Foster care in Michigan: What they won’t be talking about in federal court Monday

Sometime tomorrow (Monday), according to one news account, there may be an announcement about a new modified consent decree between the Michigan Department of Human Services and the group that so arrogantly calls itself Children’s Rights. If it happens, it’s likely to be a pretty disgusting spectacle.

On one side: the director of the Michigan Department of Human Services, Maura Corrigan will be there.  In her previous job on the Michigan Supreme Court, she turned the court’s website into a propaganda organ for adoption as the only form of permanence.  While serving on one of those pointless Obligatory Blue Ribbon Commissions she walked out during the one part of one session in which birth parents told their stories.

On the other side: someone from the group that so arrogantly calls itself Children’s Rights.  Since they, too, view permanence almost exclusively in terms of adoption, and they don’t care about keeping families together either, there’s not much to argue about, is there?

So here’s a reminder of what neither side will be talking about.  It was written in response to a request for statements of support by organizers of a Speak Out in support of Maryanne Godboldo, whose children was taken needlessly after Godboldo, in consultation with the child’s doctor, took her off psychiatric mediation.

            I am sorry I cannot be with you in person; I am honored to be with you in spirit.

            Maryanne Godboldo has been doing what the overwhelming majority of parents – that giant majority who do not abuse or neglect their children - do in one way or another, for as long as they are parents: She is fighting for her child.

            Maryanne Godboldo did not volunteer for this fight.  You might say she was drafted.  But in fighting with such determination and courage for her own child, she has become a leader in a fight for thousands of children all over America needlessly torn by child protective services agencies from everyone they know and love.

            Just last week, we learned about Prince and Charlomane Leonard in Houston.  When Prince Leonard could not get full-time work as a welder, there was no housing he could afford where the family could live safely.  So they moved to a gated community – the storage shed they had rented for some of their belongings.  Prince Leonard built shelves and a loft, installed heating and air conditioning.  The children were happy and healthy.  Then the helping hand of child protective services struck.  They offered no help of any kind, they just took away the children on the spot.

            How common is that?  Three major studies have found that 30 percent of America’s foster children could be home right now if their parents just had decent housing.

            But what about Michigan?

            ●Michigan is a state so backward, that a former District Attorney in Oakland County tore apart a family and tried to jail the parents on charges of sexual abuse based on something called “facilitated communication” – essentially a glorified Ouija board.

            ●Michigan is a state where a study of case records found that when a white family is asked about drug use and says there is none, the case record would say “no history of drug abuse.”  When the same question produces the same answer in a black family, the file would  say “denies history of drug abuse.”

            ●Michigan is a state where millions of dollars are paid to agencies that are supposed to provide in-home help to families. Some of the agencies keep the money, and then refuse to go into Black neighborhoods.

            ●Michigan is a state where, if a family makes the mistake of calling DHS because they don’t have heat in the winter, all they’re likely to get is a cold house with a child abuse investigator at the door.

            ● Michigan is the state where, in an anonymous survey, 40 percent of juvenile court  judges admitted they lied about one of their most fundamental responsibilities.  Under federal law, states are required to make “reasonable efforts” to keep families together and avoid placing children in foster care.  A judge – a real, live, judge – is supposed to certify either that reasonable efforts were made, or that there was no way to do it safely.  If they don’t at least check one of those boxes on a form, foster care in that case is not eligible for federal funds.

            In that survey I mentioned, 40 percent of the judges admitted that they lied, and said reasonable efforts had been made when they didn’t really believe it themselves.

            ●Michigan is a state where, as is discussed in our first report on Michigan child welfare, on page 52, if one parent – even a non-custodial parent - “admits” maltreatment, the other parent is denied a trial, forced to do whatever DHS wants her or him do and may lose the child forever; all without a court ever determining if that parent ever did anything wrong.

