FORMER FOSTER PARENT AND KINSHIP CAREGIVER
Ms. T is a thirty-seven-year-old African American woman who was a foster parent and a kinship caregiver for over ten years. She is a social worker who has a Master of Social Work degree and many years of experience in the social work profession. She is divorced and the mother of one teenage son.
DR. H I would like for us to start by having you tell me how you became involved with the child welfare system.
MS. T Okay. I first became involved with the child welfare system in 1993. Um … at that time I was approached by a social worker, Jim K, about two siblings of mine (my sister and my brother). At the time, they were three and one years old.
DR. H Okay.
MS. T I was asked to see if I can take them in as a relative placement.
DR. H Okay. And did you go through the licensing process?
MS. T Yes, ma’am. First I took them in and I was a temporary placement; not a foster care placement at first. And then I went through the process to become a relative placement. I had to do the physical, the licensing and all that good stuff and I had to talk to my husband.
DR. H Okay. And so you became a licensed kinship care provider?
MS. T Yes, ma’am.
DR. H For your sister and brother?
MS. T Yes, ma’am.
DR. H Okay. And how long did you keep them?
MS. T I had my sister for … right before … until January of 1995. I had her just a couple of months before I had my son.
DR. H Okay.
MS. T And I ended up finding her dad about six to eight months prior in Tennessee. And talked to the social worker and got permission. They … his mother, which would have been my sister’s grandmother, went through the process to be a kinship caregiver for my sister.
DR. H Okay.
MS. T So I transported her down there after all that was approved by the social worker.
DR. H And did the social worker help you to locate your sister’s birth father? Or did you do that on your own?
MS. T I did that on my own.
DR. H And what can you tell me about your brother?
MS. T My brother, I had him until 1998. And he stayed with me until then.
DR. H That’s a long time.
MS. T Yes, that is a long time.
DR. H And what would you say your experiences were with the Department of Social and Health Services? Did you get the services that you needed?
MS. T Uh … no, ma’am. Being a relative placement, I was restricted from a lot of services. I was restricted from the stipend at the time that they would normally pay a foster parent or somebody like that because I made too much money. My husband and I made too much money. So we didn’t qualify for that. We did get medical services for a period of time. The services were really inconsistent; we didn’t get a lot of services. The main services that we were able to get … I was able to get child care through DSHS and medical through DSHS. I wasn’t able to get food stamps because, as a household, we made too much and, thus, we were unable to get the family stipend as relative caregivers.
DR. H But I’m looking at … and maybe I’m looking at this wrong … being a relative care provider, what does your income have to do with these children? From my perspective, these children are additional members of your household. Yes, they are your family and you love them, but their expenses are also a drain on your finances.
MS. T Yes, ma’am, it was. I think at the time I was so young; when they moved in with me I had just barely turned eighteen. So when they came in, I didn’t really understand the process and I had a new social worker that was non-English-speaking. So I think that it was easier for them to say well, “She doesn’t know the system and I don’t really know the system so let her take care of them.”
DR. H But what I’m also hearing is confirmation of a finding in research done on kinship care. This finding states that kinship care providers receive a poor quality of services and also receive fewer services than traditional foster parents.
MS. T Yes, ma’am. And I did not realize that until after I got foster kids, after my siblings left. And then I saw the differences in services.
DR. H How long after your siblings left your home did you decide to become a traditional foster parent?
MS. T It was about … maybe a year or two. What I noticed is that my son didn’t like being an only child. So having him start to grow up with my brother at the time, which would have been his uncle, and then having him leave, he didn’t really like that. So I went through the process to still do temporary placement or foster care placement.
DR. H Okay. And how long did you do foster care placement?
MS. T I did that until 2007.
DR. H When did you get your first foster children … well children in foster care?
MS. T Are you talking about children other than my siblings?
DR. H Right, I am talking about nonrelative children.
MS. T My first kid was 1999 I believe, if my memory serves me right.
DR. H Was it one child?
MS. T Yes, ma’am … no, ma’am; it was two boys.
DR. H Okay, were they siblings?
MS. T Yes, ma’am.
DR. H And did you get the services that they needed?
MS. T Yes. By then I knew a little more about the system. I worked for the state by then and kind of knew what I should have got prior.
DR. H And so I’m hearing you say that in order for foster parents to be successful, they need to know how to navigate the system?
MS. T Yes, ma’am, that’s huge. That’s very imperative to be successful, to get what you need and to get what your kids need. In order for them to be successful in the placement there are certain services that are essential.
DR. H I’m wondering, because I know that when anybody becomes a licensed foster parent, regardless of whether they are a kinship foster parent or a traditional foster parent, they are required to attend foster parent training classes/sessions.
MS. T Yes, ma’am.
DR. H I guess you would say there are preparatory classes for foster care or kinship care. They don’t talk about services and how to navigate the system in these classes?
MS. T The classes are very limited; it’s a basic overview and it just says what your rights are and it says … they stress, over and over, that every household is different. So it leads you to believe that, yes, they offer medical, child care, a stipend, and all of these services, but they may not be for you or for you and your kids. So, it’s not very clear that … it’s not presented that we have these services and all you need to do is contact us; that’s not the way it’s presented. It was presented: you may qualify. As people raise their hands and ask questions, you know, it’s like, you may qualify or you may not … so it wasn’t very consistent. And that’s only in the first training that you get that overview. The trainings, thereafter, are very specific in behavioral content and they’re optional type courses.
DR. H But what I’m hearing, and please correct me if I’m wrong, is that there do not seem to be objective criteria when it comes to service or services that families receive.
MS. T Yes, ma’am.
DR. H By virtue of that fact that you become a licensed foster parent, it doesn’t necessarily equate to: these are the array of services that you are going to receive?
MS. T Exactly, yes.
DR. H Do you think that race enters into this picture? Or that race is insignificant?
MS. T I think race is very significant in determining who gets services, who knows who, and how to get those services, how to obtain those services. I don’t think that information is readily available to anyone who may walk in off the street and/or someone of minority descent. I think that it’s hard for a minority to navigate the system because your views and perspectives are different than the majority of the workers that you encounter. Therefore, it makes it hard to try to advocate for yourself and the kids placed in your home.
DR. H I’m also hearing that it sounds like people who are working in child welfare including social workers, child welfare workers, and CPS workers need to have some type of cultural awareness, some cultural competence and cultural sensitivity, as it relates to different racial, ethnic, or cultural groups.
MS. T Yes, ma’am.
DR. H People parent differently; they define family differently on the basis of their racial, ethnic, or cultural background.
MS. T Right.
DR. H And if workers are not sensitive to these various factors, then children and families end up not getting the services that they need.
MS. T Exactly, that’s correct. And you see, it needs to be more than the two hundred dollar training that we got as foster parents because we got a cultural awareness class shortly after becoming a foster parent, but it was only two hours, very basic; if you are African American and you have a white child placed in your home, there are many things you need to be prepared for prior to placement of that white child in your home.
DR. H But as social workers, we both know that cultural competence, cultural sensitivity, cultural awareness are lifelong trainings and not a one-time training session.
MS. T Exactly.
DR. H We can’t go to a two-hour workshop and say we are culturally competent.
DR. H It just doesn’t work that way.
MS. T Exactly.
DR. H And it doesn’t matter what your racial, ethnic, or cultural background is; cultural competence is something that you have to continuously work on.
MS. T Yes, ma’am, that’s true.
DR. H Now, are there experiences that you had in child welfare that you feel would be helpful to readers of this book? I am referring to experiences that you feel should not be repeated. And when I say that, I’m talking about experiences that you feel were negative and damaging to children in your care that really need to be rectified. Are there some things that you feel the system should not be doing? Or that they could improve on?
MS. T Yes.
DR. H It would be helpful if you would share some of those things with the readers.
MS. T Yes, I can do that. There have been a number of different issues I’ve had being an African American social worker, as well as a foster parent, dealing with other social workers, who weren’t as culturally sensitive as they needed to be. And like I stated before, most of them were European American social workers who were coming into my household, who were bringing kids, visiting kids, working with kids. And so some of the things that I found really distasteful and offensive were, for example, when I had my two boys in ’98, the social worker would come in and have a problem with the way the boys communicated with each other in the household. And she insinuated, as if I spoke to the kids that way; that’s why they spoke so loud and aggressively to one another. And that was really disrespectful because I hadn’t had the kids but for a few weeks. And it was assumed that … you know, “How do you talk to the kids, is that how you talk to the kids?” And I had nothing to do with their conversation; it was a two-way conversation that had nothing to do with me. But the conversation from the social worker was that I somehow taught them to speak to each other that way. And that was really disrespectful I felt. And I did talk to the social worker about that.
DR. H Well, as you know, some African Americans speak loud.
MS. T Yes, ma’am, they do.
DR. H I’ve been in places, in homes with large families, where people were excited, and their talking was very loud. They were not talking loud in an aggressive or offensive way, but this loud tone was just the way they talked.
MS. T And that’s true, but I think that if the social workers would have knowledge of the fact that’s the way some families talk, I think she would have approached me differently; I think her interaction with me would have been different. Instead of assuming that I yell at my kids like that, she would have approached me in a nonaccusatory way; after all, I hadn’t had them long enough to teach them those behaviors.
DR. H Right, I’m sure that was hurtful.
MS. T Yes, it was very hurtful. Um, and I like to deal with those things because I’ve had a number of occurrences with social workers, um, so I always want to deal with those things and ask them what’s your training and background around, you know, kids and African Americans and working with other families that are not like the Western culture.
DR. H And I feel that, especially in child welfare, if you’re going to work in the system you need to have some education, some knowledge, and cultural awareness about different families because the largest percentage of children in the child welfare system are children of color.
MS. T Yes, ma’am.
DR. H And there is not a book that you can read that’s going to make you, for example, culturally competent; but there are some basic things that you need to know about families.
MS. T Yes.
DR. H For example, you need to know about family systems and family dynamics, if you are going to work with kids and families in the child welfare system. I strongly believe that this type of knowledge is highly essential.
MS. T I agree. And I think that the other big issue for me was with my social workers; we needed to build an alliance for these kids and we can’t do that if you have some issues that you haven’t resolved or you’re not used to working with children of color and foster parents of color. And so you don’t respect them in the same way as white children and white foster parents; you don’t communicate to them in a respectful manner.
DR. H And I think that gets at self-awareness …
MS. T Yes.
DR. H … and being able to say, “I really don’t know about these families, but I’m willing to learn about them …”
MS. T Yes.
DR. H … “I really don’t like African Americans but because I have to work with them …”
DR. H … “I’m going to treat them respectfully and I’m going to learn something about the African American culture.”
MS. T Yes.
DR. H We all have biases; we all have prejudices. Your background does not matter, but we have to admit that we have biases and prejudices and learn to deal with them.
MS. T Yes, ma’am. And I did have a couple of social workers … who, after noticing a pattern of the way they communicated with me, I did address those issues and say, you know, “Do you have a problem with African Americans? Do you have a problem with African American females? Because I feel like there’s some tension in these relationships.” And I did have a few that did admit it and they said, “Yeah. What I know of you all,” you know, um, “I don’t really care for it.” And, um, I’ve had a few admit it and, say, agree that they needed some help to accomplish something.
DR. H But just using the expression “What I know of you all …” is based on some type of stereotype about African American women.
MS. T Yes, ma’am.
DR. H That, in and of itself, says to me that you’re lumping all African American women together.
MS. T Exactly.
DR. H And there are differences within any group of people.
MS. T Right.
DR. H There are differences within African American families.
MS. T Right. Well, and some of the things that the social workers have told me over the years are that they didn’t feel that they were adequately trained, did not have enough practical training, in working with different populations and so that’s why it was hard for them to come to my home or any other African American home and work with us because they didn’t feel like they had been trained adequately enough to be able to go out and work with these minority children and families and such.
DR. H Did you find as a social worker and as a foster parent that people you have encountered in your work including colleagues were open to asking questions when they didn’t know? Or were they more apt to make assumptions and generalizations regarding people of color?
MS. T I didn’t find a lot of question asking; um, I think I had a really good social worker towards the end of my career in foster care and she was big on asking questions. But my earlier years in foster care, um, there were more assumptions than questions.
DR. H I am not working in child welfare at this time, but I have worked in child welfare in the past and always asked many questions. I always asked questions if families were doing something and I didn’t understand why they were doing it. I would ask, “What does that mean? Why do you do that?” and I didn’t encounter problems working with families. Even with families in which English was their second language.
MS. T Yes, I understand where you are coming from.
DR. H We managed to communicate with each other.
MS. T Exactly, yes. And that’s important. I think it goes back to the awareness you were talking about earlier. When you are aware of your issues, yourself, and your biases, then you are able to recognize those things and try to ask the questions because you realize you don’t have the knowledge about that other culture. And so, you utilize questions, you know, in a way that you gain information that you need to work with that family … and you know you will be able to help and communicate with that family.
DR. H Now, you were a foster mom for many years.
MS. T Yes, ma’am.
DR. H In addition to the issues we’ve talked about, are there some other issues that you would like to discuss at this time?
MS. T Yes, there are several that come to mind. Um, another incident was, um, I just had some, um, children. … I’m African American. I had some children that were European American. Uh, a family composed of three siblings. Um … and I wasn’t asked, I was told that, um, “I’m probably not Catholic, but I need to make sure these children go to a Catholic church. And so, um, this was earlier in my career, um, when I didn’t have all the knowledge I needed to know that I can make some choices here. Um, so I took these kids to Catholic church every Sunday, um, and one of them, the oldest boy, um, the ten-year-old, he asked me one day … he said, um, he said, um, “Why do you take us to this kind of church?’ and I said, “Oh, isn’t this your church?” And he goes, “No,” and I said, “What kind of church do you go to?” Come to find out, he was Seventh Day Adventist and not Catholic, but the social worker had me taking him to a Catholic church, um, based on what she thought he had grown up as. And so when I asked her about it, I said, “I talked to D, and D is saying ‘Why are you taking me to this kind of church every Sunday?’” I went to this Catholic church because for my kids, you know, I’m trying to respect their culture. And so one Sunday we would go to my church and the next Sunday we would go to their church and the next Sunday my church; and so we would alternate. And so that way, they’d get their time in at their church. But I had no knowledge that these kids were not Catholic. I was exposing them and myself to a religion that these kids had not known or experienced before being placed in my home.
DR. H But I think that gets to the importance of doing a thorough and comprehensive assessment.
MS. T Yes, ma’am.
DR. H Religion and spirituality should be a part of any comprehensive assessment. It gets back to the importance of asking questions. Did she ever think to ask the children what was their religious affiliation?
MS. T Right. Well her excuse was, when I asked her about it, the thing was she saw D with a cross around his neck, so she thought that that meant he was Catholic. And she said she’s Catholic and she wears a cross around her neck. So to her it was Rosemary—I think is the name of the cross that they wear. And so that’s the false assumption that she drew.
DR. H Did she think that the cross that D wore around his neck was a rosary?
MS. T Yes, ma’am, that is what she thought it was.
DR. H I mean, I’m Catholic and I do have a rosary upstairs in my jewelry box. I don’t wear it around my neck. No, I don’t, but I take it to mass and often hold it when I am praying at home.
MS. T Right, but he had on a cross and she assumed that he was Catholic like her. And that was what she gave me. So, um, after we got it sorted out, of course, you know, I began taking him to the church that he needed to go to; what he was used to going to.
DR. H I’m listening to you and I think a lot of what you are saying is reflective of the fact that you are a graduate-level social worker. You have a strong knowledge base about social work, families, and people. I’m thinking about all of the kinship care providers and foster parents who don’t have your knowledge, background, and experiences nor do they know the appropriate questions to ask. They are trying to be good parents to the children in their homes. They are not getting the services that they need; they are blundering through the child welfare system because they do not know how to navigate the system; consequently, they find it difficult and frustrating too when dealing with the system.
MS. T Yes. It is difficult getting calls returned, and getting your questions answered and all that. I mean, if you call in and say that you want to know something about a kid—for example, can I cut this kid’s hair? You know, you may not get a call back for a month or two. And this kid is going to visits with their hair down their back or big afros because it’s hard to navigate the system and get a call back. And the social workers’ standpoint is that they have communication.
DR. H So, there’s a lack of response?
MS. T Yes, ma’am. There’s a lack of response.
DR. H This lack of response is definitely not a good thing for any foster parent and/or relative caregiver to experience.
MS. T No.
DR. H Again, do you think that race plays a part in whether or not you get a response back in an hour, as opposed to a couple of days?
MS. T I believe so and this is why I say it: um, when I joined the Washington State Foster Association, I began going to meetings with other foster parents, of other ethnicities, and finding out that my white peers, in the foster care system, were receiving services. I mean, um, Wild Wave tickets, going and taking kids there and to other places, having uniforms purchased for their foster children, etc. I had been working in the foster care system for over ten years; I had never known the state to pay for all of these services. I had always paid out of my pocket. And so I go to these meetings and I was like, well, how did you guys get all this? And if you’re a part of the right clique, um; and most African Americans joining the system are not part of the clique; we don’t know about services that are available for children in our care; we’re not given that information, we’re not hearing them say, “Hey! You want to come over and, you know, join our club?” and I noticed in that room that there was about 90 percent white people. There were about forty … forty people at the meeting. And we met every first Tuesday at Sizzlers. I saw that once I started going to the meetings and started providing names to my social workers who were less culturally sensitive, I started getting a better response. And so, it was kinda weird, you know, “Oh! I talked to so-and-so, and she said I should be getting this for my kid.” And then all of a sudden I could get a call back, or I could get them to come out and respond but, otherwise, it was like I was in this fog, by myself, you know, trying to navigate through the system; get answers, get whatever …
DR. H I think of how many foster parents and kinship care providers, especially those of color who are still in a “fog” as they try to navigate the child welfare system.
