A Foster Parent Speaks Out

http://www.nccpr.org/reports/fosterparent.doc

A Foster Parent Speaks Out
by Mary Callahan


Mary Callahan is an author of two books, an emergency room
nurse, and a foster parent in Maine, a state forced
to confront the failures of its Department of Human Services (DHS)
when five-year-old Logan Marr was taken from her mother, Christie, only to
die in foster care, bound to a high chair with 42 feet of duct tape. The
foster mother was convicted of manslaughter.

As new leadership faced up to the problems in Maine, Mary Callahan
became a respected voice for reform. She was invited to give
a presentation to an Advisory Commission working on restructuring human
services in Maine. This is the text of that presentation, given on August
7,
2003, reprinted with permission.

My name is Mary Callahan. I am a mother, a foster mother,
and a nurse. Some of you are already familiar with me from the
opinion pieces and letters to the editor I've had in the papers. Some of
you have even read the book I wrote on my experiences as a foster
parent in Maine. And some of you are saying to yourself, "Here it comes
again, Mary Callahan and more of her crazy stories."

I know exactly how you feel. I felt the same way for the first two
years I was doing foster care when I had to deal with the birth
parents of Marie. Every time there was a case review, they
would wait for me in the parking lot afterwards to plead their case.

It was all I could do not to roll my eyes. They tried to tell me that
DHS lied about them, that DHS tricked them, even that DHS forced
them to say things to their kids that they didn't want to say.
I wanted to tell them it was time to start taking responsibility for their
own actions.


Then I found out they were telling the truth.

The case worker, who was leaving his job, admitted to me that
everything the parents said was true, and most of what I had been
told about them was fiction, made up by the worker before him who
hated the dad and was determined to see him lose his kids.

This would be bad enough if it stood alone. But I knew what had
happened to Marie since she came into foster care.

That's when the real abuse began. For six years she lived in a foster
home that I would describe as sadistic. She came to me malnourished
and reading four years below grade level, thanks to the constant
stress she was under. People outside the system are horrified by
her story. The people I went to within the system looked blankly at
me and waited for me to tell them something they didn't already know.

You may think their vision is to keep children safe.
In reality the vision is to keep children safe from those horrible
parents that we hate. Sometimes it is those horrible foster
parents that we hate.

That was my first clue that the Child Welfare System in Maine
isn't really about the welfare of children. By the time I wrote my
first letter to the editor, I was convinced of that. I wrote that the
system should be torn down and rebuilt "from the vision on up,"
and I still believe it. You may think their vision is to keep children safe.
In reality the vision is to keep children safe from those horrible
parents that we hate. Sometimes it is those horrible foster parents
that we hate.


The emphasis on hating parents instead of caring about children
was never clearer than at the foster parent workshop I attended
where a speaker was introduced as The Terminator because of
the record she had set in terminating parental rights. They didn't say,
"She freed this many children for adoption." That might have been an even
bigger, more impressive number. It was how many parents she had
stuck it to. And the shocking part to me was that the audience applauded.


I would have thought, in a business as delicate as this one,
where the stakes are so high, that great care would be taken to prevent
the hating from becoming more important than the caring, that
supervisors would be constantly on the lookout for workers who let
their personal biases cloud their judgment or used the families to grind
their own axes. Instead the contempt for families can be spoken out
loud and even applauded.


The attitude is so pervasive that it trickles down to people on the
periphery of the system, like mandatory reporters. I saw an example
of that in the Emergency Room recently. A family brought in
their 6-year-old son because they couldn't control him any more. He
had a mental health diagnosis and was on medications, but that day he was
tearing the curtains down and threatening family members with kitchen
knives. I took the family back to the crisis area where, I thought, they
would talk with a social worker and come up with a plan.


A few hours later that worker came up to the triage booth with a big
grin on his face. "I think we've got 'em," he told me."

"Who?" I asked.


"Those parents. I've been sitting with them for an hour and I
counted 14 times that the child bit himself, hard." He demonstrated.

"The parents didn't do anything. They just looked at him. It's
a total parent/child disconnect. I think I have enough to call DHS."

The delight in that social worker's eyes was the same delight I saw at
that workshop in The Terminator's eyes. He was so proud of himself,
but what will be the end result of his actions? If those parents manage
to keep their child, they will never come to the ER for help again.
They will handle their problems themselves at home. And who knows
what that might mean? We are creating real child abuse when we react with
blame when asked for help.


Since I started speaking out, people have come to me with their own
stories. I get e-mails, phone calls and letters, and they fall into two
categories. They are either professionals who have seen what I have seen
and don't know what to do about it, or they are victims.

