Foster Care/Child Custody Fiascos - how do we fix it?

Great Debates
1

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58538-2001Sep7.html

I’ll warn you, this article made me physically ill to read.

I keep reading stories like this, and stories of children returned over and over to abusive or neglectful parents because parents have “rights.” The U.S. pulled out of an upcoming UN conference on children’s rights because the policy documents didn’t do enough to protect parents rights. Much of our politics seems to revolve around “the sake of the children,” “protecting children,” and “family values.” So what should we be doing to protect and take care of children in foster care?

  • kids taken away from abusive homes
  • kids whose parents are in jail
  • abandoned kids
  • kids given up for adoption who don’t get adopted
  • kids whose parents are too poor or drug addicted to take care of them
  • special needs kids who fit into the above categories

Are well-funded and well-run orphanages the answer? A friend of mine came out of the “Boys Homes” in Britain and went on to great things. He describes his childhood as a bit lonely and institutional, but 1,000 times better than the abuse and instability he suffered before going into the homes.

Should we offer parenting classes for parents in prison and parents in rehab that people have to take before getting their kids back from state care?

Offer ongoing counseling and anger management training for abusive parents before they can get their kids back? When is an abusive parent just an unrepentant abusive bastard who should never see the children again?

Should we make adoption of foster kids easier, and reduce the rights of abusive parents to get their children back? If we pumped more money into the social services system - increased the pay and reduced the caseload of social workers, would that help?

Do we work on sex education and birth control for school-aged kids and young men and women?

Should we make greater efforts to place foster kids with extended family members?

I should state for the record that I was in foster care until I was 7 months old and my parents adopted me. By all accounts I was well-taken care of and loved by my foster family. My brothers came out of foster care and were adopted at the ages of 4 and 8. Little brother is a special needs kid with fetal alcohol syndrome and epilepsy. When he came to us all the bones in his arms and legs had been broken at least once. Older brother was in slightly better shape - he’s all grown up and doing a master’s at Harvard. They had both been returned to their alchoholic mom and then bounced back into foster care repeatedly. They had zero toys, were terrified of people, and hoarded food under their beds just in case they stopped getting fed for “a while.”

I hesitate at many of these solutions, because I don’t think the state should be mommy and daddy, and you can always come up with an exception to every situation - there is no one solution that will work for every child or family, and it’s hard to keep things consistent and fair while still protecting vulnerable kids.

So, does anyone with social work experience post here?

If you were the state official in charge of child protective services, and you could set the system up any way you liked, what kind of system would you design?

2

There is a serious shortage of foster homes. I know of one foster mother whose sole recommendation is “she doesn’t hit the kids” (this is a quote from a social worker who placed a child in the woman’s cockroach-infested, dirty diapers on the kitchen table home).

There is a serious shortage of social workers. I think I read (and no, I can’t cite, I’m working from memory here) that caseworkers are frequently assigned 40-60 kids, and that they are supposed to keep tabs on home condition, schooling, medical stuff, etc. and all for something ridiculous like $30K annually.

There is a serious surplus of children. But, it violates civil rights to suggest that an idiot ought not to reproduce. In theory, I get this. In actuality, when a woman has given birth to five drug-addicted children who were subsequently abused and neglected, whose parenting skills are so non-existant that the state now places her children in foster homes BEFORE THEY ARE BORN, and who continues to have unprotected sex and take drugs and produce these poor children, ought to be fucking sterilized.

There is a serious shortage of adoptive families who will take children who are not lily white infants in perfect health. And those that will are subjected to the kind of scrutiny generally reserved for pandemic viruses.

I could go on and on.
Answers? I wish.

3

LifeOnWry - please, DO go on and on. You sound like you know your stuff.

4

Given the serious shortage of adoptive parents unwilling th adopt anyone but a healthy white baby, I’d say they’re certainly a necessity.

Absolutely.

I’m not exactly sure, but at the very least people who display genuine apathy for the welfare of their kids or can’t understand that beating the shit out of your kids is wrong should have their parental rights permanently terminated.

Ideally, the parents should be teaching this stuff. Unfortunately, many parents are either uncomfortable talking about sex with their kids, or think that “keep your pants on until you’re married” and “birth control is for sluts” is all they need to know.

5

Actually, my perspective is different. I’ve seen several cases where the child(ren) were taken permanently from the home. and for much less going on than what’s described (not to say that the kids involved shouldn’t have been taken away), Plus, I’ve got a couple of friends who’ve done foster care.

Some thoughts. Hindsight is 20/20 of course. And we do all know of horrific situations that ‘should never have occured’ and I agree. However, before I’m willing to say the entire system is screwed up beyond belief, I’d need more than a few cases. The case load of foster care cases is huge, and each of these individual sets of circumstances really only are a very tiny portion (not to suggest in any way that it’s excusable - we’d of course want the ‘horrific’ case number to be zero).

