Family Justice Journal // Issue 001

FAMILY JUSTICE JOURNAL

THE HARM OF DISCONNECTION

Strengthening Families & Communities, Advancing Relational Health

CONTENTS

FAMILY JUSTICE JOURNAL

Summer 2023

Introduction

006 The Need to Prioritize Relational Health

Jerry Milner & David Kelly

Directors of the Family Justice Group

Foreword

008 Bruce Perry

Principal of The Neurosequential Network

Perpective

012 The Call

Nicole Kati Wong, J.D., M.S.T.

057 A Better Way Nurturing Freedom Dreams Through a Principled Struggle

Corey Best

Founder of Mining for Gold

Tiffany Csonka

Parent Knowledge Curator

Christina Romero

Parent Knowledge Curator

Pasqueal Nguyen

Parent Knowledge Curator

014

Features Acknowledging & Addressing the Impact of Loss, Grief, & Relational Connection for Youth in Foster Care

Monique Mitchell, PhD, FT

Executive Director of Life Transitions International Director of Training & Translational Research

National Director of L.Y.G.H.T. at Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children & Families

020 The Ineffable Significance of Kinship

Mark Testa, Ph.D.

Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

026 The Enduring Pain of Permanent Family Separation

Erin Carrington Smith

J.D. Candidate, University of Baltimore School of Law

Shanta Trivedi

Assistant Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Sayra & Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children & The Courts, University of Baltimore School of Law

034 A Consciousness of Connection is Our Only Hope

Elizabeth Wendell & Kevin Campbell

Founders of Pale Blue

042 Family Separation as Terror

011 Beyond the Silence

Nicole Kati Wong, J.D., M.S.T.

041 Ever Since I was a Little Kid

056 Waves

060

Kaylah McMillan

Holly Lazo

Poetry Silent Tears

Sawara Robinson

061 Can I Be Myself

Sawara Robinson

Alan Detlaff Professor, University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work

048 Promoting Child & Collective Wellbeing Through Indigenous Connectedness

Jessica Saniguq Ullrich Assistant Professor, Washington State University

Reflection

062 A Discussion with Victor Sims on the Power of Connection

Victor Sims

Cover Artwork

Harini Pootheri is the artist for the cover art. She is an incoming junior at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, studying Computer Information Systems and Data Science. As part of her Ethnic and Women’s Studies course in the summer of 2021, Harini created the artwork pictured here titled “Lotus Flower: The Human Desire for Freedom” as part of her final project on foster youth and incarceration. So many children are stuck in the foster care-to-prison pipeline. Harini has witnessed many youth succumb to the foster care-to-prison pipeline during her time in the foster care system. Yet despite the unfortunate perpetuation of the pipeline, Harini would like to highlight that growth is possible and the human desire for freedom triumphs all.

The Family Justice Journal is committed to featuring the art and poetry of individuals directly impacted by the child welfare system in each issue.

BOARD MEMBERS

Advisory Board Members

Christopher Baker-Scott

Executive Director & Founder SUN Scholars, Inc.

Angelique Day, Ph.D., MSW

University of Washington Seattle Associate Professor

Faculty Affiliate of the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute

Director of federal policy for Partners for Our Children

April Lee

Director of Client Voice Community Legal Services of Philadelphia

Dr. Melissa T. Merrick

President and CEO

Prevent Child Abuse America

Lexie Gruber Peréz Service Design Masters Candidate

Royal College of Art in London

Former Senior Advisor on Child Welfare in the Biden Administration

Jey Rajaraman

Associate Director, Center on Children and the Law, American Bar Association

Former Chief Counsel, Legal Services of New Jersey

Vivek Sankaran

Clinical Professor of Law, University of Michigan, Michigan Law

Shrounda Selivanoff Social Services Manager

Washington State Office of Public Defense Parents Representation Program

Victor E. Sims, MBA, CDP

Senior Associate Family Well-Being Strategy Group

The Annie E. Casey Foundation

Paul Vincent, MSW

Former Alabama Child Welfare Director Consultant and Court Monitor

Editorial Board Members

Justin Abbasi

Medical Student, University of California, Los Angeles

Co-Founder, Harbor Scholars: A Dwight Hall Program at Yale

Laura W. Boyd, Ph.D. Owner and CEO, Policy & Performance Consultants, Inc.

Angela Olivia Burton, J.D. Special Counsel for Interdisciplinary Matters Office for Justice Initiatives New York State Unified Court Systems

Melissa D. Carter, J.D. Clinical Professor of Law, Emory Law

Kimberly A. Cluff, J.D. MPA Candidate 2022, Goldman School of Public Policy

Kathleen Creamer, J.D. Managing Attorney, Family Advocacy Unit Community Legal Services of Philadelphia

Angelique Day, Ph.D., MSW

Associate Professor, Faculty Affiliate of the Indigenous Wellness Research Center

Director of Federal Policy for Partners for Our Children School of Social Work, University of Washington Seattle Adjunct Faculty, Evans School of Public Policy and Governance

Yven Destin, Ph.D.

Educator and Independent Researcher of Race and Ethnic Relations

Paul Dilorenzo, ACSW, MLSP National Child Welfare Consultant

J. Bart Klika, MSW, Ph.D. Chief Research Officer, Prevent Child Abuse America

Heidi Mcintosh

Principal, LGC CORE Consulting, LLC

Kimberly M. Offutt, Th.D.

National Director of Family Support and Engagement Bethany Christian Services

Jessica Pryce, Ph.D.

Director, Florida Institute for Child Welfare Florida State University

Delia Sharpe, Esq. Executive Director, California Tribal Families Coalition

Mark Testa, Ph.D.

Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Elizabeth Wendel, MSW, LSW Co-Founder, Pale Blue International Consultant, Family Well-Being and Mental Health Systems

Shereen White, J.D. Director of Advocacy & Policy, Children’s Rights

Cheri Williams, MS

Senior Vice President of Domestic Programs

Bethany Christian Services

Sponsorship

The Family Justice Group is grateful for the financial sponsorship of this issue of the Family Justice Journal by the Institute for Relational Health (IRH) at CareSource. We are happy to advance the work of the IRH in promoting relational health for families, children, youth and communities, particularly those impacted by our child welfare, juvenile justice and mental health systems and individuals with disabilities. We believe that discussing and bringing to light the harms of disconnection are necessary acknowledgements of the critical importance of relational health in all our lives.

The Need to Prioritize Relational Health

Jerry Milner & David Kelly

Child welfare in the United States is both a symptom and a cause of relational poverty. As a symptom, it reflects what can happen when families are socially isolated and without the necessary social capital or resources to help them through adversity. As a cause, it erodes family integrity. With intention, laws have been crafted to punish vulnerability, expedite the severance of family relationships, and incentivize the redistribution of other people’s children.

Less than half of children separated from their parents to foster care ever return home. Discriminatory rules and policies disqualify families from doing what family does best---care for their loved ones. The “better safe than sorry” mentality to child safety continues to preempt a child’s sense of connection and belonging to their family, community, and culture. This is a direct threat to their well-being and jeopardizes the relational, physical, mental, and spiritual health of children and youth.

Relational health (connection and belonging) is essential to our individual and collective well-being as human beings in the world. Somehow, however, this most essential and defining aspect of being human has been overshadowed or cast aside in the industry known as child welfare.

Services reign supreme in the industry, and the industry has great impact on policy making nationally. Its main interest is to remain in business. This has resulted in a fixation on clinical services and proprietary models, rather than proactive family support. It sustains a narrative that pathologizes the conditions families are forced to live in or with, especially poverty and the trauma of racism.

Most often we do not see children and parents within the context of their family, culture, or community. The Indian Child Welfare Act is perhaps the lone exception of a law that does, and of course it is subject to constant attack because its purpose and efficacy are threats to the status quo. Instead, we focus on adversity and individual deficits, maladies, and extreme examples— again, most often caused by societal conditions. We then punish children and their parents for those conditions.

This is an inhumane approach that reflects a fragmented and myopic view of children and their parents. It fails to see complete human beings or acknowledge the context of their lives. It fuels the creation of one size fits all menus of research-based interventions and manuals designed to fix isolated parts of people. It ignores what we know about the importance of connection and belonging and prioritizes processes and transactions over well-being. This benefits systems and purveyors far more than families.

For example, the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) and the clearinghouse it established are designed to focus primarily on rating and approving clinical interventions to fix problems after they have occurred. It does not fund critical support for well-known needs before problems become crises. Nor does it fund community derived and provided solutions. The industry needs the problems to persist. It profits from negative views and perceptions of low-income families and families of color. It is built upon prejudice.

As a field we have convinced ourselves that we are doing right by children while outcomes and evidence (especially the accountings of people impacted by the system) say otherwise. We continue to invest our time, energy, and resources in getting better at maintaining the existing framework of investigating and separating families, including incessant efforts to increase child abuse hotline reporting and non-stop foster parent recruitment that favors the number of beds over the strength of connection. These approaches guarantee more trauma and disconnection and reinforce the inequities that were woven into child welfare from the beginning.

There are examples from other cultures and nations that recognize that supporting families is the best way to keep children safe and healthy and that communities are best situated to provide that support. For example, tribes in the United States and indigenous communities in other parts of the world have sacred and historical traditions of keeping family members connected to one another, their clans or tribes, culture, land, and world in which they live. Indigenous world views recognize that strong and healthy individuals make for strong and healthy communities, and that one relies on the other---there is deep value in interconnection.

Many Tribes and Tribal Nations have resisted efforts and policies that support unnecessary separation of families, removal of children from their cultures and communities, and severing child-parent ties. They rightfully reject the notion of termination of parental rights as a legal fiction and an act of great harm. When these efforts have not been successful, we see adults who have lost their sense of self, cultural heritage, and connection to essential relationships---forced to live with grief, depression, and worse because of what has happened to them. Our child welfare system has much to learn from the wisdom of indigenous communities.

There is overwhelming evidence of the centrality of meeting basic needs, e.g., food, clothing, housing, economic security, childcare and relational health. With this knowledge, the federal government can lay the foundation for a just and humane direction that promotes true child welfare and family well-being. The Surgeon General’s recent Advisory on the healing effects of social connection and community unequivocally identities loneliness and isolation as a national epidemic. This is an important start and opportunity to change our orientation. It needs to be followed by a national investment in relational health, including a realignment of Medicaid that recognizes efforts to promote connection and belonging as essential, preventative medical care that directly impacts physical and behavioral health. We must also prosecute the infrastructure that causes and exacerbates isolation and loneliness.

There are longstanding federal structures, programs and funding streams that are deeply destructive to families and cause disconnection and egregious inequity. We should cease to defend and maintain them. For example, the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) includes mandatory reporting requirements that lead to over-surveillance of poor families and families of color. The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) includes draconian termination of parental rights provisions that are misaligned with what we know about substance misuse treatment and emerging from deep poverty. Moreover, programs and funding that could and should be helpful are commonly misused. Most notably, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is utilized by many states to investigate families rather than provide them with economic support and mobility.

In this first issue of the Family Justice Journal, authors confront the trauma of family separation through a lens of loss of connection and belonging and the often-irreparable grief it causes children and parents. The issue calls for the end of seeing poverty, trauma, and disease as parental shortcomings. It exposes how we weaponize grief to justify removal, termination of parental rights and other practices that cause harm in the name of good. Contributors challenge all of us to mobilize around relational health and advance restoration and healing to keep families and communities strong and connected. Such a direction will benefit all.

Jerry Milner

David Kelly

Ann T. Dinh Design Consultant

Editor - in - Chief

Co-Director of the Family Justice Group

Editor - in - Chief

Co-Director of the Family Justice Group

Design Director

Foreword

Dr. Bruce Perry, MD, PhD Principal of The Neurosequential Network Renowned Trauma and Brain Expert

Like all species on Earth, we have evolved unique genetic capabilities that have allowed us to survive and thrive over thousands of generations. At the heart of these ‘gifts’ is our connectedness –our bonds with others make us part of a greater whole. For 250,000 years humans lived in small, developmentally heterogeneous groups. In these 20-60 member ‘clans’ the elderly, adults, youth, child, toddler and infant lived in close physical proximity. Physical, emotional and social interactions were dense and continuous. Caregiving ratios for children under three were 4:1 not the ‘enriched’ 1:4 ratio that today’s childcare settings brag about (1/16th the relational density of our ancestral child rearing environments). We are a social species; each of us is fundamentally interdependent upon many others – past and present, known and unknown. This foundational capacity to form and maintain relationships – to communicate, commune, couple and create with others – is responsible for the survival of every human being alive today – and every human being who has ever lived. It is no surprise then, that the complex and diverse capacities to manage stress in the individual body are intertwined with the complex and diverse systems involved in connecting with others. Connectedness, stress regulation, and health in all domains – physical, emotional, social and cognitive - are intertwined.

Another ‘gift’ of our species is the capacity of the human cortex to absorb and store remarkable volumes of information per second – and then make that ‘information’ available for ongoing analysis, processing, revisiting, revising and inventing. This is what has allowed us – over thousands of generations – to discover, invent and change the ways we live and live together. Innovations in cultivation, domestication of animals, communication, transportation, and complex social structures and so much more have resulted in our modern world. This process of sociocultural evolution has dominated human history for the last 20,000 years. As our social structures have become larger and more complex, we have codified practices, created programs, defined policy and law to guide

us through the inevitable set of problems resulting from this inventing process. Each generation has the task of problem-solving about the issues created by the choices of previous generations. Well-intended changes in systems, or practice, or policy often cause new problems. The un-ending process of creating a future will always involve review and reflection on the choices of previous problem solvers – and making tweaks, addendum, additions, subtractions to better meet the current needs and interests of a population. This ongoing inventing process is complicated by the rapid rate of changes in the world – and in the ‘inventing’ process that has accelerated dramatically in the last 100 years. The rate of creating innovations is faster than our problem-solving processes.

One of the most significant consequences of this rapid ‘modernization’ has been the relative ignorance and neglect of one of the fundamental needs and strengths of humans – to belong. Being connected to and actively engaged with others in your ‘clan’ confers physiological, emotional and social buffering from present stressors and an opportunity to heal from previous adversities. Belonging helps make you healthy, helps keep you healthy and helps you heal. Yet so many of our innovations and advances actually fragment our social connectedness (e.g., increasing screen time) in subtle but powerful ways. And many of our other innovations and policies INTENTIONALLY fragment family, community and culture. The objective of colonizing practices, i.e., ‘civilizing,’ ‘pacifying,’ ‘modernizing’, were to undermine family, community and cultural bonds to facilitate the introduction of ‘other’ ways of being, thinking and living (usually only giving partial access and privilege to these ‘new ways’, thereby keeping the colonized at the bottom of a transgenerational power differential intended to maintain the power and wealth of the colonizers). In many ways, our current social systems retain the fundamentally colonizing/feudal features that are endemic to large hierarchical systems. It should be no surprise that Aboriginal children and youth are over-represented in Australia’s child welfare and juvenile justice

system (Atkinson & Atkinson, 2007) or that First Nations children and families are most fragmented by current social policies and systems in Canada, or that the transgenerational impact of slavery and ongoing intentional disenfranchisement and marginalization of enslaved peoples results in the overrepresentation in our ‘modern’ child welfare system. Only with an awareness of these features can we – the current generation of problem solvers and inventors – adequately address and remedy these shortcomings.

This issue of the Family Justice Journal is all about that process. A group of innovative scholars and leaders are writing about the catastrophic impact of fracturing these connections. The long-standing policies of child welfare to remove children from parent, family, community and culture have only exacerbated the problems they were intended to remedy. These scholars give us hope and direction by these reflections.

My journey in this area started over thirty years ago when I was asked to evaluate a 14-year-old

girl who was being ‘hospitalized’, i.e., imprisoned, for ‘conduct disorder.’ Briefly, at age 13 she had disclosed sexual abuse by her step-father to a teacher. The resulting CPS investigation resulted in her removal from the home (they kept her 12-year-old sister in the home). Prior to this, she had been a good student, part of a church youth group, an active and successful athlete in soccer and softball, regularly visited her grandparents who lived in her neighborhood – and had never had behavioral, emotional, social or academic problems. After removal she was put in foster care in a completely different part of the city – away from school, friends, teammates, family. She would run back to her community and stay with friends. Again, and again. She started to fail in school, ‘disrespect’ her foster family, and became very sad. The legal proceedings dragged on – each time she ran away she had more restrictions. She became angrier and sadder and more isolated. Finally, she required ‘hospitalization’ to prevent her from running away. I met her, found nothing wrong with her aside from a normal set of feelings, thoughts and behaviors given the situation. I will

“The long-standing policies of child welfare to remove children from parent, family, community and culture have only exacerbated the problems they were intended to remedy.”

never forget her statement – “Why am I the one who has to get punished when he is the one who hurt me? He keeps his bed, his house, his job, his friends and I am the one who loses everything. It’s not fair.” And I would add…it’s not moral, it’s not just, it’s not effective and “our” interventions just hurt her. For the next thirty years I saw hundreds of similar examples of iatrogenic problems –physiological, social, emotional and behavioral –caused by the very interventions in child welfare, education and mental health – that were supposed to be helping children and families. At the core of all these misguided interventions is a fundamental ignorance about basics of human development, the principles of brain organization and functioning, the importance of stress response malleability and flexibility, the power of early childhood experiences and the importance of connectedness.