            A challenge to that law is heading for the Michigan Supreme Court.  A lawyer for the father – a father who didn’t even have custody of the children - submitted a brief citing the many times the U.S. Supreme Court and courts in Michigan have written decisions emphasizing that children need to be raised by their own parents, decisions making clear that this bond is sacred, and should be severed only in the most serious cases.  In its brief in reply, Michigan DHS dismissed those noble statements as, and this is a direct quote:  “platitudes.”

            So that’s what Maryanne Godboldo, her daughter, and so many others like them are up against: a child welfare agency, run by a former state supreme court judge, no less – that dismisses some of the most important writing in American jurisprudence as “platitudes.”

RUBBER-STAMP REMOVALS

            But, of course, that’s not all DHS dismisses.  DHS also dismisses notions like due process of law.

            For decades I’ve written about how there are no real checks and balances in child welfare – how anything these agencies want is rubber-stamped.

            I thought it was just a figure of speech.

            But now, thanks to Maryanne Godboldo, her lawyers, and some very good journalists at Channel 7, we know that in Michigan, it’s literally true.  No real live judge signed the order to remove Maryanne’s daughter from her home.  The order was, literally, rubber-stamped.  The same thing happened in the Mike’s Hard Lemonade case.

            And consider this: That DHS bureaucracy doesn’t come cheap.  All those investigators and foster care workers and group homes and institutions and court hearings (not to mention the occasional SWAT team and helicopter) cost a lot of money.  And the whole process takes a lot of time.

            All the time, money and effort wasted doing so much harm to Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter is being stolen from some child in real danger who really does need to be taken from her or his home.  So those children are overlooked.  And that’s the real reason for the horror story cases of real abuse that make headlines.

            But you’re not just up against DHS.

THE PERMANENT GOVERNMENT

            Governors, legislators and DHS directors come and go, but always lurking in the shadows are scores of private agencies paid for every day they hold your children in foster care.  To use the late columnist Jack Newfield’s phrase, they are the “permanent government” of Michigan child welfare.  They are the ones who stand most strongly opposed to doing anything to keep families together.  They are the ones who oppose programs to keep Black children in their own communities.

            In 2006, the head of a trade association for private agencies told the Michigan Legislature that impoverished black children are better off far away with total strangers than close by with their own kin, because the strangers, he said, live in better neighborhoods with better schools. (See our first Michigan report, page 61).

            Now consider all the money that was wasted just on institutionalizing Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter.  That money could have gone to rent subsidies, so families aren’t destroyed because they can’t afford housing, or day care, so children are not taken on “lack of supervision” charges.

            But you’re not just up against the private agencies, either.

            Tomorrow, there is going to be another kind of court hearing.  According to one news account, the hearing will discuss a plan to revise the consent decree between DHS and a group of lawyers who operate under the Orwellian name “Children’s Rights.”

            The people at CR, as I call them, are good people.  They really think they are helping children.  But they’re not helping children in Michigan.

            I say the group’s name is “Orwellian” because I don’t know many children who crave the “right” to be torn from everyone they know and love.  But CR has done nothing to pressure Michigan to do more to keep families together.  In fact, CR’s settlement with DHS has made things worse.

            The Michigan settlement has sent DHS on a hiring binge, hiring more child abuse investigators and foster care workers – paid for, in part, by cutting programs to help keep families together.

Few children are demanding the “right” to be taken from grandma and grandpa  because those grandparents can’t comply with ten single-spaced pages of hypertechnical licensing requirements – requirements so absurd that the apartment in Hawaii where President Obama was raised by his grandmother would not have qualified.

            As a result, more than a thousand children have been expelled from the homes of grandparents and other relatives across Michigan.

            Yet CR won’t even say who invited them to Michigan in the first place.

And of course CR stands silent in the face of everything that has been done to Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter, refusing to stand up for her children’s rights.

