Reasonable Efforts: Preview "Criticism of LA Times' Series on Foster Care; the Agency Leadership and the Federal Funding Scheme"

Reasonable Efforts: Preview "Criticism of LA Times' Series on Foster Care; the Agency Leadership and the Federal Funding Scheme"

Response to my letter to Bill Clinton

I have today received a letter of reply to the letter I sent to Bill Clinton and posted here on May 28, 2010.  I have edited that post by appending the text of the former President's letter at its end.

Since the entire point of my letter was completely missed, I think perhaps I'll write again.  I must admit, however, that I'm pretty disappointed in the lack of a quality response.  The reply letter offers no evidence that my letter was read by anyone with even a thimblefull of critical thinking skills.

It's sad.

It's time to plan for action. Collective action.

A little more than a year ago, I set up a Facebook account and started a cause on Facebook called "Getting Child Protection Right."  Over the intervening months, almost four hundred Facebook users from the US and abroad have joined that cause.  Some of those have made contributions to the cause's dedicated non-profit organization -- the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform www.nccpr.org ,  an organization that has done more than any other I have found to influence policy makers in a position to effect positive change to a system that, while well-meaning, often does far more to harm children and families than to help them.  That certainly was my family's experience.

Today I sent out an email bulletin to all of the members of the cause, asking them what individual actions they have taken or thought about taking in order to change things for the better. I realize, of course, that some of those who have joined the cause are just now newly involved in "the system" and may only be thinking about how to get their children back home and how to end their involvement in it.

Nonetheless, I think that it is important for all of us, those whose involvement is in the past and those presently in the system, to put on our thinking caps and come up with a collective plan of action.  Commitment to such a plan can only help to move us all from a position of powerlessness into one of strength.

I have asked for ideas and have proposed one myself.  Now I must pause and be patient, await responses and then figure out how to respond to them.  In the meantime, I shall continue to formulate my own ideas, which presently range from how to provide better and more comprehensive investigation, how to enhance real due process in dependency court, how to increase the availability of in-home, wrap-around services to keep children from being needlessly removed from their own homes, and how to make the entire process more transparent and honest.

The research and papers published on the NCCPR website are among the most helpful I can imagine.  So as a first collective action, I have proposed that every member of Getting Child Protection Right contribute one dollar or whatever they can afford to that organization on the day that we grow to 400 members, and I plan to propose that we do the same each time we acquire 100 new members, thus increasing our contribution by $100 each time we hit that milestone in growth.

I know that we can do more, but this is a start.

 

What hath the Adoption and Safe Families Act wrought? A Letter to Bill Clinton.

President William J. Clinton
c/o William J. Clinton Foundation
55 West 125th Street
New York, NY 10027

May 27, 2010

Dear President Clinton:

I am the father of two sons, Rudy, 21, and Jonah, 19, both college students. My wife, Jacqui, and I have been married for almost 24 years. She has secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, and I am her primary caregiver.

I write to you today on behalf of other families, though; families who currently are and who in the future will be adversely affected by the policies launched with the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA).

In April 1999, our local Child Protective Services agency removed Rudy and Jonah from our home on groundless suspicions. After ten months of dependency court hearings and prompt compliance with every aspect of the case plan imposed upon us, we were reunited on a “trial visit” basis. After another eight months, the dependency court case was finally dismissed.

The emotional stress of that nearly two-year experience accelerated the progression of Jacqui’s MS, and her disability increased considerably. My own stresses cost me a job.

But none of that is my reason for writing you today. Instead, I want to tell you that, building on the policy foundation established by ASFA, South Carolina has passed a new law, the signing ceremony for which took place on Tuesday last. Under that law, holding children in foster care for just six months will become grounds to terminate parental rights forever. After 18 months, the new law requires termination of parental rights, no ifs, ands or buts.

Because of the instrumental role you played with ASFA, it is very important that you know what is happening now. The policy of financial incentives from the Federal government to the states birthed by the passage of ASFA has become a malignancy, one threatening the well-being of American families.

