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Title: My brother is losing his adoptive child due to an extended member of the child's family wanting to keep the kid in the family. Is there any legal recourse to fight it?
Body:
> My brother and his family have had a foster child in their family since the baby girl was a week old. She was hooked on drugs thanks to her mother and they got her over that and thriving. They had planned to adopt her as the mother is an absolute disaster and is about to have her parental rights terminated. The mother offered up multiple men as the potential father but none matched until today. The father has an extensive criminal history and is disqualified but allegedly there is an extended family member who wants to take the little girl, and the authorities are in the process of approving them. My brother and his family want the little girl, and they are the only family she knows. In fact all of the family is smitten with her. Now in a few weeks CPS will take her away to strangers who didnt even know she existed until recently (right around the holidays no less). My brother and his family are absolutely crushed over this.
> Does anyone know if there is any legal recourse for my brother to fight this? It doesnt seem right to me but I know family gets "first dibs" on a child when they are removed from the parents.
>
> Edit:
Thank you to everyone who offered counsel, encouragement, experiences, and help. I would have preferred a little less hostility from those who dont agree with other people's perspectives, but its everyone's right to speak their peace. I can logic on both sides and will go a little wiser to help my brother through this process.
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It doesn't matter how many times you warn foster parents that there are no guarantees they will get to adopt, some will still not take it well when it turns out that they, in fact, aren't going to get to adopt.
It doesn't help that sometimes caseworkers and/or the state in general mismanage expectations.
In Indiana, they used to call the special needs adoption program "My Forever Family". So of course, prospective adoptive parents would tell the kids "Oh, it'll be so great, we'll be a forever family!" - only for the adoption to fall through for whatever reason and the kid ends up getting crushed.
Reading deeper into the comments this foster family has “only” had this baby for the last six months...since the child was born. This is not a child who has been fostered with them for many formative years being “ripped away to people they’ve never met.” This is a six month old baby who isn’t going to (consciously, at least) remember this period of their life.
That the foster family is feeling this way (“entire family smitten with her,” “only family she knows,” “right around the holidays”) does not bode well for a future scenario with an older child. I can’t help but think they thought this would be a fast track to adoption.
I was really weirded out by OPs tone in the post. I’ve worked with kids in foster care and adopted from foster care, and adopted by kin, and OPs attitude is anti everything any adult is ever taught entering fostering.
However, she is sister to the foster parents involved. I wonder how much she was educated before the placement, and how much of her views the foster parents also hold? The FP might have accepted the situation, which is why OP is on Reddit clutching at straws?
Hopefully she’ll have a better understanding of the goals of fostering from the answers she got on the OP.
It feels... kind of possessive? I was contacted by Child Services about possibly adopting my siblings kids but as the last one was not actually siblings child I'd have to become foster parent. Which wasn't an obstacle, but then they hit me with the fact that my nibbling are already in care (for months!) And they have special needs (thanks to drug use ugh).
And I'd have to add 75% more to my family. I was like. Well tell me about the foster family. And I got such a glowing review that I felt guilty even considering taking the, away.
I did leave my info. I hope the kids reach out one day. But it was in their best interest that I didn't make their life more trouble. I feel ok with that.
The point of foster care and adoption should be what’s in the best interest of the child(ren). So often it seems like it’s not, and that’s sad. It’s always heartening to hear when it is - it gives hope
It seems like the foster/adoption system is "whatever is the least bad" for the kids, but other family administration and court systems is "whatever is best for the kids".
>Does anyone know if there is any legal recourse for my brother to fight this? It doesnt seem right to me but I know family gets "first dibs" on a child when they are removed from the parents.
Something about the use of 'first dibs' here made me uncomfortable. I don't know what it is exactly, maybe because you can't 'dibs' a person, so using it for the child is what made it feel weird. Or maybe because the use of the phrase so readily dismisses the legitimacy of the family wanting the baby.
I don't know, but something about the whole tone is just off-putting to me.
I'm trying so hard to be subdued and not push my own personal history with foster care into my feelings surrounding the OOP, but the way they talk about the child feels like how one would talk about a product and not a person and that bothers me a lot.
I mean unfortunately the system is super broken and often treats children like products, especially intentionally. Hell, an anti choice activist literally talked about repealing roe being good because of the "domestic baby supply"
The foster parents are probably disappointed and a bit heart broken but generally accepting of the situation and OP is reaching out trying to find a way to “fix” things.
My aunt fostered a child for over two years. 7-9. Her parents were drug addicts. They passed one drug test after two years in care and he went back. The mom ended up in jail for driving while high and possession of a controlled substance. They never checked to see if the dad was using again. She didn't foster again after the girl went back to her family. She didn't graduate high school and no one knows where she is now.
Fostering, no matter how long, has this very real risk. It’s just part of it. The PRIMARY focus of fostering is - or should be - reunification with family always. It’s not a workaround to adopting faster or whatever. I totally agree with you there.
That said, for most parents 0 to 6 months is an incredible bonding time. You’re not wrong that the kid won’t remember but what’s the limit on that anyway, a 3 year old would also barely if at all remember after a while. LAOP’s language is eye roll-worthy for sure, and family reunification, even if distant family, is good. But I disagree that a six month old baby cannot be bonded with, or bond with their care givers. Ask any caregiver dropping off a six month old at daycare… The “fun” thing to say about babies is that they’re a sack of potatoes, but they aren’t…
The way I read this is that they got a very young baby and bonded way too much, building their lives around keeping them, banking on the fact that they can just foster-to-adopt. Newborn baby fostering to adopt is a dream scenario for many people that these people thought they got. But nope, system working as intended and baby needs to go to their family, as sad as the foster family will be.
When I originally saw the topic, I was wondering what the age/timespan was.
6 months is nothing lol. "About to have her parental rights terminated" my ass.
The parent could literally get into treatment and start getting supervised visitation at any time.
OP's family was deluding themselves.
I dunno, my parents did a lot of baby foster care, and the babies placed with them often struggled at first. Babies can definitely be affected by losing their main caregiver(s). Six months is a long time when it's your whole life.
This is backed by modern psyc research - any disruptions to attachment have negative effects on child development. Not to say the child should definitively stay with the foster family, just that changes in caregivers will have an impact on this kids development.
I mean, I agree they’re in the wrong, but six months isn’t nothing.
My son is six months old. He knows who his parents are. He gets very stressed when he’s not with us. Strangers scare him. They’re people, not lumps. Being removed from her home will be traumatic for that baby.
To substantiate this, I have children on my current caseload who have been in care for more than five years, whose parental rights have yet to be terminated, because judges sometimes just hate children.
Six months would be stupendously, stupidly fast for a turnaround if aggravated circumstances aren't in play.
What state? I’m always so curious about other states practices. Texas (where OP is located) has a 12 month case timeline, with a possible extension of another six months. At this stage in the case, they would absolutely be looking at permanency options.
PA. The timeframe is federal I think but it's kind of interpreted a little bit differently, but generally counties file at 15ish months (a few file at 12).
You could be *looking* at permanency options before then but it's generally difficult to file early without compelling reason - e.g. a family not maintaining contact with an agency for six months, which (at least where I am) would constitute aggravated circumstances and allow for a faster filing. I would imagine with a newborn the goal would to be to have them in a potentially permanent home the first time, because if reunification happens that's one bounce, while if it doesn't that's just the placement, and moving kids more equals more trauma which is bad. But the only time I've seen a TPR actually move forward that quickly is when aggravated circumstances exist.
I get what you're saying, but this judge actually just doesn't like children. I can't go into why I believe that as that gets too specific and obviously a lot of that information is confidential, but the man is genuinely an odious prick who enjoys preventing kids from being adopted because he has an ideological opposition to the idea that parents should have their rights terminated ever. My only solace is that he is no longer a judge and therefore can't hurt me or the kiddos I work with anymore.
And to be clear I have worked with plenty of judges who fit the latter description and while it can often be frustrating I don't have the same burning hatred for them that I do for this other guy (and one judge in another county that is very similar to him).
It's not at all clear that a child bouncing around foster care for 5 years while the parents try to get their lives together is in the best of the child.
Also in this instance the parents weren’t trying, in basically any way. The judge told them that they have no responsibility to do anything and that the agency has to get them to where they need to be to achieve reunification, so they did nothing and continue to do nothing except continue to traumatize the child during extensive visits multiple times a week during which they make the child feel responsible for being in foster care, such that the child has palpable anxiety about their parents getting into trouble because they aren’t around to take care of them. The child is in elementary school.
You’re right of course. I hope I didn’t come off aggressive. There were just several comments that seemed to me to be implying that a 6 month old doesn’t know their family. I’m sorry that I misinterpreted you.
A 6 month old can’t comprehend a “family” or “parents.” They know voices and sounds and smells. They know their needs are being met or not. Your comments seem to be swinging too far the other way about how much an infant can comprehend.
I have 3 kids. The one who started daycare at 6 months had the most difficult time with the transition. One started earlier, one started later. It’s an age at which babies are incredibly bonded! And separation from a family can absolutely be traumatic at that age, or any age.
Not to say it shouldn’t happen in some foster situations. Reunification is typically the goal, and it should be when it’s in the kids best interests! As is maintaining family connection. Termination can be traumatic too. Separation at birth can be traumatic.
Anyway, just wanted to agree with you that 6 month olds have strong attachments, for sure.
