Permanency Plan
In some foster care cases, I think it is fairly evident what is in the best interest of the child.
In others, it is not so clear.
What if a mother doesn’t do a very good job? She moves around all the time, doesn’t take the kids to the doctor, doesn’t get them to school over half of the time, doesn’t teach them how to walk and talk the right way? What if her children all have developmental or emotional issues that may be caused by environmental issues or maybe not? She has no place to live, no money, no transportation. No way to provide for the kids. The children have some minor injuries that can’t be explained. When DFS comes to visit, the mother refuses their services and investigators note that the house is not at all safe for children. So the children go into foster care.
Now, this mother is not an evil person. She’s immature and she has a low IQ. She does things for the kids, but they aren’t always the right things.
So DFS tries to help her. They set her up with people who teach her how to parent. They point her in the direction of people who can help her get a job and get services. They get her a psychological evaluation, they get her therapy, they get her medication if she needs it. They give her a written list of the things she needs to do to get her children back.
After all, children shouldn’t have to lose their mother because she is poor or she has a mental illness or she is too immature to parent correctly.
But what happens next? What if Mom doesn’t get a job? What if she spends her money on cell phones instead of diapers? What if she Mom is shown to have a mental illness but she refuses to go to therapy or refuses to take her medication? What if, after she is given all these services, her situation remains the same?
New laws have been passed since Bug entered foster care. Bug entered foster care when she was four. Her mother was given services. She was sent to rehab three times. She was given counseling and job help and parent educators. Mom’s rights weren’t terminated until almost four years after Bug entered into foster care.
Meanwhile, Bug got moved 22 times. She went from home to home to home. She spent years in a sense of limbo. She had no real family. She had foster families whose job was to send her back to her a mom. She had a mom who wasn’t working her case plan in a timely manner. She didn’t know if she would still be in the house on her birthday or on Christmas.
If Bug had been in foster care now, things would be different. If her mom hadn’t gotten her act together within 15 months, then her rights would have been terminated a lot quicker. (And yes, I know that not all judges stick to this timeline.)
I 100% believe that if Bug had been adopted sooner, she would have been much better off for the rest of her life. Being adopted at 6 would have meant a whole lot less heartache than being adopted at 9 1/2. Even 15 months is a long time in the case of someone like Snowbaby who has been alive 24 months and in foster care 1/6th of the time she has been alive.
So how do you balance it? In our first scenario, should this mother lose her children? I think it is easy to assume that children are better off with parents who will send them to school, get them medical care, and help them meet developmental milestones. It doesn’t matter if mom is rich or poor, but she has to be able to provide for their basic needs. What if she chooses not to though? What if she chooses not to work? Then what?
Do you send the kids back to mom when she has no way to take care of them? Being poor isn’t a reason to lose your kids, but is being poor because the parent refuses to work enough of a reason?
Which is worse? A child having the rights of his or her parents terminated, or a child living with parents who are neglectful?
The system is designed to provide birth parents with the skills, services, and support they need so that they can parent their children. But they can’t force the parent to take them up on the offer.
To me, the best option in these type of cases is an open adoption. If Mom isn’t dangerous, then let the children have a relationship with her, while they live with someone who can meet their needs.
And yet, it is still a loss to both the parent and the child.
It is hard to know what is right. I know it is foolish for me, for instance, to state that I am a much better person to raise Snowbaby and Bubba than their mother. If for no other reason than I’m sure more than half of you could make a case as to why you are the better person than me to raise them. You have more money, an advanced degree, a husband, a white picket fence.
Yet we all know that those things don’t make a good parent. Time, love, and the ability to sacrifice for the good of your children do.
I went into foster care thinking it was fairly clear cut. I’m seeing, as time goes on, that nothing is that simple. That cases involve a complex web of emotions, pasts, mistakes, legal manueverings.
And that the course of people’s lives are being dramatically altered by the decisions of others. And some of those people are little girls, curled up on a pink blanket on my floor, their arm wrapped around a doll baby, sound asleep.
June 13th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
It’s hard to know what the “right thing” is in many of these cases.
In some cases, it’s pretty clear cut. But in others, it’s not. Good judges, social workers and foster families lose a lot of sleep over the cases where the best interest of the child isn’t so abundantly clear.
June 13th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Or like poor K’s case. He has been in care off and on since he was 4 months old. He will be 4 in August. I was told the reason rights weren’t terminated was because the mom was a minor. She just turned 18. We have a TPR hearing soon, and I pray to God that this new judge is more reasonable and will do what is right for this poor boy!!
You are doing a great job, Baggage!!
June 13th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
I once asked our SW why parents are given so many chances … at the expense of the children. She told me there have been times (rare, but it has happened) that bio parents have gotten their act together on the fifth or sixth try.
To me, it’s just not right. That means for however many years for ADULTS to get their s**t together while the children basically sit in limbo. To me, that’s just so not right.
