“The hospital staff were texting with [the child welfare agency] about the dilation of her cervix”

One state allegedly maintains a secret docket of pregnant women. For those on it, it is alleged, this state will rely on a “network of informers” to plunder confidential records and spy on any mother they deem “high risk.” The state may even seek custody before the children are born.  You may be surprised at which state it is.

A lawsuit was filed last week that alleges the following: 

● A pregnant woman was reported to a state family police agency despite no allegation of abuse or neglect.

● She became part of a secret docket of pregnant women singled out for intensive government monitoring.

● Her confidential medical records were obtained and read by strangers without her knowledge.

● Every aspect of her delivery, down to the centimeter, was reported to the government, again without her knowledge.

● The government attempted to force her to undergo a medical procedure.

● The government confiscated her child at birth – refusing to allow the mother to touch her newborn, or even see her.

● The government placed the child with strangers two hours away, strictly limited visits and tried to deprive the child of her mother forever.

So here’s the first question of a two-question pop quiz: The next few paragraphs are from a news story about the lawsuit – and if anything illustrates why “family police agency” is a more accurate term than “child welfare” agency, it’s these next few paragraphs.  I’ve removed information that would reveal the state in which this allegedly occurred.  As you read, see if you can guess the state. 

The [child welfare agency] went to extraordinary and illegal lengths to remove a child from its mother’s custody, aided by an internal program that monitors the pregnancies of multiple [residents], a new lawsuit … alleges. 

The 30-page complaint… accuses the department of secretly tracking the pregnancies of multiple [state residents] that it deems “high-risk” with an internal calendar, without their knowledge or consent. 

The … suit focuses on the case of one mother, identified only as A.V., in which the [child welfare agency] — citing concerns about A.V.’s mental health — allegedly used confidential medical information to secure custody of her daughter before she had even given birth. The department also allegedly sought a court order for the hospital to perform a caesarean section while the mother was in labor, all without A.V.’s knowledge. 

[The agency] removed the infant from her mother’s custody immediately after she was born, according to the suit, only to have the child returned by court order months later. 

“No court ever found that A.V. lacked parental capacity,” the suit reads, alleging that [the agency] did not cite any formal mental health evaluation of A.V. to support its actions. 

It’s obvious, right? A state that would develop what the lawsuit calls “a network of informers,” plunder a mother’s confidential medical records, based on no more than a guess that a fetus was in danger? A state that would demand custody of what anti-abortion crusaders would call a “pre-born child”?  Must be Texas, or maybe Mississippi, right? 

If that were the answer there’d be no point in the quiz, of course.  No, this lawsuit was filed in a state so deep blue that the far right likes to call it “the People’s Republic of Vermont.”  The lawsuit was brought by the Vermont ACLU, along with Pregnancy Justice and two private firms, against the Vermont family police agency, a Vermont hospital, Copley, and a Vermont agency, Lund, that provided confidential pre-natal counseling to the mother (well she thought it was confidential).  Those paragraphs above are from an excellent story in VT Digger.  Vermont Public also has done an excellent story about the case. 

The case at the heart of the suit is no aberration in a couple of ways.  

First, as Vermont Public reports, the lawsuit alleges that the state Department for Children and Families maintains a secret 

so-called “high-risk pregnancy calendar” to regularly monitor pregnant Vermonters deemed “unsuitable for parenthood,” using confidential information illegally obtained from medical providers and social service organizations. 

The information comes from what the lawsuit calls 

[A] network of informers, including medical and social work professionals like the staff at Copley Hospital and Lund, [who] unlawfully collect sensitive information about pregnant Vermonters, even where there is no allegation or suspicion of neglect or abuse. DCF then uses the collected information to zealously seek termination of parental rights, often without having substantiated the anecdotes, information, or concerns directly. 

According to the lawsuit, one is blacklisted on this “calendar” – a term that comes from tracking due dates -- not based on conventional medical criteria for high risk, but rather 

“based solely on speculative concerns about future parenting ability, a determination that often relies on outdated, anecdotal, unsubstantiated, subjective, and discriminatory criteria. 

