Standard operating cruelty: When the family police steal more than Social Security checks

Photo by Alan Levine

When children are taken from their parents forever and those children are adopted by strangers, the parents often want to leave their children something to remember them by, perhaps a cherished keepsake or a family photo from happier times.  So they give these personal effects to the family police agency to pass on to the children.

But in Minnesota, they don’t pass them on.

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 “If I would have had something from my mom ... just to know that my mom loved me, you know, or thought enough to send something with me to fight in this world. It would have made a huge difference.”

 -- Ann Haines Holy Eagle on what the Minnesota family police stole from her

 By now we’re all familiar with one odious practice of most family police agencies (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies): They steal the Social Security benefits to which some foster children are entitled and keep the money for themselves.  Thanks to some excellent reporting from NPR and The Marshall Project some states and localities have been embarrassed into ending the theft.

But in at least one state, Minnesota, there’s another kind of theft from some foster youth that’s even worse and has gotten almost no attention:

They steal memories.

They steal hope.

They steal love.

It’s not calculated cruelty – it’s worse: It’s standard operating cruelty.  It’s been done for decades, probably without a moment’s thought.  This practice is one more illustration of something NCCPR’s President Prof. Martin Guggenheim said decades ago: “There’s a lot of hate masquerading as love in this system.” 

Because this practice gives away the extent to which, deep down, whether or not they even admit it to themselves, so many family police hate the overwhelmingly poor disproportionately nonwhite families from whom they take children. It even makes me wonder if they consider the overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately nonwhite children to be fully human. 

The practice was discovered by accident by members of the group that is, proportionately, most affected: Native Americans – since in Minnesota Native children are torn from their families at fourteen times their rate in the general population. 

As this Minnesota Public Radio story explains it involves nothing more than keepsakes and photographs. 

When children have their right to ever live with their own parents taken from them (a more accurate way of looking at it than “termination of parental rights”) and those children are adopted by strangers, the parents often want to at least leave their children with something to remember them by; almost always the items are family photos or documents.  So they give these personal effects to the family police agency to pass on to the children. 

But in Minnesota, they don’t pass them on. 

Instead, in Minnesota, the keepsakes are just shoved into the children’s case files.  The children don’t get to see them until they’re adults – and then, only if they happen to know about them.  Because even then, the family police make no effort to notify them that these keepsakes exist.  (The MPR story implies that might be changing, but it’s unclear.) 

One adult adoptee, Ann Haines Holy Eagle, said: 

“If I would have had something from my mom ... just to know that my mom loved me, you know, or thought enough to send something with me to fight in this world. It would have made a huge difference.” 

But once you acknowledge that the parents whose children you’ve taken forever love those children and the children love them, it undermines the entire white, middle-class adult-centered false vision of “permanence” that has poisoned the lives of hundreds of thousands of children. 

In that vision, children are supposed to feel about their birth parents the way so many family police feel about them: that they are at worst evil and at best sick! Sick! Sick! So why would their children want to know them, remember them, or have anything to do with them? 

And letting children remember their birth parents and acknowledging the love between them may make things uncomfortable for the people for whom the system is designed: Overwhelmingly middle-class disproportionately white foster and adoptive parents.  As the Minnesota Public Radio story explained: 

Haines Holy Eagle says she believes it’s possible that [the Minnesota Department of Human Services] has held onto these personal effects because they prioritized the wishes of adoptive parents over those of adoptees.  “You want it to be respectful of the adoptive parents, you didn’t want to disrespect them because you want them to feel like this is my new start. This is my new family,” said Haines Holy Eagle. 

Exactly.  Like something out of Orwell’s 1984, children are expected to erase their parents from their memories.  They don’t exist.  They never existed.  And nothing is more important than the feelings of the people all those middle-class professionals find it easiest to identify with: middle-class adoptive parents. 

All this explains how the family policing establishment perverted one of the most noble concepts in “child welfare” – permanence.  In the name of giving children a permanent home, the system prioritizes paper permanence – a formal decree certifying adoption by strangers.  That’s permanence of, by, and for, the white middle class circa 1955. 

