Foster Care as Punishment? A Case of Biased Reporting by the New York Times

In “Foster Care as Punishment: The New Reality of ‘Jane Crow‘,” published on July 21, The New York Times drew attention to “a troubling and long-standing phenomenon: the power of Children’s Services to take children from their parents on the grounds that the child’s safety is at risk, even with scant evidence.”

There is no doubt that unnecessary removals of children by child welfare agencies have been a problem in New York and around the country for decades – perhaps as long as these agencies have existed. However, the Times’  biased and incomplete reporting makes the article almost useless to anyone who cares about improving the system.

Most importantly, the Times ignores the equally long-standing phenomenon of the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) failing to protect children victimized by chronic, severe, and sometimes deadly abuse and neglect. The reporters’ only reference to the recent beating deaths of Zymere Perkins and Jaden Jordan, who were both being monitored by the ACS when they were killed, was to assert that these deaths may have given rise to the alleged spike in child removals.

Reporters Stephanie Clifford and Jessica Silver-Greenberg began with a description of Maisha Joefield, a mother who “splurged” on her daughter even when money was tight. For example, the reporters added helpfully, Ms. Joefield “bought her Luvs instead of generic diapers when she could.” 

It is odd to me that the authors seem to consider splurging on brand-name diapers, sneakers, or apparel to be an indicator of good motherhood

One night, Ms. Joefield was so exhausted that she put five-year-old Deja to bed and took a bath with her earphones on. Her child was found wandering the streets of Queens alone at midnight. Not knowing where her mother was, she had decided to go to her grandmother’s house. She was removed to foster care, and returned home four days later by a judge’s order.

The reporters quote legal aid attorney Scott Hechinger as saying, “In another community, your kid’s found outside looking for you because you’re in the bathtub, it’s … a story to tell later … In a poor community, it’s called endangering the future of your child.”

I don’t know where Mr. Hechinger lives, but I have never heard of a friend or neighbor alone with a small child putting on earphones and listening to music so loud with the bathroom door presumably closed that her child could not hear her.

Ms. Joefield committed a serious error in judgment that suggests a certain degree of dysfunctionality and need for assistance. While it may not have justified the child’s removal, some intervention was required to ensure the child’s future safety.

The reporters’ fixation on child removals ignores the overall trend in New York City away from placing children in foster care and toward providing supportive services to families while the children remain at home. The total number of children in foster care in the city has fallen from an average of 16,031 in 2007 to 9,041 in May 2017, according to data provided to this writer by ACS.

In the wake of Zymere Perkins’ death, ACS investigated 27,549 allegations of maltreatment in the first five months of 2017, 2,000 more than in the first five months of 2016.

This has coincided with an increase in foster care placements: the number of children placed in foster care in the first five months of 2017 was 21 percent higher than the number placed in the first five months of 2016, according to data provided by ACS.

But the increase in allegations and investigations has been met far more often with family preservation services than with child removals. Between June 2016 and June 2017, the number of families placed under court-ordered supervision to keep children safe while they remain at home went up 69 percent. In dealing with the upsurge in maltreatment reports, the agency appears to be continuing to emphasize in-home services rather foster care. 

The Times article illustrates what some have called the liberal dilemma in child welfare reform. As I argued in a previous column, “liberals are reluctant to further penalize parents whose problems in parenting ultimately stem from poverty and racism by taking away their children.” But as another columnist put it, “it’s not racist to save minority kids’ lives.”

The New York Times had the opportunity to write an important story about the difficulty ofavoiding unnecessary removals while at the same time protecting children who are in very dangerous homes. Instead, the Times chose to publish a polemic with suspect numbers, old anecdotes, and slanted language. Too bad for the Times, and for its readers.

This column was published by the Chronicle of Social Change  on August 17, 2017.

States Should Forbid Homeschooling by Adoption Subsidy Recipients

This is the second of two columns focusing on adoption subsidies. In the first column, I focused on the general need for more scrutiny on recipients of adoption subsidies. In this column I discuss the need to prevent abuse of adopted children who are removed from school.

The recent deaths of two teenage girls in Iowa and the escape of another from an abusive home has resulted in heightened media coverage and proposals for an overhaul of Iowa’s entire child protection system.

Natalie Finn, age 16, Sabrina Ray, age 16, and Malaiya Knapp, age 17, had several things in common. They were all abused by their adoptive parents, who collected subsidies from the State of Iowa. And they were all withdrawn from school on the pretext of being home-schooled.

As a consequence, one of the first lines of defense against child abuse – the observation of school personnel – was absent.

When adoption subsidies are paired with homeschooling, the combination can be lethal, as blogger Sandra Halverson Reicks points out in a recent post. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE) has reviewed hundreds of cases of severe or fatal abuse and neglect of home-schooled children. A disproportionate number of these children are adopted or have special needs.

Federally funded adoption subsidies are available to parents who adopt children with special needs from foster care. Each state sets its own definition of special needs, which may include age, ethnic background, sibling group status, medical condition, or disability.

Maximum basic monthly subsidy rates are usually in the range of hundreds of dollars per child, and depending on the state can be in the thousands for children with more intensive needs. Multiply this by the number of children, and adoption subsidies can be a sizeable addition to family income.

As the North American Council for Adoptable Children puts it, “Adoption subsidies make it possible for children with special needs to be adopted by loving families who require additional resources to help them thrive.” We don’t want to return to the days when foster parents could receive subsidies but could not receive equivalent payments if they adopted the children in their care.

But clearly, adoption subsidies provide an opportunity for unscrupulous people to take advantage of vulnerable children and taxpayers. Foster children are monitored, but adopted children are not, which leaves school personnel as the main safety net for reporting abuse or neglect. By withdrawing their children from school to ostensibly home-school them, abusive adoptive parents can effectively isolate them from the world.

When public funds are provided for the raising of children, there needs to be some oversight. School personnel is required to report all suspected abuse and neglect. These reports are crucial for the safety of children. Many homeschooled children killed by their parents might have been saved if they had been enrolled in school.

Therefore, as Reicks recommends in her blog, parents receiving adoption subsidies should be required to enroll their children in public or private schools.

“When there’s public money involved, there needs to be transparency,” writes Reicks. “It’s not enough for Iowa’s Department of Human Services to become involved after a complaint is filed. One visit does not compare to regular observations from the public or private school system.”

This does not seem too much to ask of adoptive parents, especially if the only alternative would be to require periodic home visits by adoption staff.

One might ask how this requirement would be enforced. The answer is fairly simple. Parents receiving subsidies should be required to sign a document at the beginning of each school year identifying the school the child attends and giving permission for the school to release the child’s attendance records at specified intervals throughout the school year. Continued receipt of the subsidy would be contingent on return of the form by a certain date.

The agency would request attendance records periodically, perhaps after each quarter. A history of frequent absences, or a parent’s refusal or nonresponse to the request, would also trigger an investigation.

What about young people who refuse to go to school? In these cases, clearly something is wrong, and it may well be appropriate for the state to offer assistance to the adoptive parents in dealing with the situation.

All too often, proposals like this one are rejected on the grounds of interfering with the freedom of parents. But no parent is required to receive an adoption subsidy. Those who are receiving taxpayers’ money to care for our most vulnerable children should be willing to allow their wellbeing to be monitored.

This column was published in the Chronicle of Social Change on June 28, 2017.