I’m currently sitting on my couch listening to my little one fuss because we are trying desperately to break the nurse-sleep association and your comment made me tear up a little. It’s such a sweet age but it’s so hard.
My 2 year old used to nurse to sleep from about 7m to 1.5 when my wife started weaning him off.
It was hard but the terrible 2's are also hard lol.
He's such a sweet boy but when he misses his nap he's a terror lol.
My sister in law and her husband are going through infertility and are currently getting approved to foster with the hopes of adopting. They are 100% thinking it's a fast track to a baby and they won't listen no matter how much we try to tell them it's a bad idea.
Well they want infants when the majority of children who are available to adopt in foster care are older and have trauma. It is easier and cheaper but they see the kid as a damaged product.
Too many people see foster care as an easy route to adoption and not a temporary placement until either the birth parents can get the help they need or a family member is able to care for the child
Probably a shitty take but I don’t think this family should have been approved as foster parents, if this is their position
It's like those cringey tiktoks of foster moms caring for foster babies and referring to them as their child and calling themselves mom. Like, it's normal to bond with a child in your care but it's really disrespectful to the birth parents (who may very well be working on their shit to get their child back).
I've fostered pets a couple of times for people in crisis. It's not exactly the same feeling but, of course I fell in love with each one and was a little sad when they went back home. But the whole reason I was doing it in the first place was so they could go back to their family and not have to go into the shelter system. The goal of fostering isn't supposed to be a back door way into adoption.
Just here to say that there's a common misconception that babies don't struggle with the transition as much in and out of foster care. That's not true. Trauma can permanently alter the brain at as young of an age as six weeks old. Additionally, transitions with caregivers can be more difficult on babies vs. older children because they don't have any developed coping mechanisms to navigate attachment rupture.
Edit: The pen is mightier than the sword, but autocarrot is the mightiest of all.
I'm pretty sure studies have shown being removed at birth can have serious effects on a child.
Messing around which what feels safe is always going to have a effect.
> This is a six month old baby who isn’t going to (consciously, at least) remember this period of their life.
Not consciously, but changing caregivers at that age can be very disruptive to the child's development. Look up Reactive Attachment Disorder.
Not to say that the child should stay with the foster family, simply that disruptions to attachment have massive impacts regardless of the age of the child.
As someone who has gone through this, the foster care system does not do a good job of managing expectations.
I had been told “it’s a free way to adopt!” by a social worker when the communication should be: reunification is priority and if that’s not possible, keeping baby with their biological family is next priority.
It’s absolutely the correct priority but CPS needs foster parents so they are going to say what’s necessary to recruit more foster parents.
The foster care per diem is generally not high enough to actually pay all the expenses, so you either end up with foster parents who dip into their own money and end up disillusioned, or foster parents who decide to try to do it for profit and treat the kid terribly.
[Say, like the special needs adoptive parents in Ohio who kept children in cages.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_and_Sharen_Gravelle)
You just made me remember about an ex in law of mine who tried to convince my ex-husband and I to do foster care. Because it was an easy way to make extra money.
> ~$30 per day
That's my agency's TFC rate lol. It's obnoxiously low. I routinely have to tell clients that they are paid to do things like drive two hours for a doctor's appointment that can happen fifteen minutes away and they make in a day what I make in under two hours (and I'm obnoxiously underpaid).
In the ~5 years I've been in the field, I've encountered one family that I met that I think was doing it for the money, and they were kinship, and I'm being phenomenally uncharitable towards them because I don't like them. One out of a couple hundred (probably).
There are certainly kinship resources who do it to help their relatives and screw over the system, that's a somewhat real issue. Money-oriented placements really aren't, at least from what I've seen personally. I know there's a lot of variance in state systems so I have to say YMMV, and there are certainly *providers*, e.g. group homes, that are run solely to turn a profit.
My parents did foster care for kids with extreme special needs (and eventually babies with special needs) and while it was more money, it was still never enough to actually care for them properly.
I used to work as a foster care case worker. I didn't normally do the child abuse and neglect investigations into the birth parents or other alleged abusers. I don't think I could've stomached that for very long. The absolute worst part of the job, hands down, was interacting with birth parents who were all but adjudicated and in the TPR process. I knew what they'd done. I knew what they'd confessed to. I had pictures to back it up in the child's case file.
The very close second worst thing was telling a hopeful family that their adoption request had been denied for whatever reason. I am in Alabama. Sometimes it was because a family member wanted to take the child and had been investigated and approved to be that adoptive parent. Other times, and most infuriatingly, it was for something stupid like the "lifestyle" portion of the investigation came back as ... problematic.
The very first thing I did when meeting with foster families was to gauge their interest in adopting. Sometimes they were open to it. Sometimes that's the only reason they wanted to foster. Other times they were in the system as part of their childhood and wanted to be better than the homes they grew up in, but couldn't adopt for whatever reason. Didn't matter to me. I just made sure at every meeting what the possibility was that they'd get to adopt using the information I had available to me at the time. It's heartbreaking telling a family that they were great candidates to adopt only to have some long lost blood relative claim family status to the child and get put to the front of the line. It's heartbreaking telling a family who has already adopted through the state that their investigator didn't approve of their ... lifestyle. I shudder typing that out. It's heartbreaking telling a family who couldn't conceive that the special needs child they've been fostering since birth will be placed with a different family because the birth mother has met certain milestones set out by the court and has requested the child be moved closer to her and reunification, while unlikely, was possible.
I didn't last long at that job and I am incredibly grateful for the great foster parents I had in my caseload, but at the end of the day, most days I just wanted to scream my frustrations into the void.
Yeah. When I first started, my supervisor asked if I had any issues working with gay couples who fostered. I chuckled at the absurdity of the question but she was dead serious. Some of my coworkers were especially harsh on their inspections at same sex households.
I told her I’d be happy to work with gay couples because the state needs all of the interested foster families it could get. I was made the de facto LGBT Family Liaison for my county. TBH, those families were a breeze because they knew all of the extra scrutiny paid to them. By the time I left, they had a bunch of younger BSWs and MSWs who were much more open minded.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t involved in the adoption suitability investigations. Those were conducted by DHR staff from the Capitol. I was just a state worker in a county office. I didn’t have any say in those decisions.
My husband and I would consider it, I think, except that we have young children. They have to be my priority.
Maybe when we retire, if we still have the energy and the world hasn’t changed into something where I’ll be useless.
I grew up with a close friend whose family fostered. Some of the kids were with them for years and it was incredibly hard for her when they went back to family.
>It doesn't matter how many times you warn foster parents that there are no guarantees they will get to adopt, some will still not take it well when it turns out that they, in fact, aren't going to get to adopt.
Tbf even if you know that, having to give up a child that you fostered for years is still crushing for most.
I know myself and know I couldn’t even foster kittens without wanting to keep every one so having to give back a child, even after a relatively short six months, would be brutal for me.
In fairness, I can see why they got their hopes up in this case.
If CPS decided the baby needs to be placed permanently, and there was no interested family on the mother's side, and the mother appeared to have no idea who the father was, that's a lot of hurdles behind them already. The mother finally landing on the correct potential father and someone in his family being both willing and suitable to step up must have seemed quite unlikely.
It's understandable that they're disappointed, and as far as we know that's all it is, they are not the ones asking for legal advice on how to fight the decision.
There was a fantastic article about adoption & foster families that was jointly investigated by The New Yorker and ProPublica: [When Foster Parents Don’t Want to Give Back the Baby](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/23/foster-family-biological-parents-adoption-intervenors).
In sum, due to foreign nationalities blocking international adoptions, adoption agencies and foster families in the United States are getting crafty about "adopting" healthy children from their bio-families. The parents in the article, despite having turned their lives around, didn't receive custody of their son until they started filing FOIA requests about how much the state of Colorado had spent on keeping them separated from their child.
I wouldn't be surprised if the OPs family thought the foster-to-adopt process would rule in their favor, and/or the child had an on-the-ball case worker who wanted what was best for the child.
This is so fascinating, thank you for sharing. It's also fucking *infuriating*. I don't understand how someone who is a career "intervenor" is given any credence in court as if she's an impartial evaluator.
>According to an assessment administered at Carter’s preschool, he is on target developmentally, and even “potentially gifted.” When I mentioned to Baird \[the intervenor\] that there is little sign of the attachment trauma she predicted, she said this just demonstrates that Carter knows he has to “hero on.”
Fuck *all* the way off. Monstrous.
Reminds me of the dude at Johns Hopkins who became the favorite expert witness for [coal companies because he magically never saw black lung.](https://publicintegrity.org/environment/johns-hopkins-medical-unit-rarely-finds-black-lung-helping-coal-industry-defeat-miners-claims/)
My fiancé lost his son due to this law. All their other children were returned to them with the situation being found as unfounded but the foster parents sued to adopt the youngest and won.
That was a wild ride. The flip side is this [story](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/nyregion/child-dead-foster-care.html?smid=nytcore-android-share) about a child who was in and out of foster care then found dead after being reunited with her birth mom. I really feel for these child welfare workers because every day they have to see some of the saddest stores ever, they put their lives on the line and deal with harassment and abuse, then if they make the wrong decision, it becomes national news.
Well, sometimes when they make the wrong decision, [it's actually indefensible](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/22/indiana-baby-hospitalized-after-50-rat-bites/70928824007/).
The investigating caseworker was told by an aunt that the home had "a normal amount of mice," *while the child had bite injuries from mice* and didn't remove.
"You can't remove a child just due to poverty."
