Desperate moves of parents who lose custody

Lorraine

In early fall Nephra and Shanel Payne, parents who "kidnapped" their eight children from a foster care center in Forest Hills, New York, were all over the news. They and their kids--all safe, just after dinner in their car--were located a week later in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The couple was arrested and charged with eight counts each of kidnapping--one per child. The kidnapping charges were later dismissed after they agreed to plead guilty to second-degree custodial interference, a misdemeanor for which they were each sentenced to 90 days in jail and three years probation. They were released the day before Thanksgiving.

Stories about parents "kidnapping" their own children always catch my attention for I do not immediately assume that the state is automatically right in taking

Adopting from Foster Care: Helping Kids or Enabling Family Destruction?

We at FMF are quick to throw down the gauntlet to those seeking to adopt. “If you really want to help kids (rather than feed your own ego),” we say glibly, “you’d adopt a kid from foster care. It’s not only a humane thing to do, it’s free.”

One of our readers, Lori, took us on.

“Lorraine, WHOA there lady! I was a foster child and I can tell you that a lot of misinformation about the children in foster care is out there. It is worse than the misinformation about adoption. First, children can be placed in foster care for a multitude of reasons - poverty being the largest! Sound familiar? …

8 out of 10 families are completely destroyed and the children almost always languish in foster care because they are either too old or have mental health issues caused by the abrupt disruption of their lives.

I believe that some adoptions are good - but I also believe that we need to be realistic about all the children and parents we are talking about.”

There’s a lot of truth in what Lori writes. Adopting from foster care may simply allow over-zealous social workers to scarf up more kids. The federal Adoption and Safe Families Act in 1997 relaxed requirements that states make reasonable efforts to return children to their families and required states to put termination of parental rights (freeing children for adoption in social work parlance) on a fast track. The law also continued open-ended foster care payments to states while capping family preservation funds. The net effect: increases in adoption were more than offset by increases in the number of children in foster care according to the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, a non-profit dedicated to making the child welfare system “better serve America’s most vulnerable children by trying to change policies concerning child abuse, foster care, and family preservation.”

Overuse of foster care is nothing new. In the early 1970’s, as a young attorney, I represented parents whose kids were placed in the custody of the state. I saw few cases involving physical abuse. I did see lots of specious claims of neglect. Dirty dishes in the sink, unmade beds, over-flowing cats’ pans, more beer than milk in the refrigerator, kids with fevers and runny noses, all recorded by child protection workers as evidence of neglect. One social worker curtailed visits between my client and her child because the child cried when her mother left, clear evidence that visits were harmful; another kept a child in a “treatment” facility largely because his mother sassed the social worker; a third refused to place a child with her grandmother because the child would spend time in day care while the grandmother worked.

In the 1990’s I worked for a State office managing federal anti-crime grants. In its application for funds, one regional narcotics team boasted that officers called in child protection workers when the police found marijuana in a home so that the children would be placed in foster care as an additional punishment on their parents.

My husband, Jay, is a criminal defense attorney. He is appointed to represent parents in dirty house cases about six times a year. The State charges parents with “criminal mistreatment I, a felony, for each child and places the children in foster care. Since the parents face a prison sentence if convicted, they typically plead guilty and receive probation. After they clean their house, the State returns the kids. These cases are really about conduct that offends middle-class sensibilities. It would be cheaper and less traumatic for kids if the State sent in a housekeeper or a home ec instructor.

I’ve read about children starved, beaten, sexually abused, and murdered in foster homes. I’ve seen documentaries about modern-day Georgia Tanns who falsified evidence to convince judges to terminate the rights of mothers. Georgia Tann, our readers may recall, was the mother of closed adoptions and the notorious Tennessee Baby Thief who worked with a corrupt judge, stealing children and placing them with the rich and famous including Hollywood stars Joan Crawford, Bob Hope, and June Allyson.

Who’s behind all this ripping kids from their homes, putting them into foster care, and fast tracking them into adoption? Well surprise, surprise, it’s those who are getting the bucks: Corporations with contracts to provide foster care, foster parents, and adoption agencies with contracts to place the children.