Those criteria include 

prior involvement with DCF as a child; housing status; or an expectant mother’s preference for “natural” over medically assisted birth. 

As the lawsuit notes: 

Vermont has long represented itself as a haven for bodily autonomy, and the General Assembly legislates against a backdrop of protection for reproductive rights, not conceptions of fetal personhood. Yet despite its limited statutory mandate to protect existing, born children, DCF regularly seeks out information about pregnant Vermonters who have never previously interacted with the agency. DCF amasses pre-birth evidence to support its subjective belief that these women will later make poor parents. Upon, or shortly after birth, DCF then intervenes to seize their infants.

Indeed, in 2022, Vermont voters added a e “reproductive liberty amendment” to the State Constitution. 

Yet Vermont allegedly is implementing upon pregnant woman a Project 2025-style surveillance scheme strikingly similar to one proposed by self-proclaimed liberal Elizabeth Bartholet.

Vermont’s long, ugly history

But that’s not the only way this case is not unusual.  As noted previously on this Blog, for decades, liberal Vermont has torn apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation, more than quadruple the national average.  (But don’t get too smug, conservatives – West Virginia is even worse, and four other deep red states are right behind Vermont.) 

It's all horrifyingly clear in the case of A.V., the mother at the center of the lawsuit. 

The case began when she could not stay in her apartment and had to move to a homeless shelter.  (You don’t think DCF would do this to a rich person, do you?)  The shelter’s director decided that A.V. seemed to have mental health issues.  We don’t know how she reached this decision – except that it was not the result of any evaluation by a mental health professional. But, according to the lawsuit, the shelter director didn’t think A.V. was aware that she was pregnant. This is a bit odd since A.V. had already gone to Lund for prenatal counseling.  (By the way, Lund advertises “nonjudgmental counseling”). 

But there was something else: DCF knew that A.V. had herself allegedly been abused as a child – so she was on the agency’s radar as a victim.  And yes, being a victim of child abuse, or having been in foster care, does indeed make you more likely to face the trauma of investigation and the loss of your own child at the hands of the family police. 

So, as Vermont Public explains: 

The shelter’s report prompted DCF to open “an assessment for lack of parental capacity” and assign a caseworker. The caseworker then reached out to Lund, where A.V. had sought a confidential counseling session, and Copley, where A.V. planned to give birth. She also reached out to A.V.’s mother, according to the ACLU, who said that A.V. had no mental health diagnoses and had made preparations for the baby’s arrival. 

In violation of DCF’s own policies, the caseworker did not even notify A.V. that this assessment was taking place, according to the ACLU. Both Lund and Copley provided to DCF the information the caseworker sought — without A.V.’s knowledge or consent. 

A.V. … went into labor on Feb. 11, 2022. Unbeknownst to A.V., workers at Copley notified DCF, and offered highly granular — and confidential — updates to the state about A.V.’s delivery. 

“The hospital staff were texting with DCF about the dilation of her cervix,” senior ACLU staff attorney Harrison Stark said in an interview.

While A.V. was still in labor, DCF and Deputy State’s Attorney Aliena Gerhard went to court, seeking to transfer temporary custody of A.V.'s as-yet-unborn child to DCF. 

Among other things, DCF wrongly told the court that A.V. already had given birth. The lawsuit alleges DCF knew that wasn’t true.  With A.V. unaware this was happening, let alone being able to defend herself, the judge, who, remember, had been told the child already had been born, approved the request.

But DCF and the hospital weren’t done with A.V.  Her labor continued into the next day, so the hospital allegedly went from agency to agency to agency looking for someone who would go to court to ask a judge to force A.V. to have a Cesarian section. Commendably, the state mental health agency refused. Naturally, DCF obliged.  But while the court process was underway, A.V. agreed to the C-section. 