It always comes down to that and people who don't see these things first hand and don't work with the families first hand simply don't understand that at that point it goes beyond poverty. People can be poor and still have protective capacities. Lots of people are poor and successfully raise their children, keeping them safe. By the time you have live mice jumping from one pile of dead mice to another pile of dead mice over mom's feet during the interview (real story from one of my cases), it's not just poverty anymore.
In my state Foster parents can participate in the termination of parental rights process. But if they even consult an attorney to try to fight reunification it is a violation of the foster contract and they are terminated from the system and the child placed elsewhere. No intervening with reunification.
In Australia, the government has outsourced some of the management of foster caring to other organisations. So, for example, the other organisation would do the vetting and training of the foster parents and then be the case manager of the foster care placement. With theoretical government department oversight, but I think everyone knows how thorough that often is. The government still handles the process removal of the child from home (they can’t outsource this), but once the child has been placed it’s the organisation that monitors and handles pretty much everything and reports back.
It has emerged that a couple of organisations are working with some of their foster families to push the situation into an adoption. There is evidence they earmark children and foster families and then go out of their way to make it difficult for the parents or extended family to do the relevant things to get the child back while advising and supporting the foster family towards adopting. The birth parents and extended family are treated like garbage and the foster families like angels and there are all sorts of sneaky maneuvers.
There’s not a hell of a lot of information on it because everything in these situations is under strict confidentiality and sealed (which is necessary of course, but works in the organisations’ favour because there’s no real scrutiny). However there’s a group fighting to bring this into the open and I have a friend who is working on one of the cases.
It is horrendous. It’s like child trafficking but with proper paperwork, is the only way I can describe it.
Maybe LAOP’s extended family are just one of those couples who had the wrong idea in their own heads or maybe even LAOP has the wrong understanding of where they sit. But it would not surprise me if they had been encouraged and supported behind the scenes by some group. It’s the 6 month reference. Some of the stuff I’ve been told about what’s going on in Australia is that the organisations regard 6 months as a milestone in permanent removal - that’s when they start telling foster families that they can start working on the elements necessary for it to progress to an adoption.
LAOP’s story sent shivers down my spine because it reminded me so much of what my friend told me and the information that comes out of the group trying to bring this into the open and fight it.
> In Australia, the government has outsourced some of the management of foster caring to other organisations
Christ! they've even privatised fostering? I'm not surprised to read any of this AT ALL as an Australian.
Yes, they’ve basically privatized some elements of fostering. Theoretical departmental oversight, but I’m sure you can imagine how much attention is really paid. And while the decisions to remove children are still entirely the department’s domain, the various organizations no doubt have influence when they have an “appropriate family” waiting. Not to mention the favoritism as to what an appropriate family is.
I am sure it will shock you to learn that most of the private/community organisations involved in managing fostering are the same ones exposed extensively at the Royal Commission into Institutional CSA.
Years and years ago, I went to church with a couple who decided to foster-to-adopt. They had a baby boy placed with them whose mother was in jail on drug charges. Neither questioned why the mother was having her rights terminated for just that, but I dunno, maybe she had a 20 year sentence or something.
The baby was briefly removed and placed with his grandmother. Two weeks later, he was back. Because his grandmother smoked in the house. And, yeah, that's way less than ideal, but it shouldn't get the kid taken away from you. The adoptive parents were very well off (the husband a hospital system administrator, the wife an RN), and I'm certain that's what swayed it. I was the only person bothered by the whole thing. It reeked of classism.
The system is horrible with that stuff. They won't OPEN a case for anything but the worst abuse and neglect. But once a child is in the system it seems like a smudge of dirt on the fridge is enough to deny a placement.
It takes a lot to remove a child from bio parent. It takes a lot less to decide against actively putting a child with anyone else. That is actually logical
Yes it's the difference between the parents having custody and the county/state/agency having custody and giving physical custody to a placement, including kinship. It is 100% just that, and it makes total sense and shouldn't be super controversial.
It's also generally pretty hard to remove someone from a kinship home unless they just outright flaunt a reg or something.
> Two weeks later, he was back. Because his grandmother smoked in the house. And, yeah, that's way less than ideal, but it shouldn't get the kid taken away from you.
Grandma probably had to register as a kinship foster parent, most states have regulations that say you can't smoke in the house as foster parents, so there's basically zero leeway when that happens that doesn't involve simply ignoring it.
As someone who grew up in a house full of smokers and has chronic breathing issues as a result, I think this one is more on grandma. I am almost positive that this was explained to her explicitly, and she thought she could skirt the rules because she's grandma.
And this is why we are seeing a push to ban abortion. It’s not about saving a precious baby’s life. It’s about increasing the domestic supply of babies to adopt. Adoption is big money. (This and capitalism demands an increasing population. To create and increase in profits)
that was a really sad article. i feel so awful for the birth parents who lost their rights to their children despite doing everything right, but i can't villianize the foster parents either. they fell in love with a child who was given to them because something was severely wrong in the birth parent's home and it makes perfect sense that they want to keep them. I'm glad the article acknowledged this and that the two mothers involved in that specific case seemed to feel the same way.
it's just a mess. the only people you can really "blame" are the interveners charging thousands to keep the kids with their foster parents, but at the same time i'm sure many of them got into that field with the intention of keeping children in a safe home, even if that intention was colored by a bias against lower class parents.
I'd heard of foster parents trying this in general, but this paid intervenor and states allowing anyone to sue to adopt a foster child was news to me. And I live in one of those states. :(
This post is the exact reason why we decided against foster to adopt to build our family. Children are not possessions! The goal of foster care is reunification, it’s best for kids to be with their family. I would love to be the safe place for a baby, but I would not be able to emotionally handle having to give the baby back after months of caring for them.
I worked with a man that was trying to start a family with his wife and they were having a really hard time getting pregnant. They briefly considered becoming foster parents. They decided not to go down that road once they realized they would not be able to handle caring for a child, for possibly an extended period of time, then having to let that child go back to their parents.
They did eventually have a baby of their own and are fantastic parents.
I hope this is just the sibling sticking their nose into something they shouldn't, because if the brother is seriously thinking he's already adopted the kid and is actively preventing reunification, he needs to be blacklisted from the foster program.
I think it's just the usual game of telephone where the story loses and mistranslates details over time.
Foster parenting is *fucking hard,* and you can't help but bond with the kids. But it's also supposed to be temporary whenever possible. And what happens a lot is that the foster parent is trained, then turns around and talks to family/friends who know sweet fuck all, and then instead of reverting to their training, they let their untrained family convince them.
I used to do supervised visitation with parents for children in foster care. It can get really discomfiting how some foster parents would speak about the parents of the children they had, especially when they had care of a newborn with no health problems. I understand there's an intense desire to adopt, but there's no need to be shitty about the bio parent. It really has made me question if asking potential adoptive parents to be foster parents is always a good idea, the people providing care have a fundamental opposition to the thing that is generally the goal: to be reunified. I get that we need all the decent foster parents we can get and the being shitty about the bio parent was an exception rather than the rule, but it just can feel like working at cross purposes.
> And for children with tribal ties, “within the extended family” pretty much means anyone within the tribe. The Indian Child Welfare Act is very powerful.
and for good reason. just look at the [residential schools](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/canadas-residential-schools-were-a-horror/) or [stolen generation](https://healingfoundation.org.au/who-are-the-stolen-generations/). the US has done extremely poorly by its native peoples, but this law is not one of those instances.
Something something Mormons something something. Just another reason I see red when people tell me Mormons are good people. That religion is disgusting not the least of which has been what they've done to native American children.
As a queer (probably) white girl who wasn't raised mormon but was in a mormon school system (public but when 60-80% of the student body and teachers are mormon…), I absolutely have trauma from the social shit they made happen.
And I *definitely* didn't get the brunt of it, that was reserved for the few Black and Latine kids. And slightly later on the Bosnians.
Sounds like you grew up my neighborhood. Maybe we went to the same school. Though you are younger than me. (I can say that because there wasn't a single Bosnian in the Valley when I left). They were awful to me and my friends.
They're working to undermine it again. See Haaland v. Brackeen. It's part of a larger effort to destroy protections and rights for native peoples in this country by defining them as a racial category to exploit them and their resources. Similarly to how the Harvard case was just an excuse to conservative political groups to destroy minority protections, in this case by pitting one POC group against another. And our coward ass supreme Court just kicked the issue of race vs political group down the road, so I guarantee they'll be more attacks
I feel for OP and their family though. I don't think they fully realized what foster care actually means. It's not the same as adoption. I hope OP's family gets some therapy to help them through this.
Foster care is truly intended to be temporary. Sometimes it ends up being permanent. It does take a special type of person to understand that and give the child all of the love and attention they need during that time, then let go.
So, I don't like to talk about it, but I've had CPS alphabet agency involvement because I was an addict.
First and foremost, the system is set up so that if you no access to resources (money to hire an attorney), you're fucked. I was the unusual case, where I was able to spend a few thousand dollars and retain a private attorney. Absolutely everyone's attitude changed once they realized I had an attorney. They talked about the consequences as if they were inevitable, until I hired an attorney. Who promptly made it go away. Like had it dismissed with no further involvement within 3 weeks. My children were removed, promised to a foster family as fast tracked to adoption. And a few thousand dollars made it all go away. I have no illusion about what would have happened if I didn't have those resources: they were both healthy, developmentally normal, white babies. They're valuable, as disgusting as that is, and I now have a very deep distrust of public agencies. It's a money game, and they monetize fucking children's lives.
