I read this a few days ago and am still thinking about it. Pro Publica (in this case in conjunction with the New Yorker) continues to do excellent journalism.
Ugh, so tough. My mom kept a total of 86 foster babies, from the time they were newborns for up to 10 months. Her friend kept even more. They saw a lot of drug addicted babies and they were the ones who had to comfort them when they screamed uncontrollably. And many times the biological parents wouldn’t show up for court mandated visits. It sounds like the biological parents in this story got their act together, but that was rare in my mom’s experience.
The demand for foster parents in Texas decreased dramatically when courts started to favor placing them with other relatives. My mom and her friend finally quit because it was frustrating working with the state.
Your mom is a hero. No doubt that many of those babies and their children and grandchildren owe their lives to her. As someone who has seriously considered and investigated foster parenting and dismissed the idea out of fear and/or inconvenience, I am humbled.
Oh, thank you. She was special. She stayed in touch with the boy she kept the longest and even helped him and his biological mom. At 35, he spoke in public for the first time in his life at her funeral.
Really interesting article. It shows how things have changed since @MaineLonghorn was a pretty amazing foster carer.
The standard to terminate should not be “are the bio parents the best (whatever that means) parents for this child” but are the bio parents capable of parenting this child in a safe way. If not, then the parental rights should be terminated and AFTER that the goal should be to find the ‘best’ home for the child. Separate the issues. You don’t want to be picking the best situation for a child as few of us, especially as 20 year olds, would pass the test. There is always going to be someone with better patience, more money, better medical insurance and access to hospitals, a better school district and the state would be forever shuffling kids to a better home.
The article doesn’t make it clear that there are two processes going on here, the first a Dependency and Neglect action, that is filed because the parents cannot care for the child and that state intervention is needed. A D&N can be filed and the child left with the parents but with court supervision, or the child can be place in foster care or kinship care which isn’t always a relative but just someone who has a connect with the child (coach, teacher, relative, friend can all be kinship caregivers). That’s what happened at the beginning of this case, and in Colorado for a child under 5 the D&N is on a fast docket and the D&N is supposed to be wrapped up within 12 months (18 months if over 6). With Covid, that became very hard to do, but these parents did it. I worked on two cases both with children under 5 during covid, and both took more than 18 months to get the D&N petitions dismissed but progress was being made on the plans.
At the end of 12 months, the county should have made a decision to return Carter (dismiss the D&N) or file a termination. They appear to have dismiss the first termination but continue the D&N. Not sure what the plan was at that time since the parents had met all the requirements (jobs, drug free, parenting classes).
The second part of the case is the termination of parental rights. If the parents don’t follow the plan, the state files a motion to terminate. Again, the question isn’t if another family (even a relative) would be better, it is only whether the parents aren’t capable of being the parent to this child. The final judge seemed to pick up on this and asked what the parents were missing and why weren’t they capable of parenting. The answer was that they’d done everything and were capable of parenting. The end.
I think the point of the article is this new legal strategy, foster-parent intervening, that allows foster parents to shortcut the process to adopt children in their care, regardless of fitness of birth parent(s) or other family members.
Thanks for posting. It’s an interesting article. I think one unsaid thing is that a lot of localities lead foster parents to agree to foster because they think it’s the best shot of adopting a child. Obviously Ja’Lyn knew the mom was a drug addict. She probably knew the father was too and thought there was almost no chance that the parents would stay together and both would get clean. In this situation,the foster parents had fostered other kids, but in a lot, they haven’t and they are ONLY willing to foster if they think it’s highly probable they will be able to adopt the child.
Yes, but that law (or those laws) are being misused. I’m glad Colorado clarified that law. The standards for termination were never changed, but in this case, in a small, rural county, the law was misapplied. They should have done the D&N, then if that failed the Termination, THEN and only then, qualified someone for adoption and at that point is when the intervention should kick in and a court could determin among all those who want to adopt, who is the most qualified.
The Indiana law is probably not constitutional as the notice requirements are unfair. The parent smay have won on appeal, but the problem often is that they don’t have the money to appeal.