By professionals, I mean lawyers and psychologists, even social workers
who have seen terrible suffering inflicted in the name of protecting
children. An example is a police officer who e-mailed me to say that he
accompanied a caseworker once when children were being removed
only to hear the worker tell a complete fabrication in court
about what they had found when they were at the home and how the parents
reacted.


I got this email from a foster parent, "Would
anyone out there believe how bad the foster care system is in Maine if they
were not involved in it? I set out with the desire to try to help a few
children while I still had the energy to do it. I never knew I would
be asked to lie, look the other way when some major mistakes were made, be
part of a cover-up to hide the mistakes of those who were supposed to be
protecting children. I watched my children's medical needs not be met.
My voice meant nothing at team meetings. I have had 8 families in
my area leave foster care in the past two years. They are good, honest
people and that was the problem. They are not willing to be a part of a
team that doesn't care about the children."


Would any of these people go public with me? No.

They don't want to become DHS's next victims.


When I talk to people who see themselves as DHS victims, I know I am only
hearing one side of the story. But I also recognize that the same factors
come up over and over again, and they are things I have seen for myself.

Here are those factors:


1) Lying. Everyone claims the department lied
about them. I don't doubt it any more because they have lied
about me. Just one example, a foster child asked to move back
with me after his kinship placement failed and was told that I said no.
Now I ask you to think how that must feel to a child to be rejected by
his former foster parent. He is already in the system because we have
rejected his parents, now he is being personally rejected.
Only he wasn't. I would have taken him back in a second, but his
DHS worker didn't like me, so she lied to him. His next
placement was told not to let him contact me because I supposedly
provided drugs and alcohol for him when he lived with me.

[A] foster child asked to move back with me after
his kinship placement failed and was told that I said no. Now
I ask you to think how that must feel to a child to be rejected by his
former foster parent. . Only he wasn't. I would have taken him
back in a second, but his DHS worker didn't like me, so she lied to him.


2) Divide and conquer. Just as Christie Marr was told to cut ties with
her mother, many of the people who call me say they were forced to
cut ties with someone important to them. One mother claims
she had to cut her father out of her life when he was terminally ill. She
never knew him to hurt anybody, but the department said he had, and
made her choose between him and her children.


3) The set-up. "She said to call her if I had any problems, that she
would be happy to help, and when I did call, she came out with the cops
and took my kids." I've heard that more than once. Another set up is the
parenting evaluation. Parents are told if they take it and pass, that it
will help them in court. What they are not told is that 95% of the people
who take that test fail. They are really taking the test just so the
department will have more justification for removing children. I call it the
Kiss-of-Death Parenting Eval.


4) Disrespect. Yelling seems to be acceptable behavior. When a parent
or grandparent tells me that the worker yelled at them in the DHS waiting
room, I believe it because I have seen it happen.
I've been yelled at on the phone. As a nurse, I don't even yell back
when a drunk berates me in the Emergency Room. I handle it
professionally because that's what's expected of me. They don't
seem to have the same expectation at DHS.


5) Child removal on a whim. When foster parents contact me it
is usually about some child who has been removed with no warning, and
apparently no grasp at all on the part of the department of how
painful this is for the child. Children are like pawns in a big game, moved
more easily than we would move a pet from one household to another.
One foster father said he had someone come up to him and ask why
he hadn't been to the transition meetings for his foster child. He didn't
know the child was moving. What he finally found out was that the
caseworker's best friend had become a foster parent and was interested
in that particular child, so she was giving her the child like some kind
of a gift.


At the center of any of these situations is a power struggle. Parents
think they have a certain amount of control over the circumstances
surrounding their own children. DHS workers are determined to show
them they are wrong. I think we saw that on The Caseworker
Files on Frontline when the statement "They're not taking me seriously yet,"
kept being repeated, until the child was finally taken.


What I experience is a system that is about power, control and hate. But
you know what never comes up? Love never comes up.

The only time we talk about it, we use a euphemism. When we call kids
attachment disordered, we are really saying they don't love the new
parents we have given them. And we send them to therapy to fix
that. We even say it is caused by a lack of bonding in the first six months
of life, another strike against the birth parents. Doesn't it seem
illogical to expect kids to love someone just because because we
have plopped them down in their home? And even if we have
given them a half a dozen sets of really lovable foster
parents, doesn't it make sense that the kids would be afraid to take the
chance of loving again and losing again?

