Posted on 10/20/2007 8:00:02 PM PDT by paltz
In the heartbreaking Melinda Smith case, a San Diego father and daughter were needlessly separated by the foster care system for over a decade. Last week, Los Angeles County settled a lawsuit over the case for an undisclosed sum. Yet a recent Urban Institute study found that the Smith case typifies the way the foster care system harms children by disregarding the loving bonds they share with their fathers.
Smith was born to an unwed couple in 1988. Her father, Thomas Marion Smith, a former Marine and a decorated Vietnam War veteran, saw Melinda often and paid child support. When the girl was 4, her mother abruptly moved without leaving a forwarding address. Two years later, Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services found that Melinda's mother was abusing her. Although the social worker for the case noted in the file that Thomas was the father, he was never contacted, and his then 6-year-old daughter was placed in the foster care system.
Thomas – whose fitness as a father was never impugned nor legally questioned – continued to receive and pay his child support bills. Authorities refused to disclose his daughter's whereabouts, and didn't even inform him that his daughter had been taken by the county. Smith employed private investigators and attorneys to try to find Melinda and secure visitation rights, but he eventually ran out of money.
Rather than allowing Smith to raise his own daughter, the system shuttled Melinda through seven different foster care placements. An understandably angry child, her outbursts led authorities to house her in a residential treatment center alongside older children convicted of criminal activity – when she was only 7 years old.
Melinda says that during this period she was told that her father was a “deadbeat dad” who had abandoned her. When Melinda was 16, she told an investigating social worker that the “most important thing” for her was to find her dad.
Moved by her story, the social worker began searching for Melinda's father – and found him in one day. In 2005, Thomas and Melinda finally were reunited.
Unfortunately, the Smith case is no aberration. When a mother and father are divorced or separated, and a child welfare agency removes the children from the mother's home for abuse or neglect, an offer of placement to the father, barring unfitness, should be automatic. Yet in the report “What About the Dads? Child Welfare Agencies' Efforts to Identify, Locate and Involve Nonresident Fathers,” the Urban Institute presents a shocking finding: When fathers inform child welfare officials that they would like their children to live with them, the agencies seek to place the children with their fathers only 15 percent of the time.
Fathers can offer their children a sense of permanence, security and emotional support that a foster family (or a succession of foster care placements) cannot provide. Many foster children are pushed out of their homes and into a tenuous existence when they turn 18 and the foster parents no longer receive state subsidies. Fathers could be a valuable source of long-term resources and sponsorship for these young adults.
Child welfare agencies often operate on the assumption that the fathers of the children they've taken away from their mothers are, like the mothers, unfit or uninterested in parenting. Yet many of these men are loving fathers who have been forced out of their children's lives by mothers who denied visitation, moved away and/or hid the children or employed spurious abuse charges.
“What About the Dads?” makes it clear that many child welfare workers treat fathers as an afterthought. The report found that even when a caseworker had been in contact with a child's father, the caseworker was still five times less likely to know basic information about the father than about the mother. Just as with Thomas Smith, 20 percent of the fathers whose identity and location were known by the child welfare agencies from the opening of the case were never even contacted.
These policies are harmful and misguided. One shudders to think how many little Melinda Smiths are lost in the foster care system right now – being raised by strangers, and denied their father's love.When fathers inform child welfare officials that they would like their children to live with them, the agencies seek to place the children with their fathers only 15 percent of the time.
Leving is a family law attorney (www.dadsrights.com) and the author of “Fathers' Rights: Hard-hitting and Fair Advice for Every Father Involved in a Custody Dispute.” His Web site is www.dadsrights.com. Sacks writes extensively on men's and fathers' issues (www.GlennSacks.com).
Keep this one "social worker."
Blindfold the rest of them, stand them up against a wall, and...
I just bought “Taken Into Custody” by Baskerville. A must read.
Run by feminazis where fathers have no rights.
reminds me somewhat of a movie with Mark Harmon some years ago. His wife died and his four kids were taken away from him and brutalized by the system. ‘They’ said he didn’t have a good enough job to care for them and since he now wasn’t married, his love for them wasn’t enough in ‘their’ eyes. It was a true story, can’t remember the name of the movie, the word home or homecoming was in it. Two of his kids wound of being put in a mental institution by the system (state), one was crippled by having his leg broken and the other boy was sterilized. A horrid tale, the only salvation was that after years and years and finding a wonderful woman he got them all back.
The courts actively oppose participation of fathers, and have for decades.
The people who did that should be shot and left to the vultures.
I know, it was the most gripping movie I had seen at the time and to know it was a true story made me mad as hell watching it. It took him eight years to get his kids back.
yeah....
Absolutely disgusting that there are sociopaths like that in government.
The movie was made in 1987, not the 90’s (I forget what I read by the time I get back here, old brain!), Diana Scarwid was the woman he eventually married and helped to get his kids back.
Synopsis:
Elmer Jackson is a carpenter in a small Californian town in the 1930s. Struggling to bring up 4 young boys after the death of his wife, he is horrified when the Government (citing trumped-up charges of parental neglect) places the boys into various foster homes and institutions, unaware of the abuse that boys would then be subjected to. The conditions imposed by the court and the difficulties caused by the Depression make Jackson’s determined and vigorous quest to find his boys extremely difficult.
and way back then in the 30’s too. If you ever rent a movie, I’d recommend it if it’s available in rental stores. Must go check for myself, only saw it the one time.
made myself happy, just found it at amazon, saved to my wish list!
...stand them up against a wall, and...yes. Just do it. It’s for the children.
At least for her efforts to find Melinda's Dad, this social worker may have the qualifications to head a Social Service Agency. Give her the authority to hire and fire, based on her experience and insights to make wise decisions.
Frankly, I have serious doubts about the capabilities of many who work in Social Services.
The only reason, I think, that we're seeing this kind of problem is the rampant cultural and moral degradation that we've allowed to flourish in our country, and the world. I hope the pendulum begins to swing the other way.
You never see problems like these in Islamic countries.
</sarc>
The system needs to be changed to where the state doesn't profit from stealing children
The DVD is on EBAY, both in buy it now and bid.
I think the entire social services system needs to be scrapped and redisgned from top to bottom. My wife grew up in foster care, and nothing has changed in the last 40 years. As for the workers, it is hard to say how many are incompetent and how many are just bogged down by rules and red tape so that they are ineffective in their jobs.
I must say that I do sympathize with the social workers in one regard. They work with the most despicable and disgusting individuals you can imagine. The things they see and experience are truly evil. Social workers are knee deep in garbage every day, and they don’t have a lot of good options in most cases. I see it occaisionally in my work, and it is enough to make you sick. I don’t know how anyone has the fortitude to do this work every day.
“The courts actively oppose participation of fathers, and have for decades.”
Exactly.
But try to tell that to someone that hasn’t experienced it firsthand. They will think you are lying.
“Family Courts” are out of control in many areas.
BTT
thanx, forgot to check there!
I'm reminded of a comment my oldest daughter made on this subject. She entertained the notion that people should have to pass an intelligence test to gain the right to procreate.
I'd add to that a few more qualifications such as common sense, selflessness, and the means to provide for their needs. Of course, this is indulging in fantasy.
I'm interested in your ideas on how Social Services should be redesigned. I have no trouble believing that incompetents are hired and that system is "just bogged down by rules and red tape...." They have to abide by the decisions of good and bad judges, also.
What it boils down to, IMO, is that adults cause misery to many children and they have to be rescued.
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