MS. T Yes.
DR. H Am I correct in thinking that you are no longer a foster parent?
MS. T Yes, ma’am. And before I left foster care, um, I was asked to be a foster care mentor. Because part of program, when they were trying to retain foster parents in the state of Washington a few years ago, was to hire mentors; to help people go through the licensure process; to have a mentor, you know, by their side. And I did get the chance to … mentor some African American foster parents; it was no problem, but I was always asked to mentor African Americans and had no problem with that; however, I just found it kind of ironic. Why couldn’t I, you know, mentor someone … someone white?
DR. H Right, I certainly see your point.
MS. T Um, but I did it. And, um, I did, I worked with families that wanted to give back … one family in particular; she had been in foster care years ago and had lots of problems; she didn’t feel like she was getting the help she needed. She had some kids that were level two and level three. And she felt like, she just was all alone in the situation and, um, and in talking to her I found out that she had been where I was; where you have no services, no help; supervisors won’t call you back; workers won’t call you back. You go up to the office, they have you waiting there all day and it was one of those things where she felt completely isolated, to the point where she had to let the kids go. And I could totally relate to her; I’ve been in that situation several times. And so it was nice to mentor her through the process because she had some basic knowledge about the foster care system.
DR. H Right.
MS. T And so basically, I was trying to get her through the licensing process and let her know: these are the services, these are the people you need to be connected with because if they know you’re a part of the Washington Foster Care Association, there is better training, there’s better … there’s more training, there’s, um, more research, and there are people you can contact if the state doesn’t respond.
DR. H Yeah.
MS. T There are all kinds of stuff that, when you live in your bubble as a foster parent, you don’t have access to that kind of stuff.
DR. H It sounds like the Washington State Foster Parent Association is a great support network.
MS. T Yes, it is a very great support network. You go to your meetings once a month; you know, the first Tuesday of every month, and you share stories, and you find out that you are not the only one having problems with the social worker, or that there may be a certain set of social workers that you have the same problem with. Or somebody who you might have thought, um, you know, neglected only you or didn’t return your calls, you know this worker had a pattern of nonresponse to other foster parents.
MS. T Or the worker didn’t … or neglected to give you all of the information. That was a huge piece of foster parents’ issues; former foster parents and/or social workers would not give you all of the information about a child. So you find out later, after you take the kids to the doctor, you know, oh, this child is HIV positive. Well, nobody told you. And that is information that’s supposed to be shared with the foster parent before they take them in the home … or this child has been sexually abused … it’s in the records from the past doctor, but nobody shared that information prior to placing a child in your home; the social worker’s goal was to get you to take the child in your home and give as little information about the child’s background as possible, you know.
DR. H But the medical information that you mentioned is important information …
MS. T It is.
DR. H … because, um, being sexually abused children exhibit certain behavior patterns …
MS. T Yes, information about any child who has been sexually abused needs to be shared with the prospective foster parent prior to foster care placement; there are behavioral and emotional characteristics that are common in children who have been sexually abused. Consequently, it is the responsibility of a social worker to provide comprehensive psychosocial and medical information to foster parents.
DR. H … and your work with that particular child will be entirely different …
MS. T Yes.
DR. H … than your work with a child who has never experienced sexual abuse …
MS. T Yes … and it makes you vulnerable.
DR. H … and the way this child is possibly going to behave towards other children …
MS. T Right.
DR. H … who are in the home is also a factor in foster home placement of children who have been sexually abused.
MS. T Right. And so going to those meetings allowed you to understand that, “Oh, this service worker has a history of not giving you all the information so you could take the kid.” And then you get the kid and then you slowly find out all these things, you know. Or, you know, for example, my, my first … second set of kids: probably nineteen … uh … in the military … two-thousand … ninety-nine—two thousand, my next set of kids, um, had been kicked out of four foster homes in the month prior to me getting them. I had no knowledge of those four foster homes. I had been told that they were … they had been in a receiving home too long and that they needed to move ASAP. So I took them in that same day, even though I didn’t want to. I … you know, I went ahead and did it. And then as I got them in the house and started talking to them … and they were telling me they were here-there and I called the social worker to verify it and she was like, “Oh, yeah, they were kicked out of there and they were … oh, I got their file mixed up with somebody else.” And so, I’m like, okay, what did they do? And so, you know, and then you’re getting the behavioral problem and then you’re starting to know. And … and that’s really compromising—it can put you in a compromising situation and the kids because these kids had a dual diagnosis. I had no knowledge of that when I took these kids in. Um, they had also … had a history of touching other people. And that puts you in a complicated situation, especially when my own son is in the house …
DR. H Right.
MS. T … and then these kids also had behavioral—they were level two and level three kids, sexually, um, sexually … um, I forget the name of it … there’s, uh … sexually behavioral kids … or … there’s a name for it. But they were level two and level three kids and that meant that their risk was high … for engaging in behaviors that had been done to them. And so, not having that knowledge when those kids moved in … I mean, it really put me in a situation. And I had to redo and refigure out how I was going to respond to these kids and their needs …
DR. H Right.
MS. T … um, and getting them services, you know, counseling services and stuff like that is really difficult because …
DR. H Yes, especially with them being sexually aggressive towards other children.
MS. T … yes, knowing that you have to work every day, you need to put them in child care, but you can’t put them in child care because they might start touching other people’s private parts; you know this type of behavior will be problematic in any type of child-care center. And then they get kicked out of general care and off the school bus. And then social workers don’t want to respond because they know that you’re calling in to have them taken back into the system, so they just choose not to respond, you know. So it’s really difficult.
DR. H Did you keep them a long time?
MS. T Yes, ma’am, I did. Um, I was able to … you know, work with those kids and I actually received a couple of letters from the state, in regards to those kids, because those kids did a three-sixty. And what … what I found happened with those kids is that they had gotten into a pattern of moving from home to home. And so … it was like they were waiting for me to tell them that they could no longer stay in my home. They would do something just so they could go to the next home.
DR. H Having worked in the child welfare as an administrator, supervisor, and social worker, I know that children will repeatedly test foster parents, especially when they have had multiple moves.
MS. T Yes.
DR. H This testing is common when children are placed in a new home.
MS. T Yes.
DR. H They will sometimes do very aggressive things to see if they are going to be able to continue living in their new foster home.
MS. T Yes.
DR. H Do they really want me here?
MS. T Yes.
DR. H Or am I going to be packed up and moved again?
MS. T Yes. And I saw that early on with my kids after the honeymoon phase was over. I saw that early on, especially with the youngest boy. Um, a lot of anger, a lot of bitter resentment, um, very defiant, um, and I saw that as a challenge to be able to make a difference, and to do what I needed to be a good foster parent to him as well as his siblings. And, uh, and so I did, I took those kids and, I tell ya, a lot of sleepless nights … it was a lot of work but … um …
DR. H Well sure.
MS. T … those kids … every time they did something, my motto was to say, “I love you, and you are not going anywhere. Unless you are going home to your mom, you’re not going anywhere.” So, they were doing it like, “Yeah, yeah!” and they would flip over TVs, tear up stuff, write on the walls, pee, touch my son’s privates, you know … I was writing incident reports all the time. And, um, but my thing was not to give up on them because I felt the pain that the little one felt …
DR. H Right.
MS. T … you know, just being moved from place to place to place, and not feeling like he belonged anywhere, you know.
DR. H Right, I am sure this little boy had never experienced any sense of stability in his young life.
MS. T Yes. And those two … they were a part of eight siblings that were split up into about four different foster homes. So it was really important for me to try to keep those two together, although the state was thinking about, you know, separating them because they were such a handful. So, there was lots of work with those kids but, you know, in the end they … I kept them until they were adopted out and …
DR. H Oh, that is why …
MS. T … I’m still in contact with them.
DR. H Are you?
MS. T Yes and they’re doing really good … yes.
DR. H But I’m sure that you made a difference …
MS. T Yes … yes.
DR. H … in their lives.
MS. T Some of the stories they tell me, I’m kind of embarrassed of (ha ha). I’m like, “I said that to you?” (Ha ha) I’m like, “Whoa!” Um, but some of the stuff they told me, you know, I’m really proud it stuck with them.
DR. H Right.
MS. T We went over and over. And, um, and they still call me Mama T and it’s, uh, a lot of my kids do. And so, um, even though it’s hard on them, they, you know, they still remember, they will say, “Remember when you told me how important it was to learn to read; you know, I’ve learned how to read,” and, you know, “And you said all I have to do is keep trying and I was going to learn how to read?” Then I was like, “Yeah.” And he was like, “I know how to read and I’m a superstar reader.” You know, and the littlest one was …
DR. H That must make you feel good.
MS. T It does … it does … it does … because he was in the fourth grade and didn’t know how to read. I mean, he couldn’t read a three-letter word. And it was hard for him, um, and he kept telling me … we had so many behavioral problems. I was constantly off work, um, going over to the school. And I worked at a penitentiary then. So it was hard, I mean; there was stress on my job when I had to leave my job to have to run to the school and handle something. But he’d get frustrated and have these explosive attacks; uh, he had RAD and ADD and he was a handful but a sweet kid just looking for love. And I tell you, I killed him with love. And he just … he blossomed … he just blossomed. And we studied and worked on his reading. I think it always helped because I was always in school with my kids and so I’d work and go to school and we spent a lot of time in the library. And I told him, “Just start off small.” We’d start off small with little words, you know, we had Phonics on tape; we had the little ABC DVDs; we had it all. And we were like, “Okay.” And we sat out blocks of times, um, and we worked it out. Because when each … when a different family comes in my home, I have a set base house rule that we have …
DR. H Okay.
MS. T … and then we sit down as a family, within the first week, and come up with family, household rules …
DR. H Okay.
MS. T … and we all agree on it. And we sign and we post it.
DR. H It’s important to have rules and structure …
MS. T It is.
DR. H … when you are raising kids.
MS. T Yes, one of the things that the kids wanted as a rule was to have study time—a set study time. They really didn’t want to be behind in school, missing a lot of school, or changing schools. So that was huge for them.
DR. H I’m sure the kids wanted that rule because it hurts kids when they are in a classroom and they’re not working at the same grade level as other kids in their class.
MS. T Yes … yes, ma’am.
DR. H Kids can be cruel to other kids.
MS. T Yes, ma’am, really cruel. And so these boys had more street knowledge than a grown person had. But when it came to book stuff, they … they were lacking. Um, and so it was really nice when they wanted to implement that study time; I was excited. So I took advantage of it and … we learned how to cook, and we read ingredients, and we tried to make it fun so we could bring them up to par in their classroom in order for them to not always have to be pulled out and, you know, have these explosive outbursts.
DR. H But just think of what a difference you made in their lives.
MS. T I know … I know … I look at it now and I see their Facebook posting and they call me and want to come by and I’m like, wow! You know, yeah … it makes you feel good because you’re fighting the system …
DR. H Yes, you are fighting the system to make a difference in the lives of children placed in your home.
MS. T … and you’re fighting against the odds that … you know, you don’t really know what you’re getting when they drop those kids off …
DR. H Right.
MS. T … and, um, to be able to take them in and, you know, to love them and, you know, give them something, you know, nuggets to live on.
DR. H The nuggets were ones that they never had in their lives before coming into your home.
MS. T Yes. I mean, it’s an awesome feeling; taking them on experiences that they’ve never had before. You know, taking them to Disney World, hiking, camping, and, you know, very inexpensive things, but it means a lot to them …
DR. H Right.
MS. T … that we’re out together. We’re out roasting marshmallows at night.
DR. H And they are part of a family.
MS. T Yes, yes, they are always a part of a family. So it was a very rewarding experience for me and for them.
DR. H Are there other things that you want to tell the readers?
MS. T Yes, I think, um, cultural sensitivity training is a huge piece of social work dynamics. It doesn’t matter what the ethnic or cultural background is of the child you receive in your home. I think it’s important for social workers not to make assumptions based on their own past experiences but to really ask questions and to get to know that child as an individual or that family as an individual. Um, because I found it really hard to deal with social workers; they wanted to do textbook social work. And textbook social work doesn’t work for everybody …
DR. H No, it does not because every child and every family are different.
MS. T … and it didn’t work for most of the kids that I had in my home. So, it was really difficult to work with the social workers that didn’t have the experience … the practical experience of working with these folks.
DR. H You know, textbooks provide information.
MS. T Yes.
DR. H Experience and practice vary and can be different. You know, we can read things in books, but when we get out and actually have to interact with children and families, this interaction is one of our most valuable learning experiences.
MS. T Yes, and so I found that really important; you know, another thing that I found really offensive happened in 2002. I received a set of kids from the Lakewood Police Department. They were brought to my door with the social worker. And it’s a long story how I ended up getting them. It was supposed to be a seventy-two-hour hold because this mom had always dropped off her kids, and come back. She’d go on a drug binge and come back. So … so I knew this officer and so he’d frequent my house at night for seventy-two-hour holds. And so I ended up with these kids and it lasted longer than the seventy-two-hour hold. Um, one of my encounters … one of my first encounters with the social worker after the initial visit was when she came out to see and meet them and … the interaction was limited to her coming out and doing a welfare check on the kids; the thirty-day track; she accused me of not being racially sensitive to my foster daughter at the time. And she didn’t have the words to say what she meant; she spoke all around the issue, “Aren’t you ethnically, aren’t you culturally, aren’t you …,” you know, never said “Are you black? Are you African American?” And she used to … never just come out and said it. She spoke all around the issue. And what she was basically getting at was that she felt my hair was always in corn rows and my foster daughter’s hair was very thin and very wiry; it was all over her head. But because she was a mixed race child, the social worker thought that I should have her hair braided all neat like mine instead of having it all frizzy in ponytails all over her head. Her words were really offensive. Because she said, you know, “Why don’t you have her,” you know, “J’s hair braided like yours?” you know, “Aren’t you culturally …” you know, so the first assumption was that all black people know how to braid. I don’t know how to braid.
DR. H … or … so … but black people wear their hair braided.
MS. T She didn’t have her hair in braids, yes. So those were … that was the first two assumptions that, you know … that she got. And then, um, the way she kept digging at me as if I’m lying to her, um.
DR. H Did she ever ask J, your foster daughter, do you like the way your hair is styled?
MS. T No, she did not. What she did … she tried to prove a point to me, after our conversation, the kids were outside playing while we spoke and they usually go and see the kids in their room or somewhere private, you know …
DR. H Right.
MS. T … and so what she did was … she wanted to prove a point to me, I think. Um, and so she called J in from outside and asked her to come in and, you know, I explained to her, “J doesn’t like her hair braided, J is very tender head,” you know; every time you touched her head she cries. You know, um, J … um … you know, she had been through enough trauma with the, the life that she had when the police brought her to my door, you know, and having to go through all of that made no sense to me. So I explained all of these things to her and she still proceeded to, you know, call J in and say that J would look nice with her hair braided like mine. She called J in; she got, uh, uh, a comb. And she started to comb J’s hair and twisted it into, you know, a little braid. All while J is squeezing, and turning, and crying, “Mama T and …” and I’m sitting there …
I let it go on for a couple of seconds and then I said, “Isn’t that emotional abuse, isn’t that physical abuse? She’s crying. She’s calling me, crying and you’re still braiding her hair.”
And she’s trying to talk J into, you know, saying, “Oh wait honey, be still,” you know, “I’m just going to braid your hair and you’re going to just look so cute.” J was not interested in that at all.
DR. H But cute … to whom?
MS. T Right, exactly. Because I thought she was cute with her ponytails, you know. And so I found it very offensive and, um, you know, we had an extensive talk. I definitely filed an incident report and went to the supervisor at the state office. And I did, later, get an apology. Um, but, um, you know, I feel like there needs to be more practical training before you let these social workers go out there into foster homes.
DR. H But then again, this speaks to individual differences …
MS. T Yes.
DR. H … within a culture.
MS. T Yes, within a culture.
DR. H Every black or African American girl or woman and even girls and women who are here from Africa …
MS. T Right.
DR. H … does not want her hair braided.
MS. T Right. And the other thing is … is, you know, in the classification, you know, um, you know, the mixed kids, um, they have a different grade of hair and it’s just like, you know, a white person’s hair. Just because society gave them that label, that they are black, um, it doesn’t mean, um, for J, she wasn’t black. If you asked J what she was, she could name it off. I mean, that little girl was as smart as a whip. “I’m Anglo-Saxon, I’m European, I’m Indian,” I think I was surprised that she knew her ethnic origins. So don’t call her black because she will break it down to you what she is and she could tell you a quarter of this, a third of that … I mean, she knew her historical background. But the social worker addressed her as African American. And she was not African American; the social worker did not understand her ethnic background.
