Some rare insight into who loses children to foster care – both regular and “sugar frosted”

When I first saw that still another big news organization was doing still another big story about "Safe Families" that so-called alternative to foster care that is really just foster care with sugar frosting, I groaned. I assumed it would be one more puff piece about Safe Families; and in three parts, no less.

I was wrong. For starters, the stories, which focused on one birth parent and one Safe Families foster parent (though Safe Families hates it when you call them that; they are, in all but name, foster parents) really weren't about the Safe Families program itself. Rather, the stories were something you almost never see amid the hype, hysteria and horror stories that characterize a lot of journalism about child welfare: These were stories about a typical case of a mother who lost her newborn daughter to "Safe Families" foster care; exactly the kind of case that dominates most workers' caseloads.

And because Associated Press reporter Martha Irvine spent an enormous amount of time with this family, and brought an enormous amount of insight to the task, what emerges is something that was incredibly rare in journalism even in the "good old days" – i.e. a few years ago – before all the layoffs and buyouts. It's even harder to find today: a compelling, insightful, three-dimensional portrait of the real human beings who typically get caught up in child welfare systems, in all their flawed humanity.

The mother, Hazel Evans, is not a sadist and she's not a brute. She's made her share of mistakes, but her problems boil down largely to poverty – in particular lack of adequate housing. And her problems boil down to the fact that, when you're poor, there is no margin for error.

Unfortunately, there is no one link to the entire series. But you'll find them here: part one, part two, part three.

If you read these stories, make no mistake: Had this been almost anyplace else in America besides Chicago, which has one of the lowest rates of child removal in the country, all of the children, not just the newborn, Autumn, would have been removed and placed in official foster care, not just the sugar-frosted kind - especially after an incident with a dresser. Even in Chicago, had the wrong caseworker come to the door or had deaths of children "known to the system" been making headlines that week, those children would be gone.

As for Safe Families, there's no question that the foster parent , Jessica-Anne Becker, not only meant well, she really helped. Bringing Jessica-Anne Becker into her life was one of the best things that could have happened to Hazel Evans and her children. But there was no reason Jessica-Anne Becker couldn't have been in Hazel Evans' life without ever taking away her child – no reason except the fact that Safe Families isn't designed to do that.

But because the price Safe Families extracts in exchange for helping people like Hazel is, in fact, "voluntary" surrender of the child, the stories reinforce my concerns. As I read them, I was struck by the extent to which Safe Families eased some problems while making others worse, like the ability of Hazel to raise her own infant with confidence and the ability of that infant to bond with her mother. Irvine writes:

…when Autumn came for visits … her teary brown eyes searched everywhere for Jessica-Anne Becker, the volunteer foster mom who'd been caring for Autumn since she was just 2 days old. "It would almost be like she was homesick, like she missed Jessica and David,'' Jessica's husband, Hazel said. "That broke my heart.''

That, in turn, prolonged the separation.

WHAT IF SAFE FAMILIES REALLY PUT THE CHILDREN FIRST?

Suppose the people behind Safe Families devoted the same passion to a program to provide rent subsidies and just enough other help to ease the worst stresses of poverty? Suppose the Safe Families volunteers came in to the families' homes instead of taking the children out? Then Hazel would have gained just as much from Jessica-Anne's mentoring, without the harmful side effects.

The stories also foreshadow problems ahead for Safe Families – if it hasn't happened already without our knowing it. The stories mention foster parents who are reluctant to give back the children they're taking care of. Sooner or later, an impoverished mother like Hazel is going to ask for her child back and a middle-class Safe Families foster mother like Jessica-Anne is going to say no. It will go to court, and, odds are, the mother like Jessica-Anne will win.

This is a particular danger in Oregon, which is rushing headlong into Safe Families without considering how it will mesh with a bizarre, obscene, and, I hope, unique-in-the-nation law that allows absolutely anyone claiming to have "established emotional ties creating a child-parent relationship or an ongoing personal relationship with a child" to march into court and seek possession of the child for his very own. (Yes, I know it's hard to believe, but you can click here and then scroll down to section 109.119 to see for yourself.) Foster parents - the official kind –are specifically prohibited from using this law. But remember, as the Safe Families people say over and over and over, they're not foster care, so …

MAKING OUR OWN JUDGMENTS

Of course, those who love Safe Families may find their views reinforced by the Associated Press stories as well. That's fine. I am one former reporter who clings to the idea, now considered quaint in some circles, that great journalism gives readers the information they need to make up their own minds, instead of making selective use of facts and lots of use of loaded language to tell us what to think.