An infant confiscated at birth 

DCF confiscated the child, known in court papers as S.V., at birth.  As the lawsuit states “A.V. was not allowed to hold - or even touch – the baby.” (Or, to put it another way, the baby was not allowed to hold – or even touch – her mother.)  

Then it got worse.  Again, from the lawsuit Complaint: 

Staff placed A.V. in a room adjacent to the hospital’s nursery. … Although A.V. could hear infants, including presumably S.V., cry in the next room, she was told that she was not allowed to approach the nursery and could not attempt to view her baby under any circumstances. 

The child was placed with foster parents two hours away, visits, including one at a police station, were strictly limited and highly supervised. 

We don’t know why, but we do know that this was a great way for DCF to ensure that the infant would view her own mother as a stranger.  That’s a great way to play the “bonding card” as a means to cut off the child from her mother forever.  As the lawsuit notes: 

A.V. feared her discomfort and S.V.’s unfamiliarity with her would be used as grounds to delay reunification or sever her custody rights. For example, DCF frequently reported that S.V. cried inconsolably during visits with her mother, and it attempted to use these reports as evidence of A.V.’s purported parental unsuitability. …  A.V. was led to believe that if S.V. cried during a visit, then she would be blamed and would not be allowed to see or hold her baby in the future, let alone regain custody. 

Fortunately, the court didn’t fall for it.  Seven months after DCF confiscated the child, A.V. got her back.  It should have been sooner, but DCF repeatedly stalled the process by filing so-called “emergency motions.”  By then actual mental health professionals had conducted an actual evaluation. According to the lawsuit, they “concluded that A.V. suffered none of the mental health conditions alleged by DCF.” 

This time, according to the lawsuit, A.V. gave consent to DCF to actually read the record – and DCF refused! 

One of those alleged mental health conditions, one that is cited repeatedly, is particularly interesting. 

To see why, let’s review again what allegedly happened here: 

● A pregnant woman was reported to a state family police agency despite no allegation of abuse or neglect.

● She became part of a secret docket of pregnant women singled out for intensive government monitoring.

● Her confidential medical records were obtained and read by strangers without her knowledge.

● Every aspect of her delivery, down to the centimeter, was reported to the government, again without her knowledge.

● The government attempted to force her to undergo a medical procedure.

● The government confiscated her child at birth – refusing to allow the mother to touch her newborn, or even see her.

● The government placed the child with strangers two hours away, strictly limited visits and tried to deprive the child of her mother forever. 

So here’s the second question of the quiz: What mental health condition kept coming up as something from which the mother allegedly suffered?

Paranoia.

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Progressive little Vermont tears apart families at a rate that would make Donald Trump proud

The Vermont State Capitol

            Nationally, little attention has been paid to how family policing functions in Vermont.  For whatever reason, the awful system next door in New Hampshire gets plenty of attention.  But Vermont is even worse; probably the worst in New England and among the worst in the nation.   Yet it goes largely under the radar. 

            A story about foster youth getting access to their own records was a useful reminder that Vermont needs more attention – and Vermont’s leaders need to feel ashamed. 

            I was reminded when a story about access to records brought home a comparison between two mothers and their children.  One lived in Vermont, the other lived near me in Northern Virginia. 

            Both begin the same way.  A mother’s injuries lead to prescriptions for opioid painkillers which lead to a substance use disorder. 

            Vermont Public recently told the story of what happened to the son of the first mother, Nathaniel Farnham, when the Vermont family police agency, the Department of Children and Families, invaded his life.  After two weeks of supervised visits to the family, Farnham says, 

“…one Saturday morning while I was watching cartoons with my mom, knock on the door, and there’s a DCF worker with two state troopers. And I’m getting put in the back of a car and off I go, start the 13 years of hell.”

             Farnham was at the mercy of the DCF from age 7 until he aged out in 2018.  He told Vermont Public he’d been in 35 different foster homes and at least eight placements in “residential treatment.” 

