I have a friend who has been fostering an adorable little boy since last July. He just turned one this month. The boy was very delayed, and she has done a lot to help him grow, learn, and basically be a happy baby. She loves him and would love to adopt him.
Last week, she got a call from the social worker. The SW has located relatives of the boy halfway across the state who agreed to take him in. The SW provided no explanation of where this family was when the boy desperately needed placement after being removed from his biomom, but they haven’t been present at any of the custody hearings so far.
My question is: Why does “blood” win out for custody? Is it honestly better to be raised in a situation where you are related to your biomom and see the choices that she makes in her life for good or bad, being reminded that one of them was not raising you? When a child is removed from the parents’ custody, how far across the family tree should relatives have “first dibs”? Does this vary with age (note that the boy in question has only just turned one and has been with his foster mom half his life)?
Because of course, blood relatives “know better” than someone who actually has known the child their whole lives. Just some hokum based in common law, probably. No real sociological reason for it, IMHO.
Imagine if the situation were reversed. Your friend is a relative of the child, and the child is taken away and given to a foster family. Can you honestly say that wouldn’t seem unfair as well? I can’t see a solution that’s going to please everyone.
The first is that the state does not want to be in the business of taking kids away. They do not want to be the arbiters of whos home is better than whos. Having your kids taken away is one of the most horrible things a family can contemplate, even for people that have not been able to take care of their kids. The state wants to do as little of that as possible for as little time as possible. They would rather limit their power to removing a kid from a dangerous situation, and returning the kid if the situation improves (which it often does- getting your kids back is a big incentive to get off drugs, dump the bad boyfriend, or whatever). They simply do not want to get involved in these judgment calls. It oversteps their bounds.
Secondly, the sad fact is most foster homes are not loving places. Most foster parents simply do not provide the love and care that even a relative can provide. It is a very broken system. In 90% of the cases, a kid is better off with anyone who has a connection with them than being put in to foster care where they will not get hugs, birthday parties, people to go to their school plays, a family to go home to after they turn eighteen. Our system is geared towards getting kids out of foster care as soon as possible, and in nearly every case that is the best thing to do.
Honestly? If my niece’s child (hypothetical distant relative) who I have not seen in more than half his life had the potential of being adopted into the home where the child had spent half his life, I would think that was a good outcome. But maybe that’s just me. You are correct that I would feel differently if I had been involved in the child’s life before.
I can understand this. Had the biomom gotten her act together, I would not have written the OP at all. I guess I just wonder how wide a definition we want to have as “family” – does a cousin or aunt or whoever automatically have a “right” (if you will) to the child? If the biomom never gets her life back together, is it still better for the child to know her by way of sharing relatives?
Should “getting kids out of foster care as soon as possible” include emphasis on foster-to-adopt programs as well? Or is it better for the child (and curtailing the state’s role, as you mentioned above) to keep the child in a temporary home with relatives to give the mom more time to possibly regain permament custody?
These are all sincere questions; I’m not trying to argue with you. I honestly don’t know much about child development and social services, so I started this thread in GD in hopes to hear from those who do.
Yes, but I don’t know exactly the relative in question.
For the record, I’m not entirely convinced that the situation is unfair, even though I know that my friend is a terrific mom. Even if my friend was the best mom in the world, I don’t think that any child should automatically have a right to have a so-called “better” parent just because – if I did, I’d be afraid that the state would be knocking on my door since I’m not rich or perfect. I guess I was more interested in the hypotheticals of where we draw the line on biology, the power of the state, and whether there is benefit to the child to be placed with relatives. I was torn between here GD and IMHO, but I went here because I was hoping for some cites too.
The easy answer is that it is a legislative decision. Often, if not universally, the statutes provide a preference for placement with a family member.
Why does the legislature do that? Because legislatures have a predilection for “one size more or less fits all” solutions. Granting preference to a willing shirt tail relative is a quick and simple answer that presumes that the placement with a family member is best. It is presumed that the family placement is best because it gives the legislature a warm and fuzzy feeling to think so since it ratifies their world view. Even the dimmest state legislator can reduce the most complex problem to mere child’s play by imagining a frefect word. Like the man said, no one’s life, liberty or property is secure when the legislature is in session.
That is not to say that there is not a remedy is the willing family member is clearly unsuitable. When the choice is between a suitable foster home and a suitable relative’s home the legislature will mandate the family placement every time.