Journalists who substitute sneer and swagger for actual reporting like to dismiss this as "stenography." On the contrary, the kind of reporting seen here, with its enormous investment of time and alertness to detail, is much more difficult than the self-indulgent, one-sided Pulitzer-sniffing* that too often passes for journalism on the child welfare beat.

Irvine's stories are in the mold of outstanding work like Patricia Wen's Boston Globe series, Barbara's Story, and an LA Weekly series by Celeste Fremon, who now edits Witnessla.com, in which she spent a full year with one struggling family. (Again, there's no one link but you can start at the very end of the last page of the epilogue, where Fremon does share her own view, and click your way back.)

In the end, the greatest benefit Safe Families has for society may be if more volunteers have their views of poverty and poor people shaken-up in the way it happened to Jessica-Anne.

Every time I read or see one of those stories about a once middle-class family now facing foreclosure and using a food bank, I keep waiting for the reporter to ask the family if their perceptions about poor people have changed. It almost never happens. But Martha Irvine asked. Here's the answer:

Before she met Hazel, even Jessica believed that people like Hazel were using the system, or just plain lazy. Then Jessica, jarred from her comfortable suburban existence, got a firsthand view of just how difficult it could be to make sweeping declarations about the Hazels of the world. …

"We had a front-row seat to the system, and it's just so broken,'' Jessica said.

She recalled how a pediatrician and a pharmacist treated her coldly when she used Autumn's state-issued medical card, until they found out she was volunteering to care for Autumn. She witnessed the bureaucracy — how flooded the public social service system was, the waiting for appointments or phone calls about health care or other services for Hazel or her girls.

Jessica had thought money was tight for her family. But now she felt a little ashamed, seeing how difficult it was for someone who makes little more than minimum wage to stay afloat, let alone get ahead.

"Those people who are in that situation have to want it so much more than I ever wanted to move up the ladder, because they're not even near the ladder yet,'' Jessica said.

*-Pulitzer-sniffing is the wonderful term coined by David Simon, the former Baltimore Sun reporter who went on to create the HBO series The Wire, to describe stories that forego the subtlety and nuance of great reporting in favor of sensational multi-part series that sometimes distort the truth in the quest for journalism awards. Awards jurors don't have time for fact-checking they tend to be uncomfortable with anything that challenges conventional wisdom - so Pulitzer-sniffing often works.

One viewer sees through the “Safe Families” hype

With the CBS Evening News the latest to jump on the bandwagon of offering up gushy stories about "Safe Families" - the so-called alternative to foster care that is, in fact, foster care – the comments section of the CBS News website was dominated by the usual anonymous ranting, bigotry and general nuttiness – except for one comment that cut through all the b.s. surrounding Safe Families. One viewer saw what almost all the reporters who've been fawning over this program missed. Unfortunately, I don't know who posted it; like almost all such posts, this one is anonymous, identified only by the screen name Krymarh. But I can reprint what Krymarh wrote – exactly as she or he wrote it:

During the second World war Jewish family were separating from their children for the sake of children survival. The Nazis were set to kill them all. And now in the richest and, so far, peaceful country the best solution to the economic crises it to give up your children to charitable Christians for the sake of survival. Millions of homes taken by banks stay empty. Parents cannot buy children shoes, there are sleeping in subways. Instead of buying shoes and providing decent shelter for families with children "Good people" solve the state problem and offer their solution, they take children to their Christians homes. What country is that? What country allows that to happen? Charity starts with courage of thoughts. Courage of social changes. But as long as this is acceptable and cherished solutions, any real change in hearts and minds is impossible.

Everything wrong with “Safe Families” in one “model” case

The previous post to this Blog discussed a program called "Safe Families." Touted as an "alternative" to foster care, Safe Families has been the subject of lots of gushy news stories in the last few weeks – with only The New York Times finding room for any dissent. The most recent story aired on WBBM-TV, the CBS-owned station in Chicago. As with all the others, it began with a case study – a desperate parent who was "saved" by the program, and offers a glowing testimonial.

But this case actually reveals everything wrong with the program. It reveals the extent to which the program really is another form of foster care, and even falls short of the very few model foster care programs out there.

According to the story:

Araina was in her early twenties, with three very young sons. Separated from her husband, who she says didn't pay child support, she couldn't keep her low-paying job at a sandwich shop because she couldn't afford child care. Araina was so desperate she called the state Department of Children and Family Services. "I said, 'Hey, you know, is there a thing, anything, I can do? Can you take my children temporarily until I can get on my feet, get a job and get situated?'" she recalled. The case worker urged Araina not turn her children over to the state because it might be hard to get them back. But there was another solution called Safe Families.

But what did Safe Families do? With all the energy and brain power and resources behind the program, did it find a way for Araina to get child care, without her having to surrender her children?