            So I hope that you will take your protests to the group that so arrogantly calls itself Children’s Rights as well.  Send them polite, civil e-mails (don’t let them divert attention from what they’ve done to how you’re complaining about it).  Tell them you want to know who invited them into Michigan in the first place.  Tell them to speak out against what is being done to Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter and all the children like her. And tell them to either fix their consent decree to address wrongful removal – or get out of Michigan.

           

            And there is one more thing I will ask of you.

            After Maryanne Godboldo and her daughter win this fight – and they will – don’t stop fighting.  Please keep up the fight for all the other children like them.  Or, as Joe Hill said nearly a century ago: Don’t grieve. Organize.

            Other cities have grassroots organizations of families fighting to reform their child welfare systems. You know some of them, in Philadelphia, in Los Angeles and in New York.  Detroit doesn’t have one – yet.  You can become that organization.  Those other organizations, and NCCPR, stand ready to help.  

            Thank you for your courage, thank you for your determination.

Foster care in Michigan: Rubber-stamp removals – literally

For years I and other critics of child protective services agencies have complained that there is no real review of CPS actions.  Everything these agencies want is simply rubber-stamped.

What I didn't know is that in Michigan they take that literally.

In a stunning story last week, Detroit television station WXYZ, which has led the state’s news media in covering child welfare, revealed that in two high-profile cases of wrongful removal the so-called “court orders” authorizing the Michigan Department of Human Services and law enforcement to remove the children were not signed by a real live judge.  They were, literally, rubber-stamped.

One of the cases is the case of Maryanne Godboldo, whose child was torn from her when she exercised her legal right, in consultation with the child’s doctor, and took the child of psychiatric medication after it was clear the child was being harmed by the side effects. (Details are in these previous posts.)

The other case is the so-called “Mike’s Hard Lemonade” case, in which a child was thrown into foster care because his father accidentally bought him the aforementioned lemonade at a baseball game.

Here’s what ACLU of Michigan Legal Director Michael Steinberg, who is suing the state on behalf of the family, told WXYZ:

The practice as we understand it, and as we understand happened in this case, is a caseworker rubber stamps a judge’s signature on these orders, and that to us is another indication that it’s a system gone awry, and there’s not enough checks and balances.

It also calls further into question the claims of DHS Director Maura Corrigan in a May op ed in the Detroit Free Press – the one where she said that “Contrary to popular belief, our Child Protective Services caseworkers do not decide on their own to remove children from their homes."

WXYZ found other irregularities in the “order” issued in the Godboldo case, all of which are detailed in their excellent story.  According to the story:

[Godboldo’s attorney] points out that the caseworker claims on the order that Godboldo had “numerous” referrals in the last year to CPS for “medical neglect” – Godboldo’s attorneys know of only one.

And then there’s this:

It appears the caseworker checked contradicting boxes on the order – stating both that reasonable efforts to “prevent removal of the child from the home were not made” and that they were made. So which is it?

Here’s why that is so significant: Aside from the fact that making “reasonable efforts” whenever it is safe to do so is far and away the best option for the child, it’s also required under federal law.  A real, live judge has to certify either that reasonable efforts were made or could not be made safely.  If a real live judge doesn’t do that, the case is not eligible for federal aid.

And that raises an intriguing question: How many other cases are there where the reasonable efforts certification was rubber-stamped by someone other than a judge?  And does that constitute defrauding the federal government?

Sadly, even when a judge does sign the order, it may not mean much. As we first noted in our report on Michigan child welfare (See page 33), in an anonymous survey of Michigan judges, conducted by the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law and a Maine think tank for this study, 40 percent of the judges admitted that they lied, and checked the box saying reasonable efforts had been made, even when they didn’t believe that themselves.  Half of those judges said they lied because they didn’t want to lose the federal funding.

Foster care in Michigan: Corrigan sends the b.s. meter off the scale

Looks like Detroit television station WXYZ’s expose of the way child welfare really works in Michigan, and/or yesterday’s post to this Blog really rattled Michigan Department of Human Services Director Maura Corrigan.  Because she’s got an op ed column in the Free Press today that sends the b.s. meter off the scale.    