And speaking of logic, how logical is it to take a child
because the parent moves too much, as we are told the
department did to Logan Marr? No one moves more than a foster
child and those moves are made alone. Again, we're leaving out
the love factor. Think of your own children. What do you think
would be harder on them, moving from place to
place with you, the parent they love, or losing you and everyone
else in your family, then spending the rest of their childhood waiting
for you to come and get them, wondering what they did to lose your love,
wanting to go back and find you and ask you why. Love doesn't
seem to count for anything in this system.


I spend a lot of time with the families of my foster kids now. I see how
easily they fall into each others arms, the way they finish each other's
sentences, the way they accept each other for who they are and forgive
each other. I've gotten to know the parents myself and I like them.
When I went into this business I never thought I would end up saying
this, but these mothers who have lost their children to foster care
are no different than me. They have just had harder lives. Much harder.
Many of them grew up in foster care. And now they have broken
hearts on top of it because they couldn't save their children from
the same fate.


This state is littered with broken hearts. I see it in my own foster
kids and their families. I hear it in the voices at the other end of the
phone. I also see it in the Emergency Room when patients come
to the crisis unit sobbing because they miss their children so
much, children that DHS has taken. One man was actually
psychotic in his grief over losing his children, hallucinating that
they were still there, looking through the house as if they were just
misplaced. And his children had been gone for years. I see it at my
other job too, where I teach people to live with heart and lung disease.
Three, so far this year, have shared with me their secret pain, that there
is a grandchild out there that they may never see again
because DHS took them.


And it doesn't have to be that way. Other states have undertaken
real reform, working to keep kids with their families in all but the
worst of cases and to support those families while they are going
through tough times. I've heard some encouraging things lately,
things that give me hope that Maine might be going the same way.


The news coverage on the workshop that was held
last week said the department was going to work on preventing
child abuse instead of reacting to it, focus on a family's strengths
instead of their weaknesses. But they also said something that
frightened me. Someone said they were going to be focusing on
"children who don't get enough attention. Child abuse reports
will go up again if the public can be convinced that they should
report children who don't get enough attention.

How do they expect to prevent child abuse deaths if
they are busy sifting through those kinds of reports and
possibly taking those children into foster care? I suggest that if you see
a child who doesn't seem to be getting enough attention, give him some
attention!


Letting the people who make their livings off child abuse define it
sounds like a conflict of interest to me. Imagine if the health care
industry worked that way. Hospitals could mandate hospitalizations
for cold symptoms and then reap in the bucks. Insurance
companies would just keep paying and no one would listen to the
occasional voice of reason saying that there were worse infections to
be caught inside the hospital and this was doing more harm than good.


We are losing the distinction between child abuse and parenting we
don't agree with, just as we have long since lost the distinction
between poverty and neglect.

Pity the parents who have taken on two jobs to provide for their
children, to avoid being accused of neglect, only to be accused
of not paying enough attention to them. They might as well just
give their children to the state at birth. They can no longer win,
no matter what they do.

My greatest hope for the future in Maine is Paul Vincent and the Child
Welfare Policy and Practice Group. They have come here to
introduce Family Team Meetings to Maine, a program that brings
all the players to the table before a child removal to explore and
possibly choose an alternative. Hopefully this is only the beginning.
He has done wonderful things in other states. If he does here what
he did in Alabama, I will have gotten my wish, the foster care
system will be torn down and rebuilt from the vision on up.

But even then, I will have one remaining concern.
What of those hearts already broken? I said in my book that
"DHS means never having to say you're sorry." Will that
remain true? Will the powers-that-be say, "It's too
late" as Marie's worker said to me when I asked why
she wasn't returned to her parents after he took the job and
realized what had happened to her? Will the grandparents have
to go to their graves with their pain and the parents keep coming
to the ER when they feel like dying? Will the children
keep going to bed every night asking why somebody
had to be paid to love them.


---------------------------


Mary Callahan is the author of "Memoirs of a Baby
Stealer: Lessons I've Learned as a Foster Mother" (Pinewoods Press: 2003).

Reprinted with permission by the National Coalition
for Child Protection Reform, 53 Skyhill Road (Suite 202), Alexandria VA,
22314, (703) 212-2006.nccpr.org, http://www.nccpr.org/,, www

"Doug" wrote in message
...
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/fosterparent.doc

A Foster Parent Speaks Out
by Mary Callahan


Ms. Callahan is an activist, not a foster parent. She has an opinion, one
that is clearly stated in the title of her book. She is one person, with
one opinion, worthy of a read but nothing more. Her experience with the
system is different from mine, or that of any other foster parent.

She is an activist, with an agenda. One I cannot agree with after reading
the article.

Ron

Ron writes:

Ms. Callahan is an activist, not a foster parent.

Hi, Ron!

Ms. Callahan is a foster parent.

She is also a nurse. She is also an author. She is also a activist.

