Still another bad “child welfare” bill in West Virginia.

The latest bad bill in West Virginia would make it harder to keep siblings together.

In some cases, this one encourages moving instantly to keep children from their parents (and their siblings) forever, regardless of why they came into care. 

All of the posts in this series are available here.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that in West Virginia, the Child Removal Capital of America, which tears apart families at a rate more than four times the national average, no impoverished child is safe while the State Legislature is in session. 

First came the bill that would send worker caseloads soaring by more than 48%, while drowning workers in cases for which children never should have been traumatized by a needless investigation. 

Then came the bill to build at least one, possibly two more of the worst form of institutions into which to dump children, parking-place “shelters.” 

But another one may be the worst yet.  Think of it as ASFA on steroids. 

Among its many execrable provisions the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act demands that, with certain exceptions, if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the previous 22 months, the state family police agency must seek to terminate that child’s right to live with her or his parents. It doesn’t matter why the child came into care in the first place.  

There are some exceptions.  But there also are so-called “aggravating circumstances” – situations where the agency is allowed to seek TPR immediately. In extremely rare cases that is justified. But states also are invited to pile on whatever other so-called aggravating circumstances they can think of. 

It's all led to the needless destruction of a staggering number of families – overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately nonwhite, of course -- and to the creation of a generation of legal orphans, children who “age out” of foster care with no ties to their birth parents and no other home either.  

That’s why, throughout the child welfare field and beyond, so many are having second thoughts.  But not in West Virginia, of course, where, by a nearly unanimous vote, the state House of Delegates passed a bill that would effectively double down.  This bill, like the other two, is sponsored by two Delegates who also are white, middle-class foster parents. But while I am sure both lawmakers are genuinely concerned about vulnerable children, the bill still oozes white privilege. 

One part of the bill says this: 

When a child has been placed in a foster care arrangement for a period in excess of fifteen consecutive months or fifty percent of the child’s life, and the department determines that the placement is a fit and proper place for the child to reside, the foster care arrangement may not be terminated unless the termination is in the best interest of the child … [Emphasis added].

There are some limited exceptions, including if the children are being reunified with parents and if the children were abused in the foster home. 

But now consider when that fifty percent provision would be triggered: 

● If the child is placed at one year of age.

● If the child is placed at six months.

● If the child is placed at two months.

● If the child is placed at birth. 

Though it doesn’t literally call for instant termination, and has that theoretical exception for reunification, the West Virginia chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (a group that is hardly family-friendly) got the real message.  According to a story in West Virginia Watch (which also is hardly family-friendly): 

Molly Arbogast, executive director of the National Association of Social Workers West Virginia chapter, said the change would allow termination of parental rights far earlier than the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act standard. … 

“The bill’s 50% rule would create a harsher, arbitrary standard [than ASFA] that could result in unnecessary family separations, particularly for very young children, without federal authorization.” 

Separating children from extended families 

The bill also jeopardizes the only area where West Virginia does better than average, placing children with relatives instead of strangers. 

Under this bill, what happens if relatives aren’t found almost instantly – or if the family police agency doesn’t make a serious effort to look?  What if they’re found but aren’t ready instantly because they, too, are poor and need help to fix up their home?  What if they’re simply afraid to have the family police agency in their lives and need reassurance? 

However hard this may be on the egos of privileged stranger-care parents, the evidence is overwhelming that kinship foster care typically is better for children’s well-being, and safer, than stranger-care.  And though the excuse for the bill is that it would promote stability for foster children, kinship care placements typically also are more stable than stranger care placements, because kin are less likely to give up on a child when the going gets rough. 

But the harm this bill would do to children doesn’t end there. 

One of the worst things foster care placement often does to children is to separate them not only from parents but also from siblings. The research on the need to maintain sibling connections is so overwhelming and the benefits are so great that the American Bar Association says: “Sibling relationships are sacred.” 

But this bill puts the interests of white middle-class stranger-care parents first. It sets time limits on when foster or adoptive parents who have taken in one child must be notified that siblings are available, and it says that even when a court determines that moving a child to a home with her or his siblings is in her or his “best interests” they no longer have to do it – they only have to do it if they feel like it; “best interests” be damned!  

Even the West Virginia chapter of Prevent Child Abuse America, a group, which, at the national level has a poor history on supporting families, is opposed: 

“West Virginia should be taking actions to keep brothers and sisters together — not make it easier to separate them,” said Jim McKay, state coordinator for Prevent Child Abuse West Virginia... 

“For many children, those [sibling] relationships are their only remaining connection to family — and a critical source of comfort and stability. Separating them adds to the trauma they’ve already endured,” he said, adding that federal law requires states to take actions to place siblings together. 

To which one of the sponsors said, in effect, so what? “We are pushing the envelope because we’re serious about trying to improve our foster care system in West Virginia,” he declared.  (The previous posts in this series offer several ways to actually do just that.) 

Notwithstanding good intentions, the message these foster parent lawmakers are sending boils down to: Never mind the relatives, never mind the siblings, no one could possibly be better for a foster child than – someone just like me! 

I wonder how many birth parents who lost their children to foster care are members of the West Virginia Legislature.