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| The Vermont State Capitol |
Nationally, little attention has been paid to how family policing functions in Vermont. For whatever reason, the awful system next door in New Hampshire gets plenty of attention. But Vermont is even worse; probably the worst in New England and among the worst in the nation. Yet it goes largely under the radar.
A story about foster youth getting access to their own records was a useful reminder that Vermont needs more attention – and Vermont’s leaders need to feel ashamed.
I was reminded when a story about access to records brought home a comparison between two mothers and their children. One lived in Vermont, the other lived near me in Northern Virginia.
Both begin the same way. A mother’s injuries lead to prescriptions for opioid painkillers which lead to a substance use disorder.
Vermont Public recently told the story of what happened to the son of the first mother, Nathaniel Farnham, when the Vermont family police agency, the Department of Children and Families, invaded his life. After two weeks of supervised visits to the family, Farnham says,
“…one Saturday morning while I was watching cartoons with my mom, knock on the door, and there’s a DCF worker with two state troopers. And I’m getting put in the back of a car and off I go, start the 13 years of hell.”
The mother in my Virginia neighborhood was, if anything, in worse shape. She was hooked on prescription opioids and an alcoholic. "I liked alcohol, it made me feel warm,” she would later say. “And I loved pills. They took away my tension and my pain." This addict also had serious mental health issues.
But unlike Nathaniel Farnham, this mother’s children were not taken away. The local equivalent of the Department of Children and Families never knocked on the door. Instead of “13 years of hell” the children lived safely, first in their suburban Virginia home and then in the White House -- with their mom, Betty Ford. You can get a glimpse of their idyllic life here starting at 0:50 in:
The difference, of course, boils down to a single word: Money. Betty Ford had all the help she needed to raise her children safely despite her many issues. How much hell might Nathaniel have been spared, had anything like that kind of help been offered to his mother?
What
happened to Nathaniel happens in every state, but it’s more likely to happen in
Vermont. Vermont is a top candidate for child removal capital of America. Pridefully progressive Vermont tears apart
families and sends children off to the hell of foster care at
a rate that would make Donald Trump blush proud: the second-highest
rate in America, more than quadruple the national average, when rates of child
poverty are factored in. It’s been that way for decades.
The result is a system that makes all children less safe.
Most cases are nothing like the horror stories of children tortured and murdered. In Vermont 93% of the time, when children are thrown into foster care their parents are not even accused of physical or sexual abuse. Most cases aren’t even like Nathaniel’s mother, or Betty Ford. More than 60% of the time, there’s not even an allegation of any kind of drug abuse at all.
Far more common are cases in which family poverty is confused with neglect.
Even Bill
Young, who used to run Vermont’s child welfare agency, is appalled. After the Vermont Center
for Parent Representation documented case after case of families wrongly listed
on the state´s blacklist of alleged child abusers, Young said:
“After about two months, I realized oh my god, it’s true. These stories are true … [We] have a situation where people begin to think, you know, in the interest of protecting a child, you can skew the evidence a little bit, something that people who raised me would have called lying.”
Consider how this culture harms children.
Vermonters were appalled when Trump tore apart families at the Mexican border – we all remember those children’s cries. And The New York Times just reminded us of the legacy. Yes, when DCF does it, there’s a difference: DCF workers almost always mean well. But the trauma of being torn from everyone they know and love is identical. Vermont children cry out the same way for the same reasons.
No wonder study after study finds that, in typical cases, children left in their own homes typically fare better even than comparably-maltreated children placed in foster care. And yes, that includes cases where the issue is substance use.
The harm isn’t just emotional. Multiple studies find abuse in one-quarter to one-third of family foster homes. The rate of abuse in group homes and institutions is even worse.
And all the time, money and effort wasted on false allegations, trivial cases and poverty cases is, in effect, stolen from finding those few children in real danger.
To its credit, the Vermont Legislature enacted modest reforms. But far more needs to be done. For starters, the model of high-quality family defense pioneered in Vermont by VCPR must be available to every family. This approach is proven to reduce foster care with no compromise of safety. In some cases, the federal government will reimburse half the cost. Between that and the savings from reduced foster care, this approach pays for itself.
And lawmakers need to become laser-focused on ameliorating the worst stresses of poverty. Startlingly small investments in cash assistance, housing aid and childcare can dramatically reduce not only neglect but even severe abuse. And when the issue really is substance use that compromises safety, apply the Betty Ford standard to any Vermonter who needs treatment.
Is it
really too much to ask that Vermont take a more humane approach to child
welfare than Donald Trump?
