The two agencies found that Massachusetts violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. So what about Oregon?
A columnist for the Oregonian has a very good column this week about
how the Oregon child welfare agency has torn two children from a loving couple
because the agency deems the i.q. scores of the mother and father insufficient.
There is no finding that either child was ever abused or neglected (the second child actually was confiscated at birth). In fact,
the only trauma they’ve suffered is being torn from their parents – among the
worst traumas any child can endure. And of course, they face the high risk of abuse in foster care itself –
a risk that probably is especially high in Oregon.
The behavior of the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS) –
harming the children in this way - is morally reprehensible. A good
case can be made that it’s also illegal – a violation of the Americans
with Disabilities Act. We know this because the Department of
Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services said so in a scathing letter to Massachusetts child welfare
officials about a remarkably similar case in that state. I wrote
about that case for a report-in-progress. Because of the Oregon case, I’m
posting that section of the report below.
Like Oregon, Massachusetts is enamored of a take-the-child-and-run
approach to child welfare. Both states tear apart families at rates well above the national average.
So the next time child welfare leaders in either state whine about
overwhelming caseloads and how that supposedly stops them from doing their jobs
well, some reporter might want to ask them why they waste precious resources
destroying families such as these.
This is what happened in Massachusetts:
Here’s
what a nationally-recognized expert on parenting with a mental disability said
about Sara Gordon,* a parent with a mental disability:
Clearly, [Ms. Gordon] is a loving, caring, and conscientious mother who is willing to do whatever it takes to have her daughter in her life. She is capable of learning new skills and has done so through her visits with [her daughter, Dana], despite them being infrequent. . . . It is important to remember that all parents receive help at some time, and [Ms. Gordon] should be no exception. There is no discernible reason revealed by this assessment that [Ms. Gordon together with her own parents] do not have the ability to care for her child safely.
The expert was not alone. As a
federal investigation revealed:
multiple community-based service providers, two experts who have completed parenting assessments, Dana’s court-appointed attorney, and even a majority of DCF’s most recent Foster Care Review panel all have agreed that a family-supported parenting plan would be appropriate. In this matter, a family-supported parenting plan means that Dana would be placed with Ms. Gordon and her parents in their home and Ms. Gordon’s mother (Dana’s grandmother) would maintain guardianship of Dana.
But none of this mattered to the Massachusetts
Department of Children and Families. They saw none of the love
between Sara and Dana and none of the support available to Sara from her own
parents, with whom she was living. As New York Magazine reported
in a story on the case, they saw
only her developmental disability – an i.q. of 70.
Apparently
based on little more than a caseworker’s self-proclaimed “intuition” and “vibe”
and prejudices about the developmentally disabled, DCF tore the infant from her
mother and placed her with strangers.
Seven
months later, they decided to try to separate the family forever, changing the
“goal” in the case to adoption and moving to terminate Sara’s parental rights.
Even
when the grandparents offered to assume legal guardianship, DCF would not
relent. The excuse, according to the New York Magazine story:
Long before, Sara herself had been taken from them because of her father’s
alcoholism. He’s been sober for 18 years.
We
know about all this only because, thanks to the family’s extraordinary
determination, some dedicated advocates, and some good luck, the case caught
the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services.
After
a 19-month investigation, the two agencies issued a scathing 26-page letter.
The letter did not look into whether DCF had
violated child welfare laws – though given that a widely-ignored federal law
requires child welfare agencies to make “reasonable efforts” to
keep families together, the agency almost certainly did.
Rather, they found that DCF had violated the
Americans with Disabilities Act. According to the letter:
[F]or more than two years, DCF has denied Ms. Gordon and Dana the opportunity to be a family and now threatens to deny them that opportunity permanently. Instead, DCF has continually asserted that Ms. Gordon poses a safety risk to Dana if she were to parent on her own, without consideration of any supports. However, DCF has ignored the fact that Ms. Gordon is not proposing to parent on her own without any supports, has ignored its own ability and obligation to provide such supports, and has repeatedly ignored the objective evaluations of various clinical and service professionals … who have reviewed this case and found that Ms. Gordon’s plan to parent Dana with her family’s support is appropriate.
DCF
listed several specific concerns about Sara Gordon’s ability to be a parent:
She had difficulty with feedings and diaper changes. On a couple of occasions
she walked away from the changing table. On a couple of occasions,
Sara was unable to comfort Dana when she cried. Sometimes Sara
bumped Dana’s head.
But,
the federal agency letter notes, DCF set a far lower standard for the foster
parents – the parents DCF wanted to adopt Dana. According to the
letter:
DCF was aware of, and dismissed, numerous injuries to Dana, including a black eye, bumps, bruises, cuts, and burnt hands that occurred during the time in foster care. When Dana was only a few weeks old, she was left unattended on a table in the foster home.
The
federal investigators understood that the reasons DCF was giving for keeping
the family apart were just excuses:
DCF clearly presumed from the initial opening of its case that Ms. Gordon lacked the capacity to parent Dana due to her developmental disability without consideration of appropriate supports and services. … During the Departments’ interviews of DCF staff, one investigator explained that his view of Ms. Gordon’s capacity to parent was based on his “intuition” and stating that “[w]hen you meet with someone, you get a vibe whether they are going to be able to do it or not.” [Emphasis added.]The agencies concluded that this probably was not an isolated case, noting that
the violations in this letter highlight systemic failures by DCF to ensure social workers follow appropriate policies and procedures and have necessary training to perform their duties without discriminating on the basis of disability.
Two
other elements of DCF’s behavior are worth noting:
●
DCF repeatedly stonewalled, stalling for months in response to requests for
information from the federal agencies, and, in some cases failing to comply at
all.
●
When it came to information about the physical harm sustained by Dana in foster
care, DCF may have attempted a cover-up. The federal agencies note that they
asked for all records concerning Dana’s placement in the foster home, but they
received none concerning her injuries. When federal investigators
interviewed DCF staff and asked specifically about a note that made a vague
reference to these injuries, the records still were not
provided. Only when the federal investigators made a specific
request about documents that appeared to be missing, were the documents noting
these injuries finally made available.
Although the letters led to the return of Dana
to her family, the high rate of child removal in Massachusetts suggests that
DCF learned nothing, and reverted immediately to business as usual.
But
this was not just a case about disability. The Gordon family is
poor. Had Sara Gordon come from a wealthy community and showed up at
the hospital with a team of health aides who would live with her in a suburban
McMansion, the hospital almost certainly never would have called DCF – and had
they called, DCF almost certainly would not have taken away the child.
As
Sara herself told New York Magazine: “When you’re filthy rich, they
don’t take your kids.”
* -The names of the mother and daughter have been
changed.
