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Reframing How We View Families

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Over the past year, national groups have called for sweeping child welfare reforms, like repealing the Adoption and Safe Families Act or eradicating mandatory reporting laws. Some have voiced support for abolishing the child welfare system, or at least foster care, replacing it with a new public health approach rooted in supporting families with concrete resources like income, housing and child care. These calls for reform – now being embraced by a diverse and unlikely group of stakeholders – have sparked long overdue conversations. While these conversations about statutory reforms are important and will hopefully result in meaningful change, questions linger in my mind. Can we immediately achieve the outcomes we are seeking by simply changing our underlying values and attitudes towards families? Rather than waiting for sweeping legislation, could an overhaul of the child welfare system begin today? Take, for example, the pioneering work of the recently retired Judge Ernestine Gray, wh
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Viewing Family Separation As DEFCON 1

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          Over the course of my legal career, I’ve worked with so many relatives who have struggled to get placement of their kin in foster care due to their poverty. A grandmother who didn’t have money to buy beds. A grandfather whose home wasn’t big enough to meet licensing standards. An aunt who lived out of state and lacked the resources to move. An uncle with criminal history because he couldn’t pay outstanding fees.            All too often, at the first sign that there might be an obstacle to overcome, or a challenge to navigate, the systems take the “easy” approach. It gives up on family and instead subsidizes the placement of children with strangers instead.                My mind flashed back to many of these stories after reading the New York Times’ story recounting the experiences of Ma’Khia Bryant – yet another young Black American shot by the police – in foster care. In the article, the reporters describe that after Ma’Khia was removed from her mother’s custody, the chil
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Another Way Forward

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My client already suffered from Crohn’s Disease, which hampered his ability to hold a job and resulted in frequent hospital visits, when tragedy struck. He and his wife lost their 22-year-old daughter, the burden of which was both emotional and financial, as they spend thousands of dollars for her cremation.  As this was happening, he struggled to get his other children to school, as they were only able to attend school 75% of the time, compared to a county-wide attendance rate of 85%. Yet, both children remained on grade level and were not behind. Nevertheless, when Michigan’s child welfare agency investigated a referral about the family due to the school absences, they removed the children from their home, placed them with strangers.  Going in and out of the hospital, my client struggled to participate in services.  A year later, the child welfare agency asked the court to terminate his rights.  The trial court agreed.  But last month, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed the order t
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The Road Less Traveled

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  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.   It is an artificial disti
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Lawyers and Due Process

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 “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 deny justice to famili
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The “R” Words

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There’s a certain way most white folks are conditioned to think and talk about racism in society and within systems in particular.  It’s a way that allows us to acknowledge the problem, make our repulsion known, and at the same time dissociate ourselves from it.  We’ve been able to tell ourselves that our faith tradition, commitment to social justice, career, donations or good intentions put us in the clear.  We do not feel racist and would never identify with what we perceive racist thoughts and acts to be -- the stuff of terror and the active denial of human and civil rights.  We are against the idea that someone should ever be treated differently based on the color of their skin.  Racist ideology and acts of bigotry and ignorance are an anathema to justice that decent people reject.  We may even be involved with efforts to promote equity in some way. But the hard truth is that having benign thoughts are not enough.  If it were, racial disparities in child welfare would simply disapp
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Families, Kids, And The Value Of Leaving The Door Open

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  As I started to clean up the kitchen after Christmas dinner with my family, a text message appeared on my phone. The message simply read, “Merry Christmas,” with a picture attached. The pictured showed a young man embracing his mother as he was leaving her home that evening. The picture took my breath away. Fifteen years ago, I represented that young man in the foster care system. He had lived the life in the system we never want to see. He spent a decade in group homes – over thirty placements in total – until he aged out of the system.  When I last saw her, his mother – a sweet and kind woman who loved her children deeply – was battling a long-term addiction to drugs, never able to fully conquer her demons. Her children remained in foster care, most with kin, because she could not get clean. Yet she always emotionally supported them, as we’d want any mother to do.   Now, time had passed, and fifteen years later, here were the two embracing after Christmas dinner. After leaving fost
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