A New Kind of Child Welfare

WARNING!  This is a long one.

I know the point of child welfare is to reunite children with their birth families, but I want to make a very clear statement here.  It is my belief that the point of child welfare is completely wrong.  Child welfare should be about... GASP!  Child Welfare!


I understand that biological parents deserve second chances to rehabilitate their lives and reunite with their children.  I even applaud this effort.  Families should stay together when a child's welfare is reasonably safe, but I have seen that whole reasonably safe part get tossed to the side repeatedly while children are sent home so the almighty goal of reunification can be met.

I understand social workers want us to help the children that come into our care to have healthy attachments.  They believe that the young child will not really remember us anyway and as long as they were attached to someone as babies they will not really experience the loss of us because these little babies won't remember us.  We are asked to accept that a young infant or toddler is terribly harmed by the loss of the person who carried them for 9 months, but told to disregard the loss that child may feel when cared for by another adult for 12 - 18 months.  This kind of thinking is incredibly insulting to all parents biological and adoptive.  It is an attitude that YOU really don't matter, YOU are replaceable. With this attitude it shouldn't be long before foster parents can be replaced with soft and snuggly human look-alike robots.

The child protective system seems to believe these little human beings just don't exist with real meaningful feelings until they reach an age where they can remember.   Look at your little ones.  Look into their sweet trusting faces and tell yourself its okay to disappear on them because as long as they attach to someone they will be FINE. No decent human being could do it, but many within the system buy into this heartless notion daily.  The sentiment seems to be Don't worry about the kids, they'll get over it.

I have heard the argument that termination cannot happen because there are not enough families to adopt.  That is completely absurd.  There are far more families willing to adopt in the United States than there are children waiting to be adopted.  Thousands of people gladly pay $30 - $50 THOUSAND dollars to adopt outside of the United States because our system is a convoluted mess!  Many of them alsoadopt children older than 2.

Yes, if I adopt from China it will take a lot of money and time, and headache, but if I meet qualifications (which are clearly spelled out) I will get to adopt.  I will get to make a difference in a child's life and they will make a difference in mine.  There is a standard process in place and all applicants get funneled through it and the process, though slow, is doable.  When you bring your child home they are yours, all the highs and lows belong to your family because you are... A FAMILY.

Contrast that with the US system.  We are asked to be willing to adopt.  We inquire into it and are told, "If you really want to adopt and have kids with you sooner you should foster."  This was the main point I took away from the state required adoption class.  Some of us foster, and we risk our hearts and lose these children.  Sometimes the loss is so unbearable we completely lose heart for adoption.  Some still stick to their sentiments and say they only want to adopt.  They are then contacted with Legal Risk placements, this means that the case will probably go to termination, but that the child could be taken at any time at the whim of a judge or caseworker.  When a family is finally contacted about an actual adoptive placement it often appears that no one even read the family's file before making contact.  These problems have caused so many families to either give up on adoption completely or take out the 2nd mortgage to adopt overseas.  At least then, these families, with hearts to adopt can actually make a positive difference in the life of a child.

I have been told by a social worker that kids often aren't available for adoption until they go home and are put back in the system, she said, and I quote, "by the time we are able to get them placed for adoption they are a mess."  Do you seriously NOT see the issue here?  Because the system doesn't exist for a child's best interests, many of the waiting children are older and extremely troubled.  They have been in and out of the system.  Although there are some families that sign on to do the hard work of adopting and raising these children many more families are completely terrified of what all those abbreviations attached to a name could mean in their own life, and rightly so.  The traumas effect everything and minimizing that does a disservice to the foster adoptive family and the traumatized child.  I contend that if parental rights were terminated sooner, so additional trauma could be minimized AND the system got an actual process in place many more children would be successfully adopted.

Let me say again, that yes, the parents of these children were once hurting children too, and they 100% deserve the chance to rehabilitate and bring their kids home, but they Do Not deserve to have 12 - 36 months of taxpayer supported, rehabilitation.  Those funds would be much better put to use supporting the NEXT generation.

One of the reasons children end up growing up in foster care and bouncing around placement to placement is because the system does not treat foster families with dignity.  Foster families are not given meaningful support when the chaos comes into their home.  Did you just take in a sibling group?  Managing that HUGE LIFE CHANGE is completely up to you.  Don't complain, or the kids will be taken.   Did you need some respite from 24 /7 madness?  Its up to you to find someone to take on the work.  Did you see something, hear something, or experience something with a foster child that reveals more than the original abuse allegations?  When you report it you need to accept that you will be treated like a liar.  You will be coached how you should have handled it differently.  Everyone will question your motives.

Another argument is that foster and adoptive children go back to their original families even after adoption.  The reason teenagers often go back to "old" families is because the system does not terminate soon enough when children can attach and adapt at younger ages and when that kind of change is easier.  I know many adopted children and they all attached with their adoptive families.  Even my mother, placed at 3 years old, and abused by her new parents, attached herself more to her adoptive family.  Although she met her biological family, and cared for them she never decided she would detach herself from her adoptive family and she still maintains relationships with her adoptive siblings to this day.

Some advocates of bio-family first often cite the fact that adopted children grow up wondering and questioning why they couldn't stay with their families.  Although this question may haunt some adopted children this is not the worst thing that can happen to a child.  One of the rights of adulthood is looking back and questioning why.  Many of us, if not most of us, have a question about a big thing that happened to us.  Many of us spend our adolescence and early adult years wrestling with this question.  It is through these backward glances that we decide if we will follow the paths chosen by those before us or if we will forge a new way.  Of all of the adopted people I know this question has not stunted their ability to live their lives.  The traumas associated with past abuses have, in some cases, stunted these people, but not the question "why."  My adopted friends and family members include successful business owners, college graduates, amazing stay-at-home Mom's.  None of these people were broken by their adoption.  Those who had some issues were mostly broken due to ABUSE.

  If birth parents are serious about changing their lives there should be major progress toward this after 6 months of intervention.  First they should be required to acknowledge there is a problem.  Drug tests should always be taken and always passed,  parenting classes should always be attended, and visits should never be missed except for serious illness.    Food, clothing, and shelter should be sought with intensity.  I am not saying that after 6 months every problem would be solved, but serious birth parents will work hard to reunite and not let the system do all the work for them. It should not be up to the social workers to show they have turned over every stone to help a family to reunite.  If you want your kids back someone else should not be doing the hard work for you!   If there has been major progress all children should go home at 6 months or sooner.  If less than half of the criteria have been met rights should be terminated.

I know this may sound heartless to birthparents, but I am not at all heartless in this regard.  I met my birth grandfather and he was wonderful to me.  He was a good man, despite his stay in jail in his younger years.  I am told my Grandmother did everything she could.  She even kept copies of all of the court records, and evidences of how she complied with court orders, including the cancelled checks from the bank for payments the state required her to pay for child support.  She kept all of these things so she could prove in court and to her children that she did not walk away from them.  Families that work hard to stay together should NEVER be separated. That is so wrong.  However, even with that sad story, my Mom is a functioning and wonderful human being.

The next generation of abusive and neglectful parents will mostly be culled from those who are abused and neglected without rescue.  Adoption does not break children, abuse and neglect does.  The system needs to stop spending billions of dollars trying to rescue parents that don't really want to be rescued.  Our entire society would be better served if the system spent that money rescuing the children instead.