I agree there’s a need for foster care homes. To this end, a few things can be done. Single parent dwellings should be considered. They should also do more for recruitment. I see more advertising and publicity for donations for obscure illnesses than for foster care.

Short term placements should be especially more available - and foster parents should be given options of ‘short term/long term’.

Oversite is a real necessity - the problem is the same agencies that are charged with the duty of oversite also will claim confidentiality when questions occur. I don’t think it’s appropriate to have all data smeared across the TV screen, however, I’m also reluctant to have oversite for abuses/problems reside w/the same folks that provide the care and allow them the confidentiality cloak.

6

Gee, you’d think that, wouldn’t you? (I know, we’re in agreement here, but for the edification of the masses, here goes anyway:)

Case in point - Father and birth mother beat their two year old son to death (they CRUSHED his HEAD) while drug-addicted mother is pregnant with second baby. Second baby is placed in foster care immediately upon birth, as mother is in prison awaiting trial for this murder. While in foster care, foster parents are required to bring this infant to the jail so that his birth mother may bond with him (at this point, you are all excused to go throw up, if you haven’t already). Mother is found not guilty of first child’s murder, turns out she is only guilty of not stopping father from doing so. Father gets 30 years, mother WALKS. By this time, the baby has been with the same foster parents for three years. Caseworker makes a motion to have the mother’s parental rights terminated, based on the fact that having failed to prevent one child’s murder, she probably couldn’t protect this child, not to mention the fact that the mother has refused rehab for her drug addiction, that she has no visible means of support and no immediate plans to get any, and that she has shown at best a cursory interest in the child anyway. Oh, and that the Caucasian foster parents would very much like to adopt this mixed-race, special needs child.

Birth mother objects. After all, she gave birth to this child, and therefore has rights. Legal people various and sundry actually CONSIDER this option. (Puking again? Me, too.) Rules are made. Mother MUST do the rehab thing. So she does, and it is not only my opinion that she made a half-assed job of it. New caseworker gets involved. States that because the child in question is of mixed race, his birth mother should have custody because foster parents will not be able to give this child the “correct” cultural upbringing (never mind the fact that foster parents already HAVE one mixed-race child, not to mention the cultural upbringing a crackhead accomplice murderer is likely capable of). Foster parents lawyer shows caseworker the photographs that were taken at the first child’s murder scene. Caseworker decides maybe foster parents are a better choice, after all. Adoption proceedings begin. A few months down the line, birth mother is again arrested, this time for prostitution. There are drugs in her system when she is arrested, and oh, yeah, she is pregnant again.

Cut to one year later (also known as today): Adoption proceedings are moving slowly. Birth mother has made continual appeals, all of which have been denied, but none of which were denied without several weeks of back-and-forth deliberation between the foster parents’ lawyer and various social agencies. Her parental rights have still not been formally terminated. Her third child is in foster care. Foster parents are plugging right along, doing their best, and praying that this little boy they have raised can continue to be raised in their loving home.

Fact is, their chances are about 50%. Another fact is, this little boy is one of THOUSANDS in “the system”. Sad, huh?

So. I’m open to any suggestions y’all might have as to solving this sort of thing.

7

That was NOT supposed to be a smiley face.

Note to self: get the hang of this already.

8

Like I said, we all know of heartbreaking cases.

On the other hand, here’s some cases I know about personally:

  1. Mom has had parental rights terminated to all 4 kids, ranging in age from 6 - 14, due to specifically noted neglect to youngest. Done deal, at this point all but the youngest have been adopted.

  2. Mom had parental rights terminated to all 4 kids ranging in age from 4- 14 due to her criminal conviction for receiving/concealing stolen property (she & boyfriend du jour sent her kids out to do B & E’s).

  3. Mom had parental rights to youngest child (infant) due to her incarceration. It was shown that her older kids had spent several years in foster care, the state sucessfully argued that the youngest had a chance of being adopted and not be part of the mom’s out/mom’s in cycle the older ones had been dealt.

  4. Mom had parental rights terminated due to her single incarceration on a drug related charge. All of her kids were taken (she’d left them with her own mother who also got busted on drug related charges).

  5. Another mom who’d done time for not intervening while boyfriend beat her child to death, upon birth of her second child gave it up for adoption to relatives of that child’s father, and got her tubes tied.

My point in this liteny is to suggest that there are two sides to the coin. Yes, there are tragic circumstances where children should have been removed. There’s also other cases where children were removed and shouldn’t have been, and cases where the appropriate action was taken.

My concern (as listed above) is not that there are examples where the system failed a specific child (though again, I agree it’s tragic), is that there needs to be an accountable system of oversite where confidentiality concerns are not the issue. There need to be additional resources (but frankly that’s true of all systems).

9

Well, if caseworkers were paid a more reasonable salary, perhaps there’d be enough qualified applicants to enable the government to shit-can those who failed to grasp the following concepts:

  1. The rights of the biological parents are greatly superceded by the right of the child to be properly cared for.

  2. It is absolutely critical to consider ALL the factors at hand when determining what’s best for the child.