But the column does illustrate how Corrigan, a former state supreme court justice, rose so far in the legal profession.  What becomes immediately clear if you read the piece closely is the weasel-wording.

Corrigan says DHS workers can’t take children on their own authority.  But look closely.  Then she says law enforcement can take children on their own authority – but they only do it in “emergencies.” So what Corrigan really is saying is: DHS workers can't remove children on their own.  But they can call the police and have the police do it for them. 

Then, Corrigan says, child protective services "still must obtain a court order before accepting the child from law enforcement..."  And where is the child during this process?  Already in foster care, of course.  You can bet it makes very little difference to the child that the person keeping him away from everyone he knows and loves is a cop, rather than a social worker.

So Corrigan's legal hair-splitting notwithstanding, DHS workers can and do remove children on their own authority,.

And if children are removed this way only in emergencies, please explain, ex-justice Corrigan: How did Leo Ratte, the boy in the Mike's Hard Lemonade case ever wind up in foster care?  (If anyone isn’t familiar with that case, it’s discussed in detail in the Channel 7 story.)

Corrigan then claims that “both the parents and the child are represented by an attorney before the judge when the case is being weighed.”

Leaving aside the wretched quality of much of what passes for defense counsel for parents in Michigan, something documented in detail in the first of our reports on Michigan child welfare, even at face value this is grossly misleading.  This time the weasel words are “when the case is being weighed” – because often that’s after the child already has been removed.

For example: what lawyer represented Maryanne Godboldo, or her daughter, before DHS came to take the child away?  The answer, of course, is no lawyer.  DHS went to court by itself (the legal term is ex parte) and got the court order without Godboldo ever having a chance to tell her side of the story.

Corrigan even tried to hide behind vulnerable children to defend her agency’s routine stonewalling when journalists try to hold DHS accountable.  Oh, we’d really, truly like to tell our side of the story, she suggests - and we’re always right - but we just can’t because it would invade the privacy of those poor children.

But several states have laws allowing their child welfare agencies to tell their side of the story when cases already have become public.  I'm sure the Michigan Legislature would consider passing similar legislation if Corrigan asked for it.  But she almost certainly won't.  Child welfare agencies love these laws since they allow them to cover up their mistakes.

Still, at least this sets me straight on one point concerning Corrigan: I thought she was a law-and-order conservative.  But over and over in her op ed column, when it comes to her own agency’s blunders, she tries to get the agency off on a technicality.

Foster care in Michigan: Now everybody’s double standards are showing

SEE THE APRIL 2 UPDATE AT THE END OF THIS POST


Two child welfare cases from Detroit are back in the news this week.  The one that dates back nearly three years got more attention from the daily newspapers in Detroit than the one going on right now.  The children in the two cases also have been treated very differently.  In each case, it’s not hard to see why.

The case from 2008 now is widely known as the “Mike’s Hard Lemonade” case.  It involves a man named Christopher Ratte who tried to buy lemonade for his seven-year-old son, Leo, at a baseball game.  By mistake, he gave the boy an alcoholic beverage, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, instead.

The boy was thrown into foster care for two days – plenty long enough to do serious emotional harm – then released.  The suffering of thousands of other children is vastly worse.  Yet this is the case that made the front page of the Detroit Free Press it made CNN, it even was the subject of a Scott Simon commentary on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday.

It’s easy to explain the response of both the system and the media.  The child is white and the parents are upper-middle-class.  They’re college professors.

As I wrote at the time:

 [This case is an] extremely rare example of the long arm of child protective services extending into the upper middle class. … Don't get me wrong. I'm glad the story made it onto NPR. In fact, part of the reason this story got so much attention, starting with this excellent column in the Detroit Free Press, is that the family's lawyer asked NCCPR for advice on calling attention to it. But the other part is simply because this was one of those very rare times when the system harmed somebody journalists at NPR, and elsewhere, can identify with. Read about this case and it's going to send a chill up the spine of middle class professionals as they think: "This could happen to my child."