The high malleability – therefore, the high vulnerability – of the infant and young child is of particular importance in child welfare. Separation from family is most devastating when children are young; In 2021, 203,770 children entered foster care in the US. Children ages one to five are 29 % of these. Over 2021 391,641 children were living in foster care. Of these, 33 % were one to five and 7% were ‘babies.’ (AECF, 2022)

While disruptions of connection for youth are bad; disruptions and separations of primary relational experiences early in childhood are catastrophic. In our work to study the impact of experiences (good and bad) on development (Perry, 2009), the valence of early life relational connection appears to be the most powerful determinant of many mental health outcomes later in life (Hambrick, et al., 2018). We also find that measures related to ‘connectedness’ during development are better predictors of “adversities” despite the current popular over-focus on ‘ACEs” as determinative in health outcomes. In addition, we find again and again that the major predictor of current functioning is the current state of connectedness (Hambrick, Brawner & Perry, 2019). Simply stated, connectedness is at the heart of all human health, creativity, productivity and humanity. And any practice, program or policy that actively disrespects this will increase risk, erode resilience and, ultimately, be a detriment to our progress as a species. The good news is that the importance of social engagement and relational health is emerging in many fields –the Surgeon General has written a book (Murthy, 2020) and recently a major policy paper (Office of the Surgeon General, 2023) about the importance of connectedness, for example.

Sadly, connectedness, community and culture have not been ‘centered’ in our current child welfare programs and practices. This issue of the journal has a focus on the enduring, multi-dimensional negative impact that the intentional, systemic efforts of child welfare policy and practice have on the very children, families and communities these systems intend to help. An essential element of learning from the authors in this issue of the journal is to acknowledge the limits and biases of our own educational, professional and cultural experiences. It is likely that a ‘defensive’ stance will be elicited when confronted with the harsh reality of the failures of our systems; when using our the ‘best intention’ lens we often minimize or avoid the reality of the overwhelming and sobering negative impacts of our child welfare interventions. I would ask that the reader remember that the best intentions developed and delivered within a patriarchal, colonizing framework are never good for the colonized.

References

AECF (2022) 2022 Kids Count Data Book. Annie E. Casey Foundation (https://assets.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/aecf2022kidscountdatabook-2022.pdf Office of the

Atkinson, J., & Atkinson, R. (2007). Trauma, transgenerational transfer and healing indigenous people. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 5(3), 274-282.

Hambrick, E.P., Brawner, T. & Perry, B.D. (2019) Timing of early life stress and the development of brain-related capacities. Front. Behav. Neurosci. 13:183. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00183

Hambrick, E.P., Brawner, T., Perry, B.D., Brandt, K., Hofeister, C. & Collins, J. (2018) Beyond the ACE Score: Examining relationships between timing of developmental adversity, relational health and developmental outcomes in children Archives of Psychiatric Nursing DOI:10.1016/j. apnu.2018.11.001

Murthy, V. H. (2020) Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World. Harper Wave

Perry, B.D. (2009) Examining child maltreatment through a neurodevelopmental lens: clinical application of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics. Journal of Loss and Trauma 14: 240-255,

Surgeon General. (2023). Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Office of the Surgeon General.

Beyond the Silence

Nicole Kati Wong, J.D., M.S.T.

I watched the flickering of sirens, Red and blue hues, never lessening. The city that never sleeps grew silent, And the quiet was truly deafening. Ripped from our roots (but still expected to grow), Never to see the stars the same way. Lived in many houses, never a home. They said it was care; that’s just a word they say.

A system of pain, waves of rejection, No actual meals—just leftovers and scraps. Blood in our veins and blinding affection, Still not as binding as our shared need of maps.

I was the whisper, but you knew how to shout. In a crowded room, your cheer still rings out. But, I hated when you weren’t around. The music still played, but I heard no sound.

You were born for days of adversity. Could that I would wrap a thousand thanks. Through all my outstanding absurdity, You let me shine, yet, in the sun, you never bathed.

They think I had it bad, but you took the brunt. You always took the lead, and I followed as the runt.

My lashing was a drop and yours was an ocean. You protected my youth; I’m sorry yours was stolen.

You crawled so I can stand. You cried so I did not fret. They think I overcame alone, But I shall never forget.

I can never say it enough (and it’s too hard to say it face to face): You are a brother of worth. Beyond the silence, always hear this praise.

Photo by Ann Dinh

The Call

Nicole Kati Wong, J.D., M.S.T.

stories of children being separated from parents or siblings, not due to death or necessity, but rather due to such reasons as cultural insensitivity or systemic glitches that have children entering care whenever a (well-meaning but not always well-founded) mandatory reporter call is made.

The disproportionate number of children of color in foster care is so defining a characteristic of the system that it speaks volumes of its ineptitude for cultural humility. How many children of immigrant families have entered care because their parents affectionately used ancestral, medicinal practices that were (ironically) mistaken for physical abuse? How many foster children are placed in remedial courses because of language barriers or gaps in education due to frequently transferring foster homes and schools? How many guardians are viewed as unfit caretakers because they could not afford to miss work (again) to show up to court, school conferences, etc., without the risk of job loss? How many siblings are kept apart due to assumptions that their bond is indicative of incest, rather than being viewed as a yearning for familiarity (i.e., when one sibling leaves their foster home bed each night only to be found in their sibling’s bed the next morning)? How many children are so isolated from the ethnic, cultural, and spiritual values of their birth families because they are only permitted a one-hour weekly visit—if that—with their parents? How many families have been torn apart? How many more have to be? At what point will we reshape what care really means?

Can you recall a time when you were in the middle of a phone call and—suddenly—the line went silent? It may have been a pleasant conversation or perhaps you were extremely grateful for the interruption, but whatever your feelings were, it is likely that you had every ability and freedom to reconnect with the person on the other line. The same cannot be said for children who enter the foster care system and are abruptly disconnected from their families, friends, communities, and environments.

As an educator, advocate, and attorney, the one constant I have observed about the adolescent journey is that connection is crucial. When my students made text-to-self connections, there was a more potent underscoring of information than when they felt disassociated from the material. When those of us with lived experience in the foster care system champion change, we embrace the echo of our experiences and seek to bridge resources, institutions, and innovation. When it comes to the wellbeing of a child, it takes the fused understanding of various professionals to determine what “best interest” means. Yet, in spite of the universal, conventional understanding that there is a correlation between interdependence and advancement, the system that oversees child welfare is the very one subduing the healthy development of our youth. We know this because there are countless

The vulnerable population of youth in foster care undergo traumas that are invisible and incomprehensible to their peers. Due to the many ways foster children are separated from meaningful support systems, they experience higher levels of mental health issues, emotional dependencies, physical self-harm, academic failures, etc., than the general population while still being expected to perform at the same rate as their peers As they become young adults, they experience higher levels of poverty (i.e., homelessness not too long after exiting foster care), criminal activity, substance abuse, etc. than the general population while still being judged for not “excelling” at the same rate as their peers. I have met countless former youth in foster care whose contribution to society is invisible and incomprehensible to their peers. Each system-driven severed connection created another obstruction to their ability to succeed and yet, their hearts still beat. In these silent heroes, there is a testament to the import of hope (the only thing sustaining the victim of disconnection).

This column has been filled with rhetorical questions and calls for action. Hopefully, unlike those moments where a phone call abruptly ends, there will be readers on the other side of these words who (value the importance of connection and) respond.

To Be Ripped Away From Your Family”

Over the past 20 years, through youth-centered research, practice, and mentorship, I’ve listened to and learned from thousands of youth in foster care as they’ve shared what it is like to experience foster care transitions. My heart has weighed heavy as youth discuss what it is like to be removed and disconnected from their families, placed into foster care, how they cope with loss and grief while navigating the foster care system, what it has been like to return or not return to their family, and all the ambiguities that further complicate their reality.

1 US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Children’s Bureau. (2022). The AFCARS report No. 29: Preliminary FY 2021 estimates as of June 28, 2022. Retrieved from https:// www.acf.hhs.gov/ cb/report/afcarsreport-29.

2 Mitchell, M. B. (2016). The neglected transition: Building a relational home for children entering foster care. Oxford University Press.

3 The quotes utilized in this article are drawn from personal communications with youth in research studies that I have conducted. All research studies received IRB approval and all participants granted their permission for their quotes and feedback to be used anonymously in publications and/or presentations.

4 Personal communication with youth in foster care, research participant

5 For more information on the impact of ambiguity, see Mitchell, M. B. (2016). The neglected transition: Building a relational home for children entering foster care. Oxford University Press.

Monique B. Mitchell, PhD, FT is the Executive Director of Life Transitions International and the Director of Training & Translational Research and National Director of L.Y.G.H.T. at Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children & Families. For more information, visit www. moniquebmitchell.com & www.dougy.org/lyght

Every year, more than 200,000 youth are removed from their families and placed into the U.S. foster care system.1 Each of these children are challenged by ambiguity and loss through foster care transition transactions and the introduction and dissolution of relationships.2 In this article, I draw upon the stories and quotes from children, teens, and young adults that I have been privileged to as a listener3, the research that I and others have conducted, and the lived experience of removal and disconnection for youth in the foster care system. Current challenges within the child welfare system related to becoming and being grief-informed are addressed and resources and efforts to move the child welfare field toward a more holistic and humanistic approach to supporting youth who are grieving are discussed.

6 Meyer-Lee, C., Jackson, J. B., & Sabatini Gutierrez, N. (2020). Longterm experiencing of parental death during childhood: A qualitative analysis. The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 28(3), 247-256.

7 Almquist, Y. B., Rojas, Y., Vinnerljung, B., & Brännström. L. (2020). Association of child placement in out-of-home care

Monique B. Mitchell, PhD, FT

Acknowledging and Addressing the Impact of Loss, Grief, and Relational Connection for Youth in Foster Care

with trajectories of hospitalization because of suicide attempts from early to late adulthood. JAMA Network Open, 3(6), 1-12. doi:10.1001/ jamanetworkopen.

2020.6639

8 Mitchell, M. B. (2016). The neglected transition: Building a relational home for children entering foster care. Oxford University Press.

9 Unrau, Y. A., Seita, J. R., & Putney, K. S. (2008). Former foster youth remember multiple placement moves: A journey of loss and hope. Children and Youth Services Review, 30, 1256–1266.

10 Curry, A. (2019). “If you can’t be with this client for some years, don’t do it”: Exploring the emotional and relational effects of turnover on youth in the child welfare system. Children and Youth Services Review, 99, 374-385.

11Mitchell, M. B. (2017). “No one acknowledged my loss and hurt”: Non-death loss, grief, and trauma in foster care. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, 35, 1-9. doi: 10.1007/s10560017-0502-8

12 Herrick, M., & Piccus, W. (2005). Sibling connections: The importance of nurturing sibling bonds in the foster care system. Children and Youth Services Review, 27, 845–861.

13 Wokciak, A. S., Tomfohrde, O., Simpson, J. E., & Waid, J. (2022). Sibling separation: Learning from those with former foster care experiences, The British Journal of Social Work. https://doi. org/10.1093/bjsw/ bcac204

When a youth experiences removal, they are inundated with loss from this first transaction. Most youth with whom I have worked or spoken with equate this experience to “being kidnapped,” “being tooken’,” or “ripped away.” One youth asserts, “It was a horrible, traumatizing experience for all of us – to be ripped away from your family.”4 The impact of family separation and the subsequent ambiguity, i.e., structural ambiguity, placement reason ambiguity, placement context ambiguity, relationship ambiguity, role ambiguity, temporal ambiguity, and ambiguous loss, should not be understated.5 In addition to the ambiguities that youth experience, they experience an abundance of losses. While some adults may argue that a youth does not “lose” their family when they are placed into foster care, most youth in foster care would disagree. Indeed, for them, they experience the ambiguous loss of family, e.g., parents, siblings, grandparents, etc., immediately, at the time of removal. And this loss does not go away while in foster care…it just intensifies. While not the case for all youth, terms such as “traumatic,” “heartbreaking,” and “worst experiences of my life” are the dominant themes that have emerged in youth’s stories when talking about what it feels like to be disconnected from their family and/or loved ones.

Unfortunately, the primary loss of removal can also lead to secondary losses. These losses include, but are not limited to, losses of identity, losses of community, losses of routines, and losses of self-worth. As one youth advised, “My loss was more lack of self-preservation and self-worth. I feel as if this could happen to someone no one cares about.” As illustrated by this youth’s experience, placement into foster care can also lead to a loss of hope, self-worth, and belonging. While it can sometimes be a challenge to admit this, the system, which is designed to help youth, has also harmed them and the elephant in the room needs to be addressed.

Grief is an inevitable result of loss and is commonly reduced to being “an emotion.” While grief can be expressed as emotion, it is so much more than that. Grief can be felt and manifested in our bodies, in our minds, in our spirits, and in our interpersonal relationships.

Youth in foster care have clearly expressed how they are impacted when their experiences of loss and grief are not addressed.9, 10, 11 While each relationship is unique, for youth who have been separated from siblings, this relational disconnection can be exceptionally challenging.12,13 Youth reports include, “A major loss that I had was not being able to see my sisters and being around my sisters and my family as much as I wanted to. And, having somebody that, you know, understands you that doesn’t necessarily just judge

“No one acknowledged my separation from my family. Not having acknowledgment made me feel lost.”: Unaddressed Grief in Foster Care

“You’re took away from everything that you know and love.”: The Harm of Disconnection

Sadly, grief is often overlooked and misunderstood in the child welfare system and is not adequately addressed. The challenge with this is that unaddressed and/ or unsupported grief can lead to long-term negative outcomes, including but not limited to, depression, isolation, hopelessness, suicidality, and low selfworth, just to name a few..6, 7, 8

you and just stare at you like a foster child,” and “I got taken away from my sisters, who I promised I would never let them get hurt. I was pissed and I was what most people called a troubled child or hellion.”14 As a result of relational disconnection and unaddressed grief, youth reported how they rebelled or “acted out”, felt misunderstood, did not feel a sense of belonging, and struggled with understanding their place in the world. As I have listened to how youth are impacted when their grief is left unattended, my heart falls heavy, especially when considering how proper grief-informed interventions could have minimized or mitigated these grief experiences.

The youth are telling us to listen, to really listen, to what their stories, at their heart, are telling us. Removal and separation from their families is painful, the subsequent grief resulting from separation from family, friends, homes, and communities needs to be attended to, opportunities to discuss and explore their grief is not at the forefront of service delivery, and, in the absence of these supports, youth feel “betrayed,” “hurt,” “alone,” and “unloved.” And the youth I have spoken with aren’t the only ones with this lived experience; research and conversations with youth in foster care elsewhere have also come to similar conclusions.15 With all the losses that children and youth in foster care experience, it is disconcerting that the child welfare system is not placing more emphasis on ensuring that our practices are not only trauma-informed but also grief-informed.

Grief-Informed Best Practices

Being disconnected from people and places someone cares about can be a traumatic experience, as many youth have attested. The child welfare system recognizes and acknowledges the critical importance for professionals to understand the impact of trauma and to be trained on traumainformed best practices. By being traumainformed, professionals understand how youth can be impacted by traumatic experiences and ways to provide support and minimize additional trauma. In addition to understanding the impact of trauma, it is critical for child welfare professionals to also understand the impact of grief. All youth will inevitably experience loss and disconnection when entering or while in foster care, and with this disconnection comes grief. As such, it is equally

important for our child welfare system to be trained on grief-informed best practices, understanding that being trauma-informed and being griefinformed are not one and the same.

Being grief-informed involves understanding the ten core principles of grief-informed practice and how understanding and applying these principles can better assist professionals in providing personcentered support to people who are grieving.16 These best practices include understanding that grief is natural, complex and nonpathological, contextual, disruptive, person-centered, dynamic, non-finite and that people who are grieving require relational connection, perceived support, safety, and personal empowerment and agency. Ultimately, it is essential for child welfare professionals to understand the dynamic nature of grief and how to tailor their support in a way that respects the dignity and worth of each youth they are serving. Being grief-informed also involves understanding the disparities that exist in removal rates, healthcare, education, governmental policies, etc. because of discrimination against people’s races/ethnicities, beliefs, genders, socioeconomic statuses, and other attributes which make people diverse, unique, and worth of inclusion.17

While unpacking the core principles of griefinformed practice and their application to child welfare is beyond the scope of this article, there are resources available for child welfare professionals interested in providing grief-informed support to youth who are grieving. For example, The Bill of Rights for Youth in Foster Care Who are Grieving, developed by youth, outlines the ways that adult caregivers, teachers, friends, and other people in a youth’s life can support them as they navigate their grief while in, and after, foster care.18 Additionally, Tips for Supporting Youth in Foster Care Who are Grieving, provides grief-informed tips to support youth in foster care who are grieving due to separation and disconnection,19 and Now What? Tips for Teens Who are Grieving in Foster Care provides tips for teens who are grieving in the foster care system.20

Some states have started to consider how to integrate grief-informed best practices into their core principles of child welfare practice. In Utah, for example, a cross-system statewide child welfare collaborative consisting of child welfare professionals (e.g., judges, guardians ad litem, human services staff, etc.) developed core principles and guiding practices for a fully integrated childwelfare system.21 In their guidance to child welfare professionals throughout the state, they identify the need for the child welfare system to be grief-

14 Personal communication with youth in foster care, research participant

15 Lee, R. E, & Whiting, J. B. (2007). Foster children’s expressions of ambiguous loss. The American Journal of Family Therapy, 35, 417–428.