DR. H But again, it is putting a label on an individual based on physical characteristics.
MS. T Yes.
DR. H And many times the labels are false.
MS. T Yes, exactly.
DR. H It is important to ask people how they identify themselves.
MS. T Right, because it is wrong to make assumptions about any person.
DR. H The people that I know will readily tell you who they are …
DR. H … and how they would want to be identified.
MS. T Yes, yes. Um, but that’s not the experience in the field. And so it’s hard when you get these social workers, um, and I think the biggest problem with DSHS is because, I think, a lot of my social work friends were slipping Sure, Casey Family Programs or some of the other private agencies tend to hire experienced social workers. But I noticed with the state agency, I think because they have that contract for CWTAP (Child Welfare Training Alliance Program), they bring on/hire kids fresh out of school; they don’t necessarily have the hands-on field experience they need to adequately work with people that don’t look like them. And it doesn’t matter who it is, what race, what culture, they just don’t have it and I think some will admit it, and some will say, “I have an MSW and so I’m right.” And until you pull out your MSW, and you say, “I also have an MSW; you’re not right.” When you do that, you can get them to back down and work with you. But for other foster parents, who may not have that education …
DR. H Right.
MS. T … or they may not be in that position, and maybe of a different racial or ethnic background, it would be harder for them …
DR. H Right.
MS. T … and then we lose foster parents and we have all of these kids still coming in the system that don’t look like the people that are coming out to their homes to visit them, you know. And so it’s been difficult, you know. And so there have been a lot of things to deal with as a foster parent.
You know, even with the guardian ad litem, I always advocated that we need more guardians ad litem that look like our kids, i.e., children of color, especially African American. Um, some of our kids I’ve had in my home have asked, “Who’s that lady?” I’ve had a couple that ask, “Who is this white lady that just wanna come in and take me out, and I don’t know who she is.” They don’t introduce themselves, you know. I mean, besides a one-day visit, these kids have no knowledge of who these people are and they are allowed to come in the home and just take these kids out.
There are many problems that point to racial disparities in the services that are received by children of color and their families in the child welfare system that definitely need to be addressed.
DR. H Well, I appreciate you talking to me. Is there anything else that you haven’t said that you’d like to say?
MS. T No, I think, you know, really, you know, my thing would be to … if there’s going to continue to be a CWTAP (Child Welfare Training and Advancement Program) for MSW students at schools of social work I’d like to see some ongoing training on culture sensitivity, culture awareness, cultural competency for social workers because with the disproportionality of children of color in the child welfare system and the disproportionate number of social workers in the system, it is very difficult for the social workers who lack cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity to interact with foster parents and/or kids who identify as people of color. And if you’re not culturally competent or not able to put aside your stuff and/or just have the experience to communicate effectively with another race without offending them then you’re not going to get far. I’ve had a few social workers that have offended me and I was done with them; I was done communicating. You say what you need to say, allow them to visit with the kids, and get out of my house … that’s all I’m thinking about. So, to be able to give them some ongoing cultural training experiences would be helpful. Um, in terms of getting them better prepared to work in these households, you know. I think that we can all use it. I mean I love to learn about other cultures and how to interact with people in these cultures.
DR. H And so do I because I value and respect individuals from all cultures.
MS. T Yes, so I think it would be great. I think it would be a great suggestion and I’d like to see it implemented.
DR. H Well, thank you for sharing your experiences.
MS. T Thank you.
DR. H (Silence)
MS. T Oh yes … I forgot to tell you about another incident, um … experience I had with another foster care system and some relatives … a relative placement. Um, in … um, a few years back, um, before I got out of foster care, um, I had a set of kids in my household. And I received a call from the state or … uh, no … I received a call first from my sister saying that, um, she might need me to take her kids because they had been, you know, um, were in foster care placement …
DR. H Okay.
MS. T … um, so I contacted the state because I was already licensed …
DR. H I understand why you wanted to have your sister’s children placed in your home.
MS. T … and tried to go through the process to get them in relative placement because …
DR. H Right.
MS. T … allegedly, relative placement is first but that’s not the reality.
DR. H Well that’s what the federal law says but …
MS. T That’s not what happens.
DR. H … okay, but the federal law stipulates that if there are viable relatives …
MS. T Right.
DR. H … children should be placed with relatives. And social workers should try and locate relatives and assess their homes prior to placing children in nonrelative placements.
MS. T Right, so maybe I wasn’t viable because I had kids at the time.
DR. H But your home was licensed, right?
MS. T I was licensed. I was licensed for five kids and I only had two at the time. Three of my nieces and nephews needed to be placed. So, technically, I could have been able to take these kids … but I wasn’t allowed.
DR. H Why?
MS. T I went through the process, and they said that I had my hands full and that, um, they had found suitable placement in the respite care they were in; they were just going to leave them there. And I fought against it for a while. Um, and then, by the time you get responses, try to go to these hearings, it’s already months into it and the kids are there. So I had kids placed in my home already and, so, I sort of just let it go because I wasn’t getting anywhere with the state at all. Um, consequently, about … I don’t even think it was a year later; I received a call from the state asking me if I would like to take my nieces and nephews.
DR. H Are you talking about the same nieces and nephews that you wanted to take earlier? At the time that you were told, you’re hands were full …
MS. T Yes.
DR. H … and you were not allowed to have them placed in your home by the child welfare system.
MS. T Yes, ma’am.
DR. H What happened in a year’s time to make them change their mode of thinking?
MS. T There was a new social worker and I wanted to know the same thing; that was my first question. I still have the same kids … the two boys that I had when I tried to get them a year ago. So now you’re calling me because of what? At that point, they explained to me that the home that the children had been in, um, the girls ended up being molested by the foster father of the home.
DR. H Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that the children were sexually abused.
MS. T Yes, it was very disgusting, very hurtful. Um, it just tore me up because I was open, willing, and available to take them.
DR. H Right.
MS. T Um, and for the state to tell me, um, that I couldn’t have them because I already had kids and, um, you know, they knew I was not overloaded. They didn’t ask me if I was overloaded, but they had already suggested that “Oh, you have your hands full already.” Um, and so …
DR. H But you weren’t at maximum capacity …
MS. T … No, ma’am, I wasn’t.
DR. H … in terms of licensure?
MS. T Right. Right, and so it was interesting to receive that call and I was just traumatized. I said, what services will come with them because now they’ve been molested; they were removed from my sister’s house, went to the home that you guys said was better than my home; my home is the same home that you want them to come to now. Nothing has changed, I still live at the same address, but now I’m fit enough to take them … after they’ve gone there and been molested? Um, we had some conversations about that placement, and the state didn’t want to own up to anything. Uh, they wanted to say that they needed to consult with their legal department anytime you wanted to ask them a tough question about their … about their reasoning for placing them there and having the girls in that predicament. Um, and so it was … it was, um … being African American, um, working with African American and Hispanic kids, uh, being placed in this white home, having this incident happen; it was difficult. I sort of felt at that time the state had already let me down. Um, this was my third potential relative placement at this time. Um, and they had already sorta let me down and didn’t want to take responsibility for their decision about the placement of my sister’s children. I didn’t want to take on what they had already made a mess of. Um, and so …
DR. H I can certainly understand your decision.
MS. T … I let them find a placement on their own. Um, as a result, luckily, the girls were able to go with another sibling that was already in care and they adopted the girls and they moved to Florida. And so, the girls are, currently, doing very well.
DR. H That’s good to hear.
MS. T Yes, and so it was difficult, you know, to have to go through that. I had another incident with a relative placement in 1997. It was my nephew from another sister. And he was placed in my home, and they brought him to my home. He was placed in my home from the hospital. Um, he … the date that they gave me for his birthday was wrong. He didn’t have a birth certificate or a card. It was very interesting how this whole ordeal played out. He came to my home; they dropped him off with just a bottle and a couple of things from the hospital. So I ran out, got all this stuff for the little guy. Um, I was working at the time so the next couple of days after I had him home, I enrolled him in daycare; I went through the entire application process. And one day I left work to go and pick him up … I was still working out at the prison … I left work to go pick him up and he was gone; he wasn’t at the daycare. And so I called the social worker … and so I said, “Um, I was told that you signed my nephew out of daycare,” and I was going on and on to her.
And she’s like, “Ya, let me call you back. I’m in the middle of something.” And I’m like, “Well, wait a minute. This child is in my care, I have a guardianship order; he’s in my care and he’s missing.” To me, I thought it was a crisis …
DR. H Right, I certainly would have thought that a missing child was a crisis.
MS. T … you know, this is my nephew, you know. Um, and so it was interesting because what … even though I had only had him a couple of weeks … I don’t even think it was a couple of weeks … I think it was about a week … yeah, it was about a week … it wasn’t a couple of weeks. … It was about a week … um, they had come up with this plan that I didn’t agree with. And a part of the plan was that he was allowed to see his mother. Um, even though they took him away from her, they were placing him with family so that they didn’t have to worry about visitations. So I would do the visitation, and she would be able to nurse him and bond with him and all of those things. And I didn’t really agree with it … and not because I didn’t want him to bond with his mother. I just felt like it would be very confusing for this infant to go to a new home from the hospital, have his mother involved, and daycare involved. I just thought that it would be a lot, in terms of attachment …
DR. H Right, especially because it was a newly born infant.
MS. T … and so I went with what the state said, of course. Um, and we did it that way. Well … fast forward … once I got in touch with the social worker, you know, because I’m devastated, I’m frantic, I don’t know what’s going on.
DR. H He’s gone!
MS. T I don’t know what’s going on; he’s gone from the daycare, I dropped him off before I went to work, I come back … he’s gone. So when the social worker … had finally called me back, she and her supervisor said they didn’t know I worked full-time when they placed him in my home. They … they said … they didn’t know he was going to be in daycare ten hours a day, um, and they didn’t want that for him. Um, and then they proceeded to say that I allowed my sister to see him at church when, that Sunday before, um, when he wasn’t supposed to have a visit that Sunday. And there was like all of these random things that were really weird. And I’m sitting on the phone, I’m stressed out because I’m thinking, where’s my nephew? I just got everything ready: new crib, new playpen, all of this stuff and this baby’s gone. And this social worker, on the phone, insensitively, telling me all of these things that don’t make sense to me. And I said, um, “I’ve been a foster parent for a number of years. How do you not know I work? You know; I’ve never been a stay-at-home foster parent, you know, so … you have a record about me; I’ve been licensed with the state since 1993; there are no secrets about me.” There were a number of things that came about through the investigation; the social worker was consequently fired, um, because a number of things that she said were very inappropriate in terms of race; for example, she said that my nephew was a Cuban baby. Somehow she labeled him a Cuban baby; she gave me the wrong date for his birthday and this … this was a stickler for the state. They had already placed him, but this is what I found out down the road. She gave me the wrong birthday. A child who is an infant can’t be enrolled in daycare until he or she is about five weeks old. This child was four weeks old. So I had enrolled a four-week-old into daycare based on the information that the social worker gave me …
DR. H Right, you enrolled him in daycare on the basis of inaccurate information.
MS. T … that was all that I had to go off of. There was no birth certificate, Social Security card … nothing. Um, the stuff that she said about the Cuban baby, uh, and me being black, and asking me questions about who my sister sleeps with, uh, all that stuff the supervisor found was not relevant to my nephew’s placement; you know that those were things that she should not have been asking. Um, because at the time I was not a relative placement, I was a foster care placement. So those were questions that if she had placed him with another foster parent, she would not have been asking. And like the supervisor said, it doesn’t matter who she slept with, you know. Um, and where did she get the Cuban from? She said that it was from the baby’s hair and how pale he was; and so she made up her own race, made up her own … um, and so, like I said, she was fired, but consequently, I ached for a long time … my heart just ached because I had this child and had started to become attached to him. I tried to get him back, but by then he had already become attached with a foster parent in another home. And it’s one of those things you really have to figure out. Was I going to be selfish and take him because I could as a relative? Or was I going to allow him to be successful in a home where there is a stay-at-home person who could be there for him. I wasn’t in a position to be a stay-at-home relative foster caregiver. So yes … I’ve had quite a number of experiences that I felt were racially inappropriate and I think it goes back to what I said about practical experience in the field. So … that’s it.
DR. H Thank you very much for taking the time to share so many insightful experiences.
MS. T Thank you.
JUDGE X
This is an interview with a judge who has been a judicial officer for many years and has heard criminal cases, family cases, juvenile court cases, etc. He also has many years of experience with the child welfare system, the court system, including drug court, and the mental health system.
JUDGE X One of the first things I’d mentioned is that working on child welfare judicial cases is without a doubt the most difficult rotation that we have. Um, you’re required to learn about and deal with all sorts of family dynamics with adolescent and childhood development issues as well as a number of esoteric legal issues and federal and state legal issues, all of which guide the child welfare system. So it’s the most difficult assignment that judges have. I believe.
DR. H And I know that in law school there are no courses on child development … family dynamics …
JUDGE X (Interrupts) There is nothing to prepare you; in fact the story I tell young lawyers is when I first became a judge, I was anticipating what would be the first case I actually tried. What would it be? And I thought it might be a murder case, it might be a robbery, or it might be a theft. And, of course, the very first case that I was assigned was termination of parental rights. And I have to tell you I was in shock. I was …
DR. H (Interrupts) I’m sure.
JUDGE X … you mean, you mean remove the kids from the parents? And it’s just not—you know you forget that’s an important part of this job. And, and so it hit me straight away, um, and it’s just a very difficult assignment.
DR. H Well, you’re making decisions that are gonna change lives.
JUDGE X Yes. Now I think the other thing that is difficult about it is that you are dealing with parents and family members at probably the most vulnerable time in that family’s existence. Imagine having a child removed from your care for whatever reason. Um, the child is in trauma. It’s got to be traumatic for the parents as well; not understanding whatever kind of parental deficiencies they are dealing with. And so you’re dealing with the family at a very critical moment. And yet it’s a time where you have to be able to show respect and have some understanding as a judicial officer to deal in an evenhanded way with this family notwithstanding the fact that the reasons that they’re appearing in front of you may be, um, just really awful. I mean involving things like abuse and neglect. But notwithstanding those allegations, you still have to deal with these people with respect. The goal is hopefully either reunification or some other type of permanence and stability for the children. So it just makes it really tough. I found it, I believe minority kids have maybe a tougher time because there is a pattern of disproportionality that surfaces that’s evident from my practice; um, it’s evidenced by a couple of things. By the achievement gap and the academic setting and you see the same disproportionality and the rates of young minority kids being incarcerated in the juvenile justice system. And you see the same type of disproportionality in the child welfare system in terms of, um, permanence, adoption, um, number of relative placements, um, foster care placements, the, the fact that, um, relative placements aren’t as aggressively, in my view, pursued with minority families.
DR. H And they should be.
JUDGE X And they should be.
DR. H Because federal law stipulates that …
JUDGE X (Interrupts) You have to.
DR. H … relatives should be considered the first choice …
JUDGE X (Interrupts) The first, the first choice, yeah …
DR. H … in terms of placement unless there is something in that relative’s background or in the home …
JUDGE X (Interrupts) … that stands in the way.
DR. H … that is going to put a child at risk.
JUDGE X And unfortunately I think what happens is sometimes a lack of what, you know, this old term, cultural competence or not understanding the strengths of relatives particularly in minority families makes them look less attractive. When, in fact, those are probably, um the least disruptive placements for kids …
DR. H (Interrupts) I agree.
JUDGE X … and so, yeah …
DR. H (Interrupts) Because a lot of times especially if it’s a European American caseworker who is accessing, for example, an African American family, sometimes they come in looking at these families from a deficit perspective, rather than a strengths …
JUDGE X … strengths …
DR. H … perspective.
JUDGE X Yeah, yeah, and you know that’s what happens, um, I had, um, a family, I, um. It’s not often, but periodically families are successful and work hard and are reunited and those are really, um, those are good outcomes from my perspective. They’re difficult, but they’re good. But you have to understand when people have really turned the corner, um, when they’re truly motivated, um, what their strengths are, what kind of support systems they have. Um, and it’s never easy and I know every time I return kids to a family, I, there’s some degree of trepidation. Is this gonna work? What is gonna happen? But I’ve been actually pretty successful when I’ve seen some of families do really well.
DR. H It’s very rewarding, especially when children are reunited with their families.
JUDGE X It really is.
DR. H It’s been years since I’ve been a child welfare practitioner.
JUDGE X Yeah.
DR. H But in Chicago, as administrator …
JUDGE X (Interrupts) Yeah.
DR. H … that was the goal. I worked for a private child welfare agency and, of course, we had more resources.
JUDGE X Right.
DR. H But anyone that I hired always knew that we were about families and keeping families together.
JUDGE X Yes.
DR. H When we are returning kids home, families need services …
JUDGE X Yeah.
DR. H … We have to put all the services into place …
JUDGE X (Interrupts) Right.
DR. H … to return these kids to their families.
JUDGE X Yes.
DR. H And it takes work.
