If you're like me, you've heard countless horror stories about foster care, which may put children into situations as bad as or even worse than the hells from which they came.
What you may not know is that too many of the children being placed in foster care today didn't need to be there in the first place. Often, families simply needed affordable daycare, or a car, or other form of support. Sometimes, a needless complaint by a neighbor triggers the removal. In other cases, personal prejudices and misjudgments play a role. I know--my children and I are just such victims.
The most frightening part about this is that the main actors in this drama--county departments of Child Protective Services--have nearly unlimited power to seize children on mere suspicion of harm. While in theory, there's a legal process in place to control CPS workers, in all practicality their charges are usually rubber-stamped by judges. Make no mistake: anyone who doesn't have a pricey lawyer on retainer may have virtually no recourse when CPS acts. Think I'm paranoid? Read on.
Every year, thousands of children are taken out of their parents' homes by quasi-police with frighteningly broad powers authorized by the benevolent-sounding Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA).
With nothing more than a 1,000-odd word set of allegations--no need for actual proof of anything--CPS can enter your home and take your children. They don't need a warrant to collect them, they don't read you any Miranda-like warnings to make sure you know your rights, and they don't even have to tell you where the children are once they've been hauled away.
Originally a thoughtful piece of legislation backed by Walter Mondale, focused on the study of child abuse and neglect and training of professionals, with time and amendments it's grown into a monster. CAPTA-based funds, flowing through the Department of Health and Human Services, fund a large and elaborate foster system replete with money-making opportunities.
Adding insult to injury, while CAPTA does pay for children to be put in foster care with strangers, neither CAPTA nor most states offer a cent to families who manage to find a close, loving relative who will take the children in while CPS paws over their life.
Worse, the current update of CAPTA does absolutely nothing to punish CPS workers who wrongfully take children from loving parents. The prevailing attitude in CPS departments nationwide, studies suggest, is "better safe than sorry." In other words, CPS workers look good to their bosses when a child gets removed from their home, whether or not the removal was justified.
Absolute discretion
Aggressively searching out children at risk may sound sensible, even if a few mistakes are made, but what actually happens is that it gives workers more or less absolute discretion to pluck children from their homes at will, even fragile ones like my sons, who particularly need parental support. And unfortunately, many state laws make the problem even worse.
Consider that 40-odd percent of CPS charges in one state we studied were labeled as instances of "physical neglect," which can mean anything from starving children in rags to workers finding a few cookie crumbs on the floor. By the way, would you be surprised to learn that in that state, another report cited the number of "founded" child abuse/neglect cases as zero in two of the wealthiest zip codes?
In our home state, this catch-all category of "physical neglect" is so loosely defined that it can justify the seizure of just about any kid whose family doesn't have a full-time house staff. (Look around, parents -- are there cookie crumbs on your floor right now? Are you prepared to be interrogated by strangers as to how long they've been there?)
Perhaps the scariest part of all of this is that CAPTA gives CPS workers protection from both criminal and civil liability in virtually all cases. That's despite the fact that, in a very real sense, they have the power dub you guilty of child harm and force you to prove your innocence, sometimes for a year or more, before they'll give the children back.
I still have rights
Fortunately, I haven't forgotten that while they took my children, they didn't take my rights. Despite having to work with a stretched-thin public defender, we've managed to stay on top of the situation (between bouts of crying my eyes out, of course).
We have, after a few court appearances, managed to get the county to admit that both our boys suffer from pediatric bipolar disorder--and that we're not careless idiots who could somehow have controlled their admittedly strange and sometimes threatening behavior.
Bear in mind, however, that my husband and I are middle-class professionals with good educations and experience with activism. While the lawyers have done most of the work, we know that our confidence and ability to articulate our needs has helped things along.
In fact, it seems we'll probably be getting our younger son back shortly, after only (!) a few months, and my older boy a bit later. We're in agony, but they're "letting" us see our beloved children, so we'll survive.
On the other hand, I can only imagine what happens to non-English-speaking, poverty-stricken immigrants accused of some vague parental misdeed. The idea curdles my blood.