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| A proposed Vermont law would deny this kind of comfort to foster children. |
UPDATE, APRIL 18, 2020: lawmakers appear to have
backed away from the most extreme version of the Vermont Anti-Hugging Bill.
Less draconian - but still harmful and unnecessary - language now is under
consideration. And, as Allison Green, legal director of the National
Association of Counsel for Children points out in her excellent testimony, there
is no need for any limits on visitation to be added to state law. No other state is known to have done so.
Said Green:
COVID-19 is not, in and of itself, a danger that should keep families separated - no matter the duration of time. Child welfare practitioners have the skills, knowledge, and ongoing ethical duty to have meaningful, case-specific conversations, thoughtfully consider each family’s safety and needs, synthesize that information with up-to-date guidance from public health officials, and make recommendations accordingly.
● The child welfare agency in Bernie Sanders' home state proposes a Trump-like approach to family separation, just when
children need their families most; it's a sick response to COVID-19 that dials up emotional child abuse.
● Unfortunately, Vermont is not alone – just more obvious about it.
To take all
that from a child can leave scars to the psyche that last a lifetime.
Who would
be so cruel? There was what the Trump
Administration did to children at the Mexican border, of course. But surely that would never happen in
open-minded, progressive Vermont.
In fact,
it’s about to happen – if a proposal before the Vermont Legislature becomes
law. A legislative committee has scheduled a hearing on the bill today
(Tuesday, April 14 – via Zoom).
What should properly be called the
Vermont Anti-Hugging Law would inflict emotional child abuse on a grand scale by
imposing a wholesale ban on almost all
in-person visits between children in foster care and their parents. The
proposal runs contrary to guidance
from the nation’s top child welfare officials.
And it is not necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Other states and localities have done the same; the response to COVID-19 is the usual incoherent patchwork one expects from child welfare systems. But Vermont – not Mississippi, not Texas – Vermont, is the first I know of to try to get this kind of institutionalized cruelty codified in state statute.
No Vermont legislator has put her
or his name on the proposal yet. But it’s
pretty clear who wants it. Vermont Department of Children and Families
Commissioner Ken Schatz told the House Human Services Committee that DCF previously
tried – and failed – to get the state Supreme Court to impose such a ban. Schatz said having the legislature impose the
same ban he couldn’t get from the courts is “obviously something for you to
consider” even though he made clear he was aware of federal guidance to the
contrary.
To
understand the depths of this cruelty, it’s urgent to understand who comes into
foster care. Contrary to the common
stereotype, most parents who lose their children to foster care are neither
sadists, brutes nor hopeless addicts. Far more common are cases in which family
poverty is confused with neglect.
That helps
explain why study after study has found
that, in typical cases, children left in their own homes typically fare better
even than comparably-maltreated children placed in foster care. Yes, that also applies even when the issue is
substance use.
The not-so-progressive record of Vermont child welfare
Whenever we
try to take a swing at “bad parents” the blow almost always lands on the
children. For decades, more than almost any other state, Vermont has come out
swinging.
Vermont
tears apart families at the third highest rate
in America, a rate nearly triple the national average, even when rates of
child poverty are factored in. Vermont’s
rate of removal is vastly higher than states that have been proven to be,
relatively speaking, models for keeping
children safe. That’s partly because the
more workers are overloaded investigating the cases of children who don’t need
to be taken away, the less time they have to find children in real danger.
Vermont has been an extreme outlier
since long before the current opioid crisis. So either Vermont is a cesspool of
depravity with three times more child abuse than the rest of America, or
Vermont is taking away far too many children.
The reason
the outcomes for foster children are so dismal is because the trauma of removal
is so devastating. Unlike what the Trump
Administration did at the border, the people who work for Vermont DCF almost
always mean well. But that’s no comfort
for children needlessly taken. They shed the same sorts of tears for the same
sorts of reasons.
In fact
their only comfort is the chance to visit with their parents – to be held and
to be Visits need to be
maintained to the maximum extent possible not because it’s what parents want,
but because it’s what children need.
hugged.
Yes, some
case-by-case limits on in-person visits are necessary. But, as the Children’s Bureau of the
Department of Health and Human Services explains,
visits are so important for children that courts should hold agencies like DCF
accountable for maintaining them
whenever possible and absolutely avoid blanket prohibitions of any kind – much less
anti-hugging laws.
As
I’ve noted before, that can be done safely. Here’s the guidance Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo,
director of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama in
Birmingham offered to The New York Times:
“Certainly, sick family should not visit,” said Dr. Marrazzo. “If
you have vulnerable people in your family, or who are very old, then limit
in-person contact.”
But if everyone in the family is young and healthy, then some
careful interaction in small groups is probably OK. “The smaller the gathering,
the healthier the people are to start with, the lower the risk of the situation
is going to be,” she said.
In contrast, Vermont DCF wants a ban
on all visits unless it can be proven that this would “irreparably damage any
reunification goal…” Proving this is nearly impossible in the best of
times. Now, of course, as is true in
many places, most court hearings in Vermont have been suspended. And notice
that, under this law, irreparable damage to the child’s mental health is not
even a ground for maintaining visits. That clearly is of no concern to Vermont
DCF.
In a column
for Youth Today last month I
noted that all over America there are people who can’t stay home during the
pandemic. Some always knew their jobs carried risks, others were, in effect,
drafted into the fight, such as the people who deliver mail and groceries. And
then there are the people who simply volunteer — like those bringing meals to
the elderly.
DCF, on the other hand, wants to run
away and effectively abandon the state’s most vulnerable children. The response of the Vermont Department of
Children and Families to COVID-19, like the response of many other child
welfare systems, is sickening.
When the Zoom meeting is over, Commissioner Schatz and the members of the Vermont House of Representatives
Human Services Committee will log out and open the door to the basement, or the bedroom
or wherever they go for such virtual meeetings. Perhaps they'll let their own children in for a hug. I hope they
will think long and hard before voting to deny that comfort to the children of
others.
