It was late at night when a social worker came to her home to take her away from her mom.

Someone had called the police, remembers Shanna Cotton, who was 5 then and is now 17 and a Bismarck High School student.

Her mom was facing some problems, then. And so the social services department was stepping in.

She remembers the social worker yelling at her mom, and a couple of her things were stuffed in a plastic bag and she was taken away.

She said it was pitch black and she remembers not even being able to see her foster mother's face when she arrived at her new home.

"It's very scary going into a foster home," she said. "You've never met these people in your life."

You don't know who these people are. You don't know how to act, she said. None of the stuff is yours. You have to sleep in someone else's bed.

"You don't want to touch anything, but you have to; you have to sleep in (their) bed," she said.

Cotton, who is now back with her mother, said foster care would turn out to be a good thing, but it was traumatic. She said it would have been really comforting to have something familiar, a special possession of her own to hang on to during those times when she would be shuffled from a foster home back to her family and then to another foster home.

Her art teacher at Bismarck High School, Rebecca Young-Sletten, is trying to make sure that happens - that foster kids have something of their very own. All of her students this year, for a grade and community service, are painting donated old hard-sided suitcases, which will be given to foster kids filled with homemade blankets or quilts, toiletries and a storybook.

A suitcase of things that always will be theirs, no matter where they go, no matter how many homes they move to.

Because Young-Sletten knows firsthand that many foster kids don't have anything when they arrive at a foster home.

She has been a foster parent over the years. She said a child often arrives with nothing, or, when they do have a couple of things, the items are usually in a plastic grocery bag or black garbage sack.

Darlene Hill, a social work supervisor at Burleigh County Social Services, said children often are taken on short notice when it's determined there is an eminent risk to the child. And many parents, not happy about their child being taken, don't allow the social worker to take any of the child's belongings with them.

"We ask them if it's OK if we get some of the kid's clothes … more times (than not) it's not all right. They're not comfortable with their kids going into foster care," she said.

The child is then removed with nothing. But the social services office in Bismarck does have a good supply of clothing, so the social worker can find a change of clothing to take to the foster home and then the foster parents later will provide more clothes and other essential items.

Hill said if the child is young enough to still need formula and diapers, social workers are generally pretty firm about not leaving the child's home without those items.

She said when parents do allow things to be taken, the only thing available to carry the items in is often a plastic bag.

"Oftentimes, they don't have suitcases," she said. "These families are pretty transient."

Hill said the scary part is how the kids react to being taken. Quite a few don't cry at all. Hill thinks it's because they're so used to being with a number of different adults. She said fear also might be a reason why the children react stoically.

She said Burleigh County on average has 75 children per month in foster care. And, on average, and in the past year, there have been about seven new placements per month. That's down, she said. In the past three years there were about eight new placements a month, but the trend is to try to keep children in their homes. She said the department is doing a better job of keeping children at home, and is able to do that by monitoring the homes more. She said social workers are in the homes "a lot."

But many children have to leave home behind. Young-Sletten remembers one foster boy, age 8, a severe abuse case, who walked into her home and immediately asked if there was anything in the refrigerator.

"He had such a need for survival," she said.

She remembers after he left her home the first time - he would be back for a second stint - she was cleaning out the blonde-colored dresser he had used for his clothing. She discovered he had systematically created an emergency food supply by putting dry spaghetti noodles, which were about the same color as the dresser, along the inside edges of the drawers. And he then secured his hidden-noodle cache by putting a layer of tape over them. After he left the second time, she discovered cookies hidden above the ceiling tiles. He would later be sent to Minnesota to a special facility for severely abused children.

Young-Sletten said the suitcase idea started years ago when she saw on television a teacher who was giving away backpacks to kids.

So her idea started out as backpacks, but those were hard to decorate, so it evolved into suitcases, empty suitcases, then it evolved into filling the cases with things the children would like and need.

Michael Brown, 19, of Bismarck, said he received a suitcase when he was 17.

Brown, a special needs student who is now on his own and works two jobs, bagging at Central Market and taking tickets at Bobcat games, said he cried when he got a suitcase.

"Nobody had ever given me something like that - something special that I can keep," he said recently.

With his suitcase, he could "take home with him wherever he went," he told Young-Sletten.

Until this year, students helped her on a voluntary basis, sometimes working on them on weekends. And they might produce 20 suitcases a year. This is the first year that all of her students are doing this as part of their classwork. She hopes to have some finished by Christmas and the rest by the end of the school year - a total of about 80 suitcases.

Students in the project first pick out stuffed animals from the many donated animals stored in the art room. And then they build the theme for their suitcase based on that particular animal.

Young-Sletten's art room at the high school has more than typical art projects in it. There are suitcases stored under most of the work tables, as well as in other spots. The room's hallway is lined with suitcases being prepped for painting.

Many of the homemade quilts are the work of Sharon Kalmbach, a Bismarck High School teacher, who designs them to match the suitcase's stuffed animal.

Jodi Brady, 17, a BHS senior, has been working on her suitcase project since October and has an aunt who's a foster parent.

"I've met (the foster kids)," she said. "They don't have anything."

Except for maybe a suitcase, now.

Young-Sletten said they always need donations: Money to buy supplies or the supplies themselves - fabric for the homemade blankets and quilts, storybooks, travel-size toiletries, and she is asking local dentists for toothbrushes.

She said donations can be left at the high school's office with a note explaining that the donations are for the BHS Foster Care Project; or call her at 221-3510 ext. 171.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at virginia.grantier@bismarcktribune.com.)