The case is back in the news now because the parents have filed a civil lawsuit. The Michigan branch of the American Civil Liberties Union is representing them.  That, in itself is remarkable, since often the ACLU is the perfect exemplar of  how so many of my fellow liberals abandon everything they purport to believe in about civil liberties when someone whispers the words “child abuse” in their ears.

And to the great credit of the Ratte family, they’re not just suing for damages – they’re seeking a change in Michigan law to make it less likely that any child of any race or class will have to endure this kind of ordeal in the future.

THE OTHER CASE

In contrast, not many middle class professionals in child welfare or media are likely to identify with Marianne Godboldo.

She had been homeschooling her child and exercising her right not to vaccinate her.

But this is not one of those cases about a parent getting into trouble with CPS for not vaccinating her child.  On the contrary, when her daughter, at age 13, said she wanted to enroll in public school, Ms. Godboldo got her all the required vaccinations, in an accelerated sequence.

But the child suffered serious side effects. 

Here’s what happened next, according to Darrell Dawsey, a columnist for MLive Detroit, a website run by the Newhouse Michigan Newspapers – and, for awhile, the only mainstream journalist in Detroit to take the story seriously:

the Detroit mother went to the Children's Center, a group that works with troubled children, to seek advice and a treatment plan for her 13-year-old daughter. The girl, who'd never had behavioral problems before, was suddenly irritable and not her usual self following a series of immunization shots.

As part of the center's treatment plan, a doctor prescribed the child an anti-psychotic medication. But the child's symptoms only worsened. As a result, Godboldo sought another physician, who quickly recommended taking the child off the psychotropic drug.

The mother agreed and, according to her attorney, who spoke exclusively with MLive Detroit earlier today, Godboldo began following that doctor's orders.

Unfortunately for Godboldo, the state didn't agree. Child Protective Services wanted Godboldo's child medicated according the center's plan, and CPS workers essentially told the 56-year-old mother - who was never under any court order to follow the plan - to agree to their program or surrender her child.

She refused both. And so, on Thursday, CPS workers showed up at Godboldo's house with the police, who said they had a warrant to take the child. But according to Godboldo's lawyer, Wanda A. Evans, officers never produced a warrant even after Godboldo repeatedly asked to see one.

Had the story ended there, with Ms. Godboldo reluctantly surrendering the child, no one would know about it.  After all, news is the unusual.  Wrongfully taking a child from white upper-middle-class college professors is unusual; taking a child unjustly from her low income Black single mother is a grand case of “So what else is new?”

But it didn’t end there.  According to Dawsey:

A standoff ensued. A gunshot was fired from inside the house - though, according to Evans, not at officers. Finally, after long hours of tense negotiations, Godboldo - a mother, a teacher, a dancer and a respected figure in the city's arts circles - surrendered, was jailed and, on Sunday, was arraigned on multiple felony charges.

Now that’s news.

IMPOSSIBLE BAIL

Ms. Godboldo’s daughter was placed in foster care with strangers – even though many relatives had come forward offering to take her in.

Bail was set at $500,000.  Only when the story started to get news coverage and friends in the community started to rally around, was it lowered to the point where she could get out of jail and try to see her daughter, though according to one news account, CPS wouldn’t allow the visit.

The ordeal endured by Leo Ratte in the Mike’s Hard Lemonade case was terrible, and the story deserved all the attention it got.  But there was, if anything, even less reason to take away Marianne Godboldo’s daughter.  Yet so far the Free Press, which put the Lemonade case on the front page, has devoted only a couple of news briefs to the Godboldo case.  The Detroit News wrote a story, but one that mostly parroted the police line.  They did a much better follow up story, after Dawsey’s column appeared.