She has an opinion, one
that is clearly stated in the title of her book. She is one person, with
one opinion, worthy of a read but nothing more. Her experience with the
system is different from mine, or that of any other foster parent.

Her experience may be different from what you perceive yours to be. You do
not, under any circumstances at any time speak for all foster caregivers
throughout this land. You have no basis to say that Ms. Callahan's
experience is different from any other foster caregiver, since you do not
know the experiences of all other foster caregivers.

Doug

Ron writes:

If she feels that being a foster parent is the equivalent of steeling
babies
then she does not understand what foster parenting is about, or why people
do it. That makes her books suspect, dont you think?

Hi, Ron!

She has an understanding of what foster caregiving is all about and
certainly pulled no strings in explaining that understanding to the reform
committee that invited her to testify.

Many people have spoken to the motivation of foster caregivers, among them
Ms. Golden and a host of other social work researchers and writers.
Motivation varies depending on the individual, like all undertakings.

She writes about
something that she has no real understanding of. She is better off not
being a foster parent, and so are the children that might have been placed
in her home.

Her testimony shows that she has a very clear understanding of how the
system works and the flaws that need to be reformed. The committee has been
able to make some very solid recommendations for reform of CPS in Maine
because of her testimony.


You do
not, under any circumstances at any time speak for all foster caregivers
throughout this land.

Nor does she, nor you.

Just so.

But I have a better understanding of what foster
parenting is and why than she does, obviously.

You may have a different understanding. Not a better one. You may have
come to a different conclusion as the result of your experience and
understanding than she did, but yours is no more valid or "better" than
hers.

One of the problems we run into in this forum is reading posts from people
who claim to be speaking for others or who claim that their opinion is
obviously better than anothers. It can cloud the issues.

In the issue at hand, we have heard what one foster caregiver told a
committee charged with CPS reform in Maine. We have only heard one side.
You have said that you have a different understanding of foster care, but
have neglected to explain what that understanding may be.


I know that my experience is different than anyone elses doug, as is that
of
every foster parent out there. Her experience she writes about, speaks
about, and its significantly different than mine or that of any other
foster
parent that I have known. Those I know who have had experiences similar
to
hers have not remained foster parents, because they were unable to
understand what foster parenting is actually about. They miss the most
important part of foster parenting, the single most common driving reason
for someone to ever become a foster parent.

Actually, in a survey conducted by the Pew Commission, respondents who were
most negative toward foster care and CPS practice were workers, foster
providers and folks knowledgeable about the system. Many foster caregivers
expressed views similar if not identical to Ms. Callahan's. In fact, as
Callahan herself mentions, such understandings are often the subject of
conversations among foster caregivers.

If they expressed their honest opinions outside of their circle and in the
presence of CPS workers, then they would not remain foster caregivers, as
you say. The system would oust them.

You miss the point as well. So does fern, bobb, and kneal, and all the
other members of the anti-CPS mob.

Members of your "mob" include social work researchers like LeRoy Pelton,
Lela Costin, Duncan Lindsey, and Richard Gelles along with legions of
professionals presently or formally working in the system. Thousands of
workers, administrators, foster caregivers, and social work academics and
practicuum supervisors have called for massive reform of CPS. These folks
tell legislatures that CPS bureaucracies have known about the problems for
decades but have consistantly failed to take actions they promised to
correct them.

Former Child Protective Services caseworker Alan Schwartz points out that
CPS fears most media attempts to bring these problems to light. Another
voice from the field joins Callahan in calling for reform.

"Social Workers have become Case Managers," says Schwartz in his book, "How
To Protect Children From Child Protective Services." "Instead of an
emotional involvement the Worker is expected by administrators to act as the
hub of a wheel and farm out family services to other agencies and wait for
reports to come in as to the family's progress toward reunification. A
byproduct of this approach is CPS does not have to be alone in answering
criticism of its handling of a case. The goal of CPS is not to attract
negative media attention. This hangs over the Worker's head all the time and
precludes sincere efforts to reunify families."

And BTW doug, by definition her experience with the system MUST be
different
than mine or anyone elses. She nor I can speak for any other foster
parents
experiences, unless we know them personally and well. But given her
writings I'd say that she missed the point, completely. Just like you.


Well, she does speak about what other foster caregivers have told her. She
knows these caregivers. As mentioned, the subjects she testified about are
commonly discussed among foster caregivers. Discussions about "keepers" and
other subject matter the public would find distasteful is common among
closed groups of foster caregivers. You can see this on any foster
caregiver mailist or discussion group.