Please read the May 27, 2010, entry on the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform’s (NCCPR) Blog http://www.nccpr.blogspot.com/ . I beseech you to use the power of your foundation to help reverse the harmful policies resulting from ASFA.

I am more than happy to discuss this idea with you, and I have no doubt that Richard Wexler, Executive Director of the NCCPR would be as well.

I also hope that you also read the new report of the Annie E. Casey Foundation on the reforms made in the Maine Child Protective Services bureaucracy. That report can be found at http://www.aecf.org/.

Thank you for reading this. I hope that you will use the resources of your Foundation to remedy the harm done by a law that was supposed to help, not harm, families and children.

Very truly yours,

Steven H Hirsch
*********************************

Update:  July 27, 2010

Today I received the following letter of reply from Bill Clinton:
*********************************************************************************
"July 22, 2010

Dear Steven:

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me.

Our children are the future, and protecting them is our most profound responsibility.  The goal of the Adoption and Safe Families Act was to give every child the opportunity to grow up in a healthy and safe environment, with the potential to become strong, successful adults.  Throughout my Administration, we tried to increase the number of adoptions from the foster care system by eliminating race and ethicity barriers, breaking down geographic barriers by using the Internet, and ensuring health coverage for adopted children with special needs.

I'm glad you share my belief in the importrance of advocating for children's safety.  It's vital that we talk about the issues that are important to us, so I encourage you to continue to share your views.

Sincerely,

/s/ Bill Clinton"
*********************************************************************************

So, since the entire point of my letter was missed, shall I take the time to write once more? 

Es su CASA mi CASA? I don't think so; at least it wasn't in our case.

Today I saw that  friend of mine had become a fan of the Facebook Cause that supports the National Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program.  On the National CASA web page I found this quote:  "The joy of being involved as a voice for a child needing a safe and permanent home or helping a family to regenerate and become parents  is like Christmas every time!"—CASA volunteer Freddy W. Baugh writing on National CASA’s Facebook page.  (Italics added)

As a parent who, to this day, still feels very victimized by my family's experience ten years ago in what I can only describe as the meatgrinder of the Child Protective Services - Dependency Court system in Orange County, California, I initially bristled at reading that information.  Not because my friend did anything to intentionally hurt me, because he certainly did not.  I am sure that he is just trying to do something positive for the world and for children. 

My reaction is partly frustration that I still do not know what more I can do other than drumming up support for a wonderfully effective organization, The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, http://www.nccpr.org/ , through my own Facebook Cause, "Getting Child Protection Right".  And it's also partly frustration and, yes, resentment, that despite the presence of a CASA volunteer in our courtroom, no one from CASA ever spoke to me or to my wife.  I wish they had.

Looking at the phrase above, "helping a family to regenerate and become parents", presupposes that a family has stopped being a family and parents have stopped being parents.  But how does that happen?  In our case, it happened because no one in the system bothered to investigate us in any depth prior to taking action to separate parents from children.  It happened becuase there is no CASA that is there for parents.  Oh, of course there is an attorney, but our attorney (or, in our case, attorneys, plural, because of a potential legal conflict of interest between my wife and myself, despite no REAL conflict) were not able to get the court to really see how unbelievably we parents were being mistreated by the system until a hearing that took place some nine months from the time our boys were taken into custody.  NINE MONTHS.  Do you know what effect nine months of nights away from our kids did to the course of my wife's multiple sclerosis?

I feel the pain of parents who write to me through "Getting Child Protection Right".  Their pain is my pain.  No doubt they could use a CASA, too.

I think I'll share this blog entry with my friend.  I think he'll understand.







 

Happy Birthday to Holly, and A Loving Tribute to the memory of Dr. Stanley van den Noort, M.D.

Today is my friend Holly's birthday. She is a physician, wife, mother, cancer survivor. Despite the fact that we have only seen each other one time in our lives, she is a very special friend who came into my life during a most difficult time. We live many time zones apart and before this day passes, I want to send her my heartfelt good wishes on the occasion of her completion of yet one more solar circumnavigation.
Happy Birthday, Holly.

