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 Birth
Parents Retaining a Voice in City Foster Model
by Leslie Kaufman, New York Times, June 3, 2004
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Kristal Johnson
nestled deep into the sofa between her mother and her foster
mother and listened to the two women laugh about how she used to
try playing one against the other.
There was the time when Kristal, now a poised 18-year-old,
skipped chores at the home of her foster mother, Janet Stevens,
and was told that she could not go to a party her boyfriend was
having.
Naturally, Kristal, who was scheduled for a weekend visit to her
mother, Bernadette Blount, tried to get a second opinion. But
Ms. Stevens had already called ahead. "She told me what had
happened and asked me if I agreed with the punishment or if it
was too harsh," Ms. Blount recalled. "I said, `Oh, no, you are
right. I'll back you up.' "
This scene of parental solidarity speaks to a minirevolution in
foster care, one being led by New York City. Fifteen years ago,
it would have been hard to find a place in the nation that
encouraged foster parents and birth parents to meet, let alone
talk. Child welfare literature commonly held that birth parents
— especially those like Ms. Blount, who admitted that she had
beaten her daughter — could be dangerous or might try to take
their children. Moreover, it was dogma that children would
adjust better to living with foster parents if the separation
from the birth home was swift and total.
But in 1998, New York was among the first cities to adopt an
approach to foster care that actively nurtures open
relationships between foster and birth parents.
In this model, which takes a page from the latest thinking in
divorce custody cases, not only do the birth parents know where
the foster parents live, they share in the decision making on
everything from discipline to the cereal on the breakfast table.
In the best cases, like that of Ms. Stevens and Ms. Blount, the
foster parent remains a continuing source of support and counsel
after the child returns to the birth parent, as most do.
Now after six years, with some 28,000 families having
participated in the program, the city's departing commissioner
of children's services points to the growth of the program as
among the achievements he is most proud of. "For many parents,
it has demystified foster care," said the commissioner, William
C. Bell, who will step down in a few weeks. "In surveys, parents
report a much more positive experience with the system and their
caseworkers. Children are returned home on average three months
earlier."
The family-to-family strategy, as it is called, is considered so
promising that it has already been adopted by 35 cities and
counties in 16 states. And in July, Mr. Bell will become
executive vice president of Casey Family Programs, a nonprofit
Seattle organization that develops and finances model child
welfare programs across the country, hoping to bring the model
to the rest of the nation. "We don't ever want a situation where
a parent has a kid and doesn't know where they are placed," he
said.
Proponents of this intimate approach argue that it is urgent to
expand it now, as a record 300,000 children a year are being
taken into foster care across the nation, in part because of a
1997 federal law encouraging adoptions that urges states to
remove children in potentially dangerous family circumstances.
Because family to family increases contact between birth parents
and children, they say, it improves the likelihood that the
family will reunite. They say the program also helps birth
parents who are never going to regain custody terminate their
parental rights so their child can be adopted, because they are
more confident that their child is going to a good home. Most
important, they argue, it makes the separation less traumatic
for children.
But the program has its opponents, including cities that resist
it because it requires significant funds for retraining social
workers and foster parents, many of whom now see the birth
parents as enemies.
"Foster families came to see themselves as saviors of the
children," said John B. Mattingly, director of human services
reform at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a Baltimore
philanthropy, which he led in pioneering the family-to-family
concept. Many of them found it hard to become mentors for the
adults they were taught to revile, he said, and with a
nationwide shortage of foster parents, this resistance can scare
localities from mandating relationships.
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