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CFR Family Stories |
SHANTELLE - The Heartbreaking Cycle of Foster Care
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. As teenagers, they far too often end up in the juvenile
justice system, in homeless shelters, or on the street. They become 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 mother and entered foster care at age six. She was adopted at 11 by someone
who did not appreciate the level of support she needed for all she'd been through. By the time she was 15, her
adoptive mother decided Shantelle was more than she had bargained for and returned her to foster care.
Shantelle entered a group home where theft and assault were widespread. When she was 16, she became 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 admitted that she felt isolated and overwhelmed by motherhood and needed help.
Instead of providing that help, however, Children's Services separated mother and child into two different foster care homes
and charged Shantelle with neglect.
CFR entered the case and gave Shantelle the personalized support she needed all along: engaging her in
therapy, parenting skills classes, and job training, and finding a safe foster care placement where she and her baby could
live together. The Family Court judge, recognizing how far Shantelle had come, dismissed the neglect case.
With CFR's support, mother and daughter are slowly breaking the foster care cycle.
REGINA - Seeking Opportunity and Facing Obstacles
Regina was a recent immigrant to the United States who was seeking a better life for her children.
She lived in Connecticut with little money or access to services and no knowledge of her rights as a parent.
When she needed treatment for an enlarged heart, she left her three daughters in the care of her cousin in Queens so that
she could attend a full day of critical appointments. When she returned, her daughters were gone.
The cousin had failed to send one of her daughters to school and had left her home alone.
Without doing a complete investigation, Children's Services placed Regina's children in 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 place the children with a relative who lived nearby in Connecticut, but they refused,
despite the fact that the law requires them to try and place the children as close to their parent as possible.
The agency also failed to communicate to Regina about her rights to visit or to give her financial assistance for the
long trip to the city, as required by law.
Regina's health problems and her meager resources did not allow her to travel very often and she had to miss many
scheduled visits. The tragic situation dragged on for two years, when 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, however, her children continued to ask to go home to their mother.
When CFR received the case, we acted quickly to reunify the family, immediately persuading the agency to stop its termination case,
and established visit plans with clear schedules. The CFR lawyer 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 began
visiting frequently and in unsupervised settings. CFR negotiated the children's move to the relative in Connecticut and
is now helping Regina find affordable housing. Once she is settled, her daughters can finally come home.
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, which increases the emotional damage caused by the separation. George
is not unusual: he is a dad who lost his temper and hit his six year old son Jose with a belt. But George
is poor and uneducated and ill-equipped to deal with large bureaucracies. When Children's Services removed Jose
from his care, he had no idea that he could get services to help him be a better parent and still keep his son with him.
Jose went to live with his grandmother and the Court made it clear that George was free to visit his son.
But no one made that clear to George or the grandmother, though they worked with a lawyers, caseworkers, and court
officials. Even though the judge believed the foster care agency was honoring its order for frequent visits,
George and Jose did not see each other for a year. George faithfully called his son nearly 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 when George completed all the counseling and parenting
classes ordered by the Court, father and son remained lost in the shuffle of the overwhelmed child welfare system.
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 informed George of his rights. We told the judge all the
things he had accomplished and how his progress had been ignored. The Court ordered liberal visits for George and Jose.
A few weeks later, they began seeing each other every day, and within two months, the court ordered that they be reunited
permanently. Though the scars of separation remain for Jose, he and his father are finally together again and thriving.
SUSAN - Support Makes All the Difference
Susan's story is typical of CFR's approach to family services: intervene early, identify the family's unique
needs, and provide comprehensive services. Susan's success shows what can happen when a struggling parents
who has never had support is given a team of professionals willing to help her create an effective path toward stability and
healing. Many parents make great strides once they've gotten help with these first vital steps.
Susan had fought drug addiction for many years and had lost custody of her two children. CFR met her upon
the birth of her third child, who tested positive for cocaine. Children's Services immediately filed neglect charges
and removed the baby girl. CFR's team recognized that only an intensive residential program designed specifically for
mothers with newborns could meet Susan's needs. And although Susan had faced Children's Services
before, her meeting with CFR was the very first time anyone had talked to her about what she could do to become clean and stable
and reunite her family.
Susan knew she needed help, but leaving the security of her home and neighborhood for an 18-month residential program
petrified her. She almost skipped her first day in the residential program, but the CFR social worker was there for her,
spending hours simply helping her settle in and feel safe.
Because bonding is critical in an infant's development, CFR 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 court and was 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, Susan's rehab counselors,
and the foster care worker all supported the return of her baby, who had been spending long and frequent visits bonding with her mother.
The judge agreed. Working with CFR, the drug program staff made sure that Susan continued getting help with
parenting, job counseling, and relapse prevention. Today, Susan and her daughter are making their way toward healthy
lives together and she is on her way to gaining custody of her two older children as well.
ANNA - The System: A Blunt Instrument
Anna was raised in foster care and knew she didn't want that for her children. But she was having difficulty parenting
her two children, especially her rebellious 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 offered to care for both children, Children's Services
separated them into two different foster homes.
When visits between Anna and her daughter got tense, Children's Services' proposed suspending all visits.
CFR got involved and convinced the caseworkers and judge that this was too drastic and not responsive to the family's real needs.
CFR's social worker hired a family therapist and a visit coach. Within two months, the family was having successful,
unsupervised visits and spending nights and weekends together doing activities they enjoyed. With services in place that
supported their efforts to stay together, Anna and her children were permanently reunited in time to celebrate the holidays.
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