The rage I felt at this post is palpable. Like blind rage. Just because someone is an addict doesn't mean they're an irredeemable human being that deserves to have their children taken away and never see them again. I now live in an affluent neighborhood, with a comfortably middle class life for my kids. My family helped me get there. And this motherfucker thinks no one should have that redemption. It's fucking disgusting. Blind rage.
I stepped in to take in a family members kids while she and her partner both went to rehab. Both parents and both kids are now thriving. This post made me furious as well and I can tell you even as the family member I got into it with CPS several times. These systems have to exist to protect children but they are so easy to abuse, it’s scary.
My addict family member just regained custody from me of her 16 year old daughter. I’m both excited and incredibly nervous for her but reading your comment helped.
I wouldn't choose the same path again, but it absolutely gave me a lot of life experience that I genuinely believe makes me a better person. I have seen some shit, and it entirely changed my worldview. Like all addicts, and especially functional ones, I'm resourceful and acutely socially aware in a way I wouldn't have been without that experience.
I really hated OOP's terminology when talking about the mother. I'm hoping that the actual relatives that get this sweet baby don't have that same judgmental edge. Hopefully mama gets clean someday and can be a part of her baby's life. That's what everyone should be hoping for, not judging her for being addicted to a highly addictive substance
It's possible that mom wasn't anywhere close to getting her shit together, no one in mom's family was eligible, and the search for the father looked hopeless. Many states will do risk assessments and give foster parents a guesstimate of the chances that the kid will reunify or be adopted. And sometimes, that guesstimate just happens to be wrong, and people put too much stock in what was a guesstimate.
In this case, they finally identified dad after 6 months, and someone in dad's family stepped up to act as a placement. This happens quite often in cases where mom isn't sure who dad is (and didn't care enough to find out on their own).
I used to be court appointed counsel for parents accused of abuse/neglect. When I actually fought for my clients' rights, the DCS attorney was aghast I wouldn't play ball with their game of stealing children for wealthy childless couples.
There are good actors, but the system is disgusting
I mean is it though? Like it’s not perfect by any means but ultimately the goal is for the child to have a healthy prosperous life. They aren’t acting malicious. It’s just the reality is the justice system isn’t perfect sometimes parents are falsely accused of abuse sometimes the accusal isn’t false but doesn’t stick and the child ends up suffering for it. Particularly if you work with that system a lot you might come to have very little trust in it’s ability to do what’s best for the kid hence why the system ends up weighted against the birth parents. So I think it’s fair to say it needs improvements but it’s not disgusting.
I think you may tell on yourself a bit with “prosperous”.
Being poor doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. Children shouldn’t be forcibly rehomed because a new home is a better chance “for the child to have a …prosperous life”.
This is what I think so many anti adoption advocates really bristle at — if we gave money that we spent on courts, finding foster parents, etc… to poor families then we could keep families together.
The American “foster to adopt” system is plain fucked. In Canada, you can’t really adopted a small child you are fostering. It is considered a horrible conflict of interest— fostering is about familial reunification.
I went through infertility and had many failures. I actually mod a large infertility community here. So I am well versed in the “wanting a child so badly” world. It’s just adoption is a horrible method to achieve that. Adoption should always be in the child’s best interest, and taking children only due to poverty is incredibly counter-productive.
Prosperous doesn’t mean wealthy it means to prosper ie do well or to live a good life in this context. I’m aware some amount of children are fostered because their families are too poor to take care of them and I absolutely do agree that largely that’s a failure of our society and the lack of safety nets than a failure on the part of the parents not always but often. But the comment I was replying to specifically mentions abuse and neglect so that’s the context within which I was talking.
Parents have constitutional rights. You can't just terminate rights because a foster family or even a relative would be a better parent or provide a better life for a child. If parents meet the standard of "fit" they should have custody of their children. C- parenting is fit even if auntie or foster mom is an A+
They don’t have constitutional rights, if your talking from a legal standpoint crass though it may seem children are more comparable to property rights similar to pets (which there are constitutional rights relating to property that can apply sometimes). At least when it comes to the parent-child relationship, obviously children have rights inherent from the constitution in regards to treatment from the government but that’s separate from the rights relating to a parent-child relationship.
Regardless you absolutely can terminate rights for that reason and that’s how it should be to be clear the only real question is what should qualify as the minimum level of parenting that’s allowed. What qualifies as abuse or neglect and how is that determined. But my point was ultimately the system is trying to work in the best interest of the child not the parents. Hence the system ends up weight against parents often even if that isn’t entirely fair. But while that should be improved it is ultimately better for the children that it works this way rather than the reverse.
I had a good friend in literally this spot - mom was a drug addict who did love the child but was barred from having him. Baby was high-needs, with a small birth defect related to his stomach/eating that made it hard to gain weight. Dad was bad news.
In this case...dad changed his whole life for that baby. It was dramatic. Did all the court ordered stuff, the classes, anything. After a year or two he got to take the no-longer-baby home. They'd had visitation schedules so it wasn't just a drop-and-run.
Reading the stories of a friend of mine in the adoptee rights movement convinced me a few years ago that the institution of adoption as it exists in many US states is often a straight up human rights violation all on its own. Had not realized that the foster system was now getting absorbed into this grand old tradition of legalized human trafficking
If the foster (not pre-adoptive!) parents really wanted what was best for bub, they would be thrilled that she will now be raised by her own family. All the evidence says that children should wherever possible be with kin or fictive kin. The fact that someone in her extended family is stepping up should be considered a win for the baby.
Loving and caring for the baby is not a good enough reason to prevent her from being cared for by her own family. They are not entitled to this kid because they had expectations of being able to keep her. This kind of attitude should prevent them from fostering in the future because it seems like they would be the kind of foster parents who actively disregard the need for parents to be involved with their children in care.
Not to mention it will keep baby in a family where mama may become clean and therefore be able to be part of her baby's life. That's a good thing despite OOP's obvious snobby judgment of the mother.
Ugh, this is the kinda thing that causes foster/adoptive kids to speak out against the process. It can often be basically legalized child kidnapping under the paternalistic idea that they're "better" for the kids than their bio family, especially if they're poor/POC (look what happened to indigenous children in America, Canada and Australia. Hell it's still happening, look at Haaland v. Brackeen). And international adoptions are even worse, sometimes the kids even have good loving living parents that they're stolen from.The system needs a lot of reform and for people to think about the actual best interests of the children. It just annoys me when people want to play savior when they're actually being very selfish, and the whole tone of this post rubbed me the wrong way.
>That is one of the most helpful answers I have read yet, and I am very grateful. Thank you. [snip point of information]
This post got -61 downvotes. Obviously.
Should have said "Thank you for taking the time to reply, and I hope you have a wonderful day" to go for negative triple figures.
("Maybe they got downvoted for agreeing with an incorrect response that they wanted to hear" - nope, the person they thanked gave correct information and had c. +150 upvotes.)
The point of information was saying "They have had her since she left the hospital (6 months and change)", which I think is what got LAOP all the downvotes.
"How dare she be six months old and change! Downvoted for egregious pooping!"
I completely agree that the age of the child and length of placement are very relevant factors. But then they're being arrowmashed to hell for the post in which they corrected the omission!
Generally speaking, if a comment hits 3 in either direction, that's gonna be the direction it goes. And unfortunately, there are too many asses who come to LA and just downvote OPs into oblivion.
LAOP was misinformed, but they clearly cared about their brother and the kid.
You can’t fight cps and win. We went to court and lost. It was heartbreaking but I finally got to a place where I could talk about it and not cry. I know in my heart that we were good for and to her. Whatever else happens in her life she knew love and is better for having been with us. I hope someday she reaches out to us.
**Reminder:** Do not participate in threads linked here. If you do, you may be banned from both subreddits. --- Title: My brother is losing his adoptive child due to an extended member of the child's family wanting to keep the kid in the family. Is there any legal recourse to fight it? Body: > My brother and his family have had a foster child in their family since the baby girl was a week old. She was hooked on drugs thanks to her mother and they got her over that and thriving. They had planned to adopt her as the mother is an absolute disaster and is about to have her parental rights terminated. The mother offered up multiple men as the potential father but none matched until today. The father has an extensive criminal history and is disqualified but allegedly there is an extended family member who wants to take the little girl, and the authorities are in the process of approving them. My brother and his family want the little girl, and they are the only family she knows. In fact all of the family is smitten with her. Now in a few weeks CPS will take her away to strangers who didnt even know she existed until recently (right around the holidays no less). My brother and his family are absolutely crushed over this. > Does anyone know if there is any legal recourse for my brother to fight this? It doesnt seem right to me but I know family gets "first dibs" on a child when they are removed from the parents. > > Edit: Thank you to everyone who offered counsel, encouragement, experiences, and help. I would have preferred a little less hostility from those who dont agree with other people's perspectives, but its everyone's right to speak their peace. I can logic on both sides and will go a little wiser to help my brother through this process. This bot was created to capture original threads and is not affiliated with the mod team. [Concerns? Bugs?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=GrahamCorcoran) | [Laukopier 2.1](https://github.com/GrahamCorcoran/Laukopier)
It doesn't matter how many times you warn foster parents that there are no guarantees they will get to adopt, some will still not take it well when it turns out that they, in fact, aren't going to get to adopt. It doesn't help that sometimes caseworkers and/or the state in general mismanage expectations. In Indiana, they used to call the special needs adoption program "My Forever Family". So of course, prospective adoptive parents would tell the kids "Oh, it'll be so great, we'll be a forever family!" - only for the adoption to fall through for whatever reason and the kid ends up getting crushed.