No.

Did it get her a good pro-bono lawyer so she could start collecting that child support she was owed, so she'd never need to surrender her children?

No.

The one thing they offered was exactly what foster care offered – albeit without making it nearly as hard to get the children back.

And the resemblance to typical foster care goes deep:

Typical foster care programs often split up siblings; imposing a huge additional trauma on the children. Model foster care programs keep siblings together. Safe Families put Araina's three children in three different homes.

Typical foster care programs place children far from their own neighborhoods, so they lose not only their parents but everyone they know and love; often they have to change schools. Model foster care programs keep children in their own neighborhoods. Safe Families placed at least one of Araina's children 40 miles away.

And while Safe Families tells news organizations parents can visit their children whenever they want (though, as is noted in the previous post to this Blog, the program's Handbook suggests that's not always the case), for Araina that would have meant any time she could have gotten to all those different homes, including the one 40 miles away.

The case, in which Araina "voluntarily" gives her children to the Safe Families families, also illustrates the true meaning of the term "voluntary" in child welfare.

The only case one can make for Safe Families is it's not as hard to get the kids out, once they're in. That's not good enough – and certainly not enough to earn it its current status of Child Welfare Media Darling of 2009.

Sugar frosted foster care

There's a program based in Chicago and spreading rapidly around the country in which mentor families help poor families who are stressed to the breaking point. The program claims the mentor families may help with everything from food, to helping find housing, to resume writing and getting a car. Families who were helped are offering up testimonials in a remarkable burst of news coverage – the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Indianapolis Star, the Chicago Tribune, the CBS-owned station in Chicago, and a huge spread in The New York Times, all in under six weeks. A case even could be made that this program may have saved some of the children from spending years in foster care.

Who in the world could be against something like this?

Actually, I could.

Because the price the families have to pay to gain access to all this largess is too high. It's the same price poor families almost always are forced to pay when they get desperate; the price that's been imposed on them by the middle class and the wealthy for more than a century: Sure, we'll help you – just as long as you hand over the kids first.

In one of those Orwellian twists of language that pervade child welfare, the program, known as Safe Families, repeatedly is described as an alternative to foster care. In the most technical, legal sense that's true. But by any real-world definition, and, especially from the perspective of the children, Safe Families is foster care.

Safe Families is intended to help families that are poor and desperate but are not yet in the crosshairs of child protective services. As The Indianapolis Star put it: "Typically the state will not step in to help children until they are facing abuse or neglect. Safe Families hopes to get there before things become that bad."

Safe Families recruits its families largely through churches. They agree to take in a poor person's children, again as the Star put it, "until the adults sort out their problems." Unlike foster parents, the families who take in the children receive no compensation.

The program's founder emphasizes that, unlike government-run foster care, this program is voluntary. Children are taken in because the birth parents choose to have them taken in. But when you're poor and desperate, nothing is really voluntary. If the only options are: Live in your car, or with an abusive husband or boyfriend until CPS comes and takes away the children or give them up yourself without government interference, the latter is the less bad option. But why are there no other options? (And, as will be seen in tomorrow's blog, Safe Families has taken in children where the underlying problems were not nearly that bad, and could have been solved more easily.)

In news stories, officials with the program say the birth parents can visit whenever they want and take the children back whenever they want – though the fine print suggests it's a little more complicated. In Chicago and Milwaukee, parents must sign over legal guardianship of the children, and, in Chicago, the parents must provide five days written notice to take them back. That would be plenty of time for a Safe Family parent who doesn't think the birth parents are ready to, say, call CPS. And Safe Families staff are mandated reporters of child maltreatment. As for visiting, some Safe Families families are quite flexible. But they don't have to be. According to the program's handbook:

When visits are possible, Safe Families staff (and sometimes staff from other agencies) will seek to arrange visits on a weekly basis. ... It is up to the Safe Family whether they are willing to have the parent visit their child in the Safe Family home. If not, visits will likely occur at a neutral location.

That's as restrictive as many foster care programs, and more restrictive than a few model foster care programs. And the resemblance doesn't end there. Just like typical foster care, Safe Families sometimes splits apart siblings, a tremendous additional trauma for the children. And just like typical foster care Safe Families sometimes sends children far from their birth parents. Model foster care programs emphasizing keeping the children in the same neighborhood.

Perhaps most important, any parent contemplating using the program needs to know that at least ten percent of the children taken in by Safe Families parents don't come back. In comparison, one study of an Intensive Family Preservation Services program – which targets children in much more difficult cases, children who really have been maltreated and are on the verge of foster care placement - found that 93 percent of the children didn't have to be taken from their parents at all.