I am really glad the magazine and ProPublica have brought attention to this. Some of the comments by the foster parents and the “expert” were infuriating. It’s not just the money, it’s knowledge of how to navigate this particular system.
I think these types of laws also present a very slippery slope. It isn’t nearly as far from deciding that you can intervene in parental unification plans in care situations to deciding certain expectant parents may need to compete for the rights to their unborn children as some might believe.
Having worked in this area, I have to say all the players are not always the best and brightest in their fields. The first case I worked on (as a CASA) involved three changes of SW, at least at least 8 attorneys assigned to the parents and children, covid restrictions, two kids in the home, two in foster care, court orders against other children from being near these kids, another child born during the proceedings and not part of the case…
The judge resigned during the case (for cause), the first SW is currently facing criminal charges for a personal matter (but also removed from her position) and in the end not much changed for the kids except that somewhat because of covid the father had a whole lot more money to raise them and they did a lot better because of that money. He got extra covid funds for food stamps, for the child credit, other medical services that were needed, and he had me yelling at him to make sure the kids got to school every day.
The third SW was the best and got the case moving and resolved. I never met or talked to the second SW who did nothing for 5 months. The GAL (an attorney assigned to the kids) was horrible and I haven’t seen him on any other cases (sort of unusual as the same attorneys are assigned over and over). He didn’t like the father (who was trying very hard).
But it was money that made the difference, money to the father to support the kids and money for services, either to the family or paying the professionals to do a good job.
Oh, and the foster family was great and really supported the children. The kids always wanted to ‘go home’ even though that meant giving up a suburban life with their own room and bathroom, gymnastics, swimming lessons, trips to Disney (really) new clothes to go to a tiny house where they shared a tiny room with 4, one bathroom for 7, over crowded schools.
As an adoptive parent, I understood that we weren’t giving our child a better life (material advantages aside) just a different one. Children want to be with their biological parents and vice versa; things have gone very wrong when they can’t. Even with the best adoptive family placement in the world, the child has losses that don’t disappear.
I’m also an adoptive parent, and my daughter never expressed loss of her birth family even though our family is far from perfect. Last summer she played on an international team and saw what life in China could have been like, but not HER life. The others were children of very wealthy parents, but she realized she would have been a very poor person and international travel, higher education, Disneyland would never have happened for her without adoption. It was really eye-opening for her. As a 2 year old, 7 year old, hs student? No, it was just her life but she didn’t have an option of another life.
Not trying to argue with how your daughter feels or what she has or hasn’t expressed, but she has losses whether she acknowledges them or not. She doesn’t have her biological family history, she didn’t grow up in the country or culture in which she was born.
As an adult, she may very well feel those weren’t losses she counts very highly. But they are losses nonetheless. If her parents had died and she had been placed for adoption in this country, would anyone be arguing she hadn’t lost anything?
And your daughter did have the option of another life, one in China if she hadn’t been placed for international adoption. Her life may very well have been very different and materially poorer but it would have been a life.
I am also an adoptive parent of a young woman from China. Did I post this article?
It’s about Korean adoptees who give birth to a baby who is the first person in their lives since early childhood who is genetically related to them. My daughter is getting married next month and she and her fantastic fiance plan to start working on pregnancy next summer. The article definitely rang bells for her. She has had extremely ambivalent feelings about China over the years but I long suspected that giving birth will be a revelation.
Thank you for sharing this article, I hadn’t read it before!
Yes, I know, but she didn’t have the choice of staying with a birth family or joining a new one. For her, it most likely was being adopted internationally or being raise in an orphanage in a rather poor setting until she was 14 or 16, and then going to work in a factory. She would not have been a wealthy girl living in a Shanghai high rise, going to college (and some had gone to boarding school) in the US. The women she met were very surprised that 1. she WORKED for a living, and 2. she has a sister (they just couldn’t get over her not being an only child). They were all only children who were mid-20s and were supported by their fathers.
As they get older, they (can) realize that life changes for everyone. It took my daughter a while to get there.
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