Rethinking Foster Care

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...

  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....

Poet David Whyte writes, “Start close in, don’t take the second step or the third, start with the first thing close in, the step you don’t want to take.” I’m thinking of Whyte’s words this morning as my client – a mother who for years has battled an addiction to drugs – prepares to enter an in-patient drug treatment program, days before Christmas. I’m thinking of how many obstacles she has overcome to take this first step. Being dependent on a chemical that controls your brain. Enduring the pain of losing her children to foster care. Receiving threats from professionals about the permanent destruction of her family if she can’t treat her illness. Navigating complex bureaucracies during a pandemic without a phone, or a place to live. Spending the holidays in a facility with strangers, instead of her children.  The list goes on and on. Stress. Grief. Trauma. Whyte further instructs, “Don’t let them smother something so simple.” Yet, how often in child welfare do we do this to parents...

The late Justice Ruther Bader Ginsburg had many gifts, one of which was using language to convey the harsh impact of the law on those living on the margins. Consider her words in M.L.B. v. S.L.J, in which she authored a majority opinion requiring states to provide parents with free transcripts in termination of parental rights (TPR) appeals.  She described the severity of the sanction as making a parent “forevermore, a stranger to her child.” She outlined the Court’s approach as being “mindful of the gravity of the sanction imposed on [the mother].”  And she noted that TPRs involved the “irretrievable destruction of the most fundamental family relationship.”   Her words powerfully captured that judges should exercise restraint before deciding to permanently and irrevocably sever relationships between parents and children. Her view aligns with a foundational constitutional view – that before the government strips any person of fundamental rights, it must demonstrate t...

The election of former Vice President Joe Biden provides an opportunity to end the war against poor families waged by the Trump administration. President Trump sought to deny millions of Americans – including children – health care, food stamps and cash assistance. His policies ripped children from parents escaping poverty, violence and abuse in their home countries. He refused to fight for economic security – like a living wage – that would have provided more stability in the lives of low-income families. Research informs us that these types of supports are exactly what families need to safely care for their children and prevent the unnecessary entry of kids into foster care. The Biden administration gives us hope that a broad anti-poverty agenda might be forthcoming that can provide respite to both struggling families and an overburdened foster care system. Yet, in one important area, the Biden administration should simply build on the work of his predecessor – child welfare policy. ...

    I used to say that I grew up in Nowhere, Alabama.   Nowhere was an unincorporated expanse of farm land and cotton fields that stretched as far as I could see, punctuated by the county school that I attended for eleven years of my life.   Nowhere was full of climbing trees, swinging vines, and wading streams rife with salamanders and minnows. Nowhere was much poorer than not and had few, if any, formal social institutions beyond church and school. Nowhere is Reeltown, Alabama.   I haven’t been back there in too many years to count, but an old friend recently sent me a blog post about Reeltown, written by Sean-of-the-South Dietrich, that flooded my senses and challenged me to acknowledge the tremendous influence that my community had on my development and on my life. The blog told the story of Sean encountering an elderly man in Reeltown who, based on the laws of probability, is most likely related to me somehow.   He and his wife were s...

A few weeks ago, my client, a mother in a child protective case trying to regain custody of her children. informed my students she had lost her housing and was now homeless. Immediately, my students picked up the phone and called the one person tasked with helping our client get her kids back – the agency caseworker.  When the caseworker didn’t pick up the phone, they sent her an email. Days passed without a response. About a week later, they finally received a short message with a list of other community agencies that might be able to assist with housing, which my students had discovered days prior through a simple Google search. The caseworker ended the email indicating that there was nothing else she could do to help with housing. Our client was on her own. Experts predict that due to the pandemic, up to 28 million Americans will lose their housing once federal protections end. Undoubtedly, many will be families with children. Families may become homeless or be forced to live in...