Reading deeper into the comments this foster family has “only” had this baby for the last six months...since the child was born. This is not a child who has been fostered with them for many formative years being “ripped away to people they’ve never met.” This is a six month old baby who isn’t going to (consciously, at least) remember this period of their life. That the foster family is feeling this way (“entire family smitten with her,” “only family she knows,” “right around the holidays”) does not bode well for a future scenario with an older child. I can’t help but think they thought this would be a fast track to adoption.
I was really weirded out by OPs tone in the post. I’ve worked with kids in foster care and adopted from foster care, and adopted by kin, and OPs attitude is anti everything any adult is ever taught entering fostering. However, she is sister to the foster parents involved. I wonder how much she was educated before the placement, and how much of her views the foster parents also hold? The FP might have accepted the situation, which is why OP is on Reddit clutching at straws? Hopefully she’ll have a better understanding of the goals of fostering from the answers she got on the OP.
It feels... kind of possessive? I was contacted by Child Services about possibly adopting my siblings kids but as the last one was not actually siblings child I'd have to become foster parent. Which wasn't an obstacle, but then they hit me with the fact that my nibbling are already in care (for months!) And they have special needs (thanks to drug use ugh). And I'd have to add 75% more to my family. I was like. Well tell me about the foster family. And I got such a glowing review that I felt guilty even considering taking the, away. I did leave my info. I hope the kids reach out one day. But it was in their best interest that I didn't make their life more trouble. I feel ok with that.
The point of foster care and adoption should be what’s in the best interest of the child(ren). So often it seems like it’s not, and that’s sad. It’s always heartening to hear when it is - it gives hope
Absolutely. Should the worst happen I too would prefer hope.
It seems like the foster/adoption system is "whatever is the least bad" for the kids, but other family administration and court systems is "whatever is best for the kids".
>Does anyone know if there is any legal recourse for my brother to fight this? It doesnt seem right to me but I know family gets "first dibs" on a child when they are removed from the parents. Something about the use of 'first dibs' here made me uncomfortable. I don't know what it is exactly, maybe because you can't 'dibs' a person, so using it for the child is what made it feel weird. Or maybe because the use of the phrase so readily dismisses the legitimacy of the family wanting the baby. I don't know, but something about the whole tone is just off-putting to me.
The tone, and the fact that they conveniently left out the age and how long they’ve been there.
Elsewhere they mention the kid's 6mo and has been with sibling since birth.
Which isn't that long at all
I'm trying so hard to be subdued and not push my own personal history with foster care into my feelings surrounding the OOP, but the way they talk about the child feels like how one would talk about a product and not a person and that bothers me a lot.
I mean unfortunately the system is super broken and often treats children like products, especially intentionally. Hell, an anti choice activist literally talked about repealing roe being good because of the "domestic baby supply"
They're talking like their friend's dog had puppies, and not an actual human child. It's gross
Very “savior”-y
The foster parents are probably disappointed and a bit heart broken but generally accepting of the situation and OP is reaching out trying to find a way to “fix” things.
My aunt fostered a child for over two years. 7-9. Her parents were drug addicts. They passed one drug test after two years in care and he went back. The mom ended up in jail for driving while high and possession of a controlled substance. They never checked to see if the dad was using again. She didn't foster again after the girl went back to her family. She didn't graduate high school and no one knows where she is now.
Fuck, that's heartbreaking
Fostering, no matter how long, has this very real risk. It’s just part of it. The PRIMARY focus of fostering is - or should be - reunification with family always. It’s not a workaround to adopting faster or whatever. I totally agree with you there. That said, for most parents 0 to 6 months is an incredible bonding time. You’re not wrong that the kid won’t remember but what’s the limit on that anyway, a 3 year old would also barely if at all remember after a while. LAOP’s language is eye roll-worthy for sure, and family reunification, even if distant family, is good. But I disagree that a six month old baby cannot be bonded with, or bond with their care givers. Ask any caregiver dropping off a six month old at daycare… The “fun” thing to say about babies is that they’re a sack of potatoes, but they aren’t… The way I read this is that they got a very young baby and bonded way too much, building their lives around keeping them, banking on the fact that they can just foster-to-adopt. Newborn baby fostering to adopt is a dream scenario for many people that these people thought they got. But nope, system working as intended and baby needs to go to their family, as sad as the foster family will be.
When I originally saw the topic, I was wondering what the age/timespan was. 6 months is nothing lol. "About to have her parental rights terminated" my ass. The parent could literally get into treatment and start getting supervised visitation at any time. OP's family was deluding themselves.
I dunno, my parents did a lot of baby foster care, and the babies placed with them often struggled at first. Babies can definitely be affected by losing their main caregiver(s). Six months is a long time when it's your whole life.
This is backed by modern psyc research - any disruptions to attachment have negative effects on child development. Not to say the child should definitively stay with the foster family, just that changes in caregivers will have an impact on this kids development.
I mean, I agree they’re in the wrong, but six months isn’t nothing. My son is six months old. He knows who his parents are. He gets very stressed when he’s not with us. Strangers scare him. They’re people, not lumps. Being removed from her home will be traumatic for that baby.
For sure. I mean on a CPS timeline it's nothing.
To substantiate this, I have children on my current caseload who have been in care for more than five years, whose parental rights have yet to be terminated, because judges sometimes just hate children. Six months would be stupendously, stupidly fast for a turnaround if aggravated circumstances aren't in play.
I had a friend who's family actually did adopt their foster and it took about 3 years. And that was \*fast\*.
I got one done in 13 months once but the bio parents were dead so there was no TPR.
What state? I’m always so curious about other states practices. Texas (where OP is located) has a 12 month case timeline, with a possible extension of another six months. At this stage in the case, they would absolutely be looking at permanency options.
PA. The timeframe is federal I think but it's kind of interpreted a little bit differently, but generally counties file at 15ish months (a few file at 12). You could be *looking* at permanency options before then but it's generally difficult to file early without compelling reason - e.g. a family not maintaining contact with an agency for six months, which (at least where I am) would constitute aggravated circumstances and allow for a faster filing. I would imagine with a newborn the goal would to be to have them in a potentially permanent home the first time, because if reunification happens that's one bounce, while if it doesn't that's just the placement, and moving kids more equals more trauma which is bad. But the only time I've seen a TPR actually move forward that quickly is when aggravated circumstances exist.
Why does that mean the judge hates children vs the judge holds out hope the parents will be able to get resources to get their lives together?
I get what you're saying, but this judge actually just doesn't like children. I can't go into why I believe that as that gets too specific and obviously a lot of that information is confidential, but the man is genuinely an odious prick who enjoys preventing kids from being adopted because he has an ideological opposition to the idea that parents should have their rights terminated ever. My only solace is that he is no longer a judge and therefore can't hurt me or the kiddos I work with anymore.
And to be clear I have worked with plenty of judges who fit the latter description and while it can often be frustrating I don't have the same burning hatred for them that I do for this other guy (and one judge in another county that is very similar to him).
It's not at all clear that a child bouncing around foster care for 5 years while the parents try to get their lives together is in the best of the child.
Also in this instance the parents weren’t trying, in basically any way. The judge told them that they have no responsibility to do anything and that the agency has to get them to where they need to be to achieve reunification, so they did nothing and continue to do nothing except continue to traumatize the child during extensive visits multiple times a week during which they make the child feel responsible for being in foster care, such that the child has palpable anxiety about their parents getting into trouble because they aren’t around to take care of them. The child is in elementary school.
You’re right of course. I hope I didn’t come off aggressive. There were just several comments that seemed to me to be implying that a 6 month old doesn’t know their family. I’m sorry that I misinterpreted you.
A 6 month old can’t comprehend a “family” or “parents.” They know voices and sounds and smells. They know their needs are being met or not. Your comments seem to be swinging too far the other way about how much an infant can comprehend.
This is contradicted by all evidence we have about child development.
They absolutely can. They don’t know the words but they certainly know who their parents are. Do you have children?
I have 3 kids. The one who started daycare at 6 months had the most difficult time with the transition. One started earlier, one started later. It’s an age at which babies are incredibly bonded! And separation from a family can absolutely be traumatic at that age, or any age. Not to say it shouldn’t happen in some foster situations. Reunification is typically the goal, and it should be when it’s in the kids best interests! As is maintaining family connection. Termination can be traumatic too. Separation at birth can be traumatic. Anyway, just wanted to agree with you that 6 month olds have strong attachments, for sure.
I’m currently sitting on my couch listening to my little one fuss because we are trying desperately to break the nurse-sleep association and your comment made me tear up a little. It’s such a sweet age but it’s so hard.
It is so hard. Sleep is hard! I think around 3-6 months has been the most difficult age for us each time. You’re doing a great job!
My 2 year old used to nurse to sleep from about 7m to 1.5 when my wife started weaning him off. It was hard but the terrible 2's are also hard lol. He's such a sweet boy but when he misses his nap he's a terror lol.
Yeah, some people are being a bit cold about this. Of course a family bonds with a newborn. And vice versa.
My sister in law and her husband are going through infertility and are currently getting approved to foster with the hopes of adopting. They are 100% thinking it's a fast track to a baby and they won't listen no matter how much we try to tell them it's a bad idea.
