Bureaucrats running down the clock on parents

WASHINGTON -

When
Congress passed the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act, it allowed
states to terminate parental rights after a child has been in foster
care longer than 15 months.
But the law, intended to keep
children from truly abusive homes from languishing in foster care for
years, had unintended consequences. States receive a $4,000 cash bonus
from the federal government for each child adopted, multiplied by the
percentage that the state exceeds its adoption goal.
The system
gives child protective agencies a powerful financial incentive to
terminate parental rights, something that they did more than 79,000
times nationwide in 2006, according to the federal Administration for Children and Families.
And
because infants and toddlers are much easier to place in adoptive
homes, they’re often targeted for removal by overzealous social workers
based on flimsy or anonymous evidence of parental abuse or neglect.
The
15-month clock, which starts ticking as soon as a child goes into
foster care, can easily be run down by months of forced psychological
testing and the filing of legal motions and other delaying tactics.
These
tactics give a clear advantage to child protective service bureaucrats,
who have unlimited time and financial resources to wage what often
amounts to legal warfare against stunned and beleaguered parents who
basically have to prove their own innocence.
If a person commits
murder or robs a bank, prosecutors must prove he or she is guilty
beyond a reasonable doubt. Not so in the Alice-in-Wonderland world of
CPS, where individuals and parents are considered guilty as charged by
anonymous tipsters whose hidden motivations are never brought to light.
Once the 15 months are up, that fact alone can be used as legal
justification to terminate parental rights.
It costs child
protective agencies $20,000 on average to keep a child in foster care,
versus $8,000 for in-home services for troubled families. This means
that a host of lawyers, social workers, therapists, psychologists and
other professionals make a lot more money when families are broken
apart.
And although CPS’ stated goal is family reunification, the
reality is that these agencies reap a second financial windfall when
the forced separation between child and parent becomes permanent.