It’s another example of why “sunshine is good for children.”
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| The late Judge Judith Kaye opened New York's family courts to the press and the public |
On the heels of the outstanding story in The New York Times about foster care as the new “Jane Crow” comes
another brilliant deep dive into child welfare in New York City – this time from The
New Yorker. (Once again, as you read it, please keep in mind that in
most places, the child welfare system is worse, often
far worse, than in New York City.)
Almost as striking as the story itself is why reporter
Larissa MacFahrquhar wrote it. Here’s how she explained it in the New Yorker’s daily email newsletter:
How do you decide whether to take children from their parents? For the most part, we read about child-protective services only when they fail spectacularly—when a child is killed at home. The press then excoriates the usual suspects—the caseworker (How could she miss signs that now seem so obvious?), child protection (How could they train their workers so poorly?), and the city (Does it care so little about children that it won’t pay for enough caseworkers to protect them?).
Because of this, most of the pressure on child protection is in one direction—in favor of removal. But it’s no small thing to take a child from his family. It seems strange to me that removal has come to seem the safe and cautious thing to do, and, since the press has played a large part in promoting this idea, I thought it might be useful to have a journalistic account of both sides of the story.
I sat in on the Bronx Family Court for several months and watched judges grapple with this awful decision. One mother had been coming to family court for eight years, since her young daughter had burned herself on a curling iron. For much of that time, her children had been in foster care. The foster-care agency believed that the foster parents should adopt the children. Child protection was nervous about their safety if they returned home but also knew that children often fared badly in foster care. The mother’s lawyer said that the mother loved the children and that her mistakes didn’t justify keeping them apart.
Everyone was arguing for the best interests of the children. The mother sat, mostly silent, as the lawyers made their cases
Several things stand out
about this story, but it may be most notable for how well it answers one
question. Research
has told us over and over again that in typical cases children placed in
foster care fare worse even than comparably-maltreated children left in their own homes.
As the reader is placed in
the position of the mother in this case, forced to watch helplessly as the
children deteriorate in foster care, we understand why this happens.
Something else that stands
out about this story: In most states, it would have been impossible to do it.
That’s because it relies so heavily on the reporter’s ability to see the
process for herself, by spending months in what, in New York, is known as
Family Court.
In most states these hearings
are closed. That’s not to protect children, it’s to protect almost everyone
except the children – CPS agencies that do terrible things to families and
lawyers and judges who either can’t or won’t do their jobs.
In 2001, another superb
journalist, former Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
reporter Barbara White Stack examined this issue in what is still the
definitive series on the topic, Open
Justice. She found that none of the excuses for closing hearings held
up to scrutiny and all over the country onetime opponents became supporters.
(We summarize some of the key findings of that series, and update some of the
data in NCCPR’s Due
Process Agenda.)
So along with MacFahrquhar,
the courageous mother at the center of the story and some great lawyers from
the Bronx Defenders, someone else deserves credit for this particular piece of
outstanding journalism: the late Judge Judith Kaye.
She’s the one who ordered
these courts opened in New York, when she was chief judge of the state’s
highest court, the Court of Appeals. As
she said at the time: “Sunshine is good for children.”
