Family Court Judges Sending Children Into Danger, Independent Investigations Show
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Barry Goldstein, a former attorney and past national research director for Stop Abuse Campaign, says that one of the major causes of the disturbing trend is that child abuse is treated more like a family problem than a crime, and that family court judges have come to assume the role of therapist rather than someone charged with applying the law.
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“If the offender is a stranger, the person is to be brought up on criminal charges and the goal is a conviction,” Goldstein said.
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“When the offender is someone the child knows, especially a close relative, the investigation is led by a social worker and the goal is reunification with the offender.”
The Foster Care Institute
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Leading Foster Care Expert and founder and director of The Foster Care Institute, Dr. John DeGarmo says…. a child can be taken out of a safe, stable, and loving pre-adoptive home without notice and placed into a relative's home without the relative providing proof of basic needs like running water, a bed, clothing, or food. Furthermore, current law allows uprooting and placing the child with an unemployed relative who has ongoing domestic violence, anger issues, and a substance abuse addiction simply because they're blood relatives, even if the child has never met that relative. Premature reunification happens because no basic reunification protocol or through line exists in all 50 states.
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Read more from this author:
Frequency of Visits: Are one hour weekly visits enough to achieve reasonable effort to reunify children and parents?
Rose Marie Wentz, BSW, MPA
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Visit plans that do not progress to this level place the child in danger after reunification as it cannot be known how the parent and child will interact during daily stresses and whether the safety plan will be adequate to protect the child from repeat maltreatment. One hour per week is not realistic to think that this level of contact is sufficient to meet the purposes of visits.
The Progressive Visit method is to make slow and safe steps in the Connection Plan from the initial visit to the overnight visits. Connection planning is a complex decision process based on the following factors:
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The developmental age of the child, how to meet the child’s attachment needs and what the child desires;
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The type of maltreatment that the child experienced;
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The length of time in care the child has been in care and the focus of the agency’s work with the family (stages of care: initial placement and assessment, reasonable efforts work, making final permanency decision and post permanency decision, and the rest of the child’s life);
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Family culture; and
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Special needs of parent or child: addiction, mental illness, domestic violence, educational or developmental delays, behavioral problems, medical conditions, etc.
Family Reunification and Termination of Parental Rights:
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"In two-thirds of the cases the mother had previously lost custody and killed the child after reunification."
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The child welfare system was also sharply criticized for its emphasis on family reunification and the countervailing argument that a parent's rights should be terminated more quickly.
Child welfare agencies were encouraged to provide more support programming that facilitate reunification... States that complied received federal funding for child welfare programs. Not surprisingly, states became strong advocates for reunification.
Fixing Foster Care — 5 Strategies for Change
Nadine M. Hasenecz
Reunification shouldn’t be the goal at all costs. The law requires that every reasonable effort be made to preserve and strengthen a family while solving family problems that put a child at risk.
All social workers who have discussed family preservation and reunification stress that keeping a child in or returning a child to an abusive family situation is never an option.
Preservation and reunification should not be pursued at all costs, and are acceptable only when a child’s safety and well-being are ensured.
Lethal reunifications
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The obsession with family reunification at all costs can be encoded into social worker evaluations... they are being judged by whether they close cases in a timely manner, regardless of child safety. As one worker put it, “Children are returned home or exiting custody to relatives quickly to lower the number of cases without regard to whether the children will be truly safe and the parents ready to parent again.”
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Cost considerations drive reunifications in another way as well. Reunifications save money for child welfare systems. Once a child is sent home and the case is closed, the jurisdiction incurs no more expenditures for foster care.
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Family court problems contribute to lethal reunifications as well. Judges rarely see consequences for decisions that lead to an innocent child’s death, and I have never heard of a judge being removed for the death of a child that was placed in a lethal home against all the evidence. Judges who send children to their death probably continue to endanger other children daily.