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SHANTELLE
Foster Care: A Harmful and Heart-breaking cycle
It is easy to believe that foster care "rescues" children from harm and puts them on the 'right' track
towards emotional and physical well-being. But the sad truth is foster care often creates
a devastating cycle: young children are removed from the only home they know, separated
from parents and siblings, friends and schools. They languish for years in foster care
without the love and individual attention they deserve. Eventually, they become the teens
that far too often end up in the juvenile justice system…in shelters…on the street.
They may get pregnant and see their own children wind up in foster care and the cycle begins again.
Shantelle is just one of these teens.
Shantelle was abandoned by her own mother and entered foster care as a little girl, just six years old.
Shantelle was finally adopted at age 11, by someone who did not appreciate the level of support she'd
need for all she'd been through. By the time she was 15, her adoptive mother decided
Shantelle was more than she bargained for and returned her to foster care. Shantelle
entered a typical group home where theft and assault are widespread. When she was 16, she
got pregnant. She coped with her baby for the first seven months, until group home staff
reported her for "poking" the baby and yelling inappropriately. Shantelle readily admitted
she felt isolated and overwhelmed by motherhood, and needed help. But instead of giving that
help, Children's Services separated mother and child into two different foster care homes and charged
Shantelle with neglect.
CFR entered the case and is giving Shantelle the personalized support she has needed all along:
engaging her in therapy, parenting skills, job training and finding safe foster care placement where
both she and her baby can live together. The family court judge, recognizing how far Shantelle
has come, dismissed the neglect case. With CFR's support, mother and daughter are slowly
breaking the foster care cycle.
GEORGE and JOSE
Lost in the System
Even when parents overcome their problems and children are desperate to return home, the foster care
and court systems are often too overwhelmed to make it happen quickly, increasing the emotional damage
already caused by the separation. George is not unusual: he is a dad who lost his temper.
He hit his 6 year old son Jose with a belt. But George is poor and was not equipped to
deal with large bureaucracies. He did not know that he could get services to help him
parent better and still keep Jose with him. Instead, Children's Services took over and
removed Jose from his care.
Jose went to live with his grandmother, but the Court made it clear that George was free to visit his son.
But no one made that clear to George or the grandmother: no lawyer, no case worker, no
court official. Even though the judge believed the foster care agency was honoring its
order for visits, for nearly a year, George and Jose did not see each other. George
faithfully called his son most every day and struggled to find ways to explain to Jose why he
could not be with him. Jose was anxious and confused and blamed himself for the loss
of his dad. Even as George completed all the counseling and parenting classes ordered
by the Court, George and Jose remained lost in the shuffle. Agency caseworkers came and
went and none advised George that he was allowed to see his son. In fact, George
believed he had to wait until the following year to even ask the judge when he could see his
Jose again.
Within days of CFR taking the case, our attorney went to court and told the judge all the things
George had accomplished and all the ways in which he'd been ignored. The Court ordered
liberal visits for George and Jose. A few weeks later, they began seeing each other
everyday, and within two months, the court ordered that they be reunited permanently.
But for Jose, scars remain.
ANNA
The Child Welfare System: A Blunt Instrument
Anna had been raised in foster care and knew she didn't want that for her children.
But she also knew she was having difficulty parenting her two children, especially her teenage daughter.
She went to a local social service agency and started counseling. One day, after she lost
her temper and struck her child, she immediately went to the agency counselor to ask for more help.
Rather than give Anna that help, Children's Services removed the children, over the objections of
the agency counselor, who knew the family well. Even though Anna had a relative who
could care for both children, Children's Services separated them into two different foster homes.
When scheduled visits between Anna and her daughter got tense, Children's Services' response was
again reactionary - it proposed suspending all visits. CFR got involved and convinced
the parties that this was too drastic and not responsive to the families real needs.
CFR's social worker brought in a family therapist and visit coach. Within 2 months, the
family was experiencing successful, unsupervised visits and spending nights and weekends doing things
they enjoyed together. With services in place that supported the family's efforts to stay
together, the family was officially reunited in time to celebrate the holidays.
SUSAN
The Right Support Makes the Difference
Susan's story is typical of CFR's approach to family services: get in early, identify
the family's unique needs, provide comprehensive services. Susan's success shows what
can happen when a parent, who never had appropriate support, finds herself with a team of
professionals willing to create an effective individual path toward stability and healing.
Many parents make great strides once they've gotten help with the first few, vital steps.
Susan's battles were big ones: she'd fought drug addiction for years, lost custody of
two children. CFR met Susan upon the birth of her third child, when the newborn tested
positive for cocaine. Children's Services immediately filed neglect charges and removed
the infant. CFR's team recognized that only an intensive residential program designed
specifically for mothers with newborns could meet Susan's needs. CFR met with both
Children's Services and Susan; it was the very first time anyone had invited Susan to talk
about her needs.
Susan knew she needed help, but leaving the security of her apartment and neighborhood for an
eighteen month residential program petrified her. She almost skipped out on her first
day in the residential program. But CFR was there, spending hours that first day simply
helping her settle in.
Because bonding is critical in an infant's life, CFR quickly pushed for supervised visits between
mother and baby, updating Children's Services with as much information as possible about Susan's
counseling and negative drug tests. During the early visits, the foster care worker
would not allow Susan to hold her child. CFR team members, including a social worker
and parent advocate, attended those initial visits to not only support and encourage Susan, but to
push the agency to understand that the only way Susan was going to learn to parent was by being a
parent - she needed to hold, feed, and change her baby.
Meanwhile, CFR's attorney was dealing with the courts, and was usually the only person able to
give frequent and up-to-date information about Susan's progress. When Susan was
clean for 60 days, the baby's lawyer, drug rehab counselors, and the foster care worker all
supported the baby's return to Susan, who by then was spending long and frequent visits with
her child. The judge agreed. Working with CFR, the drug program staff made sure
that Susan continued getting help with parenting, job counseling and relapse prevention.
Now, many months later, Susan and her daughter continue to thrive and are on the threshold of
leading healthy and productive lives together.
REGINA
When the System Creates more Obstacles than Opportunities
Regina is a recent immigrant, living in Connecticut, with little money or access to services and no
knowledge of her rights as a parent. She needed treatment for an enlarged heart and left
her three daughters with a distant cousin in Queens so that she could attend a full day of appointments.
When she returned, her three daughters were gone. It turns out that the cousin failed to send
one of her daughters to school, leaving her home alone.
Without doing a complete investigation, Children's Services removed Regina's children to foster care in
New York City and charged her with neglect. The children pleaded to go home, but remained in
foster care in the city.
Regina asked Children's Services to explore a relative living near her in Connecticut as a potential foster
parent, but it refused, despite the fact that the law requires them to try and place children in another
state, if need be, to be closer to a parent. The agency also failed to communicate clearly to
her about her rights to visit or to give her financial assistance for the long trip to the city, as required
by law. This, along with her meager resources, meant Regina missed visits and did not see her
children very often. The situation dragged on for over two years, and then Children's Services
moved to terminate Regina's parental rights. The agency claimed she did not visit enough and the
children should be adopted. All the while, her children continued to ask to go home to their mom.
When CFR heard about this case, it acted quickly to reunify the family, immediately persuading the
agency to stop its termination case, and established visit plans with clear schedules.
It obtained orders directing the agency to comply with the laws it had ignored and Regina got help
paying for train tickets and phone calls to her girls. The family quickly began visiting
frequently and in unsupervised settings. CFR negotiated the children's move to the nearby
relative in Connecticut and is now helping Regina find affordable housing. Once she is
settled, her daughters will finally come home.
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