JUDGE X And, you know, and I think that’s an important point because we have to be able as a judicial officer to be objective about what are identified as their parental deficiencies. But I also want to be able to appreciate what are the strengths? And as you said, you know, being strengths-based makes a difference. And, um, so, um, you know, as difficult as it has been, it’s also been some of the most rewarding work that I’ve been involved in. And, um, if you can help families heal and if you can reunite kids with their biological parents, it, it really is worth it. I mean it’s difficult.
DR. H I agree with you. I’m wondering if you would talk a little bit about (pause) bias against birth fathers because it’s been my experience as a researcher and also as a practitioner …
JUDGE X (Interrupts) Um, um.
DR. H … to notice that some judges are very reluctant to pursue placements with dads and with the parental side of the family.
JUDGE X Well, it’s interesting because in Washington, in divorce or dissolution cases, there’s no longer any presumption that kids would be placed with the mother. The presumption is joint or shared custody. And I believe it’s because the legislature intended for fathers, biological fathers, to have the same parental rights as the mother would have. But this hasn’t quite transferred over into the child welfare system yet. And there still is a bias, and it may be because we don’t tend to traditionally think of men as nurturers. Um, possibly because of developmental issues and, um, and I think occasionally the courts may not look at the child’s developmental age and ability and assess that, um, relative to who is in the best position to care for the child. And so, um, so the presumption is that, unfortunately, and I think it’s an incorrect presumption, that the biological mother or the maternal grandparents or families are preferred placements and I think that’s the question of training. I think it will take (Dr. H interrupts: “I agree, I agree.”) a lot of change in our mindset to do that. And I think training is needed for social workers, judicial officers and guardians ad litem.
DR. H Well I teach my students, and I’m only one professor, that children have a mother and a dad. And I still believe in what’s in the best interest of the child.
JUDGE X Right.
DR. H And if dad’s (Judge X interrupts: “Right.”) going to be a better parent (Judge X interrupts: “Right.”) then this is where the child needs to be placed.
JUDGE X And I’ve seen a lot of cases where mom may have a drug addiction or co-occurring drug and mental health disorder and the dad may be doing okay. Um, you know there may be situations where an out-of-home placement can be avoided if the father was actually sought after and reasonable efforts were made to place the child with the father. I don’t think that we always make those types of reasonable efforts to involve the father.
DR. H Do you think that social workers, child welfare workers do a good job or a poor job in locating fathers?
JUDGE X Um, I think overall the, the, the, the social workers I’ve dealt with did their job and did a pretty good job in engaging fathers. Uh, I’m not sure how, you know, procedurally, how they go about their searches in whether they’re thorough enough. I will tell you this though; I have noticed that some dads, well, a lot of the social workers in our county are females. I think the overwhelming majority. Um, and sometime there is a tension between the social worker and the dad. I’ve seen that happen a lot. And the dad feels like the kids have been taken away, and he’s been disrespected, and the social worker maybe has not started services as quickly as they should have or whatever. Um, but the best social workers are the ones who are willing to engage the dad and deal with them straight up. And, um, I will tell fathers at review hearings that, you know, if you want to be a player, if you want your kids back, you’re gonna need to cooperate with this social worker. Um, and I’ve told them on many occasions that this is the social worker who’s able to reunite kids with their families. So you want to work with this one. Um, so it takes some cajoling on both sides to get them to start to work collaboratively toward this goal of reunification. But there is a tension there, which is really hard to break.
DR. H I agree with that. Um (Judge X interrupts: “There’s some tension.”), but I think that dads should be given the same message (Judge X interrupts: “Oh, yeah.”) that moms are given (Judge X interrupts: “Now, I agree.”); they should be given the same message and the same services.
JUDGE X In the same … and I had another one. You know, I had, I had a guy who was across the mountain, and he, I could tell he really loved his son, and his wife really had the problems. But he just had not been the most stable person and hadn’t, um, been in the kid’s life as much as the mom had before she just blew off on drugs and her mental health issues. Um, and this guy would come across from eastern Washington every other weekend and the visits were regular; he was always on time, and was really dedicated. And we worked out an arrangement, um, that just involved him, and helped him move ahead and, um, corrected deficiencies that he had and that turned out to be just another really, I think, real big success. The child did well and had a great relationship with his father; mother hasn’t been seen. Um, but I imagined that this young child is a lot more emotionally stable knowing that he has this good relationship (Dr. H interrupts: “Right.”) with his father. It makes all the (Dr. H interrupts: “It does make a difference.”) difference in the world. Yeah, yeah, so, um, that’s a tough one but yeah.
DR. H I’m wondering have you noticed in your work any service disparities when it comes to relatives or families of color.
JUDGE X Um (long pause), there are some services disparities throughout the system which makes it, I think, at times more difficult for some low-income people and minority people. Um (pause), and let me see what would be the best example I could give. Um, well one example that is a different sort of example is the following: here, if you are a gang member you can get in drug court. Um, and the Tacoma Police Department and the Lakewood Police Department have lists of supposed gang members and their affiliates. The problem is those lists only deal with Crips and Bloods. So if you’re a Hell’s Angel, if you’re part of the Gambino Organized Crime Family, if you’re really a gang member, you can get in drug court. But if you’re a minority, a young parent who use to be involved or whose girlfriend or boyfriend or family member was involved with a gang you can’t get in drug court. So that’s an example of a disparity that’s based on supposedly a facially neutral policy that has a desperate impact on minority people.
DR. H And you know and I know that the largest number of children who come into the child welfare system come in because of substance abuse issues of their parents.
JUDGE X Substance abuse. Exactly.
DR. H For my readers …
JUDGE X (Interrupts) Yeah, uh, hum.
DR. H Will you explain what drug court is for my readers?
JUDGE X Drug court is an alternative to incarceration that allows an individual to go through treatment, and basically they check in, in drug court once a week or if they graduate they get to a higher level. It could be once a month. And, um, it’s a way to help them overcome their addiction which as you indicated is often for a lot of parents the reason that they’re before the child welfare system. And so, um, that’s basically drug court in a nutshell. We have a special drug court for child welfare cases called Family Dependency Drug Court. At one point it was called Meth Family Court because a lot of the users were on methamphetamines. Um, and meth, you know, if you go back to it, that’s kind of another historical disparity because, um, I don’t have statistics, but I can tell you anecdotally that, you know, a lot of the substance abuse you see here in Pierce County when we started the meth drug court, it was, I believe, more difficult for minority parents who might have had a heroin addiction or a cocaine addiction or if they were doing something other than methamphetamines. And sometimes, um, at least in the early 2000s methamphetamine was more the drug of choice. Again, this is just anecdotal; predominantly white addicts were using methamphetamines and I thought there were a lot of black people and Hispanics who were doing, you know, crack, coke, and heroin. And so we didn’t really have a program for them, we had a program …
DR. H (Interrupts) Right.
JUDGE X … primarily for folks who were doing meth who were predominantly white and that’s not to suggest, I mean, that no blacks were doing meth because I know plenty of black defendants who come before me for use of methamphetamines. But at the time we started that family drug court to help defendant families, it was really targeted toward the methamphetamine population.
DR. H It means that if they couldn’t get into drug court …
JUDGE X (Interrupts) It meant a harder time.
DR. H … the time clock in terms of parental rights was still ticking …
JUDGE X (Interrupts) Was ticking, yeah. … And with, and with the family drug court, the family dependency drug court, um, we have review hearings every three months. There were no six-month reviews. It was all three-month reviews and it was a fast track. And it was anecdote information that folks had higher success rates and reunification and quicker reunification which meant less time to care for the kids.
All those things, um, and again you know what’s difficult is, is that a lot of these policies we put in place are what I would call facially neutral; they’re not designed to hurt anybody. But people just don’t think ahead enough and aren’t conscious or culturally conscious enough to understand, um, that this is where the disproportionality starts to become evident because of these little facially neutral policies. Anyway, um, let’s see.
DR. H What do you think we can do? And when I say we, I’m talking about these systems, the child welfare system and the family court system, to make things equitable for all children and families.
JUDGE X Well, in my opinion the government is not a good parent.
DR. H I agree with you.
JUDGE X (Laughs)
DR. H I’m writing about policies in my book.
DR. H And although a lot of them have been on the book for years I think that a lot of them need to be revisited and changed.
JUDGE X Yeah, I, I, um, what I would like to see is more, um, engagement by child welfare officials with those communities, um, particularly communities of color to engage them and involve them in the child welfare process. And more efforts to try and find placements that are close to kids’ homes. Um, and trying to implement those decisions like the Braam decisions. That we’re not going to let minority kids continue to experience disparities; and, you know, and Braam kind of showed us where the disparities were in the child welfare system in this state.
DR. H Right, right.
JUDGE X Minority kids had more foster placements. I mean bombing out more? Why don’t we put them closer to home? Why don’t we place them closer to relatives? Why don’t we start to use indigenous types of resources?
DR. H And why don’t we put services in the homes? And keep children in their homes if possible.
JUDGE X Yeah.
DR. H Every case that comes in doesn’t necessarily have to result …
JUDGE X (Interrupts) In removal.
DR. H … What’s wrong with family preservation?
JUDGE X Yep, these things I believe are more cost efficient and are less likely to cause trauma because when you remove kids from their parents they are traumatized, even for short periods of times. So if you can avoid removal and keep kids home, you can do it at low cost. And I think as you indicated, it’s much more cost efficient; the child welfare cost skyrocketed right now and we’re not as effective as we could be. So I think engaging the communities is important. I’ve seen some models in King County which were interesting; they had sort of a hub home and there were other foster homes around it. And they did respite for each other; they kind of supported each other. So there have been a number of different models that engage the community more and I think that’s what we really need to look at.
DR. H And communities of color are basically interested in their kids.
JUDGE X Oh, they are. I meet regularly with the ministerial alliance here and we have a number of campaigns trying to recruit CASAs and guardians ad litem and, and, um (pause). … But I’m not sure that we have the expertise at the local level to reach out. I think we have commitment of our current assistant secretary for the DSHS Children’s Administration; I know Denise Revels Robinson and we’ve had dinner and she’s been at my house. And so I know she’s committed to that kind of reaching out. Um, but it’s hard, you know, when you’re at …
DR. H (Interrupts) It is; it is very hard.
JUDGE X … the top of a big institution to try to ripple change out; it is really difficult.
DR. H It is and people are resistant to change.
JUDGE X They’re resistant, I know.
DR. H They will often say, “Well, this is the way we do it here.”
JUDGE X And, Doctor, I’ll tell you I was, um, I was like the assistant to the secretary with the Department of Mental Health in Tennessee, long before I became a lawyer. And so the secretary and I did a tour of one of the developmental centers like F … but, um, a big state hospital for people with developmental disabilities. And so we’re walking down the hall and I see this kid D. And D is the kid that my wife and I had done respite for. He was big, and he’s intimidating looking, but he’s not. He just looks intimidating and he’s developmentally disabled. Anyway, I’m walking and I’m like the number two. I’m just walking; the number two guy in the Department of Mental Health and here’s this kid I’ve done respite for and he’s just beat up. Somebody has beaten him up. And, uh, the point was that even if you have that kind of power, like I had at that point, it’s hard to ripple it down through institutions and to frontline workers that you know will say, “We don’t do it like that anymore.” You don’t have to be abusive; we can be more progressive, but it’s hard to make that kind of change. That’s the point.
DR. H That it takes time. Thank you very much for talking to me.
JUDGE X You are welcome.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF PRIVATE CHILD WELFARE AGENCY AND ADOPTIVE MOTHER
Mrs. F is a sixty-two-year-old African American woman. She is happily married and the proud mother of sixteen children. She is the executive director of a private child welfare agency that focuses on providing a high caliber of services to children and families.
DR. H How many children do you have?
MRS. F (Pause) Are you talking about biological children?
DR. H Yes, I am talking about biological children.
MRS. F Well, we were talking about being politically correct.
DR. H Right.
MRS. F Well, this is not politically correct. But, um, it’s a family thing, that, um, I have sixteen children.
DR. H Okay.
MRS. F I don’t mind saying how many, you know, of those are adopted because of this book.
DR. H Right, I want you to tell me that.
MRS. F Right, yeah.
DR. H I know that they are your family.
MRS. F They are all together. They are all mine.
DR. H That’s right.
MRS. F So I have sixteen legal children (laughs).
DR. H That’s what family is about.
MRS. F And that’s family. Yeah, um, this is kinda going off a little bit just to give you a background on why I put it that way. (Sigh.) Um, there was a time when I introduced people to my children, you know her. You know they, how many, you know, are your children? Well, how many? You know what I am saying?
DR. H Well, all of them are yours.
MRS. F Yes. Um, and I had one of my daughters and that is, um, adoptive. Well, that adoptive one come up to me and say, “Mom, um, from now on I can just be an F.” And it just. … When she said, I was like she is F. But I knew what she was saying.
DR. H Right.
MRS. F Our family has changed, our whole, um, whenever people approach us. So, um, let me know if you need to know how many are biological for a specific reason and I will tell you. But other than that, I have sixteen children. (Laughing afterward.)
DR. H Oh, okay. I think it’s more important, since this book is focusing on child welfare and the child welfare system. (Mrs. F interjects: “Uh-huh.”) I think it would be relevant for you to tell me when and why you and your husband became involved with the child welfare system. And I know that we have talked about the two of you being foster parents (Mrs. F interjects: “Yes.”) at one point and time in your lives. Why don’t we start with that?
MRS. F Okay, alright. So, um (short pause), I was very young, and, um, I think I had I don’t know how many children at the time, maybe five or six children. I don’t know. And, um, we were at church, you know my pastor (Dr. H interjects: “Right.”), but at the time we were not pastoring. We were at our home church where I grew up in the Lord. And this young girl who is the same age or maybe a little older as mine as one of my sons, um, came and she would always sit next to me. At the time her mom and dad weren’t in the picture so to speak. (Dr. H interjects: “Okay.”) She was raised by her grandmother, and grandmother went to the same church. And she would always sit with me and people would always comment how much she looked like me and is that really your daughter, and that type of thing. (Dr. H interjects: “Right.”) And she just really loved it. And just a real sweetheart. And one day at this time, she was thirteen, and she came sat by me, and, um, she took my hand and said, “Mama F, I’m pregnant.” (Mrs. F chuckles.) Everything just dropped out of me. (Dr. H interjects: “Oh, sure.”) And so, you know, I was happy we were in church because I didn’t have to face her because I didn’t want my face to tell. I just kept on holding her and, um, I said, “We’ll talk after church.” And I think during offering time I just couldn’t hold anymore and I pulled her out and said what I can do for you and how can I help you through this. And we’ve talked and I just let her know that I was there for her. Slowly, she stopped coming to church and, um, she had the baby. Her grandmother, who is the baby’s great-grandmother, began to take care of the child, and, um, the young girl started really hitting the streets a lot and really lost contact with her. I figured I would only see her once a month maybe. Um, I wanted to help her grandmother because she was suffering also, um. Here she was a great-grandmother with a husband that has cancer, no supports around her. You know. (Dr. H interjects: “Right.”) So, every weekend I would always go and pick up the baby and sometimes after school, you know, me and the kids would go over and take her to the park or something like that to give her grandmother a break.
DR. H And I’m sure her grandmother appreciated the respite.
MRS. F Oh, yah. DSHS stepped in and, um, told her that she would need to, because of everything was on her at the time, her husband was dying. Um, she would need to find family to take care of the child or they would have to put her in foster care. And, um, the family is large, but there was no one that would be able to take her. And so, um, and she asked me how I felt about it, but it was actually my best friend who was her daughter-in-law that asked me what about you. I would love to, that would be fine. What does that mean and we didn’t know anything about the foster care system. So, um, I talked with her and then a worker called and she says would you be willing and we have her I say a third of her life anyways, you know. The baby knew us and we were connected with family. We would be able to keep the family connections and all that was important. Um, I said okay and we went over and picked her up. I didn’t know anything about the foster care system as she started going through this whole paperwork. You know, all of these home studies and everything, autobiographies process. Went through the process and we became her parents. And that’s how we got into the system.
DR. H Was it a long process?
MRS. F It was a long process for us because now that I understand the process, I was very protective of my information. Um, they asked a question on the autobiography and I talk about this when I’m doing classes. How did your parents discipline you? And the idea is “How did they discipline you?” … you probably discipline the kind of same way. And my answer was, very well. And that’s how my whole autobiography was, you know. And so because of that it was lengthened. I didn’t know why and no one really explained to me the why.
DR. H That was going to be my next question. Did anyone sit down with you and go over the process? Did anyone explain the reason why information about the way you were disciplined by your parents was important?
MRS. F No. No, never went through any of that. I was totally, um, I didn’t understand the foster care system. I didn’t understand what I was getting into. I just wanted to be a person to open our home and hearts to …
DR. H This baby who needed you.
MRS. F … this child and assist this family in going through this process. I didn’t know that it was all of this legal stuff. You know.
DR. H And I think that as a social worker, I understand that there must be rules, policies, and regulations. But at the same time I strongly feel that social workers and child welfare workers have a responsibility to explain the process to families.
MRS. F I agree.
