Foster Placement Removal and Confidentiality

I wrote this post earlier today, and then I saved it as a draft (which takes it off the blog, for those of you who don't blog) because I was nervous that FosterAbba, who is a friend, would be hurt by it, even though that was absolutely positively not what I intended. And it isn't even about her...

Then I remembered that the last time I asked FosterAbba if she was offended by something that I said, and I laughed and decided I had to publish it. And since you don't perhaps know her as well as I do, this is the conversation I had with her in my imagination today.

Me: "FosterAbba, I sure hope my post doesn't hurt your feelings or anything. It isn't intended to, I was just thinking about the whole topic and started writing..."
FosterAbba: "Yondalla, are you going to grow a back bone or do I have to drive out there and slap you?"
Me: "Um, I'll work on the backbone thing."

So here's the post:

*******

I've been thinking a lot about when social services is justified in a removal. Most of you can guess why I have been thinking about this. I've been thinking about what friends of mine are going through, about how Carl came to me, and how Frankie and Ann left and my brain has been running in circles as I try to puzzle my way through what policy should be, how it could work out, and what it might look like.

It does seem to me that the standard for natural/adoptive families and foster families should be different.

Moves, disruptions, severing of attachments are all hard on children, but at some gut level it seems right that if you are going to take a child away from his or her first or adoptive family, you better have an overwhelming reason why. If nothing else, it is an issue of how much government interference we want to have in our lives. I am opposed to any suggestion that people required to be licensed before they have children (although I understand the frustration that leads people to complain, "You can't drive a car without a license, but anyone can become a parent.") I'm opposed to it because I don't trust the state the decide who the good parents are. We need to be able to disagree on what makes a good parent. Families have different values. And the state should not be able to remove a child from a natural or adoptive home because the family has become pagan, or does anything else the rest of us find weird.

In short, even if we had a plethora of fantastic foster parents, even if foster care was what it should be, we should not remove children from weird or even mediocre homes to place them with "better" parents.

This is a hard truth for foster parents who sometimes, even often, find themselves saying goodbye to a child they love so that the child can return to parents who they believe, perhaps rightfully, will not care for him or her as well as they have.

But what about when the state does take custody of the child? The standards then seem to me to be different. The state has the obligation to put the child in what it believes are good homes. It worries me greatly that the state may have very different ideas about what constitutes a good home. It angers me to hear that a gay or lesbian couple are not foster parents because they are judged unfit, or are afraid that they will be so judged. It frustrates me to learn that some family who would be good at care is denied a license because their house does not and cannot meet the code in some relatively minor way.

In general though, I accept that the state has an obligation to the children in its care that it is right to hold foster parents to a higher standard than first and adoptive parents.

I had a responsibility to report Frankie's self-destructive behavior. Had I not myself said that I thought he needed a safer place, the social worker would have come out to judge the situation for herself. She might have talked to Frankie and to my kids. She might have concluded that Frankie needed help. Even if she didn't, it is also possible that she could have spoken to Brian and that Brian might have said that he was afraid, but that he didn't want Frankie to be taken away and he didn't want to make us mad.

If that second thing had happened, if she and I agreed that Frankie was safe with me and that I was well-equipped to care for him, but that Brian told her secretly that he was afraid (or even felt neglected or ashamed to bring friends over, or couldn't sleep well anymore), the social worker might decide to move Frankie and might or might not tell me everything. Knowing the soical workers I work with and the relationship I have had with them, I think she would say, "I talked to Brian and I think this is harder on him than you realize." But if she thought that I would be angry at Brian for making Frankie leave, she might not tell me. She might just say that she thought it was in the best interests of all concerned.

When I imagine that happening, I imagine that all sorts of other things happening. I would be upset. My friends would be upset for me. I would keep asking for more information, and the more heated it got the more hesitant the social workers would be to announce that it was all because of Brian.

Of course they might believe other things about me, or about my husband, or our family dynamics that might make them think we were not the best place for a particular child or any child.

And they wouldn't have an obligation to tell me.

And that means that if they were wrong, I wouldn't be in a position to show them that they were wrong, because I wouldn't know what to show them.

The natural family has a right to know. They have the right to be told what precisely they need to do in order to keep their kids or get their kids back. They have the right to services to help them do it.

And we don't.

And sometimes that sucks beyond the power of words to describe.

When I think about how that might affect me or a friend I get angry. I want more rights. I don't want to be treated like a babysitter who can be discharged for no reason. When I am attached to a child I want to be part of the team that makes decisions. If the social workers disagree with me I want to know why and I want the chance to convince them I am right.

And at the very same time, I know that it is very possible that I will receive a placement after something like this has happened to someone else. It could easily happen that a GLBT kid will come out to his or her social worker and that the two of them will decide both to move the youth and NOT tell the foster parents the truth about why. In fact that is basically what did happen with Carl. He had been living as a temporary placement with the TTFM. He did not want her to know he was gay. It was different because he came to her as a temporary placement, but it was the same in that she said "I would like to keep him" and the social worker said, "Sorry, but despite your 20 years of excellent work with us, we are placing him with this brand new family. Yes we know they have a five and a ten year old and that is not recommended with a fifteen year old, but we are doing it anyway. Sorry, we can't tell you why." (Come to think of it, it is no longer so surprising that she treated me they way she did.)

And all of this that would make me so angry when I think of it happening to me, and I agree with it when I think about it from a policy perspective.

And now my brain is beginning to hurt.

It could happen to me.

If it did, given my agency and my relationship with those people I would visit the supervisor in her office. I would say, "Please tell me, was this necessary? Are you convinced that it would hurt someone or violate confidentiality if I were told why?" And she would probably say, "Yes, Yondalla, it is necessary, and I can't tell you why." And I would cry, and she would hug me.

I would ask her, "Did I do something wrong?"

And the only small comfort that I have is that I know whatever she would tell me would be the truth.