First of two parts. Read part two here.
Every time
I think a child welfare agency can’t sink lower in its response to COVID-19,
another agency with the word “children” in its name steps up to
take the worst-response-in-America challenge.
Today's candidate: The Washington State Department of
Children, Youth and Families. Thanks
to a story from the online news site Investigate
West, and an
interview DCYF Secretary Ross Hunter did with the Seattle
Times, we now know this:
● Hunter effectively
admits he cut off all in-person visits between foster children and their
parents largely to appease foster parents who, though asked to do no
more than letter carriers and grocery clerks, are threatening to quit.
● Hunter may have felt pressured by a petition posted by an anonymous Washington State foster parent that got
nearly 300 signatures. The petition is striking for its cruelty, and well worth reading in
full.
● Hey, don’t worry, Hunter says. “There are some things
we’re finding with visits on video that are actually more positive than
in-person visits.” Yes, he really said
that.
● And some
foster parents have taken cruelty to a new level, refusing even to allow video
visits.
● Hunter’s
agency also claims it’s just following orders – from Gov. Jay Inslee. But Inslee’s office says his COVID-19 orders
still allow in-person visits, on a case-by-case basis. In fact, says a spokesman, that’s how it should be done. A reading of the actual order confirms as
much.
● Hunter gives
away his game when he says that, were the pandemic to continue for six months “I
would go figure out how to make [in-person visits] practical.”
This reveals, at best, disturbing lack of concern for how children perceive time.
Six months is a lifetime for a newborn, a quarter of a lifetime for a
toddler – and, for them, it feels like an eternity. That’s part of the reason that the younger
the child the greater the trauma of separation. And of course, these also are
the very children for whom video visits work worst.
So, if you say you can figure out
how to make in-person visits work after waiting six months, Mr. Hunter, you should be able to do it right now.
But apparently pandering to some Washington State foster parents is more important.
● The story
is a notable improvement for Investigate
West, which up to now has served as a de
facto public relations factory for the state’s foster parents. But the story still barely acknowledges the
enormous psychic trauma cutting off visits inflicts on children. And it accepts the view of foster parents
that any and all in-person visits are extremely dangerous.
Visits should be determined case-by-case
No one is
saying all in-person visits should continue. In some circumstances they are
unsafe, and in some cases foster parent fears are reasonable. But there is no need for a wholesale ban on
such visits, and indeed, like Gov. Inslee, top federal child welfare officials
specifically recommend against such a ban.
Infectious disease experts say that
often
families still can visit each other.
And many of the assumptions about visits always being unsafe are based on doing
them the same old way, supervised in crowded offices. There are other
alternatives. But foster parents aren’t
going to extend themselves if they think visits are just a favor for birth
parents, and they hate the birth parents, as is apparent in that foster parent
petition.
Investigate West fails to point out that
the risks these foster parents are being asked to take are similar to the risks
they take if they go to the grocery store or the pharmacy. And they are no
greater than the risks taken every day by the pharmacists and grocery store
clerks who help shoppers.
The “shortage” that isn’t
Hunter's desperation to appease foster parents is due to a so-called “shortage” of such parents. But, contrary
to what DCYF and Investigate West
repeatedly claim, Washington State doesn’t have too few foster parents.
Washington State has too many foster children. The shortage is artificial, the
result of decades of tearing apart families at rates above the national average
when rates of child poverty are factored in, and far above the rate in states
that are, relatively speaking, models for
keeping children safe.
For the
child, “It is not merely a matter of longing for contact,” write Jerry Milner,
Associate Commissioner of the Children’s Bureau in the Department of Health and
Human Services and his Special Assistant, David Kelly. “It is a matter of
healthy brain development, maintaining critical bonds, and prevention of trauma
that can persist for generations.”
They continue:
There will be those who use the crisis to serve their own interests or those of their constituencies. There will be those whose implicit or even explicit biases are drawn out into the light. There will be those who choose to weaponize our systemic shortcomings and use them against parents.
And that
brings us to that foster parent petition.
At one point the anonymous author says:
They say what about the bio parents who will miss [their children]? I say to this. [sic] They are the ones who made the choices which in turn lead [sic] to losing their children in the first place. They should not be worried about missing visits at this time.
Even were
that true – and much of the time it is not
– the anonymous foster parent apparently thinks that because she or he has such
contempt for birth parents (note the patronizing, dehumanizing description of them
as “bio parents”) their children do, too.
That’s not how child development works.
If a young child gets the message from a foster parent that their own
parents are contemptible human beings – or worse – s/he is likely to think: “They
are horrible and they made me, so what does that make me?” Why is Washington State tolerating foster
parents who broadcast such messages?
As Milner and Kelly make clear,
almost always, children in foster care desperately need contact – including touches and hugs – from their parents.
What the
anonymous foster parent is saying is almost exactly what the Trump
Administration said about the kids they caged at the Mexican border: It’s the
parents’ fault, they shouldn’t have crossed the border.
That’s no
reason to keep kids in cages – and alleged failings by the parents are no
reason to deprive their children of visits.
Anyone who heard the cries of the
children in detention on the border should understand this. How can anyone be trained and licensed to be
a foster parent in Washington State and not know this? Why tolerate foster parents who are supposed
to work with birth parents, but clearly loathe them – and can’t see past that
loathing to do what’s best for the children?
Yet Hunter
is doing handstands to keep foster parents like these. He made clear that fear
of losing them is at the heart of his reasoning for banning in-person
visits. In fact, were foster parents
such as these to quit, the system could only improve. Foster parents whose
attitude toward families drips with contempt would be gone. We would be left
with the many outstanding foster parents who bring real love and real courage
to their work; we would be left with those willing to step up in a crisis
instead of stepping away, and take as much risk as a grocery clerk.
Visits are fine – if they’re
people like us
There also
is an underlying hypocrisy – and racial and class bias – in some of the foster
parent fears. This can be seen in the
rush by some to cut off even video visits.
It can be seen even more clearly at
the conclusion of the Investigate West
article. It ends with the story of noble
foster parents who are “putting their health on the line” and “risk[ing]
coronavirus exposure” to arrange in-person visits for their foster children –
two such visits, in fact, each involving at least seven people, adults and
children. The visits even took place in
the foster parents’ own home!
But these
were not visits with those at-worst-evil-at-best-sick-always-suspect-
overwhelmingly-poor-disproportionately-nonwhite-birth-parents. No, these were
visits with fellow white, middle-class foster parents preparing to adopt the
children this couple had taken in on a short-term placement.
Why are the
risks of contracting coronavirus deemed insurmountable for visits with people
like them, and worth taking for
visits with people like us?
Read part two:
Flawed system, flawed journalism