16 Schuurman, D. L. & Mitchell, M. B. (2022). Being grief-informed: From understanding to action. Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children & Families. https:// www.dougy.org/ assets/uploads/ Being-Grief-Informedfrom-Understanding-toAction.pdf

17 Schuurman, D. L. & Mitchell, M. B. (2020). Becoming griefinformed: A call to action. Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children & Families. https://www. dougy.org/assets/ uploads/BecomingGrief-Informed_A-Callto-Action.pdf

18 Dougy Center (2022). The Bill of Rights for Youth in Foster Care Who are Grieving. Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children & Families. https://www.dougy. org/resource-articles/ the-bill-of-rights-foryouth-in-foster-carewho-are-grieving

19 Dougy Center (2023). Tips for Supporting Youth in Foster Care Who are Grieving (Tip Sheet). Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children & Families. https://www.dougy. org/assets/uploads/ Tips-for-SupportingYouth-In-Foster-CareWho-are-Grieving.pdf

“I didn’t open up to nobody. Nobody ain’t earn my respect enough to open up to them.”:

20 Dougy Center (2023). Now What? Tips for Teens Who are Grieving in Foster Care (Tip Sheet). Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children & Families. https://www.dougy. org/assets/uploads/ Tips-for-Teens-inFoster-Care-Who-areGrieving.pdf

21 https://legacy. utcourts.gov/utc/cip/ wp-content/uploads/ sites/51/2022/04/ Utah-Child-WelfareSystem-CorePrinciples-andGuiding-PracticesNovember-2021.pdf

22 https://www. aap.org/en/ news-room/newsreleases/aap/2021/ children-in-fostercare-much-morelikely-to-be-prescribedpsychotropicmedicationscompared-with-nonfoster-children-inmedicaid-program/

23 Keefe, R, et al. Psychotropic medication usage among foster and non-foster youth on Medicaid; Oct. 8-Oct. 11, 2021 (virtual meeting).

24 Hughes, V. (2011). Shades of grief: When does mourning become a mental illness?

Scientific American, https://www. scientificamerican. com/article/shadesof-grief

informed and their commitment to ensuring that youth in foster care receive grief-informed services. Utah has provided an excellent example for other states interested in learning how to incorporate grief-informed best practices into state policy and service delivery.

Youth who are removed from their homes, families, and communities understandably often experience grief, anxiety, anger, and other responses too quickly labeled as “mental disorders.” Multiple studies have shown the disproportionate overprescribing of psychotropic medication for youth in foster care. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “one in every three children in foster care are on psychotropic medications designed to alter their mental status or mood.”22 Furthermore, research has found that children in foster care who are on Medicaid are prescribed psychotropic medications four times more than children on Medicaid who are not in foster care.23

In March 2022, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR) included a new mental health diagnosis, “Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD).” The addition of this new pathology creates serious concerns for the well-being of youth in foster care. Aside from the concern that grief is being labeled as a pathological response to a normal human experience and life condition, this new diagnosis opens the door to more drug development and treatment for this “disorder.” Warnings about the development of a pill for grief started well before the DSM-5 added a “condition for further study” in its 2013 edition, then titled “Persistent Bereavement Related Disorder”24 and, in 2020, a clinical trial for a drug to treat “Prolonged Grief Disorder” was underway.

Here is one of my primary concerns: The drug being used to “treat” grief is currently approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) for Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) and Opioid Use Disorder (OUD). The researchers who conducted the clinical trial conceptualize Prolonged Grief Disorder as a disorder of addiction, with persistent yearning and longing for a deceased loved one as primary symptoms. They hypothesize that the positive

“I was constantly being doped up on different medicines.”: The “Dominant” Intervention (Psychotropic Medication) in Child Welfare

reinforcement provided by memories of the person who has died enables a craving or addiction. As such, they purport that a drug that helps to resolve the addiction is needed. Naltrexone, their theory asserts, may reduce the craving for the person they are grieving and thereby address the severity of the person’s “Prolonged Grief Disorder.”25 In other words, the goal of naltrexone is to disrupt the social bonding between the person who is grieving and the person they are grieving. One of the many potential side effects of naltrexone is the indiscriminate nature of that social bonding disruption; that is, naltrexone does not differentiate between social bonds. In other words, the drug’s effect does not determine which social bonds are disrupted. The effect of the drug could result in not just creating a disruption in the social bond with the person the individual is grieving, it could also disrupt social bonds with living family members, support networks, and/or peers.26 It is not a huge leap to predict future prescribing of naltrexone to “treat” youth in foster care who are experiencing grief due to the separation from family and friends. Youth in foster care, who are already experiencing isolation and vulnerability, may be further disconnected from the very social bonds and protective factors that help them mediate the changes and losses they’re experiencing.

As a thanatologist, youth advocate, and child welfare researcher, I am deeply concerned about the short- and long-term consequences of “treating” grief as a mental disorder and inadequately addressing grief for youth in foster care. Grief is not something to be “treated” or “fixed.” It is a normal and natural response to loss that requires relational connection, not social disruption. As one youth reported, “A lot of the so-called treatments that I was supposed to be receiving there consisted of a lot of suppressing what comes natural. I think that it’s had more of a negative effect than it’s had a positive effect, due to the fact that you know, if you suppress something for so long, it’s not going to just go away. It’s going to wait and it’s gonna come back with a vengeance later when you finally get a chance to express yourself.”27 Medication will not get to the heart of grief; human connection does.

In addition to recognizing and acknowledging that grief is a normal, and not pathological, response to loss, it is critical that relationally based griefinformed interventions be available to youth in foster care to address death and non-death losses. Having an interpersonal relationship, also known as a relational home, for expressions of grief to be received and held is essential to well-being.28,29 As one youth in foster care reported, “Without being able to talk to anybody, I was walking around angry all the time and getting into trouble.”30

Listening and Led by Youth in Foster Care: Grief, Hope, & Transitions (L.Y.G.H.T.) is one example of a relationally based grief-informed intervention. L.Y.G.H.T., an evidence-based and traumainformed peer grief support program for youth in foster care, was created in response to youth reports indicating their need to express their grief with others who would understand and support them. From their expressed need, the L.Y.G.H.T. program was developed as a grief-informed, youth-centered relational intervention.31 Because peer support and personal empowerment are protective factors for youth who are grieving32, 33, an intervention, other than medication, is needed. Through the L.Y.G.H.T. program, hundreds of youth in foster care have benefited from the relational support they offer to one another to cope with their death and nondeath losses. L.Y.G.H.T. program participants have experienced increased social support, hopefulness, and self-worth as well as a reduction in perceived problems.34 The power of a peer grief support program for youth in foster care is that it provides a sense of belonging through a relational home which is youth-centered and youth-led.

In Summary

While recognizing there are situations when the health and safety of a youth warrants removal, disconnection from family, friends, and other significant relationships is harmful. As a result of being removed from their families, youth are inundated with loss, grief, and ambiguity from these disconnections, which frequently go unacknowledged and unaddressed, leading to long-term negative outcomes. It is critical for child welfare professionals to not only be traumainformed, but also grief-informed. A lack of griefinformed education can lead to inappropriate and harmful pharmaceutical responses to “treat” grief, instead of utilizing grief-informed interventions that promote relational connection and youth wellbeing.

25 Gang, J., Kocsis, J., Avery, J., Maciejewski, P., & Prigerson, H. (2021). Naltrexone treatment for prolonged grief disorder: Study protocol for a randomized, triple-blinded, placebocontrolled trial. Trials. 2021 Feb 1;22(1):110. doi: 10.1186/s13063021-05044-8. PMID: 33522931; PMCID: PMC7848251.

26 Thieleman, K., Cacciatore, J., & Thomas, S. (2022). Impairing social connectedness: The dangers of treating grief with naltrexone. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 0(0). https:// doi.org/ 10.1177/ 00221678221093822

27 Personal communication with youth in foster care, research participant

28 Mitchell, M. B. (2016). The neglected transition: Building a relational home for children entering foster care. Oxford University Press.

29 Stolorow, R. D. (2007). Trauma and human existence: Autobiographical, psychoanalytic, and philosophical reflections. Taylor & Francis Group.

30 Personal communication with youth in foster care, research participant

31 Mitchell, M. B. (2017). “No one acknowledged my loss and hurt”: Nondeath loss, grief, and trauma in foster care. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, 35, 1-9. doi: 10.1007/s10560017-0502-8

32 Hooyman, N. R., & Kramer, B. J. (2006). Living through loss: Interventions across the life span. Columbia University Press

33 Schuurman, D. L., & Mitchell, M. B. (2021). The Dougy Center Model: Peer grief support for children, teens, and families. Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children & Families.

34 Mitchell, M. B., Schuurman, D. L., Shapiro, C. J., Sattler, S., Sorensen, C., & Martinez, J. (2022). The L.Y.G.H.T. program: An evaluation of a peer grief support intervention for youth in foster care. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10560-022-00843-7

“It made me feel like I was not alone, that somebody understands”: The Power of Relational Connection and Perceived Support

“I’ve been in this foster care business 58 years & I’m tired of hearing and seeing that over half the children in foster care look like me.

We have to go to the community & ask them how to solve the problem, not tell them how to do it.”

Bob Ennis Founder of Ennis Center in Flint, MI

The Ineffable Significance of Kinship

Mark F. Testa Professor Emeritus University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The title of this essay draws inspiration from the scholarship of Edward Shils, who wrote about the ties that bind people together into a family, a community, and a whole society.1 When I first came across the phrase “ineffable significance” during my graduate school days in the 1970s, I immediately sensed its meaning. Still, I needed to look-up the definition. My hunch proved correct: “ineffable” adj. “too great to be expressed or described in words.” Always up for a new challenge, I ended up devoting much of my career to attempting just that—describing in words (and numbers) the ineffable significance of kinship for meeting people’s needs for connection, belongingness, and relational health.

As graduate students of my vintage were inclined to do, I began by taking the long evolutionary view. For 90 thousand of the 100 thousand years that behaviorally modern humans have inhabited this planet, feelings of intense in-group solidarity evolved within hunter-gatherer bands of close family and extended (fictive) kin of just a few dozen individuals. There was no wider society to which people pledged their civil allegiance—only three elementary ties that Shils identified as primordial affinity, personal trust, and sacred devotion united people together into shared identities of belongingness and solidarity.

A succession of societal changes, starting with the Agricultural Revolution, lifted-out social resources from their moorings in kinship and place. The process of societal transformation from band to tribe to chiefdom and later nation state accelerated with the Industrial Revolution and freed human resources for reinvestment as financial, social, and cultural capital in cooperative ventures across vast spans of space and time.2 Sociologists and social workers, who observed and responded to the changes, studied and experimented with whether the elementary forces of in-group solidarity could be unbundled and repurposed to serve the broader civic aims of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Sociologists view diversity, equity, and inclusion from a theoretical perspective that may seem tangential to the practical concerns of social workers, but the two viewpoints are compatible. Since its origins, the founders of sociology discerned in human history an evolutionary trend toward the adaptive upgrading of social and economic roles from the ascribed claims of kinship, place, and caste (diversity). The enhanced productivity that ensued opened up new vistas for achieving a fairer distribution of wealth among economic classes (equity). The incorporation of historically subordinated groups into fully enfranchised membership in the societal community appeared close at hand (inclusion). The proposition famously

1 Shils, E. (1975). Center and periphery: Essays in macrosociology. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.

2 Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press.

invoked by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. anticipated a hopeful path of progress: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Social workers were quick to join the march, and many sought to accelerate the pace. But after two World Wars and the steady erosion of the financial, social, and cultural capital of the families and communities left behind by the global spread of monopoly capital, the optimism that initially greeted the promise of modernity began to fade. The greater diversity, which resulted from the abolition of traditional hierarchies that limited the disposability of human resources by gender, race, religion, and sexual identity, delivered many more invitations to the dispossessed to join the “dance,” so to speak. But once admitted, many found much less of the dance floor available to them to maneuver and the music played not entirely to their tastes. Similarly, absolute levels of poverty plummeted worldwide, but income inequality reached unprecedented heights, which caused many to doubt whether economic justice was ever truly part of the grand scheme. Lastly, inclusion felt less like acceptance and more like assimilation on cultural terms dictated by the dominant groups in society.

Sociologists and social workers have struggled to understand the root causes of what many perceive as modern society’s detour off the main path of progress and on to side trails that curve back towards supremacy, oppression, and exclusion. There is not space in this essay to examine the different twists in the journey. Instead, I begin with my own personal story about the ineffable significance of kinship and fictive kin relations that can feel approximately as strong.

In 2008, my wife and I visited the small Italian village from which my maternal grandfather emigrated to the United States in the 1910s. He was followed several years later by my grandmother and their two young daughters (my aunts). As a child, the village was known to me as the faraway place of Buonanotte, which means “Good Night” in Italian. We approached the small town of 198 inhabitants from the mountains above, parked our car, and walked the rest of the way to the small town square. Holding a copy of the family tree that my wife had assembled from letters and calls to relatives, we entered a small grocery store. I approached a woman at the counter. In my best broken Italian, I inquired whether she recognized any of the names on my list. She looked up, and replied unexpectedly with a Brooklyn accent, “I think we may be related.” She made a quick phone call; ten minutes later three women came strolling down the hill. Their faces beamed with anticipation. The eldest grabbed my cheeks and turned to her sisters, “He looks just like our father.” I too felt the connection and thought to myself, “So this is the ineffable significance that Shils had been talking about.”

The sisters invited us for lunch. According to the genealogical tree, they were my first cousins, once removed. I was able to fill in details missing from my copy of the family tree. The sisters were the daughters of my grandfather’s younger brother. Tradition dictated that the youngest son should stay behind to look after the parents while my grandfather and his older brother set off for America to find their fortune in the restaurant business. The brothers dutifully sent home money to the family. In spite of my unfamiliarity with this branch of

“He looks just like our father.”

Primordial Kinship

the family tree, I nonetheless felt an unmistakable tug of primordial affinity when my cousin cradled my cheeks in her hands. They insisted we visit the rest of the family on the hill and then proceeded to shower us with gifts as we bid them arrivederci

Fictive Kinship

Behavioral scientists have quibbled over whether the feelings we associate with primordial kinship actually originate from some altruism-causing genes. Perhaps the feelings reflect simply the congenial sentiments that accompany the reciprocal exchange of goods and favors, which any recurring transactions will engender irrespective of relatedness. My experience in Buonanotte provided a crucial single-case test of the competing hypotheses. We had no interaction prior to my visit and no expectation that we would ever meet again. Yet, all three cousins exhibited a deep sense of connection that I also felt, which triggered their display of hospitality, generosity, and gratitude for our visit to the town of our ancestors.

Accepting the possibility that primordial affinity persists as a deeply embedded part of our genetic code in no way denies the reality of “fictive” kin relationships. They arise independently of primordial ties and can instill a similar sense of intense mutual attachment that blood relations often do. I have had several such experiences. One fictive kin relationship is my long-term association with Robert Johnson, who along with his two sisters, aunt, and mother became one of the first beneficiaries of the new subsidized guardianship program that I helped design for the state of Illinois in the late 1990s.

Subsidized Guardianship

In November 2008 following my visit to Italy, I entered a room in which a reception was being held in celebration of the President’s signing into law the Fostering Connections to Success Act. From across the room, I spotted a familiar-looking face. It turned out to be Robert’s mother, who was attending as a special guest of the sponsors along with Robert. As I approached her, I experienced a deep sense of connection similar to what I had felt in Italy. The difference was that whereas my Italian relatives and I bonded over our common decent, my bond with Robert and his mother derived from our shared commitment to a legal permanency option that enabled a family to remain a family without terminating parental rights.

The Fostering Connections Act established the Guardianship Assistance Program (GAP), which authorized payments to states to assist children who leave foster care to the permanent legal guardianship of relatives and fictive kin. It was modelled after the IV-E waiver demonstration that I had designed for Illinois and later replicated in Tennessee and Wisconsin.3 Together, we rejoiced over the creation of a federal entitlement that extended financial assistance to relative and fictive kin caregivers who assumed permanent legal guardianship of children who otherwise would have languished in long-term foster care.

Kinship Foster Care

I initially was drawn to the study of kinship foster care during a summer internship in 1975 at the Illinois Bureau of the Budget. A memorandum’s subject line caught my eye: Youakim. It referred to a class-action lawsuit that was making its way upward through layers of judicial appeal. It culminated in the 1979 Supreme Court ruling, Miller v. Youakim. Plaintiffs had challenged the legality of Illinois law, which barred blood relatives from becoming licensed foster parents. Licensing would have entitled relatives to receive the higher foster home boarding subsidy that strangers received after satisfying licensing requirements. Defendants argued that federal law had intended for relative caregivers to be assisted under the less generous Aid to Families with Dependent Children program available to birth parents. The Youakim decision ruled against the defendants. The Supreme Court found no intention on Congress’s part to deny federal foster care benefits to blood relatives for reasons of kinship alone. The ruling paved the way for the federal funding of a hybrid program— kinship foster care.