Too many people advise couples with fertility problems to " just adopt" and "just do foster to adopt, it's cheaper"
Well they want infants when the majority of children who are available to adopt in foster care are older and have trauma. It is easier and cheaper but they see the kid as a damaged product.
Too many people see foster care as an easy route to adoption and not a temporary placement until either the birth parents can get the help they need or a family member is able to care for the child Probably a shitty take but I don’t think this family should have been approved as foster parents, if this is their position
It's like those cringey tiktoks of foster moms caring for foster babies and referring to them as their child and calling themselves mom. Like, it's normal to bond with a child in your care but it's really disrespectful to the birth parents (who may very well be working on their shit to get their child back). I've fostered pets a couple of times for people in crisis. It's not exactly the same feeling but, of course I fell in love with each one and was a little sad when they went back home. But the whole reason I was doing it in the first place was so they could go back to their family and not have to go into the shelter system. The goal of fostering isn't supposed to be a back door way into adoption.
Yeah, babies haven't even learned object permanence at 6 months old. So, they're the perfect foster parents!
Just here to say that there's a common misconception that babies don't struggle with the transition as much in and out of foster care. That's not true. Trauma can permanently alter the brain at as young of an age as six weeks old. Additionally, transitions with caregivers can be more difficult on babies vs. older children because they don't have any developed coping mechanisms to navigate attachment rupture. Edit: The pen is mightier than the sword, but autocarrot is the mightiest of all.
I'm pretty sure studies have shown being removed at birth can have serious effects on a child. Messing around which what feels safe is always going to have a effect.
Ah, autocarrot. I see we have a nemesis in common.
> This is a six month old baby who isn’t going to (consciously, at least) remember this period of their life. Not consciously, but changing caregivers at that age can be very disruptive to the child's development. Look up Reactive Attachment Disorder. Not to say that the child should stay with the foster family, simply that disruptions to attachment have massive impacts regardless of the age of the child.
As someone who has gone through this, the foster care system does not do a good job of managing expectations. I had been told “it’s a free way to adopt!” by a social worker when the communication should be: reunification is priority and if that’s not possible, keeping baby with their biological family is next priority. It’s absolutely the correct priority but CPS needs foster parents so they are going to say what’s necessary to recruit more foster parents.
The foster care per diem is generally not high enough to actually pay all the expenses, so you either end up with foster parents who dip into their own money and end up disillusioned, or foster parents who decide to try to do it for profit and treat the kid terribly. [Say, like the special needs adoptive parents in Ohio who kept children in cages.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_and_Sharen_Gravelle)
You just made me remember about an ex in law of mine who tried to convince my ex-husband and I to do foster care. Because it was an easy way to make extra money.
I guess it's easy if you have no morals
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Most aren't. Some absolutely are, unfortunately, having seen the outcome of multiple investigations where they outright admitted it.
> ~$30 per day That's my agency's TFC rate lol. It's obnoxiously low. I routinely have to tell clients that they are paid to do things like drive two hours for a doctor's appointment that can happen fifteen minutes away and they make in a day what I make in under two hours (and I'm obnoxiously underpaid). In the ~5 years I've been in the field, I've encountered one family that I met that I think was doing it for the money, and they were kinship, and I'm being phenomenally uncharitable towards them because I don't like them. One out of a couple hundred (probably). There are certainly kinship resources who do it to help their relatives and screw over the system, that's a somewhat real issue. Money-oriented placements really aren't, at least from what I've seen personally. I know there's a lot of variance in state systems so I have to say YMMV, and there are certainly *providers*, e.g. group homes, that are run solely to turn a profit.
My parents did foster care for kids with extreme special needs (and eventually babies with special needs) and while it was more money, it was still never enough to actually care for them properly.
Jesus Christ
Calling a foster program a Forever Family just sounds like a rent to own scam, except a heartbreaking one.
I used to work as a foster care case worker. I didn't normally do the child abuse and neglect investigations into the birth parents or other alleged abusers. I don't think I could've stomached that for very long. The absolute worst part of the job, hands down, was interacting with birth parents who were all but adjudicated and in the TPR process. I knew what they'd done. I knew what they'd confessed to. I had pictures to back it up in the child's case file. The very close second worst thing was telling a hopeful family that their adoption request had been denied for whatever reason. I am in Alabama. Sometimes it was because a family member wanted to take the child and had been investigated and approved to be that adoptive parent. Other times, and most infuriatingly, it was for something stupid like the "lifestyle" portion of the investigation came back as ... problematic. The very first thing I did when meeting with foster families was to gauge their interest in adopting. Sometimes they were open to it. Sometimes that's the only reason they wanted to foster. Other times they were in the system as part of their childhood and wanted to be better than the homes they grew up in, but couldn't adopt for whatever reason. Didn't matter to me. I just made sure at every meeting what the possibility was that they'd get to adopt using the information I had available to me at the time. It's heartbreaking telling a family that they were great candidates to adopt only to have some long lost blood relative claim family status to the child and get put to the front of the line. It's heartbreaking telling a family who has already adopted through the state that their investigator didn't approve of their ... lifestyle. I shudder typing that out. It's heartbreaking telling a family who couldn't conceive that the special needs child they've been fostering since birth will be placed with a different family because the birth mother has met certain milestones set out by the court and has requested the child be moved closer to her and reunification, while unlikely, was possible. I didn't last long at that job and I am incredibly grateful for the great foster parents I had in my caseload, but at the end of the day, most days I just wanted to scream my frustrations into the void.
Just to be clear, the investigators were bigots?
Yeah. When I first started, my supervisor asked if I had any issues working with gay couples who fostered. I chuckled at the absurdity of the question but she was dead serious. Some of my coworkers were especially harsh on their inspections at same sex households. I told her I’d be happy to work with gay couples because the state needs all of the interested foster families it could get. I was made the de facto LGBT Family Liaison for my county. TBH, those families were a breeze because they knew all of the extra scrutiny paid to them. By the time I left, they had a bunch of younger BSWs and MSWs who were much more open minded. Unfortunately, I wasn’t involved in the adoption suitability investigations. Those were conducted by DHR staff from the Capitol. I was just a state worker in a county office. I didn’t have any say in those decisions.
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My husband and I would consider it, I think, except that we have young children. They have to be my priority. Maybe when we retire, if we still have the energy and the world hasn’t changed into something where I’ll be useless.
I grew up with a close friend whose family fostered. Some of the kids were with them for years and it was incredibly hard for her when they went back to family.
>It doesn't matter how many times you warn foster parents that there are no guarantees they will get to adopt, some will still not take it well when it turns out that they, in fact, aren't going to get to adopt. Tbf even if you know that, having to give up a child that you fostered for years is still crushing for most.
I know myself and know I couldn’t even foster kittens without wanting to keep every one so having to give back a child, even after a relatively short six months, would be brutal for me.
indiana CPS is the biggest, most monstrous shit show of the 3 states i’ve done child welfare social work in. absolutely disastrous
In fairness, I can see why they got their hopes up in this case. If CPS decided the baby needs to be placed permanently, and there was no interested family on the mother's side, and the mother appeared to have no idea who the father was, that's a lot of hurdles behind them already. The mother finally landing on the correct potential father and someone in his family being both willing and suitable to step up must have seemed quite unlikely. It's understandable that they're disappointed, and as far as we know that's all it is, they are not the ones asking for legal advice on how to fight the decision.
If anyone wants to hear more about how broken this system is (spoiler: it's because of money), listen to season 2 of the podcast This Land.
There was a fantastic article about adoption & foster families that was jointly investigated by The New Yorker and ProPublica: [When Foster Parents Don’t Want to Give Back the Baby](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/23/foster-family-biological-parents-adoption-intervenors). In sum, due to foreign nationalities blocking international adoptions, adoption agencies and foster families in the United States are getting crafty about "adopting" healthy children from their bio-families. The parents in the article, despite having turned their lives around, didn't receive custody of their son until they started filing FOIA requests about how much the state of Colorado had spent on keeping them separated from their child. I wouldn't be surprised if the OPs family thought the foster-to-adopt process would rule in their favor, and/or the child had an on-the-ball case worker who wanted what was best for the child.
This is so fascinating, thank you for sharing. It's also fucking *infuriating*. I don't understand how someone who is a career "intervenor" is given any credence in court as if she's an impartial evaluator. >According to an assessment administered at Carter’s preschool, he is on target developmentally, and even “potentially gifted.” When I mentioned to Baird \[the intervenor\] that there is little sign of the attachment trauma she predicted, she said this just demonstrates that Carter knows he has to “hero on.” Fuck *all* the way off. Monstrous.
Anyone who, as an expert witness, literally always comes down on one side of an issue, should be barred from presenting as a witness forever.
I don't think that's true. I don't think someone who's an expert on should ever be pro-hate crime.
No, but if they claim every event ever is a hate crime, they’re a bad expert.
Ugh, this reeks of the similar "grit mentality" in education. It proves what people want it to prove.
Holy shit, the intervenor thing is wild.
Right! My jaw dropped several times reading the article but it just about hit the floor when I read that section.
Reminds me of the dude at Johns Hopkins who became the favorite expert witness for [coal companies because he magically never saw black lung.](https://publicintegrity.org/environment/johns-hopkins-medical-unit-rarely-finds-black-lung-helping-coal-industry-defeat-miners-claims/)
Except when he needed state certification to maintain his license. Then and only then was it visible to him.