This paper permanence doesn’t just mean cutting off parents from their children’s lives.  Sometimes it means cutting off siblings.  Often it means cutting off grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, teachers, coaches and mentors. 

But as Prof. Vivek Sankaran, director of the Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Child Welfare Appellate Clinic at the University of Michigan School of Law explains, what children need is relational permanence. Children need to be able to stay connected to everyone who loves them, whether they can care for them or not.  Why in the world would you want to deprive any child of as many loving connections as possible?  Unless the system that constantly postures about “children’s rights” and “the best interest of the child” isn’t really about either. 

One more advantage to relational permanence: It’s likely to be more permanent. Depend entirely for permanence on one stranger, or perhaps a stranger couple, and what happens when that cute little tyke becomes a rebellious teen and the strangers give up on her or him?  We don’t know how often this happens, because family policing systems almost never ask questions to which they don’t want to know the answers, but the data we do have are concerning.  In contrast, weave a web of relational permanence and the odds are far better that someone will always be there for that child. 

And what does it tell us when people in a system believe that children can do just fine pretending their parents never existed and having nothing about them to hold onto?  I think it suggests a system that dehumanizes not only impoverished, disproportionately nonwhite parents, but their children as well.  I think it suggests that, at least subconsciously, a lot of people in the system don’t see these children as quite as fully human as white middle-class children, so they don’t need love as much. 

Consider the comments of Penn State Prof. Sarah Font, who actually has suggested that “aging out” of foster care with no home at all is better for older foster youth than reunification or guardianship with a relative – because while family might offer love, aging out offers money. 

Or as Font put it: 

Although permanency is important for older youth as well, the implications are less clear given that reunification or guardianship or living with relatives (adoption is exceedingly rare for older youth) may deprive older youth of additional resources that are conditional on aging out. 

Notice also the one exception: In Font’s view, the only thing clearly better for older foster youth than aging out with no family at all is adoption.  What’s the difference between adoption and those other options?  Simple. Adoptive homes tend to be richer – and whiter. 

This attitude, and the notion that all those nonwhite children can do just fine without so much as a memento of their own families, suggesting that somehow love means less to them, reminds me of nothing so much as a notorious comment by Gen. William Westmoreland about Asians during the Vietnam War:  “'The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner,” Westmoreland said. “Life is cheap in the Orient."

So, Minnesota family police, you’ve shown us who you really are.  But what about the other 49 states?  What are their policies?  Do they have policies – or is it up to an individual office or an individual caseworker?

So far, we don’t know.  It’s reasonable to assume that not every place is like Minnesota.  All over the
country, there are adoptive parents who accept not only mementos for their adopted children but open adoptions. They work hard to keep children in touch with their birth parents.  There are foster parents who fight to reunite their foster children with their own families, sometimes over the objection of the family police agency.  And I’ll bet there are caseworkers who make damn sure that a treasured keepsake or photo makes it into the hands of a newly-adopted child.

But nearly 50 years of following these issues leads me to believe the Minnesota approach is more the rule than the exception.

So here’s what the policy should be:

When a parent gives a caseworker a keepsake to give to a child they may never see again: First, make several high-quality copies.  Then, take the original and Give. It. To. The Child.

When the child is too young, wait until the child is old enough and then: Give. It. To. The Child.

Why multiple copies?  Because children are often moved from home to home with nothing but a garbage bag to hold their belongings, so it’s easy for things to get lost.  And some children are institutionalized in places with staff that are abusive enough to destroy a cherished keepsake out of spite.

But this should be only the beginning.  

Systems that really gave a damn about these children wouldn’t take them needlessly in the first place.  And in the rare cases where separation is necessary and a child can’t live with her or his own parents, systems would emphasize relational permanence instead of rushing to terminate parental rights.

Shrounda Selivanoff, social service manager at the Washington State Office of Public Defense Parent Representation Program and Tara Urs special counsel for civil policy and practice at the King County Department of Public Defense put it best in the new issue of Family Justice Journal:

A parent who is unable to regain custody of their child within the timeframes of the dependency system will still have irreplaceable stories, traditions, memories, and love to give their child. A child has a right to those stories, memories, traditions, and love. 

It is their birthright.