3 Testa, M. F. & White, K. R. (2014). Insuring the integrity and validity of social work interventions: The case of the subsidized guardianship waiver experiments. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work 11(1-2), 157-172.

4 Litwak, E. & Szelenyi, I. (1969). Primary group structures and their functions: Kin, neighbors, and friends. American Sociological Review, 23(1), 465481.

5 Pew Research Center. (March 2022). Financial issues top the list of reasons U.S. adults live in multigenerational homes. Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project.

6 Shils, supra note 1, at 122.

7 Pew Research Center, supra note 5, at 3.

8 Titmus, R.M. (1971). The gift relationship: From human blood to social policy. New York: Vintage Books.

After finishing my internship, I went on to complete a two-year stint as a state budget examiner. I then returned to complete my graduate studies. My research interests now focused on child welfare and kinship care, partly for personal reasons. My father had lost his mother to the 1926 pandemic when he was 11 years old. His father was already struggling after being “black-balled” from local manufacturing jobs because of his role as a spokesperson for the New England Workers Association. Because of financial hardships, my grandfather placed his son informally with relatives. At age 15, my dad

Questioning the No-More-Kin Thesis

Litwak noted that until the late 1940s, many sociologists had embraced the point of view that there was little need to study the extended family because it along with other primary groups were doomed.4 Taking slight liberties and substituting terms used in this essay, Litwak identified the following two theoretical foundations of conventional thinking at the time: First, bureaucratic formality and civil attachment were more effective than informal exchange and primordial attachment in achieving the valued outcomes of a modern society. Second, the continued adaptive upgrading of economic productive capacity assumed enabling conditions that were antithetical to primordial group solidarity, which inhibited differential geographical and occupational mobility.

took matters into his own hands. He secured himself a permanent place with his uncle and aunt on his mother’s side. By today’s standards, my paternal grandfather would have been indicated for abandonment and neglect. Fortunately, my father found lasting permanence with members of his extended family. The major difference from nowadays is that there was no court involvement, no termination of parental rights, and no expectation that my great-aunt and uncle needed to adopt formally in order for this home to remain “truly permanent.”

Knowledge of my father’s travails and my own personal experience growing up only doors away from my paternal great-aunts gave me a different outlook on the modern extended family than what much of the sociological literature had been predicting. The prevailing narrative about the extended family being an antiquated institution in decline took a turn in the 1970s. New empirical evidence became available that challenged conventional wisdom. One of the pioneers in this reorientation was the sociologist, Eugene Litwak.

Empirical evidence gathered over the past decades challenges the validity of the thesis that the extended family system is in decline. In spite of dire forecasts, extended families have retained much of their symbolic coherence. Moreover, the share of multigenerational homes in the U.S. has more than doubled, from 7% in 1971 to 18% in 2021.5 Building on this evidence base, my research efforts moved in two complementary directions. First, I explored the symbolic aspects of kinship care, which Shils characterized as attachments that family members share collectively as possessors of certain “significant relational” qualities.6 Second, I sought to identify the socio-structural correlates of the increasing prevalence of multigenerational households. These are households that contain two or more adult generations or a “skipped generation,” which consists of grandparents and their grandchildren younger than age 25.7 My research focused on this latter group of multigenerational households.

The Gift of Kinship Care

My scholarly endeavors to isolate empirically the relational qualities that make kinship care distinctive began with an investigation of its similarities and dissimilarities with other forms of altruism that Richard Titmus grouped under the heading of “gift relationships.”8 Even though he focused on voluntary blood donations, he recognized that foster care was another area of social policy in which gift transactions took place. However, he did not regard kinship foster care as belonging to this same category. Quoting from

“... my bond with Robert and his mother derived from our shared commitment to a legal permanency option...”

Wilensky and Liebeaux, Titmus noted: “Modern social welfare has really to be thought of as help given to the stranger not to the person who by reason of personal bond commands it without asking.”9

I sympathize with Titmus’s inclination to separate kinship from stranger foster care. The distinction better aligned with the prevailing theory at the time that civil attachments were superior in unifying modern societies than the particularistic bonds of primary groups. By the time Kristen Slack and I published our paper, “The Gift of Kinship Foster Care,”10 the narrative that civil allegiances would entirely displace primordial attachments had lost much of its theoretical credibility. As I later wrote:

Qualities of Relational Permanence

It was in between the two publications cited above that I reacquainted myself with the work of Victor Pike and his colleagues on the Freeing Children for Permanent Placement Demonstration in Oregon.12 Its conceptual framework aligned neatly with the two-way flow of influence between older primordial and newer bureaucratic structures, which I thought needed reinforcement in order to conserve the bonding social capital essential to relational health and provide the bridging social capital facilitative of social and occupational mobility. The four relational qualities that Pike and his associates identified were: intent, continuity, belongingness, and respect.13

As explained in my 2005 law review article, “The Quality of Permanence,”14 the Oregon demonstration emphasized that a permanent home is not one that is certain to last forever, but one that is intended to last indefinitely. Continuity refers to the persistence of a relationship over time and with differential geographical mobility. The sense of belonging to a permanent family is rooted in cultural norms and has definitive legal status. Finally, membership in a permanent family conveys dignity and respect for both the child and the permanent family. One conspicuous deficiency of the Oregon model was its disregard for the dignity of birth parents in cases of involuntary termination of parental rights (TPR). The demonstration promoted TPR and adoption as the most appropriate options for securing definitive legal status for the successor parents when reunification efforts stopped. Even though the permanency framework that Congress subsequently codified in the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 recognized legal guardianship as a permanency goal, the unavailability of guardianship assistance payments similar to the assistance payments available to adoptive parents made the guardianship option, which did not require TPR, unaffordable for most kinship foster parents.15 Congress rectified the inequity in 2008 when it added GAP to the IV-E entitlement.16 It was at the reception celebrating the

9 Wileensky, H. & Lebeaux, C. (1958). Industrial society and social welfare. New York: Russell Sage, p. 141.

10 Testa, M. & Shook, K.L. (2002). The gift of kinship foster care. Children and Youth Services Review, 24(1/2), 79-108.

11 Testa, M.F. & Poertner, J. (2010). Fostering accountability: Using evidence to guide and improve child welfare policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 47-48.

12 Emlen, A., Lehti, J., Downs, G., McKay, A., & Downs, S. (1978). Overcoming barriers to planning for children in foster care (DHEW No. (OHDS) 78-30138).

U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Administration for Children, Youth, and Families, Children’s Bureau, National Center for Child Advocacy.

13 Id, at 10-11.

14 Testa, M. (2005). The quality of permanence—lasting or binding? Virginia Journal of Social Policy and Law, 12(3), 499534.

15 P. L. 96-272, § 475(1)(E).

16 P. L. 110-351, § 471(a)(28).

No longer can child welfare policymakers and practitioners simply take it for granted that the unidirectional displacement of social welfare functions by centralized bureaucratic institutions is structurally inevitable, financially sustainable, or even socially desirable…. The emerging pattern in public child welfare is one in which modern bureaucratic institutions must now learn to coexist with older primordial structures by creating reciprocal avenues of influence so that the macrofunctions of ensuring child safety, family permanence and adolescent well-being can become better coordinated with the microprocesses of parental authority, kin altruism, and community solidarity that make possible the accomplishment of these broader collective aims.11

17 Perry, B., Pollard, R., Toi, B., Baker, W. & Viglante, D. (1995). Childhood trauma, the neurobiology of adaptation, and “use-dependent” development of the brain. Infant Mental Health, 16(4), 271291.

18 Whether a fifth quality of a legally binding commitment needs to be added is a topic I address elsewhere. See Testa, M. (2022) Disrupting the foster care to termination of parental rights pipeline: Making a case for kinship guardianship as the next best alternative for children who can’t be reunified with their parents. Family Integrity & Justice Quarterly, 1(1), 74-82.

19 The Pew Research Center, supra note 5, at 8.

20 For a fuller discussion of the benefits of and reasons for the underutilization of subsidized guardianship, see Testa, M. (2022). Disrupting the foster care to termination of parental rights pipeline: Making a case for kinship guardianship as the next best alternative for children who can’t be reunified with their parents. Family Integrity & Justice Quarterly, 1(1), 74-82.

signing of the law that Robert, his mother, and I rejoiced over a new opportunity now available to thousands of families to receive the same type of assistance afforded Robert, his sisters, mother, and aunt to remain together as a family without requiring the legal severance of their existing family ties.

What the Future May Hold

Brain science informs us that the availability of a responsive caregiver to provide support and nurturance to a traumatized child, particularly a child traumatized by separation from primary caregivers, can diminish dramatically the alarm response or the dissociative response in the young child.17 Kinship care provides a reservoir of social capital that can be drawn upon immediately to meet a child’s need for belongingness, permanence, and love. Placement with strangers may eventually serve the same function, but it typically takes months, even years, for bridging social capital to congeal into the bonding social capital that is essential for relational health. Social capital is immediately accessible in most existing relationships in which the child is already familiar with the kinship caregiver, and is readily convertible into the permanency qualities of intent, belongingness, continuity, and respect without terminating parental rights.18

Technological innovation and economic insecurity have contributed to the permanence of extended family life in modern society. Innovative means of communications make it easier for families to stay in touch and maintain symbolic coherence in the absence of physical contact. Facetime and Zoom facilitate regular visual contact, and perhaps one day the Metaverse will make virtual living together possible. Precarious economic circumstances have made the isolated nuclear family an unsupportable ideal for many segments of the middle and working classes. Many nuclear families must turn to extended family members for help. Sometimes help arrives in the form of the exchange of financial gifts. Other times, the physical intercession of family members becomes necessary with and often without government assistance. Among the 18% of adults living in multigenerational households in 2020, one-third say family caregiving was the major reason for their residing with adult family members.19

No matter what the future may hold by way of technological innovations in communications or policy innovations in governmental programs,

extended kinship is an important social capital asset that child welfare policymakers and practitioners must be intentional about conserving. Subsidized guardianship is an underutilized option that protects those assets.20 It preserves multiple kinship attachments, which can play a crucial healing role in children’s recovery from trauma and disruptions in relational permanence. Children should not be deprived of these assets except for urgent and compelling reasons.

WHAT THE FUTURE MAY HOLD

I first met Dr. Testa when I was 15 years old. It was several years after my aunt assumed legal guardianship of me and my sisters under the new guardianship program that Dr. Testa helped design. Before this, we were living in a foster home in a neighboring state. My mother, who struggled with mental health problems, worked tirelessly to bring us back to Illinois. When the guardianship program became available, my aunt agreed to step in and take over daily caregiving responsibilities without my mother’s losing her parental rights. I am thankful that our aunt did not need to adopt in order for us to leave foster care. Adoption would have meant losing our mom, which is something that we never wanted to happen. Guardianship gave my mother space to heal so she could remain a meaningful part of our lives. Looking back, Dr. Testa has been a mentor who has been looking after me for the last 18 years of my life. He called to congratulate me on my recent appearance on national TV highlighting the $25,000 in free gas giveaways that a local nonprofit and I organized on my last two birthdays. Giving back to the community pays forward the generosity shown to me, my sisters, mother, and aunt by a public program that enabled us to remain connected together as a family during difficult times.

Reverend Robert J. Johnson

How will I get back?”

The Enduring Pain of Permanent Family Separation

Erin Carrington Smith

J.D. Candidate, University of Baltimore School of Law

Shanta Trivedi Assistant Professor of Law and Faculty Director, Sayra & Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children & The Courts, University of Baltimore School of Law

Introduction

Unlike a human parent, the government cannot love and pay close attention to each of the many children in its care, nor can it swiftly bend its rules to meet the unique and evolving needs of each child. Instead, government cares for children procedurally — all too often treating them like interchangeable widgets on a massive conveyor belt, mechanically transporting them between one-size-fits-all foster care placements, processes and services…the government is a poor substitute for a parent.2

A large body of research along with the experiences of those who have survived the system, confirm the complex harms that children experience when removed from their families and placed in the foster system.3 The stress caused by family separation can inflict irreparable harm on a child, including literally changing the structure of their brain forever.4 Children experience grief, loss, anxiety, and confusion when they are taken from their homes.5 They miss their parents, their siblings, their communities, their homes, their pets, and their treasured belongings.6

1 Annabel Goodyer, Children’s accounts of moving to a foster home, 21 Child and Fam. Soc. Work 188, 193 (2014), https:/doi.org/10.1111/ cfs.12128 (Quoting Laura, a fourteen-year-old taken into the foster system who said of the experience, “I was scared ‘cos it’s a long way in the car and I thought ‘how will I get back?”).

2 Sherry Lachman, I Was in Foster Care. Family Separation Isn’t Just a Problem At the Border, TIME (Aug. 2, 2018), https:// time.com/5355313/ immigration-childrenfamily-separation/.

3 See generally, Shanta Trivedi, The Harm of Child Removal, 43 N.Y. U. REV. OF L. & SOC. CHANGE 523, 580 (Feb. 2019), https://scholarworks.law. ubalt.edu/all_fac/1085.

4 Statement of APA President Regarding the Traumatic Effects of Separating Immigrant Families (May 29, 2018), https://www. apa.org/news/press/ releases/2018/05/ separating-immigrantfamilies.

5 MONIQUE B. MITCHELL, THE NEGLECTED TRANSITION: BUILDING A RELATIONAL HOME FOR CHILDREN ENTERING FOSTER CARE (2016).

6 Id

QUALITATIVE SOC. WORK 15, 25 (2019), https://doi.org/ 10.1177/ 1473325019893412.

8 Adoption and Safe Families Act Pub. No. L. 105-89 [hereinafter “ASFA”], 111 Stat. 2118 (creating a strict timeline for initiating termination proceedings).

9 Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 766, 102 S. Ct. 1388, 1401, 71 L. Ed. 2d 599 (1982).

10 Ashley Albert et. al., Ending the Family Death Penalty and Building a World We Deserve, 11 COLUM. J. RACE & L. 861, 887 (2021).

11 Chris Gottlieb, The Short Life of the Civil Death Penalty: Reassessing Termination of Parental Rights in Light of its History, Purposes, and Current Efficacy (forthcoming), 16.

12 Id. at 68.

13 Id. at 60.

14 See Christopher Wildeman, Frank R. Edwards, Sara Wakefield, The Cumulative Prevalence of Termination of Parental Rights for U.S. Children 2000–2016, 25 CHILD MALTREATMENT

32 (2020), https:// doi.org/ 10.1177/ 1077559519848499.

The trauma is no less severe for the parents of these children who find their families suddenly dismembered by the state – mothers and fathers with no children to care for, knowing their children are out there, but unable to see them or protect them. This debilitating feeling of ambiguous loss is compounded when their grief goes unrecognized by those around them. Dubbed “unfit” parents, they blame themselves just as much as society does. Feelings of deep guilt and shame push many parents into increasingly severe substance use, mental health crises and homelessness.7

Amid this trauma, hanging over the head of these families is the possibility of permanent separation through court-ordered termination of the parents’ rights (TPR).8 Although the Supreme Court has stated, “[e]ven when a child’s natural home is imperfect, permanent removal from that home will not necessarily improve his welfare,” this process occurs in staggering numbers.9 This essay recounts the origins of the concept of legal termination of parental rights (“TPR”) in federal law, and explores the many reasons why permanent separation may not be what is best for children and their families, including the long-term social, cultural, psychological, and even physical effects the destruction of a family has on children and parents alike.

What is Termination of Parental Rights?

