To the End of June : The Intimate Life of American Foster Care (9780547999531) (43 page)

13.
[>]
   
distribution in low-income families:
Hill, “Institutional Racism in Child Welfare,” 57–76.

14.
[>]
   
strong risk factor for all forms of maltreatment:
Andrea J. Sedlak and Dana Schultz, “Race Differences in the Risk of Maltreatment in the General Child Population,” in
Race Matters in Child Welfare: The Overrepresentation of African American Children in the System
, ed. Dennette Derezotes, John Poertner, and Mark F. Testa (Washington, DC: CWLA Press, 2005), 47. In one large, longitudinal study on poverty in child welfare, the authors looked for class bias as a reason for the overrepresentation of poor kids in child welfare and determined “that the overrepresentation of poor children is driven largely by the presence of increased risk among the poor children that come to the attention of child welfare rather than high levels of systemic class bias.” Melissa Jonson-Reid, Brett Drake, and Patricia L. Kohl, “Is the Overrepresentation of the Poor in Child Welfare Caseloads Due to Bias or Need?”
Children and Youth Services Review
31 (2009): 422–27.

15.
[>]
   
across any ethnic or racial lines:
Sedlak and Schultz, “Race Differences in the Risk of Maltreatment in the General Child Population,” 47.

16.
[>]
   
73 percent higher rate of black maltreatment over white:
E. Bartholet, F. Wulczyn, R. P. Barth, and C. Lederman,
Race and Child Welfare
(Chicago: Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, 2011), 3.

17.
[>]
   
direct help toward the families that need it:
The issue brief is Bartholet et al., cited in the preceding note.

18.
[>]
   
one of the most dangerous substances for a fetus:
For instance, a baby with fetal alcohol syndrome can have skeletal, heart, or brain malformations or be born permanently mentally retarded. For more information, see “Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders; Fetal Alcohol Syndrome,” facts from the American Pregnancy Association,
http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancycomplications/fetalalcohol.html
.

19.
[>]
   
exposure to cocaine and a decrease in functioning:
Deborah Frank, MD, Marilyn Augustyn, MD, Wanda Grant Knight, MD, et al., “Growth, Development, and Behavior in Early Childhood Following Prenatal Cocaine Exposure: A Systematic Review,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
285, no. 12 (March 28, 2001): 1613. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse launched the largest study of cocaine-exposed newborns and have been comparing these children to nonexposed kids living in comparable conditions for the past fifteen years. (See the Maternal Lifestyle Study at the government clinical trials website at
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00059540
.)
They have found an IQ differential of four points, which emerges by age seven, but other than that, there are no substantial differences, according to Barry Lester, MD, founder and director of the Brown University Center for the Study of Children at Risk, Women & Infants Hospital and Brown University Medical School. Lester, who is a principal investigator for the NICHD study, spoke at a New York University conference called “Drugs, Pregnancy and Parenting: What the Experts Have to Say,” held at NYU School of Law on February 11, 2009, and provided these figures.

20.
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thousands of these babies are now in their late teens:
Barry M. Lester is founder and director of the Center for the Study of Children at Risk, Women & Infants Hospital and Brown University Medical School. Approximately 1,400 children were enrolled at birth in Detroit, Miami, Memphis, and Providence, and as of early 2012, the kids were around sixteen years old. From the Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk.

21.
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no substantial differences had emerged:
Lester provided these figures.

22.
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kids started showing poor inhibitory control:
Lester and colleagues published an article indicating that by five years of age, the meth-exposed infants in the study showed some attention deficit/hyperactivity and emotional reactivity, and the kids who had been exposed to heavy use showed attention problems and withdrawn behavior. Linda L. LaGasse, Chris Derauf, Lynne M. Smith, et al., “Prenatal Methamphetamine Exposure and Childhood Behavior Problems at 3 and 5 Years of Age,”
Pediatrics
29, no. 4 (April 2012): 681–88. Also see Cathleen Otero, MSW, MPA, Sharon Boles, PhD, Nancy K. Young, PhD, and Kim Dennis, MPA,
Methamphetamine Addiction, Treatment and Outcomes: Implications for Child Welfare Workers
, draft prepared for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (Irvine, CA: National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare, April 2006), 7.

23.
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“not adequate parents either”
: Lester, telephone interview, May 2012.

24.
[>]
   
wrong up to 70 percent of the time:
Troy Anderson, “False Positives Are Common in Drug Tests on New Moms,”
Los Angeles Daily News
, July 28, 2008.

25.
[>]
   
drug laws were designed to prevent:
“Maternal Decision Making, Ethics, and the Law: ACOG Committee Opinion Number 321,”
Obstetrics & Gynecology
106 (2005): 1127–37.

26.
[>]
   
methamphetamines around children as a particular felony:
Parental Drug Use as Child Abuse: Summary of State Laws
(Washington, DC: Child Welfare Information Gateway, a division of the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, current through May 2009).
http://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/laws_policies/statutes/drugexposed.cfm
. Crystal meth isn't yet a major concern in New York City, but it has had an enormous impact on child welfare in other places, and from one perspective these tighter laws make sense. Meth users appear to be more psychologically disturbed and can be more out of control than other types of substance abusers. Chronic meth use can lead to intense paranoia, hallucinations, and violence. Because meth addicts, in general, are more likely to use the drug continuously throughout the day at evenly spaced intervals rather than concentrated at night like cocaine users, kids are exposed to their high parents more frequently and for longer periods of time. See Otero et al., “Methamphetamine Addiction, Treatment and Outcomes: Implications for Child Welfare Workers.” Meth is unique, too, in that people can concoct it right at home. Still, despite the media attention that meth labs have garnered, only a few thousand children were taken into custody for living in meth labs over a three-year period, as opposed to 1.2 million kids overall (Otero et al.)—though exposure to meth production is very dangerous. There are explosions, toxic chemicals, and the associated risks of violence from trafficking or selling to people who are also high on the drug.

