Rethinking Foster Care

It’s Time to Follow the Law and Take Reasonable Efforts Seriously David Kelly Special Assistant to the Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau A caseworker driving a child four hours--one way-- to visit his mother on a weekly basis.   The child welfare agency putting a family up in a hotel for two days and hiring a professional cleaning service to return a home to a habitable condition.   A children’s attorney refusing to give up on finding a family connection for a severely disabled young man, even though he requires a residential treatment setting.   A judge understanding the treatment and recovery process and insisting a parent receive the support they need.   These are all solid examples of reasonable efforts to prevent removal or finalize a permanency plan recently provided by an audience of child welfare legal professionals.   In total, a dozen or so strong responses to the straightforward question, what are the best examples of reasonable efforts that you hav

Consider, for a moment, this story I recently discovered in court transcripts. A paternal grandmother living in New York City learns that her 1-year-old grandson is in Michigan’s foster care system. Days after the child’s removal, she immediately contacts the child’s foster care worker, travels to Michigan, attends the court hearing and requests that the child be placed with her, instead of strangers. It turns out that she raised the child for the first few months of his life, and the child’s parents both support the move. And if you weren’t convinced already, she happens to be both a licensed foster parent and a foster care worker. Easy, quick decision, right?   Well, not so fast. Under the Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children (“ICPC”) – a contract between the 50 states and territories meant to ensure the safe placement of youth – before a court can make an interstate placement of a child in foster care, the state in which the potential

“CODE TALK”             After practicing for five years as a parent attorney, I have become well versed in the language of child welfare. What is this language? It is basically an incomprehensible set of acronyms or phrases that have the effect of being both exclusionary and sterilizing in the courtroom. It is language that everyone in the courtroom understands, except the parents and the children, the people for whom the language is most relevant. There is no better way to have a parent zone out than to use language that would require a law degree to understand. For example, we routinely refer or allude to ASFA, CAPTA, reasonable efforts, MNR, PPH, probable cause, dependency, contrary to the welfare, APPLA, WTLP, permanency plan, action plan, diligent search, individual level outcomes, family level outcomes, EPAC, and lastly and most notably, TPR.             This is language that disrespects parents and promotes disengagement from their cases. If they don’t understand wha

The Washington Supreme Court recently declined to recognize a categorical right for children to have attorneys appointed in dependency cases. Many in the child advocacy community are viewing the decision as a loss.   But the Court’s decision is correct for many reasons, including reasons not stated in the opinion itself.   The debate over the right to attorneys for children has often been described, and was described in this case, as a question of giving “voice” to the “voiceless.” That characterization obscures the fact that many children, by virtue of their age, simply can’t communicate.    Lawyers should be troubled by the notion that we can “represent” the position of a pre-verbal infant child. Lawyering is, foremost, an exercise in listening. Over the years, listening to clients has taught me that I can never predict what they will say, what position they will take, or which way a dependency case will go. My clients have proved my assumptions wrong enough times to