TPR is the permanent severing of the legal relationship between a child and their parent. As explained by the Repeal ASFA coalition, a group of mothers impacted by the family policing system,

“[TPR is] a violent legal mechanism that kill[s] families, and ASFA is the civil death penalty that enacts the execution.”10 To understand TPR, one must understand the origins of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (“ASFA”). In the 1970s, due to the increased availability of contraception and legalization of abortion, fewer babies were available for adoption.11 As a result, there were waitlists of up to five years to adopt.12

At the same time, the 1974 Child Abuse and Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) contributed to an increase in the foster care population by expanding mandated reporting laws. These laws require certain professionals, such as teachers, medical personnel and social workers, to report not only suspected child abuse but also vaguely defined “neglect.” States that failed to pass such laws would lose federal funding for their child welfare systems. Following CAPTA, annual reports to Child Protective Services (CPS) around the country increased from 60,000 to over a million. By the end of the 1990s, the number of reports reached three million.13

The resulting increase in children in foster care created a public outcry that too many children were suffering in temporary placements with no plan for stability. Thus, to at once solve this problem and meet the demand for children to adopt, ASFA focused on ensuring “permanency” for children through adoption. To “free” more children for adoption, more families faced the permanent rupture of their legal relationships through TPR.14

Although TPR was once reserved for children “completely lacking family ties or attachments”

7 Karen Broadhurst & Claire Mason, Child removal as the gateway to further adversity: Birth mother accounts of the immediate and enduring collateral consequences of child removal, 19

because their parents had abandoned them, after ASFA, TPR could now result from any allegation of abuse or neglect.15 Legal relationships have been severed for failure to obtain housing, relapsing during substance use treatment, failure to fully complete CPS’s service plan to address the alleged underlying concerns, and even failure to pay child support to CPS while a child is in the foster system.16

To accelerate this process, ASFA mandates that states file for TPR when a child is the foster system for fifteen out of the prior twenty-two months, although in practice, terminations have been completed in as few as five months based solely on allegations of neglect.17 While ASFA creates some exceptions to its timeline, it also permits speedier terminations when “aggravated circumstances” exist. Perhaps the cruelest of these circumstances is previously having your rights to a child terminated.18 Finally, ASFA provides financial incentives for states that outpace their projected adoption (and TPR) numbers yet provides no reward for keeping families together.19 Under this scheme, by 2016, 1 in 100 children lost their parents to TPR.20

Although the push towards TPR was ostensibly to further a goal of permanency, permanency is often illusive. Perhaps “ASFA’s most disturbing legacy” is the creation of the horrific status of “legal orphans” – children whose rights to their parents have been terminated but who will never be adopted.21 As one child put it, “I belonged to nobody.”22 Each year, approximately 30,000 children become legal orphans, nearly five times as many as those adopted.23

Finally, the permanency of adoption is not itself a foregone conclusion. One study surveyed “broken adoptions,” twenty-five percent of which failed due to physical abuse, punishment, and neglect in the adoptive homes.24 In many cases, the children of broken adoptions went back to their families. Because their rights had been terminated, parents in this situation had to engage in the strange legal posture of adopting or seeking guardianship of their own children.25

Like all areas of the family policing system, children of color are most likely to be affected. Black children are fifty percent more likely to lose their parents than white children and Native children are an astonishing 300 percent more likely.26 This is particularly concerning given the fact that Native Americans are statistically less likely to be investigated by CPS and receive heightened protections from the Indian Child Welfare Act.27

This current trend “is a continuation of many troubling histories in the United States where normative judgments [were made] around who were worthy families and who were not, who were worthy communities and who were not.”28

How Permanent Separation Harms Children

The parent-child relationship is unique and critical to child development. From birth, children rely on their parents for love, protection, and guidance. This bond forms the basis for how children organize their thinking and behavior, how they see themselves and the world around them, and where they gain their first sense of safety and security.29 Even when parents have made mistakes, the loss children experience when removed from their parents is immense.30 As one child explained:

15 Gottlieb, supra

16 Id.

18 ASFA, supra note 8, at 2117.

19 Id. at 2122.

20 Wildeman, supra note 14, at 39.

21 Cynthia Godsoe, Parsing Parenthood, 17 LEWIS & CLARK L. REV. 113, 115 (2013)

22 Id. at 134.

23 Id. at 133.

24 Dawn J. Post & Brian Zimmerman, The Revolving Doors of Family Court: Confronting Broken Adoptions, 40 CAP. U. L. REV. 437, 467 (2012).

25 Id. at 477-80; In re Cody B., 153 Cal.App.4th 1004 (2007).

26 Wildeman, supra note 14, at 39.

27 Id. at 40.

28 What is the Adoption and Safe Families Act?, REPEAL ASFA, https://www. repealasfa.org/what-is-asfa (last accessed Apr. 30, 2023).

29 Allison Eck, Psychological Damage Inflicted By ParentChild Separation is Deep, Long-Lasting, NOVA, https:// www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ article/psychologicaldamage-inflicted-by-parentchild-separation-is-deep-longlasting/.

30 Kerri M. Schneider and Vicky Phares, Coping with Parental Loss Because of Termination of Parental Rights 84 CHILD WELFARE 819, 838 (2005).

31 Jason B. Whiting, The View from Down Here: Foster Children’s Stories, 29 Child & Youth Care Forum 79, 79 (2000), https://doi.org/ 10.1023/ A:1009497110958.

32 Lori Brown, Former the foster system children give firsthand accounts to Texas Senate committee, Fox 4 (May 16, 2022), https:// www.fox4news.com/news/ former-foster-children-givefirsthand-accounts-to-texassenate-committee.

33 MONIQUE B. MITCHELL, THE NEGLECTED TRANSITION: BUILDING A RELATIONAL HOME FOR CHILDREN ENTERING THE FOSTER SYSTEM (2016).

34 Id. at 545.

35 Malinda L. Seymore, Adoption as a Substitute for Abortion?, 95 U. OF COL. L. REV. 1, 38 (forthcoming 2023), https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ ssrn.4408877.

36 Larissa MacFarquhar, Living in Adoption’s Emotional Aftermath, THE NEW YORKER (Apr. 3, 2023), https://www.

I did not really know what a foster home was, and no one took the time or cared enough to explain. I just knew that I did not want to go to one. The only thing that “the workers” made clear was that I would never live with my mother again. This was so horrifying I became sick and vomited. The thought of not seeing my mom again devastated me. I was empty inside, dazed and in a fog.31

newyorker.com/magazine /2023/04/10/living-inadoptions-emotional-aftermath.

37 Clementine J. Degener, Diana D. van Bergen, and Hans W. E. Grietens, The ethnic identity of transracially placed foster children with an ethnic minority background, 36 CHILD. & SOC’Y 201, 210 (2022), https://doi. org/10.1111/chso.12444.

38 Id. at 203.

39 Emily Kwiatkowski, Learning from the Lived Experience of Two Transracial Adoptees, NCFA (Sep. 12, 2022), https://adoptioncouncil.org/ article/learning-from-the-livedexperience-of-two-transracialadoptees/.

40 Id.

41 Dawn J. Post & Brian Zimmerman, The Revolving Doors of Family Court: Confronting Broken Adoptions, 40 CAP. U. L. REV. 437, 477–80 (2012).

42 Id.

43 MacFarquhar, supra note 36.

44 Ashley & Amy Mulzer, Adoption Cannot Be Reformed, 12 COL. J. OF RACE AND L. 558, 587 (2022), https://journals.library. columbia.edu/index.php/cjrl/ article/view/9947/5019.

45 J.M., My Burdens as an Adoptee, YOUTH COMMC’N, https:// youthcomm.org/story/myburdens-as-an-adoptee/ (last visited Mar. 29, 2023).

46 MacFarquhar, supra note 36.

47 Monique Mitchell, “No One Acknowledged My Loss and Hurt”: Non-death Loss, Grief, and Trauma in the Foster System, 35 CHILD ADOLESC. SOC. WORK J. 1, 2 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1007/ s10560-017-0502-8.

48 Karen Haynesworth, A Second Chance: My Mom’s Addiction Hurt Me, But We’ve Found A Way To Be Close, THE IMPRINT (Jan. 5, 2019), https://imprintnews.org/childwelfare-2/29167/29167.

49 Kathleen S. Kenny, Clare Barrington, & Sherri L. Green, ‘‘I felt for a long time like everything beautiful in me had been taken out’’: Women’s suffering, remembering, and survival following the loss of child custody, 26 INT’L J. OF DRUG POL’Y 1158, 1163 (2014), https://doi.org/10.1016/j. drugpo.2015.05.024.

50 Id.

51 Id.

52 Id.

53 Cari Romm, The Psychological Effects of Being Separated From Your Child, THE CUT (Jun. 7. 2018), https://www. thecut.com/2018/06/thepsychological-effects-of-beingseparated-from-your-child.html.

substance use disorder, the reason she was removed from her mother in the first place.

Once placed in the foster system, children face additional harms. They may not understand how they fit into their foster families.33 Physical and mental health conditions may be aggravated or left untreated. Some children experience abuse and neglect in the foster system, worse than the conditions that led to their removal. Others are shuffled from home to home, exacerbating trauma and worsening feelings of unworthiness and shame associated with placement in the foster system.34

Achieving “permanency” through adoption does not automatically heal these wounds. Many children continue to feel lost and confused. As philosopher and adoptee Kimberly Leighton put it, adoption “left me without an identity, left me missing something, or in a position in which something was hidden from me.”35 Another lamented, “in order to be adopted you first have to lose your entire family.”36

For children who are placed with foster or adoptive parents of a different ethnicity, the confusion and disorientation are amplified in distinct ways. Often, these children are disconnected from their heritage and confronted daily with the differences in physical appearance between themselves and their foster providers.37 As a result, they experienced “negative societal messages on race and ethnicity,” some of which may come directly or indirectly from their foster providers or adoptive parents. These children may have limited ability to explore their ethnic identity and prepare to survive in a society where they may face racial and/or ethnic discrimination.38 One child explained that she entered the “rejecting phase of [her] life” at age seven, as she began to feel a sense of “internal hatred for being Asian and for looking this way when . . . [she] was surrounded by . . . [her] white family.”39 Another child of Chamorro Indian and Pacific Islander heritage who was adopted by a white family grew up feeling “too brown to be white and too white to be brown.”40

Experiences with adoptive families also vary widely. In some experiences, adoptive parents repeatedly referred to biological families as “bad” or “evil” and referred to the child as having “bad genes.”41 Certainly, being exposed to such rhetoric would have a negative impact as children navigate their own feelings towards their biological parents and develop their own sense of selves.42 But even when adoptive parents are supportive and kind, the void may not be filled. One woman explained how difficult it was to explain to people in her life that,

although “she loved her adoptive parents, and was grateful to them for supporting her wholeheartedly in her search for her birth parents, and even in her questioning of transracial adoption . . . she also wished she wasn’t adopted.”43

Despite these complex feelings, adopted children are often expected to feel grateful, based on a common “assumption that adoptees” lives are necessarily better because they were adopted, not just different – and certainly not worse.”44 One adopted child explained that her “family’s openness about my adoption came with their expectation that I should feel grateful all the time. I was not allowed to feel unhappy or upset.”45 This is so common that one woman wrote a book about her experience and the experience of other adoptees entitled “You Should Be Grateful.”46

But no matter the circumstances, legal termination of parental rights cannot sever the psychological bond between a parent and a child. Children’s longing for their parents, who remain “psychologically present and physically absent,” creates protracted feelings of ambiguous loss and trauma that are not easily overcome and leave a lasting scar.47 As one child mourned following TPR, “I just kept thinking about not seeing my mother, how much I missed her, and when I might see her again.”48

How Permanent Separation Harms Parents

This hope of one day reuniting is also often the only thing that keeps parents going after the trauma of having their child removed.49 One mother continued to wrap gifts and write cards for her son’s birthday each year in hopes that one day she could show him she never stopped caring for him.50 Another saved her daughter’s bedframe, converting it into an outdoor garden.51 She took photographs of it that she hoped to show her daughter someday.52

After termination, this hope is dashed as parents lose control over their ability to regain custody of their children and “symptoms of grief are compounded by symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, including nightmares, emotional numbness, and an inability to stop reliving the separation over and over.”53

The gravity of this trauma is rarely examined. Once children achieve “permanency” through adoption, their parents are quickly forgotten by society. For these parents, their new permanent state is one of

unimaginable loss. Because of the circumstances of child removal, and the social stigma that follows it, most of these parents remain alone and isolated in their grief with no post-termination resources to help them cope.

The death of a child is universally seen as one of the most horrific experiences a person can have. It leads not only to psychiatric effects but also an increased risk of heart disease, cancer, and an overall reduced life expectancy from the physical toll of chronic stress.54 This level of debilitating loss is also palpable among parents who lose their children to TPR, and many of the same psychological and physical effects exist, including increased rates of suicide and premature death.”55 One woman interviewed explained the intense and disorienting loss of her children in heartbreaking terms:

I went insane. I broke down, nearly died. I couldn’t stay in my house. I couldn’t be around their clothes . . . I found myself just wandering around looking for them . . . It’s as if the three of them died. One day they just died. That’s the grief that I went through. That’s the pain that I went through. But meanwhile they didn’t [die]. Somebody’s got them. Somebody’s keeping them from me . . .56

Another felt the removal of her child was worse than death because of the uncertainty. She explained, “It’s been worse than losing a son. Losing my son through SIDS was not as bad as this because I know where he is – he’s up in heaven with God where he belongs. I don’t know where my children are. I don’t know if the system’s doing them right or doing them wrong.”57

These descriptions evoke the ambiguous loss felt by parents who experience TPR. Like children’s experiences with this phenomenon, parents too feel the “traumatic, unending, confusing,” feeling of their children’s physical absence but continued

psychological presence.58 This likely prevents many parents from being unable to return home. One mother explained that she could not return to her apartment where all her child’s things remained, while another said, “I couldn’t even go back into my house after that, I’d have panic attacks. So, I made myself homeless . . .”59

Much of the disorientation experienced by these mothers stems from a jarring loss of their identity. Becoming a mother can significantly alter a woman’s sense of self and role in her family and community. Mothers reorder their lives and routines around caring for their children. A sudden loss of those children can leave mothers feeling untethered from their old reality. The fact that their children are still alive, but they cannot parent them, only enhances these feelings. One mother asked, “Am I still a parent? Sometimes I ask myself that . . . I feel like I’m a mum deep down but then when I go out, just generally, day-to-day in the streets, I don’t feel like a mum because I don’t have a child with me . . .”60

This level of grief, confusion, and despair is not relegated to mothers. Fathers – almost universally overlooked in this research – experience the same intense loss when their parental rights are terminated. Only one study has considered fathers in this situation, and the results are equally devastating. Fathers explained the loss as being “like having part of your own body taken out” or “like taking my heart, taking out part of my soul.”61 Another said,

If it happens by force or it’s imposed . . . it’s like they’ve torn something out of you... When an organ is removed, ... even years later, you can feel pain... where the organ used to be. . . It’s the same thing, the same feeling.62

Fathers “grieved the loss of their children’s dayto-day presence, of their own role as fathers, and of an anticipated future in which they raised their children.”63

In addition to the enormity of this grief, parents who lose their children to TPR often experience significant guilt and shame. They not only blame themselves, but also face blame from those around them. In a society that idealizes motherhood, being publicly named as an “unfit” mother made some

55 Elizabeth Wall-Wieler, Losing children to foster care endangers mothers’ lives, THE CONVERSATION (Mar. 29, 2018 2:28 PM), https://theconversation. com/losing-children-tofoster-care-endangersmothers-lives-93618.

56 Kendra L. Nixon, H.L. Radtke, and Leslie M. Tutty, ‘‘Every Day It Takes a Piece of You Away’’: Experiences of Grief and Loss Among Abused Mothers Involved With Child Protective Services, 7 J. OF PUB. CHILD WELFARE 172, 180-81 (2013), https://doi.org/ 0.1080/15548732.2012 .715268.

57 Id. at 181.

58 Emma Geddes, “Some days it’s like she has died.” A qualitative exploration of first mothers’ utilisation of artefacts associated with now-adopted children in coping with grief and loss, 21 QUALITATIVE SOC. WORK 811, 814815 (2022), https://doi. org/10.1177/ 14733250211039008.

59 Kenny, supra note 49 at 1162; Broadhurst and Mason, supra note 7 at 25.

60 Id. at 52.

61 Nehami Baum and Irit Negbi, Children removed from home by court order: Fathers’ disenfranchised grief and reclamation of paternal functions, 35 CHILD AND YOUTH SERV. REV. 1679, 1681 (2013), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. childyouth.2013.07.003.

62 Id.

63 Id. at 1684.

64 Nixon, supra note 56, at 177.

65 Kenny, supra note 49 at 1162.

66 Baum & Negbi, supra note 61, at 1683.

54 Unnur A Valdimarsdo, et al., The mother’s risk of premature death after child loss across two centuries, ELIFE (Nov. 12, 2019), 1.

women feel like their place in society had been entirely discredited.64 One woman explained it, saying she felt “[i]llegitimate . . . Like that you’re not capable of anything . . . I lost hope in myself, faith in myself . . . I don’t even care about life.’’65

Fathers experienced similar shame, blaming themselves for the loss of their children and wishing they had been better fathers.66 One single father said, “I’m aware that I’m partly to blame for not being at home, but I’m also the main provider,” expressing a sense of both shame and hopelessness at his situation. Another father said, “[t]hey come and say to me, [y]ou’re not fit to be a father . . . I’m a lousy father . . . I don’t know how to be a father.”67

Beyond their internalized shame, parents are humiliated by those around them. One father’s own sister chastised, “[y]ou’re a disgrace to the family. Even being a drug addict would be better [than being] a father whose children are taken away.”68

This shame and shaming around the loss of children to TPR creates a scenario in which parents cannot adequately mourn the extreme loss they are experiencing or get the support they need from those around them because they are blamed for their loss. This situation is often described as disenfranchised grief, the experience of a loss “that is not openly acknowledged, sanctioned, or supported within wider society.”69

In the absence of this support, many parents find themselves in increasingly worsening situations as they try to cope on their own. The despair felt by many parents leads to increased substance use to try and numb the pain they were feeling.70 One woman described it like this:

Broadhurst & Mason, supra note 7, at 25.

When they take children away, they leave you feeling, like, empty, you’ve got no reason to wake up in the morning, you’ve got no reason to, say, live, in a sense. So going out drinking, doing drugs, having a laugh makes you forget what you’re going through, but you wake up every morning still the same, your life hasn’t changed.71

Conclusion

In the aftermath of TPR, the family policing system can move on, having completed ASFA’s destructive cycle, despite the carnage left in its wake. Addressing the long-term and complex harm it caused to those families is not its concern. For this reason, to reduce these harms, we must focus on both the front and back ends by first reducing the number of children entering the system, and second, stopping the timeline that leads families to termination too quickly.

