Rethinking Foster Care

  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.   The poetry of Robert Frost has been a lifelong source of inspiration for me, since I first read him in high school, although I’ve never been sure that he intended all the allegory that I permit myself to read into his words. Nonetheless, I find the meaning that I search for, and I apply it to the circumstances that I find myself in. We are in circumstances now that, in my thinking, are ripe for interpretation by one of our history’s finest writer/philosophers.  Two roads . . .   And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads onto way, I doubted if I should ever come back.   For the four plus decades that I have been a part of our child welfare system, there has been a distinction made between two roads - family preservation and foster care. ...

 “But he had a lawyer, right?” the appellate judge asked. As soon as the judge asked the question, I knew we’d lose the case.  It didn’t matter that the father – who appeared via phone at a virtual hearing to determine whether his children should be removed based on allegations of abuse – stated that he had never spoken to his lawyer. It didn’t matter that the child welfare agency had never bothered to serve the father with a copy of his petition, thus precluding him from actually knowing the allegations against him. It didn’t matter that the lawyer – who had never communicated with his client – was waiving all sorts of rights on behalf of the father.  These things didn’t matter because the father had a lawyer. And that’s all that mattered to the court.  Few things matter more to us than our children, and our right to raise them. Nevertheless, in cases involving the state’s ability to strip us of that right, appellate courts all too frequently look for reasons to den...