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Choosing Foster Parents over
Fathers
Jul 27, 2007
By Jeffery M. Leving and Glenn Sacks
In the heartbreaking Melinda Smith
case, a San Diego father and daughter were needlessly separated by
the foster care system for over a decade. Last week, Los Angeles
County settled a lawsuit over the case for an undisclosed sum. Yet a
recent Urban Institute study found that the Smith case typifies the
way the foster care system harms children by disregarding the loving
bonds they share with their fathers.
Smith was born to an unwed couple
in 1988. Her father, Thomas Marion Smith, a former Marine and a
decorated Vietnam War veteran, saw Melinda often and paid child
support. When the girl was four, her mother abruptly moved without
leaving a forwarding address. Two years later, Los Angeles County
Department of Children and Family Services found that Melinda’s
mother was abusing her. Though the social worker for the case noted
in the file that Thomas was the father, he was never contacted, and
his then 6-year-old daughter was placed in the foster care system.
Thomas--whose fitness as a father
was never impugned nor legally questioned--continued to receive and
pay his child support bills. Authorities refused to disclose his
daughter’s whereabouts, and didn’t even inform him that his daughter
had been taken by the County. Smith employed private investigators
and attorneys to try to find Melinda and secure visitation rights,
but he eventually ran out of money.
Rather than allowing Smith to raise
his own daughter, the system shuttled Melinda through seven
different foster care placements. An understandably angry child, her
outbursts led authorities to house her in a residential treatment
center alongside older children convicted of criminal activity—when
she was only seven years old.
Melinda says that during this
period she was told that her father was a “deadbeat dad” who had
abandoned her. When Melinda was 16, she told an investigating social
worker that the “most important thing” for her was to find her dad.
Moved by her story, the social worker began searching for Melinda’s
father--and found him in one day. In 2005, Thomas and Melinda were
finally reunited.
Unfortunately, the Smith case is no
aberration. When a mother and father are divorced or separated, and
a child welfare agency removes the children from the mother’s home
for abuse or neglect, an offer of placement to the father, barring
unfitness, should be automatic. Yet in the report What About the
Dads? Child Welfare Agencies’ Efforts to Identify, Locate, and
Involve Nonresident Fathers, the Urban Institute presents a shocking
finding: when fathers inform child welfare officials that they would
like their children to live with them, the agencies seek to place
the children with their fathers only 15% of the time.
Fathers can offer their children a
sense of permanence, security and emotional support that a foster
family (or a succession of foster care placements) cannot provide.
Many foster children are pushed out of their homes and into a
tenuous existence when they turn 18 and the foster parents no longer
receive state subsidies. Fathers could be a valuable source of
long-term resources and sponsorship for these young adults.
Child welfare agencies often
operate on the assumption that the fathers of the children they’ve
taken away from their mothers are, like the mothers, unfit or
uninterested in parenting. Yet many of these men are loving fathers
who have been forced out of their children’s lives by mothers who
denied visitation, moved away and/or hid the children, or employed
spurious abuse charges.
What About the Dads? makes it clear
that many child welfare workers treat fathers as an afterthought.
The report found that even when a caseworker had been in contact
with a child’s father, the caseworker was still five times less
likely to know basic information about the father than about the
mother. Just as with Thomas Smith, 20% of the fathers whose identity
and location were known by the child welfare agencies from the
opening of the case were never even contacted.
These policies are harmful and
misguided. One shudders to think how many little Melinda Smiths are
lost in the foster care system right now—being raised by strangers,
and denied their father’s love.
This column first appeared in the
San Diego Union-Tribune (7/11/07).
Jeffery M. Leving is one of
America's most prominent family law attorneys. His website is
www.dadsrights.com.
Glenn Sacks' columns on men's and
fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's largest
newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com
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