Anyway, Ms. Callahan articulated many of the underlying problems of CPS
systems nationwide. Reformers in Maine were able to capitialize on her
testimony and make changes that will serve the best interests of children in
that state. As each state begins to listen to folks who come from the
trenches and reform CPS practices, lawmakers in other states take notice.

Things are getting better.

It won't be long, now.

Policymakers need to invite the testimony of CPS workers from the field as
well. Mr. Schwartz, the CPS caseworker from New York, suggests a starting
point for reform.
"In 1978 the U.S. Congress was pressed to pass the Indian Child Welfare Act
after hearing congressional testimony of Native American children removed
from family and reservation by church missionaries who wanted to protect the
children from poverty by adopting these children out to their church members
spread across the country," Schwartz says. "There was no way for these
children to ever find their way back home. No records were saved or allowed
to be opened. Occasionally we still hear miraculous stories of these now
young adults reuniting with their family by tracing them through the
Internet.

"It is time for the U.S. Congress to investigate the services provided
children and families by state CPS as it did with the Native American
children. Families no longer view CPS as a resource in times of stress. Each
county or CPS jurisdiction is different in its approach to child welfare
services. Even in the same jurisdiction there is little agreement in
arriving at a uniformly accepted and objective definition of what
constitutes child abuse. There needs to be conformity to one standard of
operation and services that will do justice to family and children. Can you
define child abuse and get a stranger to agree with your definition? In
appraising services to families, a good starting point might be the Indian
Child Welfare Act."

It won't be long, now.

Doug



Source:

Schwartz, Alan L. (2004). Protecting children from child protective
services. New York: AuthorHouse. ISBN: 1-4184-3703-4 (Paperback)

"Doug" wrote in message
...
Ron writes:

Ms. Callahan is an activist, not a foster parent.

Hi, Ron!

Ms. Callahan is a foster parent.

She is an ex-foster parent doug.

She is also a nurse. She is also an author. She is also a activist.

She may be a nurse, and an author, and is certainly an activist, but no
longer a foster parent.

If she feels that being a foster parent is the equivalent of steeling babies
then she does not understand what foster parenting is about, or why people
do it. That makes her books suspect, dont you think? She writes about
something that she has no real understanding of. She is better off not
being a foster parent, and so are the children that might have been placed
in her home.

She has an opinion, one
that is clearly stated in the title of her book. She is one person,
with
one opinion, worthy of a read but nothing more. Her experience with the
system is different from mine, or that of any other foster parent.

Her experience may be different from what you perceive yours to be.

Is, and has been. Not a perception doug, a reality.

You do
not, under any circumstances at any time speak for all foster caregivers
throughout this land.

Nor does she, nor you. But I have a better understanding of what foster
parenting is and why than she does, obviously.

You have no basis to say that Ms. Callahan's
experience is different from any other foster caregiver, since you do not
know the experiences of all other foster caregivers.

I know that my experience is different than anyone elses doug, as is that of
every foster parent out there. Her experience she writes about, speaks
about, and its significantly different than mine or that of any other foster
parent that I have known. Those I know who have had experiences similar to
hers have not remained foster parents, because they were unable to
understand what foster parenting is actually about. They miss the most
important part of foster parenting, the single most common driving reason
for someone to ever become a foster parent.

You miss the point as well. So does fern, bobb, and kneal, and all the
other members of the anti-CPS mob.

And BTW doug, by definition her experience with the system MUST be different
than mine or anyone elses. She nor I can speak for any other foster parents
experiences, unless we know them personally and well. But given her
writings I'd say that she missed the point, completely. Just like you.

Ron

Doug

Strange isn't it that DHS of Maine thinks so highly of her assessment skills (
honed in her RN training) and her mastery of care plans (stressed in RN
training) that they INVITED HER TO address the Reform Committee on DHS.

She writes about
something that she has no real understanding of. She is better off

Do you hold an RN professional license, Ron? Have you undergone training in
psychology, patient assessment, community nursing, and care planning for
patients?

Have you passed a state licensing exam and are you the holder of malpractice
insurance?

Ms. Callahan is and was.

She was also a highly regarded foster parent, and one of the 100K per year
caretakers.

So, your little fit of pique has no relevance at all to Ms. Callahan's skills
and training, and professional expertise.

Could you handle a seizure, administer IV meds, and catherize a patient?

Didn't think so....

But given her
writings I'd say that she missed the point, completely. Just like you.


Have you Ron been invited to address DHS in Maine? She was. Obviously they
value her input, expertise, and experience.

She was a foster for close to 10 years.

She cares about children. Indeed, nurses rank #! on the list of professionals
whom the US public trusts to give them fair, unbiased, and cogent advice on
things medical.