27.
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parents who don't receive treatment:
Beth L. Green, Anna Rockhill, and Carrie Furrer, “Does Substance Abuse Treatment Make a Difference for Child Welfare Case Outcomes? A Statewide Longitudinal Analysis,”
Children and Youth Services Review
29, no. 4 (April 2007): 460–73.

28.
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complete treatment at a higher rate:
Wendy B. Kissin, Dace S. Svikis, Glen D. Morgan, and Nancy A. Haug, “Characterizing Pregnant Drug-Dependent Women in Treatment and Their Children,”
Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment
21, no. 1 (July 2001): 27–34.

29.
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less stable funding grounds than direct foster care:
Stephen Ceasar, “Mayor's Budget Would Cut Help to Families in Trouble,”
The New York Times
, June 9, 2010.

30.
[>]
   
several thousand cases that come through Brooklyn's family court each year:
According to a spokesperson from the Citizens' Committee for Children of New York, there were 64,035 petitions filed in family court in 2008. There are forty-seven judges to hear all of these cases (seventeen of them in Brooklyn family court), meaning that each judge hears about fifty-one cases per day.

31.
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crimes committed against their children:
For a better understanding of this issue, see Diane R. Martell,
Criminal Justice and the Placement of Abused Children
(New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2005).

32.
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a crime against the state:
Ibid., 24.

33.
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can lead to brutal cross-examinations:
Ibid., 27.

34.
[>]
   
The mother, Lupe:
Name has been changed.

 

5. Catch as Catch Can

 

1.
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Nationwide, there's a shortfall:
Marisa Kendall, “Shortage of Foster Parents Seen as U.S. Trend,”
USA Today
, September 22, 2010.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-09-23-fostercare23_ST_N.htm
. For a more detailed description of the low retention rates for foster parents, see Kathryn W. Rhodes, John G. Orme, Mary Ellen Cox, and Cheryl Buehler, “Foster Family Resources, Psychosocial Functioning, and Retention,”
Social Work Research
27, no. 3 (2007): 135–50.

2.
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twice as many foster kids as they do available parents:
In 2010, Pennsylvania had twenty thousand kids in care and only nine thousand homes; Oklahoma tallied 8,865 children and 4,669 homes, according to Marisa Ken-­ dall's article “Shortage of Foster Parents Seen as U.S. Trend.”

3.
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undergo a criminal background check:
For more information about each state's rules, see the National Foster Parent Association website:
http://www.nfpainc.org
. There is a FAQ page on becoming a foster parent, as well as contact information for each state.

4.
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$568 for a sixteen-year-old kid:
Hitting the M.A.R.C.: Establishing Foster Care Minimum Adequate Rates for Children
(Children's Rights, National Foster Parent Association, and the University of Maryland School of Social Work, October 2007).

5.
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estimated real cost of $790:
Ibid.

6.
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close to or below the poverty line:
There are startlingly few studies about foster parent demographics; most are quite old, and others are fairly small samples. A 1978 report showed foster families to be living at $4,000 above the poverty line; a 1990 report on Connecticut showed that more than half of the foster families lived on less than $20,000 per year, in one of the wealthiest states in the nation. Almost half of the single foster mothers (about a third of the foster parent population) lived on an annual income of less than $10,000. William Epstein,
Children Who Could Have Been: The Legacy of Child Welfare in Wealthy America
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 57–58. Also see Joan Shireman,
Critical Issues in Child Welfare
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 229; and Richard P. Barth, Rebecca Green, Mary Bruce Webb, Ariana Wall, Claire Gibbons, and Carlton Craig, “Characteristics of Out-of-Home Caregiving Environments Provided Under Child Welfare Services,”
Child Welfare
87, no. 3 (2008): 31.

7.
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twenty hours annually depending on your state:
Federal law requires that prospective foster parents be “prepared adequately with the appropriate knowledge and skills to provide for the needs of the child,” but each state requires different mandatory training hours—ranging from zero in Hawaii to twenty hours per year in Texas and Ohio. Individual agencies within each state may offer or require extra classes. Sarah Gerstenzang, “Foster Parent Training in America,”
Fostering Families Today
, July/August 2009, 28. Agencies that contract with ACS must provide eight to ten hours of foster parent training. From “Become a Foster or Adoptive Parent,” New York City Administration for Children's Services.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/html/become_parent/become_parent.shtml
.

8.
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delivered directly to the family home:
Michael B. Katz,
In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America
(New York: Basic Books, 1996, Tenth Anniversary Edition, Kindle Edition), Loc. 139–46.

9.
[>]
   
thus creating the first foster homes:
Jillian Jimenez, “The History of Child Protection in the African American Community: Implications for Current Child Welfare Practices,”
Children and Youth Services Review
28, no. 8 (August 2006).

10.
[>]
   
Colored Orphans Asylum in New York as early as 1836:
John Francis Richmond,
New York and Its Institutions, 1609–1871: A Library of Information, Pertaining to the Great Metropolis, Past and Present
(E. B. Treat, 1872), 302–3.

11.
[>]
   
execute a son for misbehaving:
Elizabeth Bartholet,
Nobody's Children: Abuse and Neglect, Foster Drift and the Adoption Alternative
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), 33.

12.
[>]
   
even work in factories:
Stephen O'Connor,
Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), 36.

13.
[>]
   
neglected their daughters' decency:
Nina Bernstein,
The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care
(New York: Vintage, 2001), 87, citing Linda Gordon's
Heroes of Their Own Lives
(New York: Viking, 1988).