DR. H I’m an educated woman and I’ve never been a foster parent. And certainly if I walked into an agency and I wanted to be a foster parent, I would need the process explained to me. I know what’s involved in it, having been an administrator at a private child welfare agency. However, being a child welfare administrator is entirely different than being a foster parent.
MRS. F Right.
DR. H But again, I’ve never been personally involved with the child welfare system.
MRS. F And then for me coming from where I came from, the African American community, regardless I mean there’s a lot of other things in my DNA, but that’s what I hold on to. And being surrounded there, my grandmother I know that she was not a “legal foster parent.” There were always children at our home, always. And they were always cousin so and so. You know.
DR. H But that’s one of the strengths of the African American community.
MRS. F And that’s all I wanted to do.
DR. H We take care of our own.
MRS. F Right.
DR. H And when I say our own, it doesn’t necessarily have to be blood kin …
MRS. F Right, exactly.
DR. H … to be taken in by a family.
MRS. F And so this is all knew. You know. I saw it with my family. I saw it with my mom, and dad, and grandparents. I saw it with aunts, and uncles. That if someone needed, it could the next-door neighbor, it could be someone at church, or it could be someone they specifically just met.
DR. H Sounds like my grandparents.
MRS. F And if the need was there, someway there is going to be…might not be a bed, but it would be a cot someplace, you know, or roll up something.
DR. H As I reflect back, hmm, on my career and childhood, I realize that my grandmother was practicing social work and didn’t have a title.
MRS. F All I wanted to do and that I knew, all of these papers, um, it didn’t match what I was trying to do for me. Um, I was blessed to have in the middle of the process or I guess towards the end another licensor stepped in. I don’t know why. It might have been because I don’t was standoffish to the process. I mean, I am sure we were two of those people whose family goes through the process that was a headache to the system. I am sure we were because we were always fighting, “Why, well, why?” because I am not going to give that information. No, you can’t have that information; you know (laughs), you can’t have a copy of my Social Security number. (Dr. H interjects, “Well, I think some information is very personal and not needed for foster home licensure.”) My Social Security number, what for? I just want to take care of the child, and so this other licensor stepped in and she was a gem, a gem and, um, she proceeded with the licensing and, um, she literally wrote down the steps; actually you will see that same paper, well I made it prettier, um, at my agency. We use that same thing. I mean it was very important to me that families really know about the process. We have it blown up really big and we take them through the steps.
DR. H Well, I think that you need to tell my readers all about your agency. I know all about it.
MRS. F Well, um, One Church One Child, Washington State, is a nationwide African American organization that recruits African American families for African American children that are in the foster care system, um, primarily for adoption. In Washington State, we began breaking away from that, and, um, we began recruiting for foster care and adoption. We were the first One Church One Child to also recruit for foster care families.
DR. H I think that’s wonderful. I’m familiar with One Church One Child because I lived in Chicago for many years. I actually knew Father Clements and went to his church, Holy Angels, several times.
MRS. F Ooh, ooh. He is still with us. We wanted to start this program and in 1988 we began One Church One Child of Washington State. And in 1998, we decided to become a placement agency because we saw that families that we were recruiting were slipping through our fingers. We were recruiting for all agencies, but the state agencies would let them slip through their fingers because at that time, I don’t know what it is now. (Dr. H interjects, “Right.”) We don’t refer families to them. We license them ourselves but at that time (Dr. H interjects, “And that’s a good thing.”) … what we would do is the class, then the application to the agency. Sometimes I would go into the workers’ cubicles and see applications piled up on their floor. I’m talking about at least a foot high or maybe higher, piles, piles of applications and packets, and, um, files and just, you know, all sorts of paperwork. I could see why they were slipping through our fingers, and sometimes they were not responded to in a timely manner and this is why we started our agency because …
DR. H It means that children were waiting for families.
MRS. F … Exactly, exactly. And this is why we started One Church One Child at our agency. The — part is the placement agency, so now we are licensed and the only African American placement agency in Washington State. Um, with a focus on African American children; um, we do not discriminate; we do not show a difference or anything like that. We’ve had white families, Indian families, — families, Asian families, — families. Um, we’ve placed children of all races and ethnic backgrounds that I can think of right down to children from Somalia. Um, but our focus, our focus is always is our children, our African American children. (Dr. H interjects: “Because …?”) There is no other agency that has that focus.
DR. H You and I know that African American children are disproportionately represented (Mrs. F interjects: “Absolutely.”) in the child welfare system. Although there are services out there, there are also many families that need services. African American children come into the system in large numbers and they continue to stay in the system. I think it is wonderful that you and your husband started this agency and you have continued to be proactive in terms of finding families for these children.
MRS. F It is not easy because, we had. … When we started out I had nothing but my Garfield High School graduation certificate; that was my education. I was a mom; I was serious about our children, period. Um, I wanted to do something; actually it goes back to my first placement when she became legally free, well, um, her mom came to me and, you know, said, “Mama G, I think they are going to probably take her away from you and put her in a home that will adopt, and I want you to adopt her.” I said, “Well, you are not using names right.” (Dr. H interjects, “No.”) I said sure. But the problem is that I don’t know anything about adoption, and is this what you want? And she said, “I want her with you, period.” And we had a family meeting, and the whole family, everyone; of course there wasn’t anyone that didn’t say no. And two years later, she’s been with us for two years. So we began the adoption process and after we adopted her, after it was finalized, then I called my licensor and I said I wanted to do my exit interview to turn in my license and she said, “Oh okay.” She came out to do the interview and she said, “So why is that you want to turn in your license?” And I said that I’ve adopted and, you know, that there is no need for me to have the license anymore. We kept on talking; as we talked, she would put down a child’s picture on the dining table; we just kept on talking and she never said anything about the pictures. We kept on talking (Dr. H interjects, “Right.”), and she would put down another picture after a while. We talked about the moon, space, church, my plant, or anything, then she would put down another picture. There were about five pictures that were put down; finally, I said, her name was G and, um, I said “G, what is this? (Laughs. What are these?” So she said, “Oh, well, you are saying that there is no need, but I just want you to see some of the faces of children that need you and where are they going to be when you turn your license” and she went just like this, you know … and I was like, huh, needless to say. I was a foster parent for twenty years after that conversation. Because of that …
DR. H Approximately how many children did you parent?
MRS. F … because we had the agency we were very careful not to, um, we didn’t want lots of children. Plus, I had the agency, and so I didn’t want to just be a foster parent that took in a lot of foster children. I was not able to parent every child who needed a home, but I was able instead to use my impetus to recruit families. (Dr. H interjects, “Okay.”) The children, all of the children that came into our lives as foster children, um, came in because I could not find a placement; they were the harder to place, they were runners, sexually active, drug users, promiscuous, ones that would not stay in school, um; usually they had a combination of three or four of those problems.
DR. H The children who came into your life, and eventually into your family, are the children that you and your husband adopted … right?
MRS. F Yes, all of the children that we’ve adopted have been hard to place children not because of their African American ancestry. I mean they were not hard to place because of their ethnic background. Our children are hard to place (Dr. H interjects, “Right.”) because of the other things. I’m trying to think, but I believe all of them, there might have been one I can think of real quick, um, were born drug and alcohol affected, and they all had multiple problems in some area.
DR. H But I think even in my experience, of course I haven’t parented any children placed in foster care. However, working in child welfare, if a child is born with drugs and/or alcohol in his/her system and placed with a parent or parents who can really love and support him/her and get the services the child needs the child is going to thrive.
MRS. F I believe that. I believe that wholeheartedly because of my experiences, both positive and negative, with our very first child; the one that came … she was, um, drug and alcohol affected but with high alcohol affects; the other children we had were also drug and alcohol affected but more highly drug affected. She was highly alcohol affected. I could cry just thinking about her. I did not get the supports I needed. I know now from being in the system so long that the supports were there; the supports were given to others. I did not get those supports because I did not understand what were my rights, what were the child’s rights, and even through school I did not get it.
DR. H Do you think that race impacted the quantity and quality of the services you received?
MRS. F Yes, absolutely it does. Um, skipping around, I am also on a CPT (Child Protective Team) or I used to be; you sit on a team and when the families come in, they more or less fight for the children and you listen to them; you listen to the social worker, you listen to all of this, and then we make some decision about, you know, when the child should return home, and what other services are needed. I remember time and time again people saying, “That’s the grandmother, you know, but, you know, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” These types of things were said about African American families and I never heard that, never, never heard that said when a white family came in.
DR. H But that in and of itself is discriminatory. (Mrs. F interjects, “I can call them on it as long as I am there.”) This type of statement is clearly a prejudgment of people based on their racial/ethnic background.
MRS. F And so when I look at my children, and, um, particularly that child, when workers have that kind of discriminatory belief and/or attitude, I know that I have to be a strong advocate for my children; they might not even know that they have it, you know.
DR. H I think that is really important to have self-awareness. And I talk about this in the practice section of my book; it’s really important for social workers and child welfare workers to have some self-awareness, as well as cultural awareness and sensitivity, especially if you are going to work with children and families of color (Mrs. F interjects, “Right.”), and it is not to say that as people of color we don’t have biases or prejudices. But anyone who is going to be in the social work profession, I strongly feel needs to have some self-awareness or you can’t effectively do this work.
MRS. F You know, it’s one thing to have a bias. I believe that there is not one person on this earth that does not have a bias. (Dr. H interjects, “I agree.”) It is just impossible. And even people different from me are biased sometimes to the point of prejudice. My whole thing is come in my face and be prejudiced, but just know that you are and acknowledge it and be aware of it. Because then you can do something about it; you can’t do anything with something you don’t acknowledge that you have.
DR. H I teach my students that we all have biases and prejudices, but you can’t allow them to interfere when you are working in any facet of social work. You have to leave them at the door because as social workers, we are cannot judge people; we’re supposed to be nonjudgmental. And if you allow those biases and prejudices to enter in your professional work, you are not going to be objective; everybody needs to be treated the same.
MRS. F I totally agree. It’s harder, I think … I know it was harder for me in my younger days when I was going through this stuff, not understanding and not knowing how to fight this type of thing. Um, I wanted to get us to why we began One Church One Child community services because every step of the way, um, it’s not that we are better than the state, but we can give our families better services than the state can give them. And I don’t mind saying that. Um, I know that. I look at things like kinship … when we first started out in 1988, our whole thing was kinship. Then, fifteen years later, all of the sudden, it’s like kinship, kinship, kinship; you know, it’s a big deal thing … only they called it fictive kin. I told them, “Don’t say fictive kin because fictive means pretend and my relationship with my aunts and uncles, and cousins who are not blood is stronger than some of my relationships with my blood aunts, uncles, and cousins and these are not fictive and these are not pretend relationships, these are real. I am a real person, you know, I am flesh and blood. I am not plastic.”
DR. H I feel the same way about terminology. I remember this training in the early nineties. I was at a conference and a woman from the Child Welfare League of America had given a presentation on kinship care; she was talking about grandparents and she referred to them as foster parents and she talked about foster grandchildren. I raised my hand and I said, “You know, I think that’s a horrible misnomer because one’s grandmother is one’s grandmother; one’s grandchild is one’s grandchild. There nothing foster about it; it’s real.” The presenter acknowledged that what I had said made perfect sense.
MRS. F I believe that, of course.
DR. H I think a lot of the terminology that we use for children and families has negative connotations. For example, I don’t even like the term foster child. (Mrs. F interjects, “It’s better to say a child in care.” Laughs.) I tell my students, in this class if you are writing a paper, you will have to say “a child in foster care, not a foster child; this is a child just like any other child” (Mrs. F interjects, “Yes, it is.”) and it is not the child’s fault that she/he is in the system. Do you think that in the child welfare system we have institutional racism?
MRS. F Yes … (laughs) yes! I know we do and the sad thing is that we keep going around in circles around it; you know and I know that we do. You are an educator and researcher; but my take on it is that sometimes, somewhere along the lines, you know … I’ve been doing this since 1988 and you have probably been doing this work before that time and others before that, but we’re doing the same thing. When do we get to the point where we say, “Yes it is now and what do we do about it now, to get rid of it and stop it now.” You know, I’m like (laughs) …
DR. H Well, I’m saying that in my book, but I’m just one person. But I’m hoping that this book will be read and not only utilized by people in the child welfare, but by professors who are preparing young people to go and work in child welfare. I think that we are never going to eradicate this problem until we call it what it is and acknowledge that it exists in the child welfare system as well as in other systems. My book is on racial disproportionality and disparities in the child welfare system; in my mind racial disproportionality is simply a politically correct term that is used for racism in the child welfare system. It is what is it and it’s been in existence since the child welfare system started because the child welfare system was not started to serve children of color. And that in and of itself is a racist act.
MRS. F Absolutely, absolutely.
DR. H What else would you like to tell me that you think might be helpful to readers of this book?
MRS. F (Pause) I don’t know; we’ve … and I apologize; we’ve jumped around so much that I am wondering what was left out. (Dr. H interjects, “I think what you’ve said makes sense.”) I think it is really important to call it what it is; um, racism and I think we need to stop being afraid of … and when I say, “We,” I am not talking about we African Americans, we people in the child welfare system; all of us are afraid of hurting people’s feelings or try to say things just the right way or, you know, this type of thing. Um, all of the trainings that we go to, all of these different projects and everything, sometimes it gets so heavy on me that I feel like I can’t breathe, and I’m just cut by a different piece of leather and I want to roll up my sleeves and I just want to do what is right. I just want to see outcomes. (Dr. H interjects, “You know, I want to do the work [laugh], and, you know, we’ve worked together in the past and we are working together now; you know that I’ve resigned from certain committees because I felt these committees were not serious about working on and trying to eradicate this problem.”) And unless you can have a conversation about it, you cannot resolve the issue. I think that is a thing that I would really like to see hit in your book. I think I say it a lot with my mouth because, um, I’m not … and when I say I am not educated, I’m talking about, um, I don’t have a PhD. I, um, I am not putting down the education that I have. Sometimes I just put it out there. I look at people that can act it like you; I look at people that act it and I learn from you. I learn that you don’t always have to open your mouth and that sometimes a closed mouth says more. And so, I know this is way off, but this is my time to give you your kudos, oh, okay. (Dr. H interjects, “Thank you, I know … And I learned the way I act from my maternal grandmother.”) I just want you to know that I’ve learned that and I’ve watched you. There are three people and I won’t name them, but you are one of them that I have watched and I’ve grown through watching each one of you; I have learned to speak when I have something to say that is going to hit it hard. Even in the transition design committee I learned that; I am sticking it out, but I’m opening my mouth at the right times, at the right times which is hard and a learning process for me (laughs).
DR. H It is a learning process. It’s hard, but what you’ll find is that when you do open your mouth it has some impact.
MRS. F I’m saying that’s what I’m learning; and so I want you to know that it came from listening and watching you.
DR. H Well, thank you.
MRS. F Yeah, um.
DR. H I try to teach that to my students but unfortunately some of them even as they graduate with their MSW, they don’t get it. But I’ve had some to come back and say, “I’ve finally learned what you were trying to teach me. I put my foot in the mouth in the wrong place.” (Mrs. F interjects, “Right, right.”) It can have a negative impact. Sometimes you don’t realize the negative implications until after you have mistakenly opened your mouth and made a statement. (Mrs. F interjects, “You taught me without even saying it.”) Yes! What you’re trying to say is that you don’t reach your goals when you speak before you think.
MRS. F Right, right … how come we do that … um, I don’t know. I think the only other thing that would be is that not only is my organization important, but other African American organizations, agencies, groups, or work groups, whatever also have an importance in our community and in the child welfare system. My colleague CG and I started a group called the Association of African American Service Providers and it’s now incorporated. We are moving forward with a small group. We started because I began seeing that I was called to the table constantly if there was a work group going. You know … was looking around and I am thinking, is there no one but me? You know … is there really nobody but me in this whole world?
DR. H I feel that way.
MRS. F Oh, I know, I know you must have the same thoughts. What I started doing these last three years whenever I get called, I would send somebody else from my office like C or E or I would take somebody else over with me because I wanted to make a statement, you know, that I am not going to be here forever. In fact I am on my way to retirement. I can mentor those individuals and bring them in. Otherwise, this system is going to be under water.
DR. H Who was serving on all of these boards and committees before I relocated to Washington State?
MRS. F Nobody, not us. … But not us …
DR. H I am not going to be here for the rest of my life. (Mrs. F interjects, “We are not there.”) Another thing that I say to these committees is that they are not about me or me being at the table and that doesn’t mean that’s me; it is the African American community. I look at some of the groups; some of the groups that are not headed by people of color; but these groups are trying to speak for me and other people of color; they don’t speak for me; you cannot speak for me. You can’t. I can speak for myself. (Mrs. F interjects, “No.”) I need to be at the table, and if I am not at the table then your work group or committee doesn’t represent me or mean anything to me. Because the thing that is missing is our lived experiences and there is no book, no degree that can compensate for that.
MRS. F Right, right, so … that’s another big, big, thing that I think our agency did a lot to bring to the forefront. Tiny, tiny, agency, very small agency, um, yet it’s been around since 1988. Next year, we will be celebrating twenty-five years.
DR. H I think that’s wonderful; that’s wonderful. I don’t know if you readily know the answer to my next question. Appropriately how many children have families because of your agency?
