Child Protective Services: Waging War on the Poor
by Mary Callahan & Jesse Leah Vear
On March 8th, International Women's Day, POWER (Portland Organizing to Win
Economic Rights) and MADAR (Maine Alliance for DHS Accountability and
Reform) will stage a march around Portland, a rally in the DHS parking lot
and an indoor event called the Unfair Fair.
The march is in support of THE MOTHERS OF THE DISAPPEARED, mothers who have
lost their children permanently to the system in spite of never having hurt
those children. At the rally, representatives of the two groups will present
DHS with a joint statement outlining their demands for fundamental changes
in the Child Protection System to make it as fair to the poor as it is to
the wealthy.
The UNFAIR FAIR, held at the Chestnut Street Church from 3PM to 6PM, will
have booths to spotlight certain practices that bias the system against the
poor. The Frontline Documentary THE TAKING OF LOGAN MARR will be shown at
4PM.
Out of all the injustices and indignities created by poverty, the
unnecessary destruction of families by DHS is the cruelest. We are not
talking about cases of serious neglect and abuse where intervention is
legitimate. We are talking about the thousands of families all across the
country broken up due to borderline incidents, false allegations, or poverty
conditions mistaken for neglect.
In recent months, many of these cases have affected our members and thus
compelled us to speak out and get involved. Federal and State governments
have created perverse financial incentives that reward social service
agencies for destroying families. Families are not informed of their rights,
and when they do try to defend themselves against DHS, a lack of finances
further stacks an already stacked deck against them. The checks and balances
that exist in almost any other area of law do not exist here, with
confidentiality laws and complete immunity from prosecution protecting one
side - the DHS — and little or nothing protecting the other side — the
families.
Furthermore, families with children in the system are terrified by reports
of ongoing abuse in foster care. There is a disturbing tendency to cover up
these issues rather than expose and correct them. Statistics of abuse in
foster care are doctored, and those who step forward to report the abuse are
retaliated against.
We are aware of and support recent efforts to improve the system with family
team meetings, but we believe this to be too small an effort and one that
will prove to be short-lived without more basic, fundamental changes. The
system will not return to its original intent, that of protecting children,
unless and until financial incentives stop rewarding the patent destruction
of families. Moreover, we must create a system that is as fair to the poor
as it is to the rich. Checks and balances insuring due process for families,
transparent decision making, and consistent standards are just some of the
necessary elements required of such a system. We commit ourselves to join
in this process.
We call for:
- Removal of the perverse financial incentives that reward breaking up
families.
- Real citizen review boards to oversee DHS agencies and hold officials
accountable for wrong-doing.
- Review of all cases where non-abused children have been removed from
families.
- Due process, including access to independent experts for all families who
are faced with termination of parental rights.
Mary Callahan, of Maine Alliance for DHS Accountability & Reform, is an
author and foster parent from Lisbon, Maine.
Jesse Leah Vear, of Portland Organizing to Win Economic Rights, is a
low-income activist & organizer from Portland, Maine.
For more information about this event, please call 681-0035, email
power@riseup.net, write Po box 4281 Portland, Maine 04101, or visit the
following website: www.babystealer.com.
Excerpts from Mary Callahan's testimony before the committee charged with
merging DHS and BDS*, August 8, 2003
When I talk to people who see themselves as DHS victims, I know I am only
hearing one side of the story. But I also recognize that the same factors
come up over and over again, and they are things I have seen for myself.
Here are those factors:
|
Think of your own children. What do you think would be harder on them, moving from place to place with you, the parent they love, or losing you and everyone else in your family, then spending the rest of their childhood waiting for you to come and get them, wondering what they did to lose your love.
|
1) Lying. Everyone claims the department lied about them. I don't doubt it
any more because they have lied about me. Just one example: a foster child
asked to move back with me after his kinship placement failed, and was told
that I said no. Now I ask you to think how it must feel to a child to be
rejected by his former foster parent. He is already in the system because we
have rejected his parents, now he is being personally rejected. Only he
wasn't. I would have taken him back in a second, but his DHS worker didn't
like me, so she lied to him. His next placement was told not to let him
contact me because I supposedly provided drugs and alcohol for him when he
lived with me.
2) Divide and conquer. Just as Logan Marr's mother, Christie Marr, was told
to cut ties with her mother, many of the people who call me say they were
forced to cut ties with someone important to them. One mother claims she had
to cut her father out of her life when he was terminally ill. She never knew
him to hurt anybody, but the department said he had, and made her choose
between him and her children.
3) The setup: "She said to call her if I had any problems, that she would be
happy to help, and when I did call, she came out with the cops and took my
kids." I've heard that more than once. Another setup is the parenting
evaluation. Parents are told if they take it and pass, that it will help
them in court. What they are not told is that 95% of the people who take
that test fail. They are really taking the test just so the department will
have more justification for removing children. I call it the Kiss-of-Death
Parenting Evaluation.
4) Disrespect. Yelling seems to be acceptable behavior. When a parent or
grandparent tells me that the worker yelled at them in the DHS waiting room,
I believe it because I have seen it happen. I've been yelled at on the
phone. As a nurse, I don't even yell back when a drunk berates me in the
Emergency Room. I handle it professionally because that's what's expected of
me. They don't seem to have the same expectation at DHS.
5) Child removal on a whim. When foster parents contact me it is usually
about some child who has been removed with no warning, and apparently no
grasp at all on the part of the department of how painful this is for the
child. Children are like pawns in a big game, moved more easily than we
would move a pet from one household to another. One foster father said he
had someone come up to him and ask why he hadn't been to the transition
meetings for his foster child. He didn't know the child was being moved.
What he finally found out was that the caseworker's best friend had become a
foster parent and was interested in that particular child, so she was giving
her the child like some kind of a gift.
At the center of any of these situations is a power struggle. Parents think
they have a certain amount of control over the circumstances surrounding
their own children. DHS workers are determined to show them they are wrong.
I think we saw that on The Caseworker Files on Frontline when the statement
"They're not taking me seriously yet," kept being repeated, until the child
was finally taken.
What I experience is a system that is about power, control and hate. But you
know what never comes up? Love never comes up.
*Department of Human Services and Behavioral and Developmental Services
Back to Peace Talk Index, Spring, 2004