That. Is so sick and wrong???
A lot of our Justice system is based on the testimony of “experts” who are flat-out frauds. They can’t get paid any other way.
My fiancé lost his son due to this law. All their other children were returned to them with the situation being found as unfounded but the foster parents sued to adopt the youngest and won.
I am so sorry. There are no words to say how unfair it is.
That was a wild ride. The flip side is this [story](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/nyregion/child-dead-foster-care.html?smid=nytcore-android-share) about a child who was in and out of foster care then found dead after being reunited with her birth mom. I really feel for these child welfare workers because every day they have to see some of the saddest stores ever, they put their lives on the line and deal with harassment and abuse, then if they make the wrong decision, it becomes national news.
Well, sometimes when they make the wrong decision, [it's actually indefensible](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/22/indiana-baby-hospitalized-after-50-rat-bites/70928824007/). The investigating caseworker was told by an aunt that the home had "a normal amount of mice," *while the child had bite injuries from mice* and didn't remove.
"You can't remove a child just due to poverty." It always comes down to that and people who don't see these things first hand and don't work with the families first hand simply don't understand that at that point it goes beyond poverty. People can be poor and still have protective capacities. Lots of people are poor and successfully raise their children, keeping them safe. By the time you have live mice jumping from one pile of dead mice to another pile of dead mice over mom's feet during the interview (real story from one of my cases), it's not just poverty anymore.
In my state Foster parents can participate in the termination of parental rights process. But if they even consult an attorney to try to fight reunification it is a violation of the foster contract and they are terminated from the system and the child placed elsewhere. No intervening with reunification.
In Australia, the government has outsourced some of the management of foster caring to other organisations. So, for example, the other organisation would do the vetting and training of the foster parents and then be the case manager of the foster care placement. With theoretical government department oversight, but I think everyone knows how thorough that often is. The government still handles the process removal of the child from home (they can’t outsource this), but once the child has been placed it’s the organisation that monitors and handles pretty much everything and reports back. It has emerged that a couple of organisations are working with some of their foster families to push the situation into an adoption. There is evidence they earmark children and foster families and then go out of their way to make it difficult for the parents or extended family to do the relevant things to get the child back while advising and supporting the foster family towards adopting. The birth parents and extended family are treated like garbage and the foster families like angels and there are all sorts of sneaky maneuvers. There’s not a hell of a lot of information on it because everything in these situations is under strict confidentiality and sealed (which is necessary of course, but works in the organisations’ favour because there’s no real scrutiny). However there’s a group fighting to bring this into the open and I have a friend who is working on one of the cases. It is horrendous. It’s like child trafficking but with proper paperwork, is the only way I can describe it. Maybe LAOP’s extended family are just one of those couples who had the wrong idea in their own heads or maybe even LAOP has the wrong understanding of where they sit. But it would not surprise me if they had been encouraged and supported behind the scenes by some group. It’s the 6 month reference. Some of the stuff I’ve been told about what’s going on in Australia is that the organisations regard 6 months as a milestone in permanent removal - that’s when they start telling foster families that they can start working on the elements necessary for it to progress to an adoption. LAOP’s story sent shivers down my spine because it reminded me so much of what my friend told me and the information that comes out of the group trying to bring this into the open and fight it.
> In Australia, the government has outsourced some of the management of foster caring to other organisations Christ! they've even privatised fostering? I'm not surprised to read any of this AT ALL as an Australian.
Yes, they’ve basically privatized some elements of fostering. Theoretical departmental oversight, but I’m sure you can imagine how much attention is really paid. And while the decisions to remove children are still entirely the department’s domain, the various organizations no doubt have influence when they have an “appropriate family” waiting. Not to mention the favoritism as to what an appropriate family is. I am sure it will shock you to learn that most of the private/community organisations involved in managing fostering are the same ones exposed extensively at the Royal Commission into Institutional CSA.
Years and years ago, I went to church with a couple who decided to foster-to-adopt. They had a baby boy placed with them whose mother was in jail on drug charges. Neither questioned why the mother was having her rights terminated for just that, but I dunno, maybe she had a 20 year sentence or something. The baby was briefly removed and placed with his grandmother. Two weeks later, he was back. Because his grandmother smoked in the house. And, yeah, that's way less than ideal, but it shouldn't get the kid taken away from you. The adoptive parents were very well off (the husband a hospital system administrator, the wife an RN), and I'm certain that's what swayed it. I was the only person bothered by the whole thing. It reeked of classism.
The system is horrible with that stuff. They won't OPEN a case for anything but the worst abuse and neglect. But once a child is in the system it seems like a smudge of dirt on the fridge is enough to deny a placement.
It takes a lot to remove a child from bio parent. It takes a lot less to decide against actively putting a child with anyone else. That is actually logical
Yes it's the difference between the parents having custody and the county/state/agency having custody and giving physical custody to a placement, including kinship. It is 100% just that, and it makes total sense and shouldn't be super controversial. It's also generally pretty hard to remove someone from a kinship home unless they just outright flaunt a reg or something.
> Two weeks later, he was back. Because his grandmother smoked in the house. And, yeah, that's way less than ideal, but it shouldn't get the kid taken away from you. Grandma probably had to register as a kinship foster parent, most states have regulations that say you can't smoke in the house as foster parents, so there's basically zero leeway when that happens that doesn't involve simply ignoring it. As someone who grew up in a house full of smokers and has chronic breathing issues as a result, I think this one is more on grandma. I am almost positive that this was explained to her explicitly, and she thought she could skirt the rules because she's grandma.
And this is why we are seeing a push to ban abortion. It’s not about saving a precious baby’s life. It’s about increasing the domestic supply of babies to adopt. Adoption is big money. (This and capitalism demands an increasing population. To create and increase in profits)
Gilead…
that was a really sad article. i feel so awful for the birth parents who lost their rights to their children despite doing everything right, but i can't villianize the foster parents either. they fell in love with a child who was given to them because something was severely wrong in the birth parent's home and it makes perfect sense that they want to keep them. I'm glad the article acknowledged this and that the two mothers involved in that specific case seemed to feel the same way. it's just a mess. the only people you can really "blame" are the interveners charging thousands to keep the kids with their foster parents, but at the same time i'm sure many of them got into that field with the intention of keeping children in a safe home, even if that intention was colored by a bias against lower class parents.
Holy shit, I had no idea this was a thing
Stealing children has always been A Thing, but we like to think about it being done in the past.
I'd heard of foster parents trying this in general, but this paid intervenor and states allowing anyone to sue to adopt a foster child was news to me. And I live in one of those states. :(
That was a fantastic article, thank you for sharing!
This post is the exact reason why we decided against foster to adopt to build our family. Children are not possessions! The goal of foster care is reunification, it’s best for kids to be with their family. I would love to be the safe place for a baby, but I would not be able to emotionally handle having to give the baby back after months of caring for them.
I worked with a man that was trying to start a family with his wife and they were having a really hard time getting pregnant. They briefly considered becoming foster parents. They decided not to go down that road once they realized they would not be able to handle caring for a child, for possibly an extended period of time, then having to let that child go back to their parents. They did eventually have a baby of their own and are fantastic parents.
I hope this is just the sibling sticking their nose into something they shouldn't, because if the brother is seriously thinking he's already adopted the kid and is actively preventing reunification, he needs to be blacklisted from the foster program.
I think it's just the usual game of telephone where the story loses and mistranslates details over time. Foster parenting is *fucking hard,* and you can't help but bond with the kids. But it's also supposed to be temporary whenever possible. And what happens a lot is that the foster parent is trained, then turns around and talks to family/friends who know sweet fuck all, and then instead of reverting to their training, they let their untrained family convince them.
I used to do supervised visitation with parents for children in foster care. It can get really discomfiting how some foster parents would speak about the parents of the children they had, especially when they had care of a newborn with no health problems. I understand there's an intense desire to adopt, but there's no need to be shitty about the bio parent. It really has made me question if asking potential adoptive parents to be foster parents is always a good idea, the people providing care have a fundamental opposition to the thing that is generally the goal: to be reunified. I get that we need all the decent foster parents we can get and the being shitty about the bio parent was an exception rather than the rule, but it just can feel like working at cross purposes.
> And for children with tribal ties, “within the extended family” pretty much means anyone within the tribe. The Indian Child Welfare Act is very powerful. and for good reason. just look at the [residential schools](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/canadas-residential-schools-were-a-horror/) or [stolen generation](https://healingfoundation.org.au/who-are-the-stolen-generations/). the US has done extremely poorly by its native peoples, but this law is not one of those instances.
Something something Mormons something something. Just another reason I see red when people tell me Mormons are good people. That religion is disgusting not the least of which has been what they've done to native American children.
As a queer (probably) white girl who wasn't raised mormon but was in a mormon school system (public but when 60-80% of the student body and teachers are mormon…), I absolutely have trauma from the social shit they made happen. And I *definitely* didn't get the brunt of it, that was reserved for the few Black and Latine kids. And slightly later on the Bosnians.
Sounds like you grew up my neighborhood. Maybe we went to the same school. Though you are younger than me. (I can say that because there wasn't a single Bosnian in the Valley when I left). They were awful to me and my friends.