MRS. F I don’t know the number, but it’s in the thousands, because of what we did … even before we were recruiting. When you think of it we did classes; that’s all we did. We recruited, did classes, and help fill out applications and send them on their way. Um, I do have the figures for how many we have that are self-licensed, but that is a very small number. You know, we say small, but one thing that I wanted to make sure is that we were personable, make sure that if you picked up the cell and you called my office and you pushed my extension, my cell would ring. If I am not at the office, my cell is on twenty-four hours of the day. I am on and every one of the families knows that. Every one of the families can get hold of absolutely anyone in the agency either because they have their direct cell number or because they call the office number. There is also a worker and all the families know his direct number. His office line does not ring to his cell phone number because they don’t need to because they can dial his cell number directly. In fact, families can reach all of our workers. All of our workers and also the front desk people can be reached 24/7 at our agency. This is another thing that I don’t believe is available at any other agency maybe in the world (laughs) that other agencies will do something like that for their families.
DR. H I tend to agree with you because I think some agencies that I’ve called just to confirm the time for a meeting and I get a machine. (Mrs. F interjects, “You, well, you might get a machine with us.”) But I don’t get the call back from these agencies; apparently someone always responds to calls to your agency.
MRS. F You’ll get the call back; you’ll get the call back.
DR. H I can deal with the machines, but my issue is that it’s unprofessional not to return calls.
MRS. F I agree. You know, when I was going. … That’s why we started our agency. There was so many things that I felt needed to be done for our families. Things that I would liked to have seen done for me; returning phone calls was one. If I had a problem between 9:00 and 4:30, then I probably could get somebody; but that’s not the problem. But between 9:00 and 4:30, my children are in school and I’m probably not going to have a problem. You know (laughs)…
DR. H Well, you know, in the child welfare system, a crisis can occur at any time.
MRS. F Crises usually occur after hours. Crises usually do not occur between 9:00 and 5:00. Crises occur when the child gets home and is out running or playing and hurt themselves or over the weekend when the office is closed. Crises occur after 5:00 and on weekend; that’s when you cannot get anybody at the office. I wanted to change that, at least for the little pot of families we had. So our families can get us; our families can call any of our workers by their cell phone number. Um, I’ve had a worker that was literally out of the country and then called me because somebody had called him and he didn’t want to let them know he was out of the country because he didn’t want to put them on hold until he returned; he called me and then I called some others and we went to see about it. You know, he was there to talk them through it until we arrived to handle the situation. He said, “Don’t worry, we will handle this,” and we were there like in an hour.
DR. H I am sure for the families this type of immediate response has made a tremendous difference to families served by your agency (Mrs. F interjects, “I know it has.”) to know that they can call their worker.
MRS. F We call them family workers. We don’t call them social workers; they are family workers. (Dr. H interjects, “Well, they are providing services to children and families … right?”) Right, they are the M family workers, and then that was one thing; then kinship was another thing. Helping them fill out the applications was important; we help them fill out the applications, you know. Just all of this is like a one-stop shop; you know, always being there for our families. I think it is so important. I see now where agencies and the state agency, the DSHS, the Children’s Administration, is really making big strides testing unified home studies; they are now doing these. I have mixed emotions about these home studies. Um, I don’t hold that back and I think anybody that I have come in contact with knows that. First of all, we’ve been doing unified home studies since 1998. We’ve always done foster care/adoption unified home studies; that’s what’s been done at our agency. And, um, we are not the only one; most private agencies do unified home studies. It’s just the state agency that didn’t. These studies are a new thing for them. You know, its unified homes, big deal, and they want you to go through this training and all of this. And, um, but it’s comical because I think we’ve been doing unified home studies for over twenty-five years. We’ve been doing them and now you’re just caught on, kudos to you.
DR. H It’s really amazing to me, but I guess it’s because I never worked in child welfare for a state agency. My work has always been with private agencies, and there is a definite difference in the quality of services that the children receive.
MRS. F Yes, absolutely. I’m going to give this. … It is a much shorter packet of M, our agency. I will give you some information that is much shorter. I know that our time is up, but thank you so much for talking to me. Dr. H, if you wanted this interview to continue even over the phone, I would be glad to. I feel like I did not do the interview justice because of our short time; you know, if I have left any holes and you need to fill the holes, give me a call.
DR. H Thank you, I’ll call if I think of anything that you did not discuss; however, I think that you provided a wealth of information for my readers.
ADOPTIVE MOTHER
This is the interview of a forty-two-year-old African American/Caucasian mother of three biological sons who is a divorced, single parent. She recently adopted her three-year-old niece, who was four in December 2012. She is a college graduate with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Social Welfare (BASW).
DR. H How long has your niece been with you?
MS. B Just now … four months.
DR. H Did you adopt her through a private agency or the state agency?
MS. B It was through the state agency.
DR. H When did you first become involved with the state agency?
MS. B I am part of the maternal family. O will be four in December 2012, and her brother S will be two in August 2012. They were in foster care together. It was looking as though they were originally going to be adopted by their foster parents. This did not work out, their misfortune. I came to find out that if I wasn’t able to adopt both of them together I could not adopt singularly. Being the single mother of three boys this was not an option for me. Then, shortly after a few months passed I learned that her brother was going to be returned back home to his biological father.
DR. H Okay, that was a good thing.
MS. B Yes, that left O that was to be adopted by the foster family she was residing with at that point for almost a year.
DR. H But she has family of her own.
MS. B Yes.
DR. H And I am wondering why the social worker didn’t pursue adoption by a family member rather than what I consider a stranger foster family.
MS. B I asked that same question myself. Even though I made myself available in the very beginning I was never contacted outright to adopt O but I was pretty much told that she was in a good place and that she had adjusted and that she had already come so far in the family that she was living with.
DR. H But federal law states that maternal relatives and/or paternal relatives should be the first option for any child who comes into the state foster care system.
MS. B Yes, yes, that is true. And I think that had I not had a background in social work and been someone not knowledgeable about the law and the system and the way things work, and having a support system that I could fall back on, that would have been the end of the case. She would have been adopted outside of the family. This being the only one out of all five children that would have ended up being adopted outside the family. Another reason that I was adamant about adopting her.
DR. H And it is important to keep children with their family.
MS. B Yes, and I wanted … never wanted O to ask the question of “Why my family never came for me?” I believe that, you know, that a lot of our children that are adopted out must always wonder that there is family that is available. Um, and I wanted to step forward and make sure that I did everything I could to adopt her and bring her home so that she would know not only her family but our family history, the culture that we come from. She would know both sides because we are biracial. She was going to be adopted by a white family. Um, and I wanted her to be able to know growing up as a biracial child some of the things that you are going to encounter which are very different than someone just of a white background, someone of just an African American background. It is very difficult for them to understand what we have gone through.
DR. H You are right.
MS. B I also wanted to make sure that O had contact with her mother. Her biological mother is my stepsister. She has multiple aunts, uncles, grandparents.
DR. H All the research that is done with children who exit the foster care system demonstrates that these children go and find their birth families. It is interesting to me as a social worker because social workers will say when they are doing a diligent search for families that they can’t find parents. “We can’t find his mom; we can’t find his dad. We’re terminating parental rights.” Yet, when these children age out of the system they go and seek out their birth families.
MS. B Yes, yes.
DR. H Well, why don’t you share with me the process involved in adopting your niece? Was it an easy process?
MS. B It was not an easy process. I wish I could say that it was. As I said earlier, having the background in social work definitely helped me to be able to navigate through the system because it was never made easy for me. I was basically kept being put on hold, not even knowing when there were court dates, happening to hear from it through my stepsister and appearing at the court dates to kind of get an idea of even what was going on, where she was at with things and found that it just seemed that they were fast tracking her to the adoption with her foster parents. So, someone who didn’t have that knowledge would never know that they could appear at these court hearings, that they had a right to be privy of what is going on in this case.
DR. H Right, you are absolutely right. Do you feel that race or institutional racism played a part in how O’s case was dealt with and in how you as a relative were treated throughout this process?
MS. B That could be some of it, but I think that most of it was the social worker who was handling the case at that time was very new to the profession and I think was probably under a lot of pressure and had a lot of other cases that she’s handling. It was just easier to please the foster family. It just made it a smoother system for her to just continue on to let O stay in this home that she has been in and to tie up the ends by completing the adoption. Whereas, when I presented I presented an additional amount of work that was going to have to take place. With that starting out as the background check and, you know, them coming to your home and doing a home study; there were multiple steps that needed to be taken that she had already taken with the foster family.
DR. H But you are family to O.
MS. B Right and the sad thing is she did not see that as a benefit. That is what would have hurt O had I not been someone who was very determined that I was going to adopt my niece.
DR. H For me what I am hearing is a problem in terms of social workers. This is one particular social worker, but it makes me wonder how many other cases are being handled this way. What it says to me is if you are going to do child welfare work then you need to learn that families come first.
MS. B Yeah.
DR. H You need to learn how to engage with families. It is not about making your tasks easier. It is about doing what’s best for the child. In the long run it is best for children to be with their families if at all possible.
MS. B Yeah.
DR. H That speaks volumes about what we are teaching in schools of social work to future social workers who are going to do child welfare work.
MS. B Yeah.
DR. H Are we not teaching them about families and the significance of families?
MS. B You know, it was something that really worried me that someone in my profession would not have grasped the importance of family and that there is so much value in keeping family together and even the odds that you can keep the biological parent connected to the child.
DR. H Right, because adoptions sometimes are usually closed. Although sometimes foster parents say they are going to keep the birth parent involved, in reality in the majority of cases this does not happen. I don’t know if it is fear or insecurity, but they don’t want birth parents involved once that adoption is finalized.
MS. B Yes, yes, I agree. That does seem to be that … that tends to be the case. And I am sure in this situation that would have definitely been the case from some of the comments that the foster parent had made about my sister and those types of things. Even though she was mentioning at the time that I would be able to come in and still have a relationship, I just never felt that I could not bank on that; that I needed to do everything I could to pursue adoption of O.
DR. H Throughout this process did your sister make her wishes known that she wanted O placed with you?
MS. B Yes, it was always my sister’s choice to have O come and live with me. Her three older daughters that I mentioned earlier were adopted by their paternal grandparents and this was after their biological mother’s rights were terminated. She had O shortly after those rights were terminated. I had talked with her that O would be taken from her care as well. So, she had always said from the beginning that if that happened she wanted O to come to me. She was able to get O back into the home and then lost custody again. And then at that point she knew that she didn’t want her rights to be terminated. Because with her attorney that she was working with it would be better for her to relinquish her rights and O would come to me. “If I relinquish my rights it has to be that O is going to live with my sister.”
DR. H Why were her older girls placed in the child welfare system?
MS. B So, their mother suffers from … she has some developmental challenges.
DR. H Okay.
MS. B There was some neglect and also domestic violence. And I think making a decision to stay in those relationships was therefore not protecting the children.
DR. H Right, I understand.
MS. B So, the children were taken from the home. And they did more than a year of counseling and different trainings for my sister to go to and they just were not seeing what they wanted out of her. So, her rights were terminated.
DR. H Is O in counseling or speech therapy?
MS. B She is currently in speech therapy. They said that when she came into foster care she was probably a year behind in her speech and when I got her in the home she was communicating, but there were a lot of words you could not understand. And then there was also not yet at three she still was not making four- or five-word sentences and just a lot of one-word commands.
DR. H Right.
MS. B But in these four short months her vocabulary has definitely expanded.
DR. H Oh, that’s wonderful.
MS. B Yes, and we have gotten past the frustration of her not being able to communicate with you.
DR. H Right.
MS. B Helping her to either learn new words or show us in a way and from there we are able to teach her how to say that back in its form.
DR. H I think that is wonderful. Well, what are some of the challenges that you encountered on this road to getting this adoption finalized?
MS. B Dr. H, I have to say that the biggest challenge for us was … ah, it just really felt the initial social worker had a lot of control over how this could have gone. She delayed a lot of things to where more time had gone by where she was left in that foster home and able to continue that bonding relationship there and not able to begin a relationship in the possible home that she was going to be adopted in.
DR. H Right, right.
MS. B It was also very difficult to maneuver through the system and kind of understand and I felt that there were a lot of stereotypes about how family was perceived when they are coming forward to adopt a child.
DR. H Can you give me some examples?
MS. B Yes, I began a weekly visit with O after going to visits with her mother. They began visits in my home which would be for about an hour and a half once a week.
DR. H Okay.
MS. B We were very limited to be in the house for that time. So, I asked at one of the visits if we couldn’t have permission to go to the zoo or the park, taking her outside of just that home visit.
DR. H Right.
MS. B They said, “You have to have a car seat.” Which … I was very much aware of. I asked, “Does she not have a car seat? Could you provide one?” And it was immediately … I found out in some of the transcribed papers that were given to the adoption social worker that I was seeking money for O because I asked for a car seat. And when I was told that I had to provide my own car seat. Even though at this point I had not … you know … there were …
DR. H You were still having visits.
MS. B We were just beginning our visits and nothing had been started on the application for adoption. I didn’t know if I was going to have her in my care. It was really looking as though she would be turned over to the adoption family. So, I just felt that, you know, it being a state law that parents have to have a car seat for their child, that O would have been provided one because she is given benefits by the state. She would’ve had a car seat.
DR. H Well, she also is in foster care.
MS. B Exactly.
DR. H It is my understanding that the Children’s Administration keeps a supply of car seats in the regional office for use when transporting kids.
MS. B What I also found out after asking this question because she also told me that I could not share the car seat that the foster mom had that I had to have my own. And again I think that this was just another thing that she was throwing up, an obstacle, something that she was trying to throw in the way to deter me from my decision to adopt O. It wasn’t so much about the means of getting a car seat. I found a way to get a car seat, but I just felt that the state should have provided her a car seat.
DR. H Especially since they have car seats.
MS. B Yes, what I found out from the adoption social worker once she had taken this over and she saw this write-up, she asked me, “What is the big deal about the car seat?” She said that you were seeking money for this. I said, “All I was asking was, Where the car seat is for O? O should have had her own car seat; when she came into foster care she is a ward of the state. She should have had her own car seat.” “I can’t believe they did not give you a car seat. We have a budget specifically for these things.”
DR. H That’s what I was talking about.
MS. B You should never been required because she was not in your care. I did purchase the car seat. And I was told by the social worker after I kept pushing the issue that there was not a specific law about me sharing the car seat with the foster parent, but that she just did not think that it was a good idea. That just told me it was her own (laughs).
DR. H This almost sounds like social worker bias.
MS. B It was her own bias that she had. And then there were the difficulties with turning and gathering all the paperwork and learning what was required of me to be able to adopt her.
DR. H Did she sit down and explain what would be needed in terms of documentation?
MS. B I never heard from her, never heard from her. She never offered to sit down with me or to have a meeting. If it wasn’t for me just looking for other routes … my sister’s lawyer had hired a social worker to come in and actually do an adoptive home study because we were not getting anywhere with the state. Out of her own funds she paid for the social worker to come in. And she did an adoptive home study of me. She sat down and explained what the process was and what I would need to do. And then they also had a legal aide who went out and found out what it was I needed to do class-wise, so what training needed to take place. I had a twenty-seven-hour course I needed to sit through just as if I was becoming, applying to be a foster parent.
DR. H Because I think the state requires … I think it’s called “From Foster to Adopt.” You actually have to serve as the child’s foster parent, even if you are a relative prior to moving into adoption.
MS. B And so, they called and found out when the class was; the class was the day that they called. It just had started.
DR. H Why is everything always last minute?
MS. B Because I didn’t have a social worker who was willing to work with me to make sure I had that information. That was not her goal. So, it wasn’t something that she put anything into.
DR. H You are a professional person who works full-time.
MS. B Yes, she knew that. Yes, I think that she was hoping that I would just become so engrossed in my life and see that this was too much work. She was not getting anywhere and I would not follow through.
DR. H Obviously, she did not plan on you following through.
MS. B I just had to find other avenues to get what it was that I needed. We even had to contact the state to find out why is it that things are not moving? And why is it that we are not having visits? It took calling someone who was above this social worker’s supervisor to actually get the ball rolling.
DR. H I remember when I talked with you. Tell us what happened.
MS. B So very frustrating, not knowing when courts dates were, and the court dates that I did find out about, going and there really being no mention of my wanting to adopt O. And when it was mentioned it was more of a “Well we really don’t know if she will be able to; you know, she stepped up before, but nothing ever happened.” So, I was written off. And never did they come back and revisit and want to sit down and figure out why O was not adopted the first time she was put into foster care.
DR. H You stated that what was presented to you was adopt O and her brother.
MS. B Yes.
DR. H Not one child, but two. I understand that because state law says if at all possible siblings should be placed together. I understand that, but you also made it very clear in your own personal family and circumstances that you could not adopt two children.
MS. B I knew that it would not be fair to those children. The ages that they were and my work schedule and I also have three older boys.
DR. H Right.
MS. B So, when I was told that, it was devastating to me and it was really something that I had to really be honest with myself. You know, could I really do this? And I’m walking away from both of them is what it felt like to me. And it was very hard for me to even tell her at the time that I just can’t possibly take both of them. But on the other end of it I knew that it was the best thing for me to do.
