Rhetoric versus reality

Before its annual summer recess, the House of Representatives passed the "Children's Initiative" bill 256 to163, a margin too small to override a presidential veto. The legislation combines three separate bills: the "Family Preservation Act," the "Mickey Leland Childhood Hunger Relief Act," and a deficit reduction measure. It provides $3.5 billion for family preservation, $1.2 billion for deficit reduction.

Last week Senate Democrats came roaring back to Washington promising to pass comparable legislation to "show compassion" and prove that the Bush administration's concern for families is all slogan without substance. In stately Senate offices and private dining rooms, liberal senators pledged their commitment to "family preservation" that would leave no child without a haven amidst heartlessness.

Several miles away from the Capitol, in one of the District of Columbia's rough neighborhoods, conversation is different. There, citizens talk of four children found locked up by their mother in two filthy, roach-infested rooms. The four children-ranging in age from nine to three-had been imprisoned for as long as four years. None was able to speak more than simple sentences.

Although social workers and neglect lawyers told The Washington Post that the case was the worst they could recall, the D.C. Department of Human Services decided that children were not in "imminent danger" and recommended that the children not be removed from the apartment home. The department, fearing the children would be "overwhelmed" by a move, wanted the family preserved. A judge overruled the department and the children were removed.

On Capitol Hill, where lawmakers say the word and create a federal bureaucracy out of nothing, the child welfare problem has a simple solution-more money. Whenever a child is killed emotionally or even physically by an abusive parent, the story is the same-the system is overloaded and underfunded. While Congress is trying to give more money to child welfarists in order to "preserve families," critics charge that the child welfare system is so deeply flawed that bigger bucks will not help.

Take the District of Columbia case. Perhaps the children languished in their squalid prison for four years because the social work staff was overloaded and couldn't send an investigator. But once the danger was discovered, the Department of Human Services refused to remove the children from that dismal environment.

Were child welfare officials in Washington, D.C., merely suffering from a bad day and poor judgment? No-their decision was standard operating procedure. It stemmed from a basic change in child welfare thinking over the past decade. Formerly, children were placed in foster care when social workers determined they were at risk of either neglect or abuse. The goal, when the parents truly were incapable, was to move rapidly toward adoption.

The system had problems. Some children were placed in foster care when it was not necessary. Their family groups, often headed by single mothers, had problems but merely needed a little help to get through hard times. When foster care became necessary, it often lasted too long: the road to adoption needed smoothing. Furthermore, some Christians worried that Scandinavian-style bureaucrats who hated useful spanking would gain too much power.

But the change that came was revolution, not reformation. Increasingly, social workers began to view genetic bonds as everything, even when relatives were abusing children. They considered single-parenting as something any mother, aunt, or second cousin could do, as long as social workers became the second "parent."

They believed that with massive social work intervention, every abusing environment could be turned into a home. With family preservation as the goal, social workers began to ignore alternatives like adoption.

Adoption of children from dysfunctional homes began to be viewed not merely as a last resort, but as no resort. Since "family preservation " was essential, children already in the system tended to languish in foster-care limbo, never freed for adoption as long as there was even the slightest possibility that abusive parents or relatives would change their spots.

Simply put, social workers began to judge their success by whether they could keep a child in his dwelling. If a case came to the point where parental rights had to be terminated, the social worker had failed in her duty to preserve the family.

Quintessa Murreld of New York City died in foster care last year at the age of three. Her uncle, who was also her foster father, pleaded guilty of manslaughter. Quintessa had been placed in foster care because her mother, a crack addict, neglected her. After six months in that foster home, she was not placed for adoption, but was moved into foster care with her aunt and uncle, who made it clear that they had no intention of adopting the child.

When Quintessa sat sad and listless on the floor and defecated on herself, the aunt told the social workers "she [would] not tolerate this behavior for long." Quintessa's caseworker promised to try to get Quintessa evaluated, but she had 30 other cases. Before any evaluation was done, Quintessa arrived at the hospital in a coma. According to the New York Times, she "suffered from malnutrition, burns, bruises, and an old arm fracture that appeared to have been untreated. She had been strangled with a cord."

Although "family preservation" could help some families, it clearly is not a panacea for the child welfare mess. In 1990, 617,000 children were in foster care, up 45 percent from 1987, largely because of increases in both substance abuse and single parenting. Most troubling is the number of children stuck in the social work system. In the early 1980s only 40 percent of the children in foster care left the system, but by 1990 that low rate had slipped further, to less than 30 percent.

This raises questions. If "family preservation" as a strategy has not worked, why is the House of Representatives seeking to spend $3.5 billion more on it? Why are so many interest groups-including the Children's Defense Fund-behind the new policy?