The line on biology is probably drawn differently in different states. When I worked in CPS, we could certify relatives within the second -degree as kinship foster parents- and they were foster parents. They were not given custody- if that happened, it was done by the parents and the family court. They didn’t have a rightto be foster parents- they were preferred over non-related foster parents if they met the qualifications. There often is benefit to the child in being placed with a relative. Maybe not in the particular case you’re talking about- but often, children are be placed into foster care at ages older than a few monthe, along with their siblings. It would have been extremely difficult to place five siblings in the same unrelated foster home- I only saw it happen once , and it involved hiring a homemaker. We couldn’t place five kids in the same relative’s foster home either- but when the five kids are placed between Grandma and the two aunts, they tend to see each other more often than when they are placed in three unrelated homes. Also, older kids are likely to know Grandma and the aunts. The plan is usually to return the kids to the bio parents at some point, and relatives aren’t usually strict about “two hours, twice a month at the agency” visits. Another reason that I suspect but never officially heard- if there are kids with relatives who would make suitable foster parents, placing them with those relatives frees up the other foster homes for kids without such relatives.
Wasn’t trying to argue, was just trying to define my two cases. As I said, I don’t entirely think that the situation is unfair since I don’t know all the details. All I know is what I was told by my friend, and she’s probably too emotional right now to be a reliable source about the “distance”. Perhaps I should have left the original story out of this. (I apologize.)
From what (very) little I know about child development, it would be someone who was involved in the child’s life prior to removal from the home (be that a grandmother or a second-cousin-twice-removed or even a friend – I just don’t think “blood” should come into it). And if second-cousin-twice-removed was more involved as a positive force in the child’s life than a close relative like the grandmother, I would rather see the child placed with SCTR than Granny, even if Granny desperately wanted her direct descendant. Or, if the child was older, keeping the child in the same community with the same friends might outweigh Granny too. Maybe I’m totally off-base here or missing another factor; feel free to say so.
[On preview: Thanks for the info from your experience, doreen. I had not considered some of those benefits to a relative, and they make a lot of sense. Do you have a sense of how often it happens that the original placement is done with a non-relative, and it takes 6 months to move to a relative? I guess that it takes some time to certify the relatives as foster parents, but 6 months seems to be bordering on the time when a child would be getting comfortable.]
I don’t imagine that it takes six months to certify a relative. My office could approve relatives on a same day basis in a emergency. A further study would be done within two days, and the final certification might take three months or more- with the child in the relative’s home while the process went on. But that’s assuming that the relative was the initial placement, or was located within a couple of days. If the bioparents waited a while before giving info about the relatives, (and some did) the move might wait until the whole process was complete. Every now and then relatives were found to be unsuitable ( or more often, someone in the relative’s household was uncooperative- wouldn’t go for the fingerprinting or medical exam). You don’t really want to place a child in an unrelated home, move him or her to a relative when you find one two months later, and then find yet another home if the relative can’t be certified for some reason. The original home is not likely to be available.
Oh , and I just noticed that in your OP you said the relatives were halfway across the state- that almost certainly added to the time as it probably involved the relative’s local CPS agency as well and would almost certainly require waiting until the home study was complete.
Disclaimer: The following represents speculation based on some interesting animal studies and extrapolation on observed human behavior, but is not meant to be taken as demonstrated fact, or made the basis for custody law, or used as an argument in a particular placement case.
Hypothesis: Blood kin represent people who are to some extent genetically programmed to put a higher priority on the welfare and the survival of the child than non-relatives.
Yes, yes, I know there are plenty of horrible parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings, etc. etc. who should never have been allowed to reproduce, much less raise offspring. Random strangers chosen off the street would be a better choice than leaving a child with some of these blood kin. But when all things are equal, or unknown, biology leads to odds of a better outcome with blood kin.
Under Indiana law (the state in which I did a family law clinic back when I was in law school), the only preference given grandparents in custody law is that grandparents have the right to petition for visitation of their grandchildren. They are as strangers when it comes to custody.
All blood relatives other than the [assumed] biological parents are as strangers to the child as far as custody determinations are concerned, and if neither biological parent is fit to take custody, the court may assign custody to whatever guardian the court finds would best serve the interests of the child, without regard to familial association.
The State of Washington attempted to grant preferred status to grandparents, but that was struck down as unconstitutional.
I’m surprised that there is anything that gives persons other than the actual biological parents any special standing. It goes against most of what I learned in that family law clinic.
Different rules apply to foster parenting (there is, I believe, federal guidance on this issue, requiring social services agencies to attempt to place a child with a blood relative when one is available and willing to act as foster parent), and I don’t know much at all about the rules that apply in guardianship cases.