The mother in my Virginia neighborhood was, if anything, in worse shape.  She was hooked on prescription opioids and an alcoholic. "I liked alcohol, it made me feel warm,” she would later say. “And I loved pills. They took away my tension and my pain."  This addict also had serious mental health issues. 

            But unlike Nathaniel Farnham, this mother’s children were not taken away. The local equivalent of the Department of Children and Families never knocked on the door. Instead of “13 years of hell” the children lived safely, first in their suburban Virginia home and then in the White House -- with their mom, Betty Ford.  You can get a glimpse of their idyllic life here starting at 0:50 in: 

            The difference, of course, boils down to a single word: Money. Betty Ford had all the help she needed to raise her children safely despite her many issues. How much hell might Nathaniel have been spared, had anything like that kind of help been offered to his mother? 

            What happened to Nathaniel happens in every state, but it’s more likely to happen in Vermont. Vermont is a top candidate for child removal capital of America.  Pridefully progressive Vermont tears apart families and sends children off to the hell of foster care at a rate that would make Donald Trump blush proud: the second-highest rate in America, more than quadruple the national average, when rates of child poverty are factored in. It’s been that way for decades. 

            The result is a system that makes all children less safe. 

            Most cases are nothing like the horror stories of children tortured and murdered.  In Vermont 93% of the time, when children are thrown into foster care their parents are not even accused of physical or sexual abuse.  Most cases aren’t even like Nathaniel’s mother, or Betty Ford.  More than 60% of the time, there’s not even an allegation of any kind of drug abuse at all.  

            Far more common are cases in which family poverty is confused with neglect.  

            Even Bill Young, who used to run Vermont’s child welfare agency, is appalled.  After the Vermont Center for Parent Representation documented case after case of families wrongly listed on the state´s blacklist of alleged child abusers, Young said:  

“After about two months, I realized oh my god, it’s true. These stories are true … [We] have a situation where people begin to think, you know, in the interest of protecting a child, you can skew the evidence a little bit, something that people who raised me would have called lying.”

            Consider how this culture harms children.  

Vermonters were appalled when Trump tore apart families at the Mexican border – we all remember those children’s cries.  And The New York Times just reminded us of the legacy. Yes, when DCF does it, there’s a difference: DCF workers almost always mean well.  But the trauma of being torn from everyone they know and love is identical.  Vermont children cry out the same way for the same reasons.  

No wonder study after study finds that, in typical cases, children left in their own homes typically fare better even than comparably-maltreated children placed in foster care.  And yes, that includes cases where the issue is substance use. 

            The harm isn’t just emotional. Multiple studies find abuse in one-quarter to one-third of family foster homes. The rate of abuse in group homes and institutions is even worse. 

            And all the time, money and effort wasted on false allegations, trivial cases and poverty cases is, in effect, stolen from finding those few children in real danger. 

            To its credit, the Vermont Legislature enacted modest reforms. But far more needs to be done.  For starters, the model of high-quality family defense pioneered in Vermont by VCPR must be available to every family. This approach is proven to reduce foster care with no compromise of safety.  In some cases, the federal government will reimburse half the cost. Between that and the savings from reduced foster care, this approach pays for itself. 

            And lawmakers need to become laser-focused on ameliorating the worst stresses of poverty.  Startlingly small investments in cash assistance, housing aid and childcare can dramatically reduce not only neglect but even severe abuse.  And when the issue really is substance use that compromises safety, apply the Betty Ford standard to any Vermonter who needs treatment. 

            Is it really too much to ask that Vermont take a more humane approach to child welfare than Donald Trump?

Child welfare and coronavirus: Vermont’s child welfare agency wants an anti-hugging law

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.

            Imagine for a moment that you are a small child.  Suddenly everyone you know and love has disappeared.  Where is Mommy?  Where is Daddy?  Where are my brothers and sisters? Even for a child who can speak, let alone an infant, comprehension is almost impossible – it’s an experience akin to a kidnapping.  There can be no real comfort other than once again experiencing the chance to look Mom or Dad in the eye, experience their touch and literally feel the family’s embrace.

            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.