Part of the story is the well-known cultural tendency to see single parenting as fine as long as social services are there to pick up the slack created by an absent father. But there is a hidden story as well. "Family preservation" has increased in popularity as an alternative to transracial and cross-cultural adoptions. For 20 years the National Association of Black Social Workers has maintained that transracial adoption is "cultural genocide." Their opinion has been influential, especially in public welfare circles. The result: black and Hispanic children stuck in foster care, when there are willing adoptive families of the "wrong color."

In 1985 the National Coalition to End Racism in America's Child Care System challenged the Michigan Department of Human Services and eventually won. A federal judge found prohibitions on transracial adoptions to be unconstitutional. Although that ruling applies only in Michigan, similar rulings have occurred in other parts of the country. The handwriting is on the wall-it seems likely that the Supreme Court, when an appropriate case reaches it, will outlaw racial or cultural discrimination in child placement.

In San Antonio, the Texas Department of Human Services rejected the request of Cheryl and Bud Peacock to adopt one-year-old Annie, a foster child the Peacocks had cared for since the baby was three days old. The Peacocks are Anglo; Annie is Hispanic. When the Peacocks expressed their interest in adopting Annie, they were first told they could not because they are not Hispanic. When they pressed the issue, the story changed. DHS claimed an interest in preserving Annie's family by placing her with a five-year-old half sister (who had never met Annie) in the sister's foster home while they await a Hispanic adoptive family.

The Children's Defense Fund denies the connection of "family preservation" and reverse racism; CDF spokeswoman Mary Lee Allen said she "has never heard that issue raised." But a report by the Ohio state government's Adoption Task Force is typical in its coupling of support for "family preservation" with an attack on transracial adoptions.

As Carol Coccia of the Coalition to End Racism notes, transracial placements will end if people come to believe that blood is thicker than love.

Parents who have been frustrated in their adoption attempts also confirm the connection of "family preservation" and reverse racism. One white foster mother in New York jokes that the fastest way to find a previously non-existent family for a minority foster child is to make noises about adopting him.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with seeking to place a child in a same-race home. That's the ideal situation-but it is not always possible. The Michigan federal court decree in the suit brought by Carol Coccia's group says that if all things are equal, race may be a deciding factor in a placement. But race cannot be the determining factor, especially when the alternative for a child without a same race adoption is a decade of foster placement. Even though some foster homes are wonderful, others are not, and the emotional plight of children without permanency is heartbreaking.

The New York Times reported last week that New York City's Child Welfare Administration, instead of trying to facilitate adoption when necessary, has put all its eggs in the "family preservation" basket-and the basket has gaping holes. Often, children are kept with parents whose lives are governed by crack. It is estimated that more than half of the children who eventually enter New York's foster care system have emotional or behavioral problems. Scarce resources go to drug treatment programs for the parents in the hope that families will be reunited.

Randi was born in New York City in 1985. She lived with her parents in a Harlem tenement. The parents were reported to the state child-abuse registry five times before Randi was four. Both were addicted to crack cocaine and often let their seven children go hungry. Randi was removed by state authorities from her parents' home and placed in foster care with an aunt who abused and neglected her. She was then moved into the home of another aunt, where she lived for less than five months before being fatally beaten by her aunt's 20-year-old son. The New York Times reported that "Randi's thigh bone was broken in two, her liver lacerated, her body battered."

At least one authority on child abuse has second thoughts about family preservation. Richard Gelles, professor at the University of Rhode Island, is now convinced that "some parents ought not to be parents." He says "the only way to protect their children is to get them out, into permanent placement with no chance of reunification."

Gelles says "you could throw an unending supply of money at some of these cases and it still wouldn't work." The reason: some parents, perhaps ruined by drug abuse, don't see their children as human beings, and that's a factor you can't change."

Biblically, adoption is a good option for some children. It gives a child a chance for a childhood rather than an endless cycle of foster care and abusive homes. But that viewpoint is being lost. Mary Beth Seder, director of professional services at the National Committee for Adoption, is "not opposed to putting more money in the child welfare system." But she opposes the Family Preservation Act, saying it is already hard enough to terminate parental rights when appropriate.

Child welfare is a complex matter. Families with parents who love a child and are working to get out of their trouble are certainly worth preserving. There is also a danger in giving social welfare bureaucrats too much power to terminate parental rights. As Carol Coccia says, "It's a fine line."

The House of Representatives paid little attention to these complexities. It produced legislation demanded by the Children's Defense Fund and by the American Public Welfare Association, the trade organization for the state welfare bureaucracies that are in such disarray. The Senate is likely to pass this legislation.

Ironically, President Bush will probably veto the bill, not because he understands its faulty assumptions, but because during the election campaign Democrats cannot resist a political tweaking. The "Children's Initiative" is to be funded by a 10 percent surtax on millionaires, and President Bush reaffirmed last week that he will "never, ever, ever" approve another Democratic tax increase.