To ensure that fewer families are separated, we must abolish mandated reporting and repeal CAPTA, the law that expanded its reach. Instead of protecting children, mandated reporting leads to the opposite result: children, parents and those required to report all confirm that mandated reporting prevents families from gaining access the help, resources, and support they need. As one impacted youth wrote, families need support, not family policing:

Because many people facing TPR are already experiencing multiple crises like substance use problems, homelessness, and mental health concerns, the loss of their children can lead their lives to spiral out of control.72 Sometimes

Parents explain how the fear of mandated reporting prevents them from seeking help. For example, Rise Peer Advocate and impacted parent, Shakira Paige recalls how she was forced to feed her family nothing but peanut butter for days, rather than asking for help because she was terrified of a family policing case.74 Mandated reporters themselves have concerns that reporting is biased against marginalized populations and feel that they cannot do their jobs supporting families because they are restrained by their reporting obligations.75 Further, there is no evidence that mandated reporting actually keeps children safer.76

Once families are in the system, ASFA’s 15/22-month timeline - the “ticking time bomb”77 - means that many loving families are needlessly destroyed. Proposed legislation, the 21st Century Children and Families Act, would make important changes to ASFA, making termination discretionary, lengthening the timeline, and not requiring termination at all when a parent is incarcerated, in immigration detention, or children are with kin.78 But a large movement led by impacted parents and children backed by advocates, activists and scholars, believe that these measures offer only provisional relief. Ultimately, they call for ASFA’s complete repeal because of the irreparable destruction that ASFA has caused.79 The Repeal ASFA coalition describes the future as “a world where families are supported and given the resources they need to thrive, and the family death penalty, or termination of parental rights, no longer exists.”80 Because of the harm of permanent family separation to children, parents, and communities, this is the world we should all be working towards.

73 Mariah, Take a Deeper Look, Children’s Rights (Feb. 9, 2023), https:// www.childrensrights.org/ news-voices/take-adeeper-look.

74 Jeanette Vega and Bianca Shaw, Expand Support for Families, But Not Inside the Child Welfare System, RISE, (Jun. 7, 2021), https:// www.risemagazine. org/2021/06/expandsupport-for-families-butnot-acs/.

75 Lisa A. Goodman, Jennifer E. Fauci, Helen P. Hailes, and Laura Gonzalez, Power with and Power Over: How Domestic Violence Advocates Manage their Roles as Mandated Reporters, 35 J. OF FAM. VIOLENCE 225, 229 (2020).

76 Mical Raz, More Mandatory Reporting Won’t Keep Children Safer, WASH. POST (May 1, 2018), https://www. washingtonpost.com/ news/made-by-history/ wp/208/05/01/moremandatory-reportingwont-keep-children-safefrom-predators/.

77 Iesha Hammons, Fighting for Myself Taught Me How to Fight for Others, Children’s Rights (Jan. 30, 2023), https:// www.childrensrights.org/ news-voices/fighting-formyself-taught-me-how-tofight-for-others.

78 21st Century Children and Families Act, H.R. 5856, 117th Cong. §2 (2021).

79 Shanta Trivedi, The Adoption and Safe Families Act is Not Worth Saving: The Case for Repeal, FAMILY COURT REV. (2023), https://doi. org/10.1111/fcre.12711.

80 Real ASFA, https:// www.repealasfa.org/.

Re-storying Us

A Consciousness of Connection Is Our Only Hope

Elizabeth Wendell Co-Founder, Pale Blue

Kevin Campbell Co-Founder, Pale Blue

We are a contradictory species, shaped by our history as homo sapiens, with unique skills that have evolved an amazing superpower. As Dr. Bruce Perry explains, “We have evolved a brain that can connect to other brains and change our collective futures.”1 We have demonstrated through this a remarkable ability to invent and reinvent societies and produce works of art, science, technology, and cultures that have enriched and transformed our lives and the planet. Yet, we have also demonstrated that we are destructive, warlike, violent, oppressive, patriarchal, misogynistic, and exploitative in ways that threaten our collective survival and routinely negatively alter the futures of other humans and the environment.

Dr. Perry’s insight as a neuroscientist about our unique brain and its ability to connect with others to change our future evokes a powerful and hopeful view of human possibility. However, he also recognizes that we have evolved a deeply embedded adaptation that has become a virulent maladaptation threatening the survival of humankind. We persistently favor connecting our brains to other brains within homogeneous groups who actively use this ability to disadvantage others. The tools humans use to construct our social, political, and economic realities are stories about ourselves in relationship to others. The most fundamental and powerful narratives are about safety: safe, unsafe, dangerous, and even ‘beyond redemption’.

Those empowered to create stories about people shape the quality of justice in a nation for better or worse. One institution in America designated to tell stories about people’s lives with well-known transgenerational consequences is the child welfare system.

1 Perry, B. D., & Szalavitz, M. (2010). Born for love: Why empathy is essential-and endangered. William Morrow.

The Story of Zeros and Ones

Binary thinking provides simplistic explanations or concepts, dividing them into two mutually exclusive categories, such as true or false, good or bad, and safe or unsafe. Binary thinking can help people make quick decisions and recognize a scenario’s advantages and disadvantages. However, a binary view lends itself to extensive limitations, including bureaucracy-supported processes with swift, surface-level, power-based decisions that have life-altering consequences. Unfortunately, Western culture and specific bureaucracies such as the U.S. child welfare system have embraced a binary, over-simplified power structure shaped by the stories we tell about the people most affected by our systems. For example, people living without shelter are named “Homeless,” ignoring the complex social, economic, and health conditions that result in deprivation and social alienation. Parents involved with CPS are called “Child Abusers” despite as many as 85% of children in foster care for poverty and health-related neglect. Drug and alcohol use by poor and minority parents

is policed by Child Welfare and the Juvenile Court as a parenting test, fueling public outrage and forcible family separation.

The U.S. child welfare system claims responsibility for children’s safety, permanency, and well-being, assuming it is the better parent. As a result, child welfare flattens children’s stories as safe or unsafe and parents as risky, dangerous, or at the very least, suspect. As a nation, we sustain an institution built to respond and police flat, single stories about the usual suspects rather than responding to the complexity of economic insecurity, institutional racism, and other politically determined health and social conditions.

Child welfare is a multidimensional and dynamic phenomenon reduced to simple dichotomies, such as good or bad, stable or unstable, safe or unsafe, and family preservation or termination of parental rights.2 Binary thinking leads to oversimplification, generalization, stereotyping, and bias in decisionmaking and policymaking. It can also prevent critical thinking, creativity, and empathy for diverse perspectives and experiences.

² Sullivan, D. J. (2009). The child protection paradox: Principles and practices of public health. SAGE Publications.

Binary thinking favors the privileged and powerful, obscuring the harm done to disadvantaged persons as necessary or unavoidable. This system of oppression has rapidly become more critically harmful as young people, parents, and relatives have used new technologies to demand their storytelling rights and amplify the evidence of their experience.

Today we face new realities, stories from parents, youth, advocates, and science that objectively challenge the bias and injustice from which we built and sustain our legacy welfare systems. For example, the 2018 Zero Tolerance Policy of the Trump Administration, forcibly separating children from their parents at the border, was roundly repudiated as harmful to children and parents with the likelihood for many of a lifetime of health and mental health consequences.3 Yet, the bodies and brains of children and parents domestically are no different, no less vulnerable to forcible and prolonged family separation and its effects on children and their parents.4 Dr. Dorothy Roberts writes, “The facade of benevolence makes most Americans complacent about a colossal government apparatus that spends billions of dollars annually on surveilling families, breaking them apart, and thrusting children into a foster care system known to cause devastating harms.”5

67

The devastating harms of family separation on children’s development are profound.8 When children experience separation from their families, they are more likely to suffer from toxic stress, which disrupts the development of sturdy brain architecture and increases the risk of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral problems.9 One of the primary mechanisms through which toxic stress exerts its effects is by dysregulating the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, the primary stress response system in the body.10 Chronic activation of the HPA axis can lead to increased levels of cortisol. This stress hormone and others are linked to various adverse health outcomes, including immunosuppression, inflammation, and metabolic dysregulation.11 Moreover, in the developing brain, excessive cortisol exposure can impair the growth and connectivity of neurons, leading to deficits in learning, memory, and executive function.12 Quite literally, the processes of a body’s supersystem are subjected to such distress that the biology is altered, accelerating the rate of cellular ageing and exponentially increasing the probability of premature chronic disease.

3 USCRI, “How the Zero-Tolerance Family Separation Policy Harmed Children and Families,” December 15, 2021, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, https://refugees.org/ policy-brief-how-thezero-tolerance-familyseperation-policy-harmedchildren-and-families/.

4 Roberts, D. (2022, April). Abolish Child Protective Services: Torn Apart. Mother Jones. Retrieved from https:// www.motherjones.com/ crime-justice /2022/04/ abolish-child-protectiveservices-torn-apartdorothy-roberts-bookexcerpt/

5 Ibid

6 See also National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. (2023, May 7). NCCPR Child Welfare Blog. Retrieved May 7, 2023, from http:// www.nccprblog.org

54

Children with a family separation history are more likely to suffer from poor physical health, including having a higher prevalence of chronic illness, malnutrition, and poor growth and development. Also, the toxic stress from separation can heighten the risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and other metabolic disorders later in life.13 Per longitudinal research from Nuffield, 85% of adults who spent time in institutional or foster care report having chronic, incurable conditions by age 49.14 Thus, family separation and placement into foster or residential care are life-changing in one of the most harmful ways possible: ruining health.

The consequences for parents and families are also severe. Families are vital social units that

7 Youngmin Yi, Frank Edwards, et al., “State-level variation in the cumulative prevalence of child welfare system contact, 2015-2019,” Children and Youth Services Review 147 (2023).

8 National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, “Young Children Develop in an Environment of Relationships,” Working Paper No. 1 (2004), http://www. developingchild.net.

9 Shonkoff, J. P., & Garner, A. S. (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), e232-e246. doi:10.1542/ peds.2011-2663

10 Gunnar, M. R., & Quevedo, K. (2007). The neurobiology of stress and development. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 145-173. doi:10.1146/ annurev.psych.58. 110405.085605

11 McEwen, B. S. (2007). Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: central role of the brain. Physiological Reviews, 87(3), 873904. doi:10.1152/ physrev.00041.2006

47 – The percentage of Native American children in Minnesota who will be forced into foster care at some point during their childhoods.

54 – The percentage of white children in Indiana who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods.

– The percentage of Hispanic children in Indiana who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods.

64 – The percentage of Native American children in Minnesota who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods.

– The percentage of Black children in Arizona who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods.

73 – The percentage of Native Alaska children who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods.

73 – The percentage of Black children in Kentucky who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods.

74 – The percentage of Black children in Montana who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods.

79 – The percentage of Black children in Indiana who will be subjected to the trauma of a child abuse investigation at some point during their childhoods.6,7

12 Lupien, S. J., McEwen, B. S., Gunnar, M. R., & Heim, C. (2009). Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behaviour and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 434-445. doi:10.1038/ nrn2639

13 Shonkoff, J. P., & Garner, A. S. (2012). The lifelong effects of early childhood adversity and toxic stress. Pediatrics, 129(1), e232-e246. doi: 10.1542/ peds.2011-2663

14 Sacker, A. & Murray, E. (2021). The Long-Term Effects of Family and Childhood Factors on Adult Health, Well-Being and Socioeconomic Outcomes. Presented at the Nuffield Foundation seminar, June 2021. Retrieved from https:// www.nuffieldfoundation. org/wp-content/uploads/ 2021/06/Presentationfrom-Amanda-Sacker-andEmily-Murray.pdf

15 Levine, R. A., Sato, S., Hashimoto, T., & Verma, J. (2016). Love, honor, and solidarity: The global cultural appeal of social bonds. Journal of CrossCultural Psychology, 47(9), 1199-1224. doi: 10.1177/ 0022022116654778

16 Ibid

17 Geronimus, A. T. (2023). Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society. Little, Brown Spark.

18 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (2020). ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Report, Fiscal Year 2020. Retrieved from https:// www.ice.gov/doclib/ about/offices/ero/ pdf/ice-ero-fy2020enforcement-removaloperations-report.pdf

19 Masten, A. S. (2014). Global perspectives on resilience in children and youth. Child development, 85(1), 6-20. doi: 10.1111/ cdev.12205

20 Gilligan, J. (2016). Beyond safety: Embracing a more expansive view of well-being. Child Welfare, 95(1), 9-28. doi: 10.1080/ 03004430.2016.1143038

21 Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard University Press.

provide support to their members.15 Extended networks are critical in traditional societies, helping child-rearing and group survival.16 However, many families risk being separated due to factors beyond their control, such as political violence, poverty, discrimination, or natural disasters.17 For example, per a 2020 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) report, deportations affecting undocumented immigrant family members and unaccompanied immigrant minors increased by over 100% between 2018 and 2020 in the United States, leaving many families vulnerable to the trauma of forced separation.

The Safety Dichotomy

The current binary view of safety lives within “doing-to” bureaucracies: large groups of influential individuals who are definers and decision-makers for other large groups. The binary of safe or unsafe, often in an affluent, white cultural context, limits understanding of a richer view of safety, including health, relational, cultural, and emotional safety. It has been said family separation in the name of safety trades one problem for another. Science demonstrates that adversities in childhood are cumulative and compositional. In other words, subjecting children who experience poverty-related neglect to forcible family separation exponentially increases the burdens of distress, causing deeper disruption within the developing body and brain with serious lifetime health consequences and harm to children’s memory and ability to learn. An argument for an expanded definition and positioning of safety does not ignore its original requirement. Instead, it suggests the world will become more biologically consistent, culturally connected, and relationally based. How is power operating in our discourse about child safety, whose power is operating, and how are communities responding to that power?

A new safety paradigm is required, emphasizing a definition of safety that includes and expands beyond the traditional focus on physical protection to encompass wellbeing’s emotional, social, and psychological dimensions.20

Similarly, many refugees experience family separation due to war or persecution in their home countries and face challenges with resettlement and reunification in their host countries.18 Thus, national and global attunement to this reality is essential. Awareness also offers a stark display of the binary focus the dominant culture often chooses: Black and brown families in the United States face this reality daily.

Family separation disrupts the social fabric and undermines groups’ collective resilience.19 Families give their members a sense of belonging, identity, and security. Thus, when separated, child and adult members can lose or have reduced access to their social capital and coping resources. Separation and disconnection also affect families’ ability to cope with poverty, discrimination, violence, and illness.

Moreover, the new paradigm must be situated within families and catalyzed and supported by systems rather than the inverse. By adopting a more holistic and comprehensive understanding of safety, we can recognize the vital importance of family connections in human development, resilience, and health.

The safety paradigm encourages us to consider immediate threats to children’s well-being, such as abuse, neglect, or exploitation, and the broader social, economic, and cultural factors contributing to family separation and disconnection.21 Addressing these underlying social and political determinants of family separation can help create a more supportive and nurturing environment for all families, promoting greater resilience and well-being at the individual, community, and tribal levels.

“Without the right to health, the other rights matter very little.”

JUDGE MICHAEL NASH Director of the Office of Child Safety, Los Angeles County

The Permanency Paradox

The permanency paradox in child welfare refers to the dilemma that occurs when a system allegedly tries to balance the competing goals of protecting children from abuse and neglect and preserving their family ties and cultural identity. The binary, which forces a choice between reunification or termination of parental rights based on the safety dichotomy, harms in several ways. First, it can create a sense of urgency and pressure that may not be conducive to effective decision-making or service delivery. Second, it can overlook the complexity and diversity of family situations and ignore the potential benefits of alternative permanency options, such as reunification, kinship care, and guardianship. Third, it disrupts the biological connection and health building that results from access to parents, family, community, culture, and language.

To address the permanency paradox in child welfare, some researchers and practitioners have advocated for a more flexible and holistic approach that considers each child’s and family’s best interests and respects their rights and preferences.22 This approach involves a collaborative and participatory process that engages all the stakeholders, including children, parents, relatives, foster carers, social workers, judges, and advocates. It also involves a continuum of permanency options that accommodate different needs and circumstances and allows for ongoing contact and support between children, parents, and their families of origin.23 The definition of permanency moves away from a legal definition on a piece of paper and into a family and community-created response to economic, social, and systemic challenges. A culturally responsive, trauma-transformed practice recognizing the underpinnings of historical oppression and generational trauma would create a power shift that welcomes complexity and repositions safety or permanency in the context of families rather than systems.

Challenging the current child welfare system to address the permanency paradox and promote the well-being of children and families is essential.24

The Scarcity Dichotomy

Examining family separation is beginning to uncover the realities of individualistic, dominant consumer culture and its economic consequences. According to a report by United Family Advocates, in 2017, “27,871 children in the United States were placed in foster care due to inadequate housing.”25 Quickly, an economic and scarcity conversation is uncovered. Scarcity posits a limited number of resources geared toward supporting the dominant culture rather than a responsibility for sharing resources. This thinking returns the discussion to the hyper-individualized rather than the relational and communal. The scarcity paradigm is an allencompassing concept within Western societies that places a premium on limited resources, driven by the necessity for competition and effective distribution.26 The scarcity paradigm undeniably affects how we view relationships and their importance, leading us to prioritize efficiency, productivity, and obedience over loving caregiving.