DR. H Right.
MS. B But then after that they never called me to tell me that …
DR. H O was going to be in the system and placed for adoption as a single child.
MS. B No, I was never told that; only I had found it out through her mother who had called and said that “S is going to go home, her younger brother is going to go home with his father.” I said, “That means they are splitting them; so that means that O will be up for adoption.” And then I called the social worker back and told her, “If she’s going to be up and then I want to adopt her.” The attorney had to also write a letter to them to tell them to stop any type of proceedings that you are trying to do for adoption of O by the foster parents; we have someone who is very seriously looking to adopt O but she never got back to me with any paperwork, never took it upon herself, you know, to explain what this process would be like and never got me the classes that needed to be taken, none of that. She knew all of that early on.
DR. H It appears that you had to advocate for yourself and have others advocate for you.
MS. B Oh, yeah, yeah, it was very much the attorney and her assistants who they also did their own home study; it was just kind of a walk-through of the home. Mind you still at this time, this social worker had never been to my home. It wasn’t until I contacted the state upper leadership who actually got some fire behind her. It was her and the guardian ad litem who came to my home to do what they called a home study. And if they were there all of ten minutes I would be surprised.
DR. H Well, one cannot do a home study in ten minutes.
MS. B (Laughs) They both walked through the home; let me explain where things were. I was actually opening doors and explaining which room was … belonged to which person in the home, where O was going to be set up and was explaining we were in the process of getting a bed pulled out of the garage that had been my older son’s bed when he was a young boy.
DR. H Right.
MS. B And the comment that I got from the social worker was “All you need is a mattress; as long as they have a place to lay their head.”
DR. H A mattress, what kind of statement is that for a social worker to make when discussing sleeping arrangements for a young child?
MS. B I didn’t have to have a bed or a frame. As long as they had a place to lay their head that was all they cared about. I thought wow! I said, “She will not have to lie on the floor. I will be seeing to it that she has a bed.” They didn’t. … They never looked for anything to see if it was safe and toddler-proof. They noted that it was very clean and O should be fine there and they were out of the door. And I still did not really hear from her after that point just to make sure we were continuing. We increased our visits; we were having overnight visits at this time. She would contact us if there was something that the foster parent needed and she was sort of the in-between person. She ended up turning that over to us ourselves. We just worked together to find out the best way to meet up.
DR. H How active was the juvenile court judge in this case?
MS. B And, once I was presented even though it was presented in the light of not being a trusted … trusted individual to follow through on this adoption, he saw otherwise. He read my letters of recommendation; saw that I had gainful employment for more than 20 plus years, and that I had raised three boys.
DR. H Well, you are a good mom.
MS. B Thank you, that I had did due diligence on my own, and had brought forth background checks from individuals who were going to be in the care of O, that I had gone through measures to make sure that my home was ready for O and he was one, I can remember him saying when she said, “Well, when I called her and told her that if she could not adopt both of them that this was not going to happen.” He said, “I actually admire her for not jumping the gun and saying I’ll take them. They are my niece and nephew; I’ll take them.” He said that “This tells me that she’s got a head on her shoulders and she really thought this through. It must not have been an easy decision for her. I want this case fast tracked for dual.” They still had not gotten the mother’s rights terminated and where they were with the father’s rights.
DR. H And that is in federal law that they do concurrent planning and work with parents, but also try to pursue another permanency goal.
MS. B He wanted to see O in my home within the next few months. The transition had better start taking place. Because as I was telling him I just felt like every time we would come back to court there was another continuance and still that was another month that O was there or two months. Just seeing her one hour a week was just not enough.
DR. H Right.
MS. B He agreed. He agreed that we should be looking at this case as being an adoption and that we should start building this relationship and everything we should have in place for this foster home to adoption.
DR. H And children can attach. Just because a child has been in a foster home does not mean that the child cannot attach to someone else, especially a child as young as O.
MS. B Right and so she was just three years old when we were moving into the transition. That was commonly shared with me. “She is really bonded with this foster family and we just don’t know how well she will bond with you. It can be really difficult when you have to move a child more than one time. She has now had three placements.” Those three placements being her placement from birth she was taken and put into foster care; she was returned to her mom and then she was returned to foster care and then had still been staying in that same foster home. They said, “Oh, you create a fourth move; she probably would not bond with you because of that.” Because prior to her being in foster care she and I had not really seen each other, maybe once or twice when she was born.
DR. H Right.
MS. B When she got her back I got to see her at a family gathering that we had. So they said, “You don’t have any close relationship with her; it is not like you saw her all the time. You were not like a caretaker for her. You just are merely related to her and actually you are related through marriage.” So, I really thought that I had to defend my relationship with my sister. I lived in the home with my stepsister.
DR. H Right.
MS. B And I actually helped to raise them as children, her and her sisters. So, I have a very close relationship with all of them. They look to me for guidance as their big sister. So, it was very difficult for someone from the outside to say that this wasn’t family and that we did not want to do anything possible to keep our family together.
DR. H Well, O’s mom voiced her opinion.
MS. B Yes.
DR. H She stated where she wanted her child to live.
MS. B Exactly, that should have said it all, but unfortunately I felt they did not have much respect for her mother. They didn’t take anything that she said seriously.
DR. H That is very sad; it is very troubling to me because she is her birth mom.
MS. B She is her birth mom.
DR. H How did this case move along after it was fast tracked?
MS. B We were really on a fast track. It was turned over to the adoption side of the house and it was just really like night and day. I got a new social worker who was very experienced in the field. She has been doing this for sixteen years. Contacted me right away, the first thing she wanted to do was come to my home, make an appointment for us to sit down and to look at all the paperwork. She had questions herself. She would review the case and saw the notes from the other social worker. Something is just not matching up for me. I reading what she had written in the notes and I see the recommendations from some very qualified folks who say this child needs to be moving forward.
DR. H I had questions. Certainly, I was not working with you as a social worker, but I had lots of questions.
MS. B Right, but I thought, you know, that this is what a social worker should be doing. They should be asking the questions. I do not feel comfortable with this child being here or if someone else has brought up something I need to do due diligence. I need to find out what is really going on. So once she met with me she wanted to know from my own mouth what had happened, why things had taken so long. She questioned it herself. She read what the judge had written. She said, “It seems really odd that only one person that has said anything negative out of everything that was presented in this case.” So, she was excited to move things forward. There was not once that I did not know what the process was going to be. I was given every piece of paperwork that was needed. I was always told in advance when the court case was. If I needed to be there or if I didn’t; she was always respectful of the fact that I had to work. If there was a court case that I didn’t need to be there for or couldn’t be there, she either sent me the information or called me or even sent me an e-mail. She was very open and transparent about where we were with the case. Any time I had questions she was right there to answer them quickly, even worked on Sundays.
DR. H It sounds to me like a social worker who is engaging in what I call good child welfare practice and she was doing what was in the best interest of the child.
MS. B She was at all points.
DR. H Where was the guardian ad litem in this process?
MS. B She was there, but I felt that was only making business because this is what I have to do. I would always hear from her a day or two before court.
DR. H But the guardian ad litem is supposed to be an advocate for the child and doing what is in the child’s best interest.
MS. B Yeah, yeah, she was also holding up this case. She has worked O’s older sisters through that whole case. She and my sister had a history. They did not get along. It came down to where they were trying to get me to keep O in the home that she was in … in the foster care home. She called me one day and said, “I am really struggling.” I said, “I find that really difficult. I am going to ask you something outright, what are you struggling with? Is your hesitancy because of the feelings that you harbor towards my sister? And you can’t get over what happened with the first case and see what is in the best interest with O.” At first she did not know what to say. “I appreciate you asking the question. No, it does not have anything to do with that. I struggle with the fact that O is doing so well. I have never seen her do this well with a family and she is now beginning to speak and these types of things.” And I said, “And you don’t feel that she can get there here in my home in my care? Do you not feel that her being able to have a relationship with her mother, her being able to have a relationship with her cousins, aunts, uncles, grandmas, be in a home where she would be loved by family that she would not be able to flourish in this home?” She couldn’t say no to it.
DR. H Right.
MS. B She said, “I’m really glad that I called you and we had this conversation because I was really on the fence. I didn’t know if I should go to court and recommend you for placement or if I should stick with where O is where I have seen her bond and where I have seen her flourish.” So she came to the home. We were having a visit. She was amazed. She said, “Just in that short time I can tell just in that time she is bonding with you.” I said, “Yeah.”
DR. H Well, you are her relative.
MS. B So at that point she went to the court and had made the decision. She was also one that I believe had held this up. From that point on she was there. I have to meet with you before I go to court. She has only been to the daycare once.
DR. H Does she like her daycare?
MS. B She loves her daycare. She has made friends which is something she did not have before.
DR. H That’s wonderful; that’s wonderful.
MS. B She is talking so much more now that she has been in daycare. Also, learning some social skills. When I received her in the home she did not say her name. She recognized her name but did not say it. So, she has learned to say her name. She also didn’t understand hello and good-bye. She would always hold her head down when someone would say hello or good-bye. Prompting her to say hello or good-bye you wouldn’t get anything out of her. From the time she has been in daycare which was February when I got her, so four months; she has exhibited behaviors that the other children are doing. Saying good-bye to the parents; they know whose parents are who. She runs to me; I am almost afraid that she is going to knock me over.
DR. H. She is glad to see you.
MS. B She is so glad to see me and she jumps into my arms. With my children I was always say, “And how was your day?” For the first couple of days it would be she and I in the car she would not say a word. No, even to answer a yes or no question she wouldn’t. There was just no conversation, no excitement. I thought, oh my God, does she not like her daycare? That was not the case at all. I just think she needed to feel …
DR. H I think that she was probably still adjusting.
MS. B She was … she was. Now, she gets in the car and I ask, “Did you have a good day?” She says, “Yes, I had a good day.”
DR. H That’s remarkable. For me that means she is in the right place.
MS. B Oh, thank you, thank you.
DR. H Is there anything else you want to tell me?
MS. B No, I think that is everything.
DR. H Thank so much.
MS. B You are welcome.
FEMALE FOSTER CARE ALUMNUS
This twenty-six-year-old young woman identified herself as Caucasian but stated, “We have a little bit of Native American in our family.” Mrs. T entered the foster care system when she was in middle school. She has been happily married for three years and has been in a relationship with her husband for almost seven years. She graduated from a Master of Social Work Program in June 2013. She is the proud mother of three children. Her six-month-old baby boy accompanied her to the interview. Not only was Mrs. T placed in foster care when she was entering the preadolescent stage of her development, but she also was separated from her siblings who were placed in foster care.
DR. H As you know, I’m interviewing you for my book. Because I want to bring some voices to this, my book. I am very happy to get a chance to see your baby.
MRS. T My baby just turned six months old today.
DR. H Oh! How exciting. Is he sitting up?
MRS. T He’s sitting up; he just started crawling a little bit; he can scoot a little bit. And now he can get on all fours, but then he doesn’t know what to do after that.
DR. H Okay, let’s start by having you tell me about your ethnic background.
MRS. T Um, I am Caucasian. We have a little bit of Native American in my family. Um, I guess when I was going through the system, they told us not to mark that down because you’d have to through the tribal stuff.
DR. H Right and now, you should. You know, for kids coming into the system, they can mark it down, which is good. I think that we should celebrate our heritage, whatever it is.
MRS. T Yeah, okay.
DR. H Tell me, what age were you when you became involved in the foster care system?
MRS. T It was about seventh or eighth grade.
DR. H Okay; and what brought you into the system?
MRS. T My parents started doing drugs. Well when I … my mom first met my dad, they were at a community college in Y, and my mom had me when she was seventeen. So they were kind of in a little bit of trouble up until I was like in third grade. Then they straightened out for a few years.
DR. H Okay. They were young.
MRS. T Yeah. Yeah. And then they straightened out for a few years and then starting about seventh grade my dad lost his job at Microsoft. And when I was a baby, he did a lot of cocaine and then he went through rehab. So then when he lost his job at Microsoft, they both started doing methamphetamine.
DR. H And that drug is very common in this part of the country.
MRS. T Yeah. Yeah and so that’s when it kind of started; I think they started up again when I was like in seventh grade, but things didn’t really start to get …
DR. H Are you an only child?
MRS. T I have three younger sisters that are both my mom’s also and my dad has a … a son that’s about a year younger than me.
DR. H And did all of your siblings come into the system too?
MRS. T My little brother that’s just a year younger lived with his mom the whole time, so he wasn’t involved.
DR. H Okay.
MRS. T But my younger sisters were, but they lived with a family friend in the Tri-Cities. We lived here.
DR. H That means you were separated. Siblings are often separated once they enter the child welfare system.
MRS. T Yeah, we were.
DR. H This type of separation is not good for kids.
MRS. T No, it is not.
DR. H We know it’s best, when children come into the system as a sibling group, to keep them together.
MRS. T Um … I can see that. Sometimes I still think of my sisters as like seven and eight years old because that’s when we went in the system. It’s sometimes hard for me to believe that one is twenty-two and one is about to turn twenty-one.
DR. H I’m sure! I’m sure. Are you all connected?
MRS. T Um, yeah, my one sister, the middle sister is about to graduate from C. W., yeah, at the end of June. She’s going to be a history teacher. And then my history teacher, kind of; she finally just found a job. But it’s been tough for her. She’s the one that’s always in trouble.
DR. H Is she?
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H But I think it’s a positive thing that she’s got a job.
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H That’s good because work is important to most people. Work can impact how an individual feels about her/himself. I think that will be a good thing for her to be a teacher. And she’s got the two of you as role models. (Mrs. T laughs.) Well tell me a little bit about what it was like being in the foster care system.
MRS. T Um, I think I had kind of a unique experience because when my parents started getting in a lot of trouble, I had a friend in high school that asked me if I wanted to start going to her church. So I started going to her church and going to bible study; I had a bible study teacher. And she kind of knew what was happening
DR. H What was going on?
MRS. T I went to … I lived with my friend for like two months and that did not work. (Laughs momentarily) Living with your like best friend in high school didn’t work out. And then I lived with my grandma for like a month, but the state didn’t want to place me with my grandma.
DR. H Why?
MRS. T Things my grandpa did when he was younger.
DR. H Okay.
MRS. T Yeah, he had a couple of criminal history things from when he was like twenty-two or something.
DR. H Okay. Oh my goodness!
MRS. T (Laughs) Yeah.
DR. H I am sure that, you know, those types of issues come up today with some kinship caregivers. One of the things that’s being done is they’re actually reviewing these types of cases on a case-by-case basis because what somebody did twenty years ago is sometimes no longer an issue when assessing for child safety and best interest of the child. Sometimes it really doesn’t have a bearing on whether they can be a good parent twenty years later, especially when a child already has a strong emotional relationship with a kinship caregiver such as a grandmother or some other relative.
MRS. T Yeah, I’d agree with that. And so since it wasn’t working out with my friends, my bible teachers said I could come live with them and then the state was trying to make it so I couldn’t live them either until they became foster parents. So they had to go through all the …
DR. H They had to go through the licensing process in order to become foster parents.
MRS. T … rigamarole. Yeah, and that was like a yearlong process while I was there.
DR. H Oh my goodness! However, the licensing process for foster parents sometimes takes an inordinate amount of time, especially if the foster home study is being done by a social worker from a public child welfare agency.
MRS. T And I remember, they went through a private agency. I remember they had to do certain things, like put up the laundry soap when people would come to check out their house and stuff. I’m like sixteen years old; you don’t have to keep the laundry soap put away.
DR. H Well to me those were kind of artificial measures. I can certainly understand putting up laundry soap and other household items if you had been an infant or toddler. However, you were a teenager and certainly not going to do anything dangerous with laundry soap? What did those things have to do with being a good parent?
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H Frankly, there are many other more important factors that are part of a foster home study.
MRS. T Yeah, so I … I got lucky with being with my foster family that I got.
DR. H Did the private agency finally approve this family?
MRS. T Yeah, they did. Um, and I lived with them all through high school. I had an opportunity to go live back with my parents and my sisters. Move back with them, but I just did not want to go back to my parents.
DR. H You chose to stay with your foster parents.
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H Did they adopt you or did they continue to be your foster parents?
MRS. T They were just my foster parents. I think they got guardianship.
DR. H Okay. A lot of foster parents prefer to become a child’s legal guardian rather than go through the adoption process. And a lot of relatives also decide to become legal guardians rather than adoptive parents. I know that a lot of relatives that I worked with in child welfare preferred to become legal guardians for relatives in their care; they stated that they did not feel right adopting a relative because they were already blood relatives of the children in their care.
MRS. T Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
DR. H Well, what kind of things did you and your foster parents do together?
MRS. T Um, well, I moved in November of my sophomore year. And my freshman year was just kind of just bouncing around; I did not get good grades that year at all. And then they, they were trying to have kids for awhile and she ended up getting pregnant like a month after I started living there.
DR. H Oh my goodness! That kind of thing often happens to some couples when they adopt after trying for years to have a biological child.
MRS. T Right, they finally. … You are finally just relaxed about it. So she had a baby like at the end of August, my first year of living there. So a lot of the time was like preparing for the baby.
