Many Barriers to Providing "Normal" Activities for Foster Children

One of the most frustrating things about working as a social worker in the District of Columbia's foster care system was being unable to ensure that my clients were able to do the normal things that other young people get to do—like visiting friends and participating in extracurricular activities. When a foster parent asked if a child could visit a friend, I had to say this was not allowed unless all the adults in the friend's family took time off from work to get fingerprinted, paid for the fingerprints, and filled out a long child abuse clearance form. The whole process cost them up to $60 (depending on where they lived) and it would be at least a month before the clearances were approved.

More frustration ensued when foster children wanted to participate in extracurricular activities. Federal law requires that children in foster care be kept in the same school when they are placed in foster care or change foster homes, except if it is not in their best interests. As a result, many of my clients were not attending local schools and had to use private transportation services. This made it hard for my clients to engage in extracurricular activities because these providers usually require that the child be picked up at the same time every day and drivers are often not available for pickups that occur after school dismissal time.

Another problem was the refusal of many foster parents to transport their foster children to and from friends, activities and games. Most of my clients, like more than half of DC foster care youth, live in the Maryland suburbs, since there are not enough foster homes in the District of Columbia. While suburban parents know that transporting children to activities is part of their job, the same is not often true of foster parents, especially when the child attends school in the District or across the county. The foster parent of one of my clients had never been to her school the year that the child lived with her. My client was never able to participate in an evening performance or go to a school dance because her foster parent would not bring her. And of course, even if another parent had offered to bring her, that would not have been allowed unless that parent received police and child abuse clearances.

A new movement over the past two years has called for “normalcy” for foster children. Basically, the concept means that foster children should be able to engage in the same normal activities as their peers. Following the lead of several states, Congress recently passed a law that requires states to develop a standard for what is reasonable and prudent in allowing foster care children to engage in “extracurricular, enrichment, cultural and social activities.”

As a former foster care social worker, I wholly support the effort to bring normalcy to foster children. Being in foster care is abnormal enough. Denying foster youth the activities that will help them build relationships and skills and relieve stress is truly adding insult to injury. Unfortunately, implementing the law is less simple than it appears to people who are unfamiliar with the nuts and bolts of foster care.

In order to make sure that children in foster care can have normal social lives, states will have to address the valid concern about who is liable in the unlikely event that a foster child is exposed to some type of maltreatment at a friend's home. Florida's normalcy law, which was the model for the new federal law, provides that a foster parent is not liable for harm caused to a foster child during an activity deemed reasonable in accordance with the “reasonable and prudent” standard. Without such a provision, many foster parents will not be willing to allow visits and sleepovers.

In terms of extracurricular activities, the fix is more difficult. More emphasis may have to be placed on keeping a child in the same school district when he or she moves to a different foster home. Children's attorneys who have aggressively pushed for their clients to stay in the same school may have to consider whether this is truly in the child's best interest when it prevents them from participating in extracurricular activities. States and local jurisdictions have to be willing to say goodbye to foster parents who are not willing to inconvenience themselves to enrich the lives of their charges.  

This column was published in Youth Today on April 22, 2014

A Tale of Two Families

Last week, the nation was once again focused on a Montgomery County, Maryland story that first came to national attention on December 20 of last year when a ten-year-old boy and six-year-old girl were picked up by police while walking home by themselves from a playground about a mile from their home. The police contacted Montgomery County Child Protective Services (CPS), which interviewed the children at school, visited the family at home, and threatened the children would be removed unless the parents signed a “safety plan” promising that they would not be left alone until the case was resolved.

The children's parents explained that they believed in “free range parenting,” allowing their children to take gradual steps toward independence consistent with their age and ability. Eventually, CPS took the middle route between substantiating the neglect and ruling it out, making a finding that left open the possibility that neglect took place. But on April 12, the children were once again in the clutches of CPS when police picked them up in a park and brought them to CPS headquarters after a dog walker called 911. They were not reunited with their parents for five-and-a-half hours (without any food), and their parents did not know where they were for the first three hours. The family is reportedly planning to sue CPS.

The extreme attention paid to the Meitiv family stands in ironic contrast to another story that transfixed the Washington area last year. On March 19, 2014, police began searching for eight-year-old Relisha Rudd, who had lived with her family at the District's large family homeless shelter. Relisha had not been at school since February 26 but no report had been made because her family had lied to the school about her absence, stating that she was sick and under care by a “Dr. Tatum.” Tatum turned out to be a janitor at the shelter. His wife's body was found on March 20 with a bullet in the head; he was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound on March 31. Relisha has never been found.

An investigation by the Washington Post found that DC's Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) had sustained three complaints of abuse or neglect involving this family. The last complaint was only two to three months before Relisha disappeared. Due to the family's right to confidentiality, the agency has declined to release any details about the conclusions of their investigation, whether any type of monitoring or services were provided or whether the family had an open case when Relisha disappeared.

The juxtaposition of these two episodes illustrates the fundamental conflict in child welfare between doing too little and doing too much. In one case, children who were being allowed to develop independent living skills in a safe and loving home were traumatized by Child Protective Services. In another case, child in a family that was clearly struggling, whose brother was found to be abused not three months earlier, was allowed to disappear from a government-funded homeless shelter with no action taken until she was gone for three weeks.

What can be done to prevent more children to be unnecessarily traumatized or fall through the cracks? Somehow, we need to inject a little bit of common sense into child welfare practice. The Washington Post reported that there were many signs that all was not well in Relisha's family, in addition to the three prior reports of abuse or neglect. School staff “described her arriving with filthy clothes, dirty hair and an empty stomach, and they said she often didn't want to leave.” On the other hand, the Meitiv children seem to display the independent spirit and self-confidence that comes from a loving home. Social workers and police need to be trained and allowed to distinguish the children who need help and those for whom their intervention will only a source of trauma.