* * *

http://sciencedude.freedomblogging.com/2009/09/18/legendary-uci-researcher-van-den-noort-dies/57369/

Stan was my wife’s neurologist for almost twenty years, and since I took her to almost all of her visits with him, we became good friends and allies in managing her battle against the chronic progressive nature of MS. He treated her through the remission that accompanied her second pregnancy and the nursing of our baby and watched our two little sons grow up, as we usually brought them to his office at UCI.

One afternoon In 1999, the OC Department of Child Protective Services took our boys from their elementary school in Irvine to Orangewood Children’s Home on allegations of abuse against me and failure to protect against my wife

Three days later, after a CPS in-home investigation and evaluation, which included full disclosure of my wife’s MS and my spousal caregiving and parenting role, we reported for a hearing before an OC pro tem dependency court commissioner after CPS formally agreed in writing that our sons could return home. Our attorney told us that such agreements were rare and only given in those cases where CPS regarded parents highly and judged them as low risk.

At that hearing, after objection to the agreement by an attorney from the contracted law firm representing the children, the pro tem commissioner imposed an additional requirement by court order: “Father not to be sole caregiver of the minor.” (sic)

That order was neither discussed nor debated in open court and no one raised the issue of my wife’s MS and my caregiving role.

That judicial indifference to the presence of the disease of MS in a family and lack of discussion by any of the attorneys present created a situation that made it impossible for us to comply with the court order. There were times when my wife had to lie down for a nap when I was the only other adult at home with the children. I clearly explained that to social workers who visited our home, whose response was that we were therefore in violation of the court order and would consequently lose the children.

I explained the situation to our attorney and implored him to seek a modification of the court order, because MS prevented us from being able to comply. He told me that he attempted to do so, but failed.

The inevitable happened. CPS took our boys away again and this time placed them in a “sibling assessment facility”.

During this time, Stan, who had known our family for some ten years, went so far as to write a letter to the dependency court on our behalf. He knew what kind of parents we were and he was unfailingly supportive. It was incredible to him and to us how lack of awareness of the disease and its effect on a family could be so ignored by officialdom.

My wife’s MS definitely worsened under the stress caused by the emotional pain of having our boys taken away. Stan did what he could to help us. He was a wonderful physician and a great friend. Our boys finally were allowed to come home ten and one half months later and the court finally dismissed the dependency case in December, 2000.

Through relapses, remissions and exacerbations, Stan was always there. He got my wife into a late-stage clinical trial for Copaxone after her body rejected beta interferon, and she remains on that injectable medication today. That may be the reason she is not in a wheelchair full-time after some thirty years of living with MS.

Stan was a wonderful clinician and researcher, a great professor and dedicated dean. But to us, he was a beloved healer and friend, advocate and ally, and rock of support. We have missed him for the two years since his brain injury, and now we will miss him forever.

May his memory be a blessing to all who knew and loved him, and may our story be of comfort to his family, especially his beloved wife, June.

Getting Child Protection Right

It's been some time since I've posted here. In the interim, my kids got me to join Facebook. Shortly thereafter, I established a Cause there with the same name as the title of this post. One purpose of that cause is to raise funds for The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, a non-profit corporation based in Northern Virginia, whose executive director is Richard Wexler.

When we were in the meatgrinder of the CPS system, I really wanted someone to help us get out of it, and naturally I went to the Internet for information. But now, with the benefit of the passage of time, I know that the real solution to how we, as a society, handle issues of child abuse and neglect must come on the policy level that will influence state legislators to take the action necessary to make the reforms that children and families so need and deserve.

Here in California, where state finances are in turmoil, this could be an opportunity for reform ideas to take root. If there could be a non-governmental alternative to addressing cases of child abuse/neglect, one involving extended families, friends and support communities, what a different experience children and families in crisis would have.