And national media?  It’s early yet, but so far, nothing.  Perhaps that will change Saturday when a rally is scheduled on behalf of the family.  But somehow, I doubt I’ll be hearing anything about it from Scott Simon on NPR Weekend Edition.

Because Godboldo case didn’t happen to people like us, it happened to people like them.  They are people most of us know as story subjects only, (and often the stories are not flattering) not as friends, relatives or colleagues. 

Of course one could argue there’s another difference.  The Rattes never fired a gun, not even a warning shot to keep from having their door broken down, and they didn’t barricade themselves in their home.  And, in fact, there is no excuse for Ms. Godboldo doing that, if she did.  There needs to be some kind of penalty - but the price should be paid by her - not her daughter, who is being punished by being separated from her mother.

It’s also the case that the Rattes didn’t have to fire a gun.  They could get great lawyers to help them.  That and their upper-middle-class status got Leo out of foster care in days. That still was plenty of time to do real emotional damage.  But odds are the ordeal for Ms. Godboldo’s daughter is going to last a lot longer – and it would have lasted a lot longer even had there been no confrontation.


As for the high-handed behavior of Michigan child protective services in both cases, there's nothing unusual about that at all, as is documented in NCCPR's reports on Michigan child welfare.

If they win, the Rattes lawsuit will help change the system.  Paying as much attention to all the Maryanne Godboldos would help a lot more.

TWO FOOTNOTES:

● Some of Ms. Godboldo’s supporters have set up a website in support of her and her daughter, but the individuals and organizations involves are not identified.

● And this one almost goes without saying: There is one group that has been entirely consistent in its treatment of the two cases: The group that so arrogantly calls itself “Children’s Rights.”  Their name, and the fact that they have a consent decree in Michigan notwithstanding, they have shown absolutely no interest in the rights of either Leo Ratte or Maryanne Godboldo’s daughter.


UPDATE, APRIL 2: Guess who turned in Marianne Godboldo

            In an extended interview with WXYZ-TV, Marianne Godboldo added some details to the story of what happened to her daughter – including exactly  who it was who turned them in to CPS.

            According to the story:

            ● The child is not even in a foster home, she’s been institutionalized.

            ● The child has not even been allowed a visit with Ms. Godboldo or her father since her ordeal began.  Visits, but only under state supervision, are expected to start sometime next week.

           ● The problems actually began when her daughter was 11.  That’s when she received the accelerated series of immunizations.  Ms. Godboldo says shortly afterwards the child was diagnosed with encephalitis.  But Children’s Hospital in Detroit recommended the girl be tested at another institution.

            ● After ten days of tests, that institution claimed the child was psychotic, and urged Ms. Godboldo to put her daughter on psychiatric medication.  She reluctantly agreed.

            ● When the child’s symptoms worsened – including hallucinations – she returned to the institution and said she wanted to take her child off the meds.

            ● The institution then demanded that the child be admitted to that very institution – or they would call CPS.  Ms. Godboldo says the threats came from a nurse, a psychiatrist and the director of the institution.

            ● Ms. Godboldo refused, and said she wanted a second opinion.

            ● That’s when the institution allegedly carried out its threat. 

It’s not absolutely clear if the place where the child is institutionalized is the same one that allegedly threatened to call CPS if Ms. Godboldo did not admit her child there.  But this much we know: While the child suffers the loss of her parents, the institution that allegedly turned the mother, or some other institution, gets at least a couple of hundred dollars a day for the “care” of the child.

Meanwhile, the Detroit News has a good story on its website about today’s rally.  There is still nothing from the Free Press. [UPDATE: The Free Press posted a story late Saturday afternoon.]  Scott Simon's commentary on NPR Weekend Edition today was about the Bronx Zoo cobra.

And Marianne Godboldo’s daughter already spent more than twice as much time in foster care as Leo Ratte.