Foster Care - Hard on Foster Care Parents Too

A wonderful article about what foster parents go through when a foster child leaves their home appeared today in the New York Times.  The article can be found here.

In Family Court, the longer a child stays in foster care, the more inclined a court is to terminate a parent's parental rights.  The logic behind this is that children who spend a considerable period of time in a foster home, especially those placed in foster care at a young age, develop significant bonds with their foster parents and disrupting those bonds usually proves harmful to the children.

Rarely, if ever, do we stop to consider the harm that is done to the foster parent who has also developed a bond with the child.  To be sure, family reunification is a laudable goal. And foster parents know what they are getting themselves into and assume the risk of "losing" a child to a parent that overcomes whatever challenges led to the removal of their children.  But that does not necessarily make the pain accompanied with the loss any less tangible.

It takes a person of enormous strength of character to voluntarily become a foster parent.  It is a daunting task to reassemble the pieces of a broken child.  Having accomplished that, one hopes, it is profoundly difficult to let that child go knowing that the work that was done may be yet again undone.  More importantly, it is even harder to let go of those we love.  And, ultimately, that is what it takes to be a successful foster parent and from whence all other necessary attributes such as empathy, patience and kindness flow. . . love.

Child Abuse - More to the Story

An article in the New York Times today reported that a mother was being charged with murder in the death of her 7 week old child.  The article can be found here.

Buried in the last paragraph of the article is the fact that the woman was being treated in a hospital for a suicide attempt.  Also mentioned in the article is that her husband is the person actually believed to have murdered the child.  The point here is obviously not to excuse the parents' behavior.  Rather, the hope is to understand that there are often underlying reasons for why people do (or fail to do) certain things.  In this particular case, it may very well be that the mother (and the father) suffer from a serious mental illness.

To the extent that a child abuse or neglect case is brought against a parent, prosecuting agencies and the courts are often overly focused on the result of the neglect or abuse.  However, unlike criminal court, the family court is not, in theory anyway, a place designed to punish parents but to reunify families, to the extent possible.  For the family in today's article, that is obviously not a feasible reality.  But for most non-fatal abuse and nearly all neglects, there is usually a measure of hope.  The extent of that hope depends on several factors.  The most important of these factors is the parent's willingness to identify the underlying cause of the problem and their determination to address that problem forthrightly.  A dedicated team of advocates including social workers, attorneys, therapists, case workers and the like can make a great deal of difference in bringing that goal to a reality.

How Do I Get My Kids Back?

It is a jarring experience for any family to have a caseworker show up at your home and tell you that he or she is there to remove your children from your home.  The reasons can vary widely: drug use, domestic violence, excessive corporal punishment, etc.  But what matters most is getting them back.  And one thing to keep in mind is that time is most certainly not on your side.  As discussed in previous posts, with the implementation of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (A.S.F.A) which has been adopted by New York State, courts and state agencies are under strict time constraints as to how long they can allow a child to remain in foster care.  As a general rule, any agency that keeps a child in foster care for 15 of the first 22 months following a removal must initiate a termination of parental rights cases.  Those agencies that stray out of compliance with that requirement are often quickly pressured by judges and referees of the Family Court to commence those proceedings.  Discretion and patience have essentially been factored out of the equation.

The following is not meant as a definitive set of actions you need to take but rather a guideline that will enable you to both get your children back as quickly as possible and to defend yourself should the agency deem it necessary to file a termination of parental rights (or even an abuse or neglect) proceeding against you:

1. Keep a meticulous diary of every interaction with the agency or your child(ren).  This will prove vitally important at a trial as it will enable you to testify in great detail what efforts you made to have your child returned and comply with the agency's mandates without having to rely on memory alone.

2. Don't wait for agency representatives to contact you, call them constantly.  If they do not return your call promptly, call them back.  The caseworker assigned to your case no doubt has many, many cases he or she is dealing with.  Be the squeaky wheel. 

3. As soon as possible find out what services the agency wants you to engage in and make every effort to engage in those services immediately.  Just enrolling in these services can be a daunting challenge but the agency has a affirmative responsibility to assist you with this.  Make sure they do.

4. Visit with your children at every opportunity.  I know this seems obvious, but most often it is a failure to visit regularly that serves as the primary, or at least one of, the bases to terminate your parental rights.  It is no excuse that you had other things to do.  Whatever else is going on in your life, even if it involves your services, visiting with your children consistently is vital. 

5. Make sure you communicate with your attorney regularly and, in that vein, it is of critical importance that your attorney and the agency have up to date contact information for you.

Understand that while agencies may be quick to remove your child, they are not nearly as quick to return them and if your child has been removed from your home you can expect to have to fight for them to be returned.  This means being able to show that you have planned for their return.  Planning for your child's return requires, preparation, vigilance and consistency.  Following the steps provided above and any others you can come up with, with the assistance of your attorney, will be a great start.

"Are You My Mom"?

A mother who had not seen her son since she gave him up for adoption over 50 years ago, finally met her son.  The full story can be found here.  The son's first words to his mother were "Are you my mom?" 

It is a miraculous story.  But more importantly, it is illustrative of a fundamental problem in the law that comes up quite frequently in cases in which an agency is seeking to terminate a person's parental rights.  Ever since the Adoption and Safe Families Act (A.S.F.A.) was enacted in 1997 by the federal government, and subsequently adopted by New York State, there has been a push to achieve permanency in children's lives at all possible speed.  This reaction was intended to prevent lingering stays in foster care that seemed to go on for years without any final resolution.  More can be read about the law here. 

However, a fundamental principle is often lost here.  The bond between parent and child can and often does transcend time.  This problem is most notable when a parent is incarcerated and the court seems willing to terminate parental rights almost on that fact alone because the parent has not been around.  Similarly, the abandonment cases give rise to the same issues.  What the law ignores is that in many situations, time can have a beneficial effect.  Parents who either could not or did not have the wherewithal to be parents can develop into wonderful parents, all the stronger for the hard lessons they have learned.  And a child's need to be with that parent can be profound. 

It is one thing to find that someone has permanently neglected or abandoned a child.  But in the dispositional phases of those cases, courts need to consider more carefully their willingness to sever that precious tie.