All this being said, some parents cannot care for their children because of death, mental illness, incarceration, drug addiction, or zero nurturing skills. Sadistic parents, step-parents, and partners of parents exist in every community. Long term foster care is no answer for these children. Every year thousands of children “age” out of foster care with no family and no resources. Prisons are filled with former foster children.

Adoption would benefit these children who have no family. Unfortunately these children are the least likely to be adopted.

Happy Adoption Day

Oh, who would have guessed? Who could have seen? Who could have possibly known?
All these roads we have traveled, the places we’ve been would have finally taken us home.

And it’s here’s to you and three cheers to you! Let’s shout it, “Hip, hip hip, hooray!”
For out of a world so tattered and torn, you came to our house on that wonderful morn.
And all of a sudden this family was born. Oh, happy Adoption Day.

I first heard this song (now a children’s book), Happy Adopton Day, November 4, 2001. I was participating in a Sunday service at my former Unitarian Church--on my birthday--along with an adult Korean adoptee with a not-so-favorable view of adoption, another adult adoptee frustrated by her lack of information regarding her roots, and adoptive parents. I knew the adoptees from my support group; we were all on the same page regarding adoption.

After a very emotional service—a photographer from NJ’s largest newspaper had taken a photo of me embracing the Korean woman where we appear to be smiling and laughing when in fact we were sobbing and comforting one another—we closed with this song. The adoptees and I looked at one another in disbelief and we stopped singing and just stood there in silent solidarity.

As National Adoption Month gained momentum over the past several years I’d start bracing myself around the end of October for the onslaught of warm and fuzzy adoption stories and the “A Home for Holidays” television special sponsored by the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. I’m sure readers know that the late Thomas, founder the Wendy’s hamburger chain, was an adoptee. The show has been hosted by Mariah Carey, Sheryl Crow (who is now an adoptive mother), and Rod Stewart. I realize while I’m not thrilled with the institution and wish it could be eradicated like polio, it does have its place. Being a responsible blogger, I did some homework; here’s what I discovered from About.com:

In 1976, the governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis, announced an Adoption Week for his state. Later that same year President Gerald Ford proclaimed that Adoption Week would be celebrated nationally. As more and more states started to participate in Adoption Week it became clear that more time was needed for holding events and in 1990 National Adoption Week became National Adoption Month.

Today National Adoption Month is celebrated during the month of November. The celebration usually includes National Adoption Day with courthouses throughout the nation participating and hundreds of adoptions being finalized simultaneously.

National Adoption Month is a time to celebrate family and to bring about awareness that there are hundreds of thousands of children in foster homes awaiting adoption. States, communities, and agencies hold events during the month to bring the need for families into public view.

How about that? NAM has been around for as long as I’ve been a member of the birthmother sisterhood! It wasn’t created by Dave Thomas; it was started by a Yankee politician!

More importantly, it’s not about separating newborns from their mothers who may not be prepared for the emotional and financial responsibility required to care for their child; National Adoption Month is designed bring awareness to the fact that there are far too many children in foster care who need permanent homes in stable loving families. That’s terrific, really. For the past few years the Heart Gallery, a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to raising awareness about foster children available for adoption here in NJ, has worked with some of the country's most prestigious photographers to create portraits that capture the individuality and spirit of each foster child who is eligible to be adopted. These photographs are then shared via the web and through gallery exhibits in the hope that potential families will be moved to inquire about adoption.

These are kids who have been in the state foster care system system for years, some since birth who have never had a permanent home. Many have lived in several foster homes all their young lives while their parents battle with substance abuse,mental illness,or even prison. I attended the opening exhibit and can attest to the power of the program, which has resulted in happy endings for several children. I even met some of the kids featured in the exhibit; they’d melt your heart. I spoke to some of the photographers and they said they wished they could have adopted their subjects; perhaps some of them did.

For the first time in seven years I’m not dreading National Adoption month; nor should you. If your library doesn’t have its collection of adoption books and movies prominently displayed, nudge them. People like to be informed and enlightened; who wouldn’t enjoy reading The Girls Who Went Away, right? Just don’t ask me to sing Happy Adoption Day.