In addition, Safe Families achieved its track record almost entirely in Chicago; the other locations are just getting started. As it happens, there probably is no place in America where CPS shows more restraint about taking away children than Chicago. The mentality is very different in Milwaukee and Indianapolis.

After I raised some concerns in the Times story (the only news organization in which the reporter thought including another side of the story might be a good idea), the program's founder, David Anderson, got in touch. He said they've almost never had to call a CPS hotline on a family and, of the ten percent of children who don't return, about half are cases in which the birth parents voluntarily decided that the Safe Family parents should have permanent guardianship. But here again the issue is the definition of voluntary. Sadly, there are any number of times when impoverished birth parents see how much more a substitute family can provide for a child materially, and so persuade themselves that the children would be "better off" in the middle-class home.

As I've noted before on this Blog, When I wrote my book on child welfare, Wounded Innocents, (Prometheus Books: 1990, 1995) nearly 20 years ago I cited an Orlando Sentinel story about a mother in Florida who desperately loved her two children, four-year-old Lisa and two-year-old Amanda, but was homeless. Fearing that the state would take them away, she "voluntarily" surrendered them, to the state, at first temporarily. "She figured giving the kids up for temporary custody was her best chance of keeping them," the Sentinel reported.

"Lisa and Amanda's mother visited them at the church day care facility every day. By fall she was talking to a church worker about giving the girls up for adoption. Because she thought that "was going to be better for them than anything she could ever give to them. She did love the girls. If she could give them up, they could be taken care of, sent to college," the worker said. … The girls said their mother "'had water in her eyes' when she said goodbye. The mother left a necklace - a chain with a big heart and two little ones - behind as a remembrance. She told Lisa to tell Amanda that she loved her. And she left."

That, too, was "voluntary."

But let's grant everything Anderson says: Let's assume birth parents really can see their children whenever they want and get them back whenever they want. And let's assume the odds of losing a child to CPS this way are so slim it's really nothing to worry about. Let's even assume the odds of losing a child to CPS actually are greater for families that don't get help, because eventually they'll deteriorate, CPS will take their children, and then it will be much harder to get them back. There's still a huge problem with Safe Families: No child should have to give up her or his parents – for months, weeks or even days, just because those parents are poor.

Why force families to pay that price for help? The answer is in the first sentence of the Safe Families handbook. It refers not to preserving families but to "rescue" of children. That tells you that the mentality behind this program is the same child rescue mentality that has caused so many problems in child welfare from its inception. Similarly, the handbook is permeated with the pejorative term "biological parent" - a term that conjures up images of someone no more important to a child than a test tube. The term "birth parent" is value neutral. To his credit, Anderson has agreed to change the language in the handbook on both counts, and to remove the five-day written notice requirement for Illinois parents when they want their children back. He says it was never enforced.

But why is it that in America, for more than 100 years, almost every time people in child welfare come up with some "new" way to "help" poor families, especially poor minority families, it involves separating them from their children - and, more important, separating their children from them? Why should a child have to endure being taken from everyone she or he knows and loves - whether it's by CPS or a well-meaning volunteer - just because that child is poor? Why do we keep doing this to children? Why isn't the same energy and effort of these volunteers exerted to fix up poor people's homes, drive them to job interviews, bring them a home cooked meal, and yes, watch the children - not for days in someone else's home - but for the day or an evening in their own home? All these options still allow for all the good things about Safe Families - in particular the potential to build lasting bonds between the birth family and the helping family.

Anderson argues that Safe Families families do these things too – and more. Some Safe Families families take in the birth parents as well as the children. He argues that the substitute care is just one part of the program (but just happens to be the part on which every news organization fixates). But why not do all these other great things without the sugar frosted foster care? (Indeed, there actually is a program that does just that. It even has a similar name: Save the Families, and it was the subject of this very good story on NBC Nightly News last week.)

The reason Safe Families doesn't skip the substitute care is the same reason the substitute care is the part that's most attractive to all those reporters: It's the part that involves "child rescue" so it's the part that makes the helpers feel best.

There has, however, been one unquestioned benefit from Safe Families: The fact that this program has been able to recruit so many people to provide substitute care for no financial compensation at all is still more evidence that it's nuts for the group that so arrogantly calls itself "Children's Rights" to run all over the country demanding giant pay raises for foster parents so they can be reimbursed not just for basic expenses but for every movie ticket, theme park ride, even every teddy bear they buy for a foster child.

Yes, sugar frosted foster care beats the unsweetened variety. But as the better program, Save the Families, proves, there is no reason to limit poor children to these options.

Tomorrow: Everything wrong with "Safe Families" in one "model" case