NC’s foster care system is rife with injustice. It’s about to get worse | Opinion
Adoption stories are supposed to be feel-good stories. A headline might read: “Neglected Child Longing For Forever Home Finally Finds Loving Family.” That’s the mythology invoked by N.C. House Bill 647.
The “Expedite Child Permanency” bill proposes to encourage quicker “permanency” for children by streamlining the foster care-to-adoption process and giving foster caregivers more rights.
But what if there aren’t nearly as many children “waiting” for forever homes as we’ve been led to believe?
It’s hard to see the reality of this system because it happens out of the public eye and behind the shield of confidentiality. But as an attorney who works in this system, I can tell you that a peek into the inner workings of North Carolina’s abuse/neglect/dependency courtrooms would reveal what the families caught there have in common: they are poor, disproportionately Black and they share the happenstance of having been noticed and reported to DSS by a teacher, medical worker or police.
That doesn’t make them the worst of the worst; it makes them the unluckiest of the unlucky.
A peek into our courtrooms demonstrates that our state, one that had a $6.5 billion state budget surplus last year, declines to invest in the well-being of its poorest residents. It does not offer generous food, housing, medical, mental health or childcare subsidies to parents who want to take care of their own kids. But it will certainly give plenty of financial incentives to foster caregivers.
A peek behind the curtain would also reveal scores of beloved children who have been brutally separated from their parents by bureaucrats and systematically rerouted into adoptive homes that are wealthier and whiter, on average.
This bill would require a district court to ascertain within one year of removal whether a child will ever be able to go home again, and if not, to find them a “safe, permanent” alternative. Right now, though, our backlogged courts often don’t even make any determination about whether DSS’s original removal was justified until more than a year has passed.
Take the story of Priscilla Smith, for example, whose newborn grandson was wrongfully seized by the Durham County Department of Social Services out of the hospital because they didn’t think his mother was up to the task of parenting due to her disability. The family sued to get Z.S. back — and won — but it took more than a year for the ordeal to conclude.
If this bill had been law, Z.S. could have already been adopted.
North Carolina’s foster care system is rife with injustice. The due process parents receive is a sham. Parents are entitled to be assigned an attorney and are granted the “opportunity” to be heard in court, but as an attorney practicing in this courtroom I’ve seen lawyers regularly waive the chance to speak on behalf of their clients. There isn’t much point in speaking anyway, since district judges usually rubber-stamp the recommendations of DSS social workers, fearing the backlash of the rare worst-case scenario that might make the news.
Meanwhile, the “help” that the system offers is judgmental, rigid and hard to access. Durham County DSS has been known to assign parents to take parenting courses that no longer exist, to report for random drug testing at centers that are only open while the parents are at work, and to forget to notify parents in advance about their visitation appointments.
North Carolina’s foster care system absolutely tears children from loving families every single day. Separating a child from their parents is one of the most traumatic experiences imaginable. Children who experience this pain suffer from body dysregulation, difficulty managing emotions, poor self-regulation, poor self-esteem, cognitive impairment and long-term health issues.
If we claim to love children, we have to love their parents too, and we have to take care of and respect their families of origin. Otherwise, our state isn’t protecting kids; it’s harming them.