DR. H You and your foster parents were getting the baby’s room ready, and also getting the family ready for a new addition.
MRS. T Yeah, and it was my sixteenth birthday; they actually took me to Disneyland because I …
DR. H Oh, that was nice.
MRS. T Yeah, I had never been anywhere before. Um, it’s just kind of a lot of adjusting still. We still … she still had a lot of the bible study for the church. And I then went on, you know, some trips with the church.
DR. H Okay, so what I’m hearing is that religion was important to them and to you.
MRS. T Yeah, definitely.
DR. H And I think that was good.
MRS. T Yeah and it was hard because my parents aren’t religious at all. And I think that’s one of the main reasons why I gravitated …
DR. H Was religion one of the reasons that you gravitated toward this family?
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H Are your children being brought up in the church?
MRS. T He’s not right now.
DR. H Okay.
MRS. T Maybe, when he gets a little older.
DR. H Right.
MRS. T I haven’t found a new church since I went to SPU. And some things kind of turned me off at SPU. It was kind of tough going to a religious school because I felt like my family was not accepted because they weren’t religious in many ways. So I was kind of struggling with that and now that I have my own child, I definitely want him brought up in the church and now it’s just a matter of …
DR. H It is just a matter of finding the right church.
MRS. T (Laughing) Yeah, and getting back on my feet after having a baby.
DR. H Right, and sometimes it helps to just visit churches. Visits help you to actually examine their doctrine, get a feel for the congregation and see if it feels right for you.
MRS. T Right.
DR. H There are a lot of interdenominational churches that welcome anyone. And their doctrines are not strict; you know, some traditional churches are very strict in terms of their doctrines.
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H Some of them do things that I think a church should do. I think churches should be warm and welcoming to anybody. And that’s one of the things I like about my church (Mrs. T chuckles momentarily); they welcome anybody, homeless, poor, etc. But I know that certain churches are very different. You know, religion is supposed to be about helping people, reaching out to the less fortunate, and embracing anyone without any kind of discriminatory practices.
MRS. T Yeah, I agree.
DR. H Well, who encouraged you to go on to college?
MRS. T Um, it’s probably my foster family. I kind of. … My parents never graduated college, but they were pretty adamant about us going, even when they were in trouble (laughs).
DR. H Right, well most parents want their children to have a better life than the life they had when they were growing up. No matter what they’re doing they want their children to excel and do well. And I think that’s a positive quality in your parents.
MRS. T Yeah, I’d agree. So it’s kind of instilled in us since …
DR. H You were little.
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H That is a good thing because education is extremely important.
MRS. T Yeah, and then I didn’t really have the means or the know-how until I was in foster care.
DR. H Okay, I certainly understand what you are saying.
MRS. T My foster mom helped me figure out how to apply, how to get scholarships and those kinds of kind of things.
DR. H And did the foster care system help?
MRS. T They … yeah, I got a lot of help from Triage for Kids; they had like … a coaching to college mentor type of …
DR. H Was that the agency that monitored your foster home?
MRS. T Ah, no, it was Olive Crest.
DR. H Okay, I’m familiar with them. I’m actually on their advisory board.
MRS. T Oh, yeah?
DR. H Yes.
MRS. T Yeah, they were the ones; the social worker, she was wonderful; it was just that there were tons of referrals that they had to monitor.
DR. H Okay. And do you think that these rules were more state regulations than private agency regulations?
MRS. T Um, they could’ve been. I’m not sure. It seems that a lot of the rules were geared to whether or not you were going to be long-term foster parents and have kids coming in and out. Not necessarily geared to being foster parents one time. They were becoming foster parents so that I could stay there. It wasn’t individualized; it was more about the …
DR. H It seems that the process was more about adhering to the general policies and procedures for licensing any foster home.
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H Okay. What else do you remember about the system?
MRS. T Um, I did not have a good experience with anyone from CPS or DSHS.
DR. H Okay, please tell me about your experiences.
MRS. T Um, my, the very first caseworker told my grandma that at this point since I was already like fourteen or fifteen, there was no reason for her to be doing all this work anyways because I would end up just like my parents.
DR. H That was a very insensitive thing to say about you. In fact, it was quite a most judgmental statement.
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H It was a very discouraging statement for a social worker to make to you and your grandma.
MRS. T Yeah, and the second social worker would come to ask … just ask for my parents. I had not seen my parents. I did not know where my parents were for about year. And so she would come over every couple of weeks only to ask grandma about my parents. She insisted that I knew where my parents were. And after that my foster mom told her that was like … that’s enough. Like because she did not act like a social worker, but she was actually a social worker. She graduated from the Seattle campus.
DR. H Unfortunately, there are some individuals who have a Master of Social Work degree but are clueless about how to be a social worker and how to engage with children, adolescents, and families.
MRS. T And she’s like … that’s not okay for her to be asking you all the time about your parents. And so she had a friend that was working for DSHS at the time and so she became my case manager.
DR. H Okay. And was she a good case manager?
MRS. T Yeah, she was.
DR. H What do you think was this social worker’s motive in continuously asking you about your parents? Was she trying to develop a plan to terminate their rights?
MRS. T That could’ve been it. I think also they wanted my parents to be doing their drug analysis treatment stuff that they were supposed to be doing. And I think it was because my sisters were living with my dad’s mom in Tri-Cities.
DR. H Okay, it never ceases to amaze me when I hear of these types of experiences.
MRS. T So I don’t know if they were trying to …
DR. H You don’t know if the plan was to return your sisters to your parent’s home.
MRS. T Yeah, but I didn’t see them for about a year. I’m not sure really where they were.
DR. H That must have been hard, not knowing where they were or what was happening to them.
MRS. T Yeah, it was. I’m glad I had my grandma … my grandma was still around the whole time.
DR. H And I think it is wonderful that you were able to maintain a relationship with her.
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H Because for children whether they’re in foster care or not, it’s important to have family connections and it’s especially important for children in foster care because they lose so much.
MRS. T Yeah. Yeah, she was, I mean … I remember … I’d always call her to pick me up from my friend’s house. So she’d pick me every evening and I wasn’t allowed to spend the night there. She would take me back at like 8 or 9 at night like every single day. I was tired of living at my friend’s house. And then we always had Sunday dinner with my grandma and we still do.
DR. H Oh! I think that’s wonderful.
MRS. T Yeah, so it’s been a little rough because my mom is actually with my grandma right now.
DR. H Is she?
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H Is she clean and sober?
MRS. T I think for the most part. She’s not doing any like street drugs that I know about.
DR. H Right, I hope that she is drug-free.
MRS. T But she still drinks every once in a while and I think that she has a problem with prescription drugs.
DR. H That’s sad.
MRS. T Yeah, so it’s been tough not wanting your mom around your child, you know.
DR. H Of course, however, you have to do what is best for your child.
MRS. T And since my mom lives with my grandma, I don’t feel like I have a good relationship with my grandma anymore because I don’t necessarily like or want to be around my mom.
DR. H Right, and yeah it’s really hard. I know this from my own work experience, for grandmas to tell their children, whether it’s the daughter or a son, that you can’t live here or you can’t come because you’re using drugs is a hard thing to do. I think it’s because they love them, but at the same time they’re enabling them to continue to allow them to live or visit their home when they are actively using drugs and/or alcohol. And I don’t think that most grandparents see it that way. It’s their child and they often say, “I don’t want my child out on the streets.” But you have to do what’s best for your children. And I hope for your mom that maybe having grandchildren will motivate her to clean up her act.
MRS. T I keep hoping so. Um, but she’s better the past year than she’s been in a long time. But she’s not like well enough that I feel comfortable.
DR. H Right, and I’m thinking if you want your children to have a relationship with your grandma, she can come to your house without your mom; she sounds like a wonderful person from what you have told me.
MRS. T (Chuckles) Yeah she definitely is.
DR. H Is there anything else that you want to tell me about foster care? I think it’s remarkable that you’re studying to become a social worker. What do you think the foster care system can do to make life better for all children?
MRS. T I think the main thing, and I’m not sure if it’s for every agency, but they need to stop labeling children in foster care. It seems like you’re labeled as a foster child and so you are; you’re a criminal whether or not you’ve done anything just because your parents have messed up. And anywhere you go, whether it’s, even in the system that’s supposed to be working for you … you’re criminal. And outside of that, you’re labeled kind of as a criminal. I remember, um, in Texas where they had the guy that was marrying all the girls.
DR. H Right, I remember hearing about those girls.
MRS. T And they put all of them in foster care and there was like this whole huge media thing.
DR. H I remember seeing that big story on one of the national news networks about the man and those girls.
MRS. T They were saying that they would end up awful because they were in foster care. And I was thinking that I was in foster care at one time in my life. I actually got a scholarship with Orphan Foundation of America and they were very involved in advocating for foster children and I remember the lady who was in charge of the scholarship I got; she like wrote them this long letter about how, you know, sometimes foster care is better and that the labels given because children are in the foster care system are going to influence them to act badly.
DR. H I don’t agree about labeling because I do not think that children in the foster care system should be labeled. I’m not working in the child welfare system now, but when I did, I always told my workers be careful about the language that you use. And in this agency we do not say “foster child.” We say, “A child in foster care or a girl in foster care or a boy in foster care”; we don’t say “foster child” because that has a very negative connotation in this country. And we don’t want to label children. We don’t want to make children feel bad about themselves. Why did you decide to become a social worker?
MRS. T Um, well, I worked for Triage for Kids all through my undergrad. I actually was in pre-med my first two years of college and, um, I did fine I just. … When my grandpa was really sick I went and visited him during his dialysis.
DR. H Okay.
MRS. T And I almost passed out. It was yeah. … That’s … and I didn’t like being in the hospital at all and I kept going with pre-med for like another six months. And then I decided to do something else and I just did English literature. Because I just decided to do something that I wanted to do and then I worked at Triage that whole time and then after that they extended my work study so that I could work there.
DR. H Tell us a little bit about them. What do they do?
MRS. T Ah, they are. … They kind of give the supplemental services to foster youth; they have tutoring, or coaching to college; they also have educational advocates who are basically kind of like lawyers for kids in the system to …
DR. H I think that’s wonderful.
MRS. T Yeah, to make sure they can stay at the same school. Because I think they say that every time you switch a school you are like three months behind the other kids who aren’t switching.
DR. H See, that’s … that’s hard for children, not only academically but emotionally because these children have already suffered a lot. And to leave your school and leave your friends that’s another trauma for them.
MRS. T Yeah, definitely it’s hard. And so I worked in the tutoring department my first year and that was where I would test the kids before and after they entered the program. I think they had to do that for their United Way grant that they had and then they decided to contract that out so I worked at their warehouse; they called it Triage Wearhouse, but its W-e-a-r and it’s like a clothing store with new and used clothes for foster kids. And they come like a couple of times a year to pick out their outfits and stuff.
DR. H That’s nice.
MRS. T Yeah, so I worked there for like four or five years and then they didn’t have money for my position anymore and my student loans were about to come up or they were due. So I got a receptionist job at a granite and marble company and I actually worked there just until I had my baby.
DR. H Okay.
MRS. T Um, and I was the inside sales manager for about a year before I stopped working there. And I didn’t really think about going back to school until I started getting very frustrated with my sales job.
DR. H Okay, I can certainly understand your frustration.
MRS. T Because you’d have people call and they’d be like, “This green tile isn’t the green tile I ordered. I need this color green to match my sink.” And I’m like there are the kids that don’t have food. You know, there are elderly people that are being abused, like honestly I don’t care about your green tiles.
DR. H Right, I understand because dealing with the public can be difficult.
MRS. T But I have to pretend that I do.
DR. H Right, because people can be insensitive when they’re dealing with sales people.
MRS. T Yeah, yeah, so then I remembered how great some parts of being in foster care were, and how awful other parts were. So then I decided to go back and get my Masters in Social Work since I’d looked online for new jobs and half the jobs would say you needed a Master in Social Work. So, everyone I would see said, “It will be good.”
DR. H Right, one can never have too much education.
MRS. T Or it would be meaningful.
DR. H And do you plan to work in child welfare?
MRS. T For the most part, I don’t want to work for like CPS or anything.
DR. H Right, there are many other areas of child welfare.
MRS. T So, I would probably like to work for a private agency.
DR. H And that’s good child welfare work; private agencies tend to have highly trained and skilled social workers and it’s not to say there are not some good social workers with the state agency. But by and large children can get a higher caliber of services and children get individual attention. Social workers at private agencies have smaller caseloads. I’m speaking from professional experience.
MRS. T Yeah, yeah … because technically I had my social worker at the state level and my social worker at Olive Crest. And my social worker from Olive Crest was always there, always helping whereas the state one would not come by for a couple weeks.
DR. H My first job after I got my MSW was at a private agency, the Children’s Home Society of Florida. I had approximately fifteen cases. I did foster care and adoptions. I could give every child individual attention.
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H And it makes a difference. Anything else you want to tell me?
MRS. T Hmm …
DR. H Do you think that race entered into the treatment or the services you received?
MRS. T It probably did with me not knowing. For instance, I might have received more services or more attention just for being white. Um, or going into Tree House, I don’t … I wouldn’t say any of them are racist, but they might have stereotypes where I walk in as a white kid getting services and then a family of African Americans might come in and they might not get as great a service just because of the color of their skin. And I never thought of that until I had that diversity class.
DR. H And it has been shown in research that there are service disparities on the basis of race.
MRS. T Yeah, because I would say there was a far greater number of ethnic diversity in my … like when I would go for the independent living skills programs. I would be like one of the only white people. And that could be just from starting out at the beginning where they were taken from their home quicker than I was. It was. … We were probably living at my house for about a year that they could’ve taken us out at any point. We didn’t have heat, we didn’t have water for a while, sometimes we would have water, sometimes we didn’t; we didn’t have electricity. My dad and his friend, who I’m pretty sure were high at the time, built this weird shed in the back to put a generator back there, so that we could have a couple of electric cords and like we didn’t have garbage service and things like that, and that was probably my entire freshman year of high school.
DR. H And the child welfare system still allowed you to stay at home with your parents.
MRS. T Yeah, until my parents got kicked out of the house at the end of my freshman year; that’s basically when we became homeless technically; that is when they finally took us out. Which they probably they could’ve just kept us in our house because we were white and you know that deep down, that they were, you know, a little bit racist about it. Whereas I feel like they’re really quick to take kids of color out of their house.
DR. H It’s true, it’s true, research has shown including some of my research that children of color are removed at a higher number, they remain in the system longer, and it’s harder for them to exit of the system once they get in, and these things are prevalent at every decision point in the child welfare system.
MRS. T Yeah, I believe it. I think it’s, you know, bad on the other end too. I feel like we should’ve been taken out a lot sooner and I think it just needs to be an equal playing field.
DR. H I agree with you because I feel that you and your siblings living in the conditions that you described were at risk of harm. I mean, what if that cord had caught fire and the house had burned down? I mean that’s a risk.
MRS. T My, I can’t eat pancakes to this day because that’s all that I could make for my sisters and I for like that entire year, and there was a Jack in the Box down the street so I can’t eat Jack in the Box. And like we had a social worker come and interview me at the school and I didn’t lie, I told her what was going on but it was …
DR. H She still left you there.
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H And it sounds like you were the person who was parenting your sisters.
MRS. T Yeah, I think that’s one of the things I’m thankful for my foster mom for was that she would always … I would start doing something like some kind of … taking care of something and she would be like, “This is your time to be a child and to think about yourself.” Or I’d be worried about what my parents were doing and she be like, “They’re adults, they can take care of themselves. You worry about yourself and just yourself.” So that’s been tough learning that.
DR. H Right, I am sure it was a hard lesson after being thrust into the parental role as a child.
MRS. T But I have been grateful for that kind of lesson in my life.
DR. H Yet you had a right to your childhood.
MRS. T Yeah, so there I was … I’m very thankful to her for giving me a chance to at least have a little bit of fun.
DR. H Are you still in contact with her?
MRS. T Hmm, she actually is … I’m going to the NASW conference on Saturday, and my husband is going to be out of town for his state bowling tournament, so she’s actually watching my son both days.
DR. H Oh! I think that’s wonderful.
MRS. T Yeah, and she. … Her kids are both eight and ten now, so they are still young. They live in Auburn and so it’s a little tough sometimes to drive.
DR. H Right. But I think it’s good that you still maintain a relationship with her.
MRS. T Yeah.
DR. H I am sure that is means a lot that the two of you are still close.
MRS. T Yeah, we get along pretty good. She’s only like ten years older than me so it was probably tough. I can imagine it being tough for her before, having a teenager before a kid. I can’t imagine.
DR. H But from what you’ve described to me, you were not a teenager who was a behavior problem.
MRS. T No, I wasn’t.
DR. H You were not sneaking out of the house or engaging in some other inappropriate behavior (both laugh).
MRS. T No. I probably should have given her a little test …
DR. H Are you referring to a test such as talking back and not listening? I bet you obeyed the house rules whatever they were.
MRS. T Yeah, I did.
DR. H Is there anything else you would like to say?
MRS. T I don’t think so.
DR. H Well, thank you so much for talking to me.
MRS. T Thanks for interviewing me.
DR. H It was my pleasure.