I see how much turmoil my older two children went through, being moved from home to home, as compared to my youngest, who was in fewer homes (and the TPR was done before he was a year old).
I do believe in bio family — I’m adopted myself — but never at the expense of the children. Adults have lived their lives — good, bad, or otherwise — but children all need a chance. By taking that chance and giving it to adults, it’s costing too many children too much.
June 13th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Good post.
When I first started trying to adopt I thought it was so clear cut, too, and I couldn’t understand the way the laws worked. Now I see all the grey areas, though.
June 13th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
I wonder why it takes some judges so long. Even if the case has only been 3 years or whatever, the poor kid has lived with this THEIR entire lives, and that needs to be recognized. Good, loving, child-minded parents don’t need 6 chances. Plain and simple.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
I just love your writing. If you could do enough of these wonderfully thoughtful monologues, you’d be on your way to once fantastic book that would sell like hotcakes!!
June 13th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Wow- amazingly well said. Although I am curious about a few things/developments that apparently are occcuring in your lives. How about a private password post to update us? Is there hope that Bubba & Snowbaby may soon have the name of Baggage added on to their names? I hope so- they seem so happy and settled, and isn’t that what its all about? Giving the kids what they need?
Kudos to you for your work with Callie. We’re mid-MAPP now for therapuetic care, and are having to “select” or “deselect” the races/genders/etc that we prefer. Unfortunately, because of the seriously racially divided area we live in now(small town USA where folks still refer to minorities as “colored”), I’m scared to bring a child of mixed race (like some of my siblings and my godkids/godsister) or minorities in, for fear of them not being able to cope with the segregation and discrimination. As much as I’d love to fight it, I won’t do so at the detriment of a child’s selfesteem, and that’s what would happen here, unfortunately.
How’s Bug doing lately?
June 13th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
I’m with Angela. Write a book, you are a natural. You express things so amazingly clearly and well. There are so many shades of gray in foster care/adoption situations, and we do the best we can to deal with the ambiguities.
June 13th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
It seems like the courts always put the mom’s needs/rights/wants before the baby’s. It is like they have it backwards–what the baby needs should be the most important thing.
If the mom has already made big enough mistakes to lose the baby, what are the odds that she is going to get her act together enough to get the baby back and keep it all together enough to provide for the baby?
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m an advocate for the child and don’t have a lot of sympathy for the family who has abused or neglected him/her.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:10 am
I just have to say — your blog is totally the cutest one I’ve ever seen! Love the color motif! I like how you argued your points. Very well said. I think that the job of a mother is very subjective. Good, bad, mediocre, whatever — it’s really not for anyone to say. We all work in different styles and we usually go by our guts…
June 14th, 2007 at 8:15 am
well said
June 14th, 2007 at 9:43 am
After reading through a file that at times resembled a very long episode of COPS. I have wondered when you stop trying to help them, the parents, and start doing the absolute best for the child.
I was reading the file and at one point realized I was reading it like a novel. As I was sitting there Telling this ‘charachter’ in this novel to “take the treatment!! Just go in. I know you can do it!” and the next page getting so disappointed because again there was a relapse. It isn’t like I didn’t know the darn outcome. BUT I still did it.
I think it was at that point DH told me to take a break from the file and walk away
June 14th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Let us not forget about the new precidence being set across our state (NY) and soon to find it’s way into other states. Our - soon to be adopted - son’s mother had her rights termninated because she was mentally ill. This was after 16 placements and three times back to mom. He turned 11 and ended up on an ‘unadoptable’ list created by idiots. NOW, because of the mental illness reason give for termination it ELIMINATED ALL of the other abuse issues which are as bad as they can possibly get. Mom is taking us to court to have visitation rights. After all, our soon to be adopted son is on an unadoptable list which gives her rights for visitation - and if she wins, get this - we will have to appeal and if that doesn’t work her visitation rights may last even after the adoption is finalized. She is a monster and has done unthinkable things to our boy. On his way to bed tonight he told us about another beating he received which involved a belt, cries for help, and eventually police intervention - this was before he was 9 because he spent 2.5 years in residential treatment prior to moving into our home.
I say, remove children from adults that are not capable of putting them first. It will be their only hope for a future. And I too believe that had the rights been terminated when he was 3 he would have far less issues now.
June 14th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
I talk to many people who continue to advocate for services to bioparents, which is not bad and I fully support, but it’s like they think that the children involved are in suspended animation or something. On one hand, it’s great that parents are able to receive services to improve their lives and the lives of their children, but the kids don’t stay frozen in time. This fact is too often forgotten, both by judges and those who are advocating for the bio-parent’s rights.
You said it much more eloquently than I did. I’m just the therapist who works with the children and get’s to see the trauma, continued neglect and hurt experienced by the kids when the bio-parents continue to fail to get their shit together. Too often the kids end up being foster care road kill.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:14 am
It is all so incredibly heartbreaking. You are doing a great job. Thankyou for being there for those kids of yours.