One of the primary consequences of the scarcity dichotomy is the tension between slow relationships and fast processes. Bureaucratic systems often emphasize efficiency, productivity, and compliance, which can directly conflict with the slower, more organic process of building and maintaining relationships.27 This tension can result in prioritizing short-term outcomes and procedural requirements over the long-term wellbeing, stability and health of families, further exacerbating the issue of family separation.

An anthropological viewpoint can provide valuable insights into how the lack of resources affects family dynamics and overall well-being. Throughout our collective human journey, extended family support systems have been essential to the fortitude of societies and their constituents. In providing social, economic, and emotional aid to its members28, these networks have instilled a sense of security that helps individuals and whole communities thrive. Subscribing to the idea of scarcity, however, may risk undermining these hugely beneficial affiliations, leading to greater vulnerability and detachment among those with fractured familial ties.

Zeroes and Ones (Binary Thinking) Doesn’t Work

We must redraw our conceptualization of life as relationally nested, complex, and fundamentally symbiotic. Any ideas of help for others that fail

22 Connolly, M., & Doolan, M. (2007). The permanency paradox: A commentary on current practice in New Zealand. Social Policy Journal of New Zealand, 32(1), 101-112.

23 Festinger, T., & PrattDannals, J. (2018). The permanency paradox: A longitudinal study of outcomes for foster youth aging out of care. Children and Youth Services Review, 93(1), 1-9.

24 Ibid

25 United Family Advocates. (n.d.). Family Poverty is Not Neglect. Retrieved from https://www. unitedfamilyadvocates.org/ family-poverty-is-not-neglect

26 Ehrenreich, B. (2009). Bright-sided: How positive thinking is undermining America. Metropolitan Books.

27 Mink, G. (2006). Bureaucratic power in the US welfare system: A critical historical overview. Social Policy & Administration, 40(1), 53-71. doi: 10.1111/j.14679515.2006.00487.x

28 Levine, R. A., Levine, S., Schnell-Anzola, B., Rowe, M. L., Dexter, E., LeVine, P., . . . Miller, P. (2016). Child care and culture: Lessons from Africa. Cambridge University Press.

Who benefits most from sacrificing children’s original soil or birthright for so-called legal permanency in the name of safety?

29 “Ta-Nehisi Coates on Entrenched Racist Myths,” YouTube video, uploaded by Politics and Prose, May 12, 2017, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v= d2t4ergKek..

30 David Denborough, “Narrative Therapy: Charter of Story-telling Rights,” [Publication Date], Dulwich Centre, https:// dulwichcentre.com/au/ narrative-therapy-charter-ofstory-telling-rights-by-daviddenborough

31 Coates, T.-N. (2015). Between the World and Me. Spiegel & Grau.

to appreciate the extraordinary nature of human capability within a range of relationships exist more for their benefit than for others and is a form of symbiosis called parasitism.

As we strive to create a more humane and just child welfare system, we must rethink the assumptions and practices that have shaped it for hundreds of years. We must move beyond the binary logic of safety versus risk, removal versus reunification, and punishment versus support. Instead, we must prioritize equity, economics, and environment as fundamental to child well-being, recasting prevention as a context of family support rather than a punitive or extractive response deployed at the last minute before children are harmed. We must appreciate parents’ and families’ complexity and diversity and empower them to invent solutions and make decisions, preserving dignity, autonomy, and self-determination. We must remember that slow, relational experiences are the source of our health, healing, and thriving rather than models of service imposed by an industry funding scheme.

To Re-story 29 Us Requires Restoring Story Telling Rights 30

Today’s oppressive, dysfunctional, and failing social and health systems have changed little in the 75 years since their beginning. The institutions we

constructed during the 3rd industrial revolution and their funding were built on stories about poor people, pregnant and parenting women outside of marriage, and Black, Native, and Hispanic Americans, not by them. We must confront the reality that these institutions were built on dehumanizing, dismembering, and demeaning stories about people. Since then, what we have called reform has primarily been new stories about the disadvantaged and the vulnerable, inventing new ways to hold power and influence over them.

To Re-story America, we must restore storytelling rights to the people who depend on institutions and systems rather than the industries that profit from them.31 A dangerous new chapter in child welfare occurred on February 9th, 2018— the passage of the Family First Prevention Act. Five years later, almost no prevention services of any real meaning have materialized, and the socalled group home reforms have had little to no positive impact, but one thing was accomplished. The authority and legitimacy for authoring stories referred to as evidence were entrusted solely to the industry and its adjacent research sub-culture through the popular idea that what Child Welfare needs for reform are evidenced-based models. The result is that the only good child welfare reform is the creation of intervention models done to and for children, youth, and parents by service providers and the government. Unfortunately, very soon

“If folks can’t imagine you as human, all the policy in the world is irrelevant.”

TA-NEHISI COATES

after the legislation was enacted, the industry adopted a new tradition of tokenizing parents, young people, and relatives by describing their testimony not as evidence but as lived experience.

Of course, everyone knows that evidence is objective, and experience is subjective; no one knew this better than those pushing for this change for their own political and economic benefit. Attaching the word evidence to proprietary model authors and academics, legitimized by federal and state law, was an intentional form of capture by the industry. Moreover, it resulted in a tremendous institutional advantage having the effect of silencing anything other than the ”experience” of harm reported by those on the receiving end of Child Welfare agencies and their service providers.

Lived experience is, in fact, a compelling form of evidence. In criminal and civil law practice, it is known as cumulative evidence. When many, and in the case of child welfare, tens of thousands of youths and parents, each year for decades report being harmed by similar patterns of conduct, it would be damming evidence in front of a jury, but so far has been of little interest to the industry and most academics.

What if social and health-related laws, policies, and institutions resulted from stories told by Black families, low-income families, Tribes, other marginalized communities, parents with disabilities, mothers, fathers, young people, and relatives? What institutions, if any, would they build? What would those institutions do, how would they work, what would they consider a good outcome? What role would service providers play in that system? What quality of justice would they demand?

The Kempe Center at the University of Colorado and Pale Blue have catalyzed a Together in Truth project supporting communities to come together and tell the truth about child welfare. In Washington, DC, a group of parents convened truth-telling. Their key finding, “every welfare program in the district hammered us. Child welfare just finished us off by taking our Black children and stealing our souls.” These are the brutal consequences of webs of institutions created and operated through stories of power told about people.

Our greatest gift is a brain that can learn to connect to other brains and change our collective futures. We must expand the circle of storytelling until everyone stands within it; only then can we create an equitable society and a healthy planet. A consciousness of this connection is our only hope.

Ever since I was a little kid

My mama was preparing me for bigger shit

Never really had the drip

Never really had the clout

Back in school I was a clown

But look at me I’m poppin now

My mama never had no doubts

Yeah I’m digging deep into my memories

Flipping through my history

My faith was out

Who was God a mystery

Didn’t pray to him

I prayed to me

where I’m from it’s a game

Of no more misery

Trynna get up off the streets

Who’s gon make it

Is it me

This music shits a gift you see

But I ain’t know til recently

I prayed to god

He sent a beat

Now tell me if that’s fate

Or G

I believe

He’s saving me

I’ll make it out

You wait and see

Starving

Hungry

Can’t wait to eat

I started off in poverty

Shelter homes

And a dream

My mama painted

Brighter things

Yellow rooms

It sounds extreme

But now it means the world to me

Those whipping that she gave to me

Trynna teach responsibility

So I could be a prodigy

Im gonna make her proud of me

I’m going hard no stopping me

They call me beast

And I agree

Imma gonna set my family free

I’m branching out just like a tree

This is our story

On this beat

I pray to god and

Bring the heat

foster care tried to destroy me

So I’m here to share the truth

Foster care didn’t protect me

Tore me from my mothers arm

Worked hard to shatter our family bonds

Now I stand here with an ask

To Repeal Mandated Reporting

That’s would be

A real child protection act!!

Kaylah McMillan

Family Separation as Terror

Alan J. Dettlaff Professor, University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work

The following excerpt is adapted from Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System: The Case for Abolition, forthcoming from Oxford University Press in September 2023. This excerpt traces the history of family separations in the United States to the era of human chattel slavery to demonstrate that the intended outcomes of those separations—the subjugation of Black Americans and the maintenance of White supremacy—are the same intended outcomes of the family separations done today by the child welfare system.

Alan Dettlaff is a professor in the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston. He is also co-founder and senior advisor to the upEND movement, a collaborative effort dedicated to abolishing the child welfare system and building alternatives that focus on healing and liberation.

The forcible separation of Black children from their parents was first used as a means of controlling Black families in the United States over 400 years ago as a practice of human chattel slavery. This practice of forcibly and involuntarily separating Black children from their families was used by the state as a means of maintaining power and control by a system of White supremacy that is foundational to this country’s origins. Historical evidence suggests that the practice of forcibly separating Black children from their parents was vast and pervasive, with as few as one-third and as many as two-thirds of enslaved children experiencing some form of family separation.1 Accounts of these separations written by those who were formerly

1 Tadman, M. (1989). Speculators and slaves: Masters, traders, and slaves in the old south. University of Wisconsin Press.

2 Williams, H. A. (2012). Help me to find my people: The African American search for family lost in slavery. University of North Carolina Press.

3 Hawley, F. (1840). Selling a mother from her child, American Anti-Slavery Almanac 1, no. 5, pg. 15.

4 Separating parents from children. (1838). American Anti-Slavery Almanac 1, no. 3, pg. 16.

enslaved describe the devastation and profound loss that accompanied them, as well as the cruelty underlying this practice. In some accounts, they tell of infants being sold away solely because their crying annoyed their enslaver, while others tell of infants being beaten to death when they impeded the sale of their enslaved mother.2

The intent of this practice was clear. Separating children from their parents was the cruelest form of punishment enslavers could enact against Black parents and it was used to terrorize them into subjugation. Enslavers knew the threat of family separation was more powerful than the threat of physical violence and used this threat to force compliance and quell any notion of rebellion. If enslaved parents disobeyed their enslavers, or demonstrated any indication of dissent, family separation was used as a means of punishment, which served to further regulate their behavior. Fundamentally, the destruction of Black families was the defining characteristic of the horrors of human chattel slavery, and the mechanism by which the state maintained Black families’ subjugation.

A unique characteristic of this time in history is how clear this intent was to all parties. Enslaved parents knew their children could be taken from them at any moment and submitted themselves to other atrocities to maintain their families. Enslavers knew the effectiveness of this threat and employed it when necessary to maintain order and prevent rebellion. The threat was omnipresent and pervasive with no remedy to prevent separation from occurring. Enslaved individuals were solely considered property—a position sanctioned by the United States Supreme Court—and could be bought, sold, or traded at any time, at the whim of their enslaver. . Black parents had no recourse against the separation of their children as they were not considered human by law, and thus were legally unable to establish a family.

Another unique characteristic of this time is how clearly horrific the practice of forcible family separations was to all who knew of it. The pain and horror of a child being separated from their mother and sold away to strangers was so visceral that it became the key tool used by abolitionists to unite others in the anti-slavery movement. Issue after issue of abolitionist literature contained personal accounts of family separations, counter arguments to pro-slavery narratives about family separations, and direct appeals to action. For example, the 1840 edition of the American Anti-Slavery Almanac contained the following personal account:

One of my neighbors sold to a speculator a negro boy, about 14 years old. It was more than his poor mother could bear. Her reason fled, and she became a perfect manine, and had to be kept in close confinement. She would occasionally get out and run off to the neighbors. On one of these occasions she came to my house. With tears rolling down her cheeks, her frame shaking with agony, she would cry out, ‘don’t you hear him— they are whipping him now, and he is calling for me.3

Many of these accounts were accompanied with graphic illustrations of enslavers tearing children away from their mothers as a means of demonstrating to the public the atrocities and dehumanization of chattel slavery. The text accompanying the image stated:

Children, see those two little boys! See that child under the man’s arm! See that poor woman with chains on her wrists, stretching out her hand toward the little babe! She is their MOTHER. The boys are crying. They have seen their dear mother for the last time. See how she tries to reach them. She would go after them, but her hands and feet are chained, and that wicked man holds her back. How he looks!

Do they take the children away because she was unkind to them, or could not take care of them?

No, the man who is driving the boys with a hickory stick is a slaveholder. So, he came and paid money to the man who is quietly smoking a cigar, and bought them. The hearts of the mother and children are broken, but the slaveholders pity them not. Do you ask if this is true? Yes; children are torn from their parents, and parents from their children, every day, at the south.4

In addition to these accounts of family separations, abolitionist writers also challenged the counterarguments presented by enslavers and other pro-slavery members of society. Many of these arguments addressed the long-standing narrative that enslaved people did not have the capacity to feel the same emotions toward their children as White Americans did. One personal account entitled, “Can Slaves Feel?” stated:

unit and the right to family autonomy as matters of both divine and natural law. Ultimately it was the inhuman act of separating families that humanized the condition of the enslaved and brought about the realization that reform could never be sufficient for an institution that had reached this level of inhumanity—that improvements could never end the violence that had been firmly established as the norm—and that the only way to ensure this violence would never again be perpetrated on another family was complete and total abolition.

5 Weld, T. D. (1841). Can slaves feel?

American Anti-Slavery Almanac 1, no. 6, pg. 21.

Some years since, when traveling from Halifax, in North Carolina, to Warrenton in the same state, we passed a large drove of slaves on their way to Georgia. Before leaving Halifax, I heard that the drivers had purchased a number of slaves in that vicinity, and started with them that morning, and that we should probably overtake them in an hour or two. Before coming up with the gang, we saw at a distance a colored female, whose appearance and actions attracted my notice. I said to the driver, (who was a slave,) ‘What is the matter of that woman, is she crazy?’ ‘No, massa,’ said he, ‘I know her, it is _____. Her master sold her two children this morning to the soul-drivers, and she has been following along after them, and I suppose they have driven her back. Don’t you think it would make you act like you was crazy, if they should take your children away, and you never see ‘em any more!’ By this time we had come up with the woman. She seemed quite young. As soon as she recognized the driver, she cried out, ‘They’ve gone! they’ve gone! The soul-drivers have got them. Master would sell them. I told him I couldn’t live without my children. I tried to make him sell me too; but he beat me and drove me off, and I got away and followed after them, and the drivers whipped me back – and I never shall see my children again. Oh! what shall I do!’ The poor creature shrieked and tossed her arms about with maniac wildness—and beat her bosom, and literally cast dust into the air, as she moved towards the village. At the last glimpse I had of her, she was nearly a quarter of a mile from us, still throwing handfuls of sand around her with the same phrenzied air.5

Despite all the horrors of human chattel slavery, of which there were many, it was the unthinkable act of seizing a child away from their mother that brought the public to see past the narratives created by enslavers of the unfeeling, unemotional—even compliant—enslaved person. It was the violent act of tearing families apart that exposed the institution of slavery as one that was no longer tenable in a humane society that upheld the family

Following the abolition of slavery through passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, laws and policies, as well as government systems to implement these policies, were formed with the specific intent of solidifying the White supremacy that was now threatened by abolition. It is within this context of the need to protect White supremacy that the origins of the modern child welfare system emerged. Since its earliest origins, the child welfare system has been designed to maintain the superiority of White Americans while maintaining the oppression of Black Americans by first excluding Black children from services during the early 1900s when services focused largely on poverty relief, and later through intentional over-inclusion when services shifted to surveillance and separation of families. Today, more than half of all Black children in America are investigated by child welfare authorities,6 and Black children are forcibly and involuntarily separated from their parents at rates nearly double that of White children.7 In some states, Black children are forcibly separated from their families at rates more than three times that of White children.8 Thus, while the history of separating Black families in the United States began during chattel slavery as a means of maintaining their oppression, the oppression of Black families is now maintained by a vast government system of social control that knowingly inflicts harm on Black families through the same act of forcible family separation—an intervention the state refers to in language devoid of trauma as “removal.” While the system purports these separations are based on the need for protection, the outcome is the same—the subjugation of Black families at the hands of the state for the purpose of maintaining White power.

