueprint to try and help kids understand it's ok to go through adversity because there's always going to be a light at the end of the tunnel,' he said. 'But you have to make sure you have the right people around you.'
That purpose led him to a 9-year-old named Aniyah.
'She's had quite the journey,' Aniyah's adoptive mom, Catherine Wetzler said.
Wetzler started out as Aniyah's aunt.
'I met her when she was seven months old,' Wetzler said. 'And a couple days after I met her, she was living in my home, with Doug and I, and was our foster child.'
Over the course of eight years, Wetzler and her husband Doug fought to get permanent custody of Aniyah. It wasn't easy. The couple ran into one road block after another.
'There was a lot of unfortunate situations along the way,' Wetzler said. 'During our second encounter with the Family Court system, I was coming out of court, and ran into Jodi. And CASA got involved with our care.'
Jodi Johnson runs CASA. The group, overseen by MHA, trains volunteers to help Family Court judges make better-informed decisions about a child's safety and wellbeing. A judge has so many cases, CASA volunteers act as their eyes and ears, advocating for children.
'They visit at least once a month,' Johnson said. 'They talk to the schools, pediatricians, therapists, the caregiver… and most importantly, we talk to the children and get to know them.'
'Which made a huge world of difference for us,' Wetzler said. 'Because we finally felt like we had support that she needed. It wasn't really about us, it was about her and the support she needed to get used to all these different transitions.'
Wetzler said, when Johnson came into her life, she was at a breaking point.
'I was feeling kind of defeated by the system at that point,' Wetzler said. 'I had to let Aniyah go live in a rehab center with her mother. The other time, I had to let her go live at Cornerstone, which is part of the City Mission downtown. Those were very, very challenging for us. What brought her to our home finally was that, her mother took her to NYC and left her in a homeless shelter. It took me a week to get her back here.'
Through the entire way, CASA was there to lean on.
'When I felt like, 'do we give up at this point? Is it just going to be this pattern where we just send her back to these situations? And just getting involved with CASA, it helped Aniyah a lot and it helped me work a lot of my own feelings with all of this,' she said.
Aniyah's life took a profoundly happy turn at the end of last year. The week before Christmas, a joyous December day marked the culmination of a long-awaited adoption by her beloved aunt and uncle.
'She has a lot of spirit about her, and I believe that now that her home is her permanent home, Aniyah will thrive,' Wetzler said. 'Aniyah will have a good life. And Aniyah will go to college, and she will be successful, and we will travel and she will get to experience things that every child will get to experience.'
Part of that life experience includes becoming 'best friends,' as Aniyah says, with Ray Davis.
'Many people are going to continue being in her corner,' Davis said. 'Whether it's family or not, I'm going to tell you: everyone is going to be an Aniyah fan at the end of the day… I'm one of her biggest fans too.'
MHA is always looking for volunteers. Johnson said there are about 40 CASA volunteers right now and they need 100 more. To volunteer, you can call [phone].
You can also call that number for help if you need it, or
Kelsey Anderson is an award-winning anchor who came back home to Buffalo in 2018. See more of her work here and follow her on Twitter.
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