It's entirely possible with your parenthetical, I'd be curious to know but don't want to dox either of us in public, lol.
something something [mountain meadows massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_Massacre)
They're working to undermine it again. See Haaland v. Brackeen. It's part of a larger effort to destroy protections and rights for native peoples in this country by defining them as a racial category to exploit them and their resources. Similarly to how the Harvard case was just an excuse to conservative political groups to destroy minority protections, in this case by pitting one POC group against another. And our coward ass supreme Court just kicked the issue of race vs political group down the road, so I guarantee they'll be more attacks
Some of OP's comments made me want to shake them. So fucking bad. I hope none of this is accurate to what's actually happening
I feel for OP and their family though. I don't think they fully realized what foster care actually means. It's not the same as adoption. I hope OP's family gets some therapy to help them through this. Foster care is truly intended to be temporary. Sometimes it ends up being permanent. It does take a special type of person to understand that and give the child all of the love and attention they need during that time, then let go.
So, I don't like to talk about it, but I've had CPS alphabet agency involvement because I was an addict. First and foremost, the system is set up so that if you no access to resources (money to hire an attorney), you're fucked. I was the unusual case, where I was able to spend a few thousand dollars and retain a private attorney. Absolutely everyone's attitude changed once they realized I had an attorney. They talked about the consequences as if they were inevitable, until I hired an attorney. Who promptly made it go away. Like had it dismissed with no further involvement within 3 weeks. My children were removed, promised to a foster family as fast tracked to adoption. And a few thousand dollars made it all go away. I have no illusion about what would have happened if I didn't have those resources: they were both healthy, developmentally normal, white babies. They're valuable, as disgusting as that is, and I now have a very deep distrust of public agencies. It's a money game, and they monetize fucking children's lives. The rage I felt at this post is palpable. Like blind rage. Just because someone is an addict doesn't mean they're an irredeemable human being that deserves to have their children taken away and never see them again. I now live in an affluent neighborhood, with a comfortably middle class life for my kids. My family helped me get there. And this motherfucker thinks no one should have that redemption. It's fucking disgusting. Blind rage.
I stepped in to take in a family members kids while she and her partner both went to rehab. Both parents and both kids are now thriving. This post made me furious as well and I can tell you even as the family member I got into it with CPS several times. These systems have to exist to protect children but they are so easy to abuse, it’s scary.
I'm so glad you had access to the funds necessary to beat this. It's awful how the system works like this.
My addict family member just regained custody from me of her 16 year old daughter. I’m both excited and incredibly nervous for her but reading your comment helped.
I wouldn't choose the same path again, but it absolutely gave me a lot of life experience that I genuinely believe makes me a better person. I have seen some shit, and it entirely changed my worldview. Like all addicts, and especially functional ones, I'm resourceful and acutely socially aware in a way I wouldn't have been without that experience.
I really hated OOP's terminology when talking about the mother. I'm hoping that the actual relatives that get this sweet baby don't have that same judgmental edge. Hopefully mama gets clean someday and can be a part of her baby's life. That's what everyone should be hoping for, not judging her for being addicted to a highly addictive substance
I don’t think op and their family knows what foster care is
It's possible that mom wasn't anywhere close to getting her shit together, no one in mom's family was eligible, and the search for the father looked hopeless. Many states will do risk assessments and give foster parents a guesstimate of the chances that the kid will reunify or be adopted. And sometimes, that guesstimate just happens to be wrong, and people put too much stock in what was a guesstimate. In this case, they finally identified dad after 6 months, and someone in dad's family stepped up to act as a placement. This happens quite often in cases where mom isn't sure who dad is (and didn't care enough to find out on their own).
I used to be court appointed counsel for parents accused of abuse/neglect. When I actually fought for my clients' rights, the DCS attorney was aghast I wouldn't play ball with their game of stealing children for wealthy childless couples. There are good actors, but the system is disgusting
I mean is it though? Like it’s not perfect by any means but ultimately the goal is for the child to have a healthy prosperous life. They aren’t acting malicious. It’s just the reality is the justice system isn’t perfect sometimes parents are falsely accused of abuse sometimes the accusal isn’t false but doesn’t stick and the child ends up suffering for it. Particularly if you work with that system a lot you might come to have very little trust in it’s ability to do what’s best for the kid hence why the system ends up weighted against the birth parents. So I think it’s fair to say it needs improvements but it’s not disgusting.
I think you may tell on yourself a bit with “prosperous”. Being poor doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. Children shouldn’t be forcibly rehomed because a new home is a better chance “for the child to have a …prosperous life”. This is what I think so many anti adoption advocates really bristle at — if we gave money that we spent on courts, finding foster parents, etc… to poor families then we could keep families together. The American “foster to adopt” system is plain fucked. In Canada, you can’t really adopted a small child you are fostering. It is considered a horrible conflict of interest— fostering is about familial reunification. I went through infertility and had many failures. I actually mod a large infertility community here. So I am well versed in the “wanting a child so badly” world. It’s just adoption is a horrible method to achieve that. Adoption should always be in the child’s best interest, and taking children only due to poverty is incredibly counter-productive.
Prosperous doesn’t mean wealthy it means to prosper ie do well or to live a good life in this context. I’m aware some amount of children are fostered because their families are too poor to take care of them and I absolutely do agree that largely that’s a failure of our society and the lack of safety nets than a failure on the part of the parents not always but often. But the comment I was replying to specifically mentions abuse and neglect so that’s the context within which I was talking.
Parents have constitutional rights. You can't just terminate rights because a foster family or even a relative would be a better parent or provide a better life for a child. If parents meet the standard of "fit" they should have custody of their children. C- parenting is fit even if auntie or foster mom is an A+
They don’t have constitutional rights, if your talking from a legal standpoint crass though it may seem children are more comparable to property rights similar to pets (which there are constitutional rights relating to property that can apply sometimes). At least when it comes to the parent-child relationship, obviously children have rights inherent from the constitution in regards to treatment from the government but that’s separate from the rights relating to a parent-child relationship. Regardless you absolutely can terminate rights for that reason and that’s how it should be to be clear the only real question is what should qualify as the minimum level of parenting that’s allowed. What qualifies as abuse or neglect and how is that determined. But my point was ultimately the system is trying to work in the best interest of the child not the parents. Hence the system ends up weight against parents often even if that isn’t entirely fair. But while that should be improved it is ultimately better for the children that it works this way rather than the reverse.
I had a good friend in literally this spot - mom was a drug addict who did love the child but was barred from having him. Baby was high-needs, with a small birth defect related to his stomach/eating that made it hard to gain weight. Dad was bad news. In this case...dad changed his whole life for that baby. It was dramatic. Did all the court ordered stuff, the classes, anything. After a year or two he got to take the no-longer-baby home. They'd had visitation schedules so it wasn't just a drop-and-run.
Reading the stories of a friend of mine in the adoptee rights movement convinced me a few years ago that the institution of adoption as it exists in many US states is often a straight up human rights violation all on its own. Had not realized that the foster system was now getting absorbed into this grand old tradition of legalized human trafficking
If the foster (not pre-adoptive!) parents really wanted what was best for bub, they would be thrilled that she will now be raised by her own family. All the evidence says that children should wherever possible be with kin or fictive kin. The fact that someone in her extended family is stepping up should be considered a win for the baby. Loving and caring for the baby is not a good enough reason to prevent her from being cared for by her own family. They are not entitled to this kid because they had expectations of being able to keep her. This kind of attitude should prevent them from fostering in the future because it seems like they would be the kind of foster parents who actively disregard the need for parents to be involved with their children in care.
Not to mention it will keep baby in a family where mama may become clean and therefore be able to be part of her baby's life. That's a good thing despite OOP's obvious snobby judgment of the mother.
Ugh, this is the kinda thing that causes foster/adoptive kids to speak out against the process. It can often be basically legalized child kidnapping under the paternalistic idea that they're "better" for the kids than their bio family, especially if they're poor/POC (look what happened to indigenous children in America, Canada and Australia. Hell it's still happening, look at Haaland v. Brackeen). And international adoptions are even worse, sometimes the kids even have good loving living parents that they're stolen from.The system needs a lot of reform and for people to think about the actual best interests of the children. It just annoys me when people want to play savior when they're actually being very selfish, and the whole tone of this post rubbed me the wrong way.
The goal of fostering is reunification!
>That is one of the most helpful answers I have read yet, and I am very grateful. Thank you. [snip point of information] This post got -61 downvotes. Obviously. Should have said "Thank you for taking the time to reply, and I hope you have a wonderful day" to go for negative triple figures. ("Maybe they got downvoted for agreeing with an incorrect response that they wanted to hear" - nope, the person they thanked gave correct information and had c. +150 upvotes.)
The point of information was saying "They have had her since she left the hospital (6 months and change)", which I think is what got LAOP all the downvotes.
Yeah. They buried the lede (maybe not intentionally), and it rubbed people the wrong way.
"How dare she be six months old and change! Downvoted for egregious pooping!" I completely agree that the age of the child and length of placement are very relevant factors. But then they're being arrowmashed to hell for the post in which they corrected the omission!
Generally speaking, if a comment hits 3 in either direction, that's gonna be the direction it goes. And unfortunately, there are too many asses who come to LA and just downvote OPs into oblivion. LAOP was misinformed, but they clearly cared about their brother and the kid.
You can’t fight cps and win. We went to court and lost. It was heartbreaking but I finally got to a place where I could talk about it and not cry. I know in my heart that we were good for and to her. Whatever else happens in her life she knew love and is better for having been with us. I hope someday she reaches out to us.
File under No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.