6 Kim, H., Wildeman, C., Jonson-Reid, M., & and Drake, B. (2017). Lifetime prevalence of investigating child maltreatment among US children. American Journal of Public Health 107(2), 274-280. https:// doi.org/10.2105/ AJPH.2016.303545

7 Yi, Y., Edwards, F. R., & Wildeman, C. (2020). Cumulative prevalence of confirmed maltreatment and foster care placement for US children by race/ ethnicity, 2011-2016. American Journal of Public Health 110(5), 704-709, https:// doi.org/10.2105/ AJPH.2019.305554

8 Putnam-Hornstein, E., Ahn, E., Prindle, J., Magruder, J., Webster, D., & Wildeman, C. (2021). Cumulative rates of child protection involvement and terminations of parental rights in a California birth cohort, 19992017. American Journal of Public Health 111(6), 1157-1163. https:// doi.org/10.2105/ AJPH.2021.306214

9 Q & A: Trump Administration’s “Zero-Tolerance”

Immigration Policy. (2018, August 16). Human Rights Watch, https://www.hrw.org/ news/2018/08/16/ qa-trumpadministrations-zerotolerance-immigrationpolicy

10 Merchant, N. (2018, June 18). Hundreds of children wait in border patrol facility in Texas. Associated Press. https://apnews.com/ article/north-americatx-state-wire-us-newsap-top-news-borderpatrols-9794de32 d39d4c6f89fbefa ea3780769

11 Thompson, G. (2018, June 18).

Listen to children who’ve just been separated from their parents at the border. ProPublica. https:// www.propublica. org/article/ children-separatedfrom-parents-borderpatrol-cbp-trumpimmigration-policy

12 Holpuch, A. (2020, February 25). Trump’s separation of families constitutes torture, doctors find. The Guardian. https:// www.theguardian. com/us-news/2020/ feb/25/trump-familyseparations-childrentorture-psychology

13 U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Children’s Bureau, The AFCARS Report: Preliminary FY2021 Estimates as of June 28, 2022—No. 29 (Washington, DC: October 4, 2021), https://www.acf.hhs. gov/sites/default/ files/documents/cb/ afcars-report-29.pdf

The horror of family separation was the defining characteristic of human chattel slavery that both maintained its existence for decades and ultimately led to its abolition. Despite all the horrors of slavery—the physical and mental horrors of branding, bondage, flagellation, rape, and other acts of torture, along with the moral horrors of defining humans as property and denying all aspects of freedom—it was the horror of separating babies from their mothers’ arms that became the collective moral and spiritual outrage that fueled the abolitionist movement and ultimately, the start of the Civil War.

This moral and spiritual outrage over the cruelty of family separations was felt again in the United States in May 2018 when the Trump Administration announced a “zero-tolerance” policy intended to expedite criminal prosecution of any unauthorized migrant seeking to enter the United States through its southern border, including those legally seeking asylum. Soon after the policy was announced, it became clear that unauthorized parents traveling with children were being targeted under this policy and separated from their children. Although the Trump administration denied there was a specific policy to separate families, it became clear through multiple reports that family separations were specifically being used as a punishment against migrating parents and as a means to deter further migration.9

The public response to these separations was immediate and harsh. Media outlets began reporting that children were being held in cages with chain-link fencing. Images were shared of young children in overcrowded facilities, sleeping on concrete floors, with only foil blankets to cover them.10 A viral audio clip was released where sobbing children who had been separated from their parents could be heard screaming “Mami” and “Papa” while guards were overheard making jokes about them.11 Scholars and activists pointed to the connections between the family separations occurring under the zero-tolerance policy to those that were done during the time of slavery—as well as to other periods in history including Indian boarding schools and Japanese internment camps. Once again, images of babies being torn from their mothers’ arms were displayed across media outlets. Dozens of protests were held drawing thousands of people demanding that family separations cease immediately. In June 2018, two months after the zero-tolerance policy was announced and following immense public pressure, Donald Trump signed an executive order halting family separations. In total, nearly 3,000 families were separated during the two-months this practice was in effect.

There is a disconnect in our public consciousness. During the era of human chattel slavery, the horror of family separation was known to all. The cruelty of this practice and the grief and trauma that resulted was felt so strongly by all Americans, the practice of family separations became the issue that ultimately led to slavery’s abolition. Similar responses to the cruelty and trauma of family separations have occurred throughout our country’s history, most recently during the Trump administration’s blatantly cruel practice of forcibly separating children from their migrating parents as a means of curbing immigration at the southern border. During this brief period of extensive family separations, the trauma children experienced following separation was so clearly painful and visceral, both legal and medical experts proclaimed the trauma caused to children due to family separation was tantamount to torture.12 Yet the child welfare system forcibly separates over 200,000 children from their families every year in every state across the country and these separations go largely unnoticed.13

What distinguishes contemporary family separations with those that occurred during slavery is that today’s separations occur under a façade of benevolence, a myth that has been perpetuated over decades by those in power that family separations are necessary to “save” the most vulnerable children. As a result, the public ignores or simply fails to recognize the harm that results from this practice. Yet this has not always been the case in our history. The horror and terror associated with family separations during slavery were known to all, so much so that recognition within the public consciousness of the pain and trauma experienced by enslaved Black mothers and their children became the pivotal factor that facilitated slavery’s abolition. This collective understanding of the inhuman and barbaric act of separating mothers from their children has moved the nation to act in other times throughout our history as well. What if this shared understanding was understood once again? What if we could see past the mirage of benevolence and recognize family separations for what they truly are—statedirected, state-sponsored terror? Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System: The Case for Abolition is dedicated to moving us closer to this reality.

In Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System, Alan J. Dettlaff presents a call to abolish the American child welfare system due to the harm and destruction it causes Black families. Dettlaff traces the origins of the modern child welfare system, which emerged following the abolition of slavery, to demonstrate that the harm and oppression that result from child welfare intervention are not the result of “unintended consequences” but rather are the clear intents of the system and the foreseeable results of the policies that have been put in place over decades.

By tracing the history of family separations in the United States since the era of slavery, Dettlaff demonstrates that the intended outcomes of those separations—the subjugation of Black Americans and the maintenance of White supremacy—are the same intended outcomes of the family separations done today. What distinguishes contemporary family separations from those that occurred during slavery is that today’s separations occur under a facade of benevolence, a myth that has been perpetuated over decades that family separations are necessary to “save” the most vulnerable children.

Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System presents evidence of the vast harms that result from family separations to make a case that the child welfare system is beyond reform. Rather, the only solution to ending these harms is complete abolition of this system and a fundamental reimagining of the way society cares for children, families, and communities.

Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System can be preordered here https://global.oup.com/ academic/product/confronting-the-racist-legacy-of-theamerican-child-welfare-system-9780197675267

“People are afraid and the reason they are afraid is because we do not do what we say we will do.

If I’d had community supports, my life would have been very different.”

Angie Chilton Mother & Grandmother in Sullivan, MO

Promoting Child & Collective Wellbeing Through Indigenous Connectedness

Jessica Saniguq Ullrich Assistant Professor, Washington State University

Who I Am, Where I Come From

I am Inupiaq, a Tribal citizen of Nome Eskimo Community, a descendant of the Native Village of Wales, Switzerland, Germany and France, a mother of two amazing teenage daughters, an Assistant Professor at Washington State University in the IREACH program. I also identify as a social justice warrior, a survivor of child poverty and neglect, and I am a loving being on a learning journey. I started working in child welfare as a visitation supervisor in Spokane, Washington, then worked on the frontlines as a caseworker in Anchorage, Alaska, was promoted to an Indian Child Welfare Act Specialist position, and then supervised an Alaska Native family services unit before deciding to go back to school. I knew after 10 years of working in child welfare that there needed to be a different approach to addressing the multi-faceted issue of child maltreatment. I felt like there was something missing and we weren’t getting at the root of what was happening, and I wanted to do research to learn about what could be done differently so that children were not harmed by their parents or the system that intervened.

Indigenous Connectedness Framework

Southwest Alaska defined connectedness as the interrelated welfare of a person, family, community, and the Earth (Mohatt et al., 2011). Many Indigenous scholars and communities had similar concepts of well-being. I drafted an Indigenous Connectedness Framework that was based on what I was learning from the literature to describe the importance of family, community, environmental, intergenerational, cultural/spiritual connectedness for child and collective well-being (Ullrich, 2019). This is the first draft of the Indigenous connectedness framework based on the literature review (Figure 1).

This symbol was used because it was in black and white photos of Inupiaq and Yupik ceremonial art and could help organize what I was learning about Indigenous well-being. It was encouraging to hear from my Yup’ik colleague, Elsie Boudreau, that this symbol represented the eye of awareness in her culture. In this Indigenous Connectedness Framework, the outer spokes represent the connectedness of relationships children should have, the blue outer circle represents the ways connectedness is built and maintained, and the inner circle represents the child well-being being supported by spiritual connectedness and collective well-being.

Lessons Learned from Indigenous Connectedness Research

To build off the well-being literature and the initial draft of the Indigenous Connectedness Framework, I collaborated with Facing Foster Care in Alaska and Alaska Center for Resource Families

God, Creator, Universe-all encompassing, the backdrop to everything

While I pursued my PhD in social welfare at University of Washington, I had to write a qualifying paper to advance to doctoral candidacy. I was mentored by my supervisory committee and guided by Tribal leaders to do a literature review on the ways Indigenous child well-being was conceptualized and how it was promoted (Ullrich, 2019). It wasn’t enough to study trauma, we needed to know what to do about it, and recover how to be healthy and well on our own Indigenous terms again. I came across an article that defined well-being in a way that I thought the child welfare system was missing. The People’s Awakening Team from

Figure 1. INDIGENOUS CONNECTEDNESS FRAMEWORK

(Ullrich, 2020). Leaders from these community organizations helped me craft the questions asked, recruit knowledge bearers, and helped me think through the results of the study. I connected with 25 Alaska Native knowledge bearers to learn about child wellbeing and see if there were updates to the Indigenous Connectedness Framework that needed to be made. I interviewed 9 foster care alumni, 10 relative caregivers and 6 foster parents. I wanted to learn from this group because I believed what they shared could help improve Alaska Native child outcomes in the child welfare system.

While knowledge bearers spoke about relational actions that promote child well-being the most, what followed that was discussion of trauma and challenges that children faced. Using Indigenous storytelling as a research method, I thought about the main lessons that needed to be learned from the sacred stories that were shared. One lesson learned was how important it is to acknowledge the traumas and relational wounding that has happened to children. In many stories, the knowledge bearers shared how the child welfare system compounds the trauma through the process of child removal. Children are not only removed from their parents, many times they are also removed from their siblings, grandparents, aunties, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors, daycares, medical providers, teachers, schools, playgrounds, favorite toys, pets, culture, people who can teach them ancestral knowledge, and any sense of familiarity that helps them feel grounded and rooted in who they are as a relational being. If children feel disconnected from everyone and everything that they love, it can lead to feelings of being lost, or unsure of who they are This is a quote from a foster care alumnus that highlights the need for relational connectedness:

Too often child welfare interventions contribute to children’s feelings of disconnection from important well-being relationships. This can lead to feelings and beliefs that disconnect them from who they are and where they come from as an interconnected being. When children are no longer grounded in who they are, it can become a cycle of relational wounding and disconnection (Figure 2). Becoming disconnected can give way to beliefs or feelings of being completely alone, that we don’t matter, that the people we love leave us, that what we do doesn’t affect anyone else, that relatio¬nal harm is normal, that the best defense is an offense, that we must close and protect our hearts or that we must compete with one another to get by. While it is true that people experiencing trauma and disconnect need to adapt in order to survive, it comes with a severe cost to personal, interpersonal and collective well-being. These beliefs lead to unhealthy ways of relating to one another. This dynamic of disconnection needs relational repair and focused healing efforts at all socio-ecological levels.

The second main lesson learned from knowledge bearers’ stories was the need to build and maintain connectedness and relational continuity through relational actions. It’s not enough to co-exist alongside each other, or have a wish or a thought, we need to do something that helps people connect and know each other. Through relational connectedness we then have a shared responsibility to respect one another and maintain healthy boundaries while engaging in responsibility and reciprocity. One foster parent shared this quote that speaks to this point:

The importance for me is to know where I came from and to know who I am, and just being me, because in this world without my culture, and without my language, and without the stuff I know, I feel lost. Who am I? Was I supposed to be someone different? Then I should learn those things and it’s just really important to me to know that stuff so I can pass it down to my children, because it’s who we are. And it’s really important to have with us.

~Sarah (self-selected alternative name)

It’s not “it takes a village to raise a child.” It’s being connected to that community and knowing that if there’s an issue, that community will step in and help. I think that when you hear the phrase, “it takes a village to raise a child,” it’s easy to dissociate yourself from the responsibility of being able to connect with other individuals within the community…

~Kious

(self-selected alternative name)

Internal Connectedness

An

Many Indigenous cultural teachings and practices help people learn how to build healthy relationships with themselves, one another, with the Earth, and with the collective. One relative caregiver shared how the tradition of giving a Native name to her granddaughter was a sacred practice. The baby was named after a loved one who had passed and now the baby will inherit the good traits from the person they were named after. This Native name that the child received will help the baby build relational connections between extended family and community members, and it teaches the young person who they are in relation to an ancestor in the spirit world. One relational action and tradition can help build multiple connectedness relationships at the same time. The knowledge bearers shared hundreds of stories and examples of the ways relational actions, or mechanism of connectedness, can help children maintain relational well-being or heal from relational wounds if there’s been trauma and disconnection. This is why so many Elders and Indigenous community scholars have said that culture is medicine. Culture is a way of life, it’s a way of knowing, it’s a way of being in the world as relational beings. I believe the term culture is synonymous with spirit. The stories, teachings, ceremonial practices, gatherings, songs, dances, and clothing carry spiritual/cultural and relational meaning that strengthens and supports a child’s well-being. When children are well, so is the collective.

This led to the development of the third and final lesson learned from the knowledge bearers in this study; that being in right relationship with children

can teach them important lessons in life that can help them develop a healthy ‘inner ecology’ (Kawagley, 2006). This is where it became clear how important it is for children to develop a healthy relational identity and internal connectedness with their mind, body, spirit, emotions, and whole being (Figure 3).

A child’s internal connectedness is influenced by the relationships they have with family, community, ancestors, and the Earth, this is represented by the outer spokes in Figure 3. Indigenous communities have teachings and practices that can help young people develop a healthy inner relationship with themselves. I believe this is why many Indigenous Elders have instructed younger generations to know who they are and where they come from.

Figure 2. DISCONNECTEDNESS FRAMEWORK

2006)

Figure 3. INTERNAL CONNECTEDNESS

When children know who they are a sense of awe, belonging, wonder, celebration, love, and power comes in that helps a person develop healthy relationships externally. We should encourage children to observe their dreams, examine their thoughts, question their perceptions, be creative with their ideas, nurture their bodies, expect and accept safe loving interactions, and trust that while everything is always changing, there is still something constant that can be counted on in life within them. Children are unique souls that need to express their authentic being within the relationships they have. Everyone connected with each child can help them develop a nurturing inner world and develop their gifts that they might share with others if we are lucky.

What I learned from the knowledge bearers was that who we are is more than the trauma we have experienced. We are not forever victims or people who harm others. We are not some oppressive social construct that makes us less than anyone or anything else on the planet. We are not only our emotions, only our bodies, only our minds, only our spirits separately. We are beautiful beings of love and light. We are our ancestors, family, community, Earth, spirit, and future generation all at the same time. Every person is an individual that is connected to a collective. This means when we are working with children, we are also simultaneously working with everyone and everything they are connected to. Child well-being is a shared responsibility. Connectedness relationships should not continue to be systematically severed in child

INDIGENOUS

Environmental Connectedness

welfare, or any system that interacts with children. It’s time for the systemic harm to stop. Until then, we must continue to teach our children how to be resilient to the social relational norming of trauma, separation, removal and disconnect.

Based on these important lessons learned, the Indigenous Connectedness Framework (Figure 4.) was updated to include an acknowledgement of the trauma and challenges that the knowledge bearers spoke about, which are represented by the red lettering on the outside of the circle. We need to keep trauma from becoming a mechanism of disconnection. That is not to say that trauma and challenges in life won’t happen, but they should be outweighed by the connectedness actions represented in the blue outer circle that can help build and maintain relationships despite the challenges and hardships. When connectedness is maintained, it can help a child develop a healthy internal connectedness and relational identity which is represented by the green inner circle.

Every person will have to grapple with difficult thoughts, feelings and aspects of ourselves that we don’t necessarily like, but this shouldn’t be our foundation, we need to ground ourselves in who we are beyond the trauma, pain or beliefs that keep us feeling powerless. We, as the adult relatives and community members in children’s lives are responsible for changing the societal policies, constructs, practices, and theories that guide our work. This transformative process requires that everyone do their part. Each of us must engage in

Community Connectedness

Intergenerational

Family Connectedness

Figure 4. INDIGENOUS CONNECTEDNESS FRAMEWORK

processes of relational healing and repair because we’ve all been exposed to or have been a part of the disconnectedness process. It is time for the promotion of well-being to be our norm for all children again. Every child needs and deserves a sense of connectedness. This is where each specific person, family, community, organization, and context should fill in their own connectedness framework with their own knowledges, histories, pedagogies, stories, and cultural practices.

To transform and repair relationships, we must acknowledge the trauma and challenges we’ve experienced, take action to rebuild connectedness relationships, while simultaneously engaging in the development of our own internal connectedness efforts of knowing who we are and where we come from and what that uniquely means to ourselves. Our children, nor anyone else, should feel like they have to become someone they are not. Our children should not feel invisible. Our children should not have to be prepared for the real dangers of living in an oppressive and sometimes cruel society. Studying and living a life of connectedness can help us on our personal and collective healing journeys.

Qannukiaq Kaysi Piliuqpita? How Shall We Proceed?

My ancestral singing and dancing practices had been forbidden by missionaries for over 50 years. This made it so we are still in the process of recovering our songs and dances. The late Ernie Frankson, an Elder from Tikigaq (Point Hope, Alaska) had a library of Inupiaq songs that he knew. He was an amazing drummer and dancer. One day Mr. Frankson came to my Anchorage based Kingikmiut Dance group to give back one of our community’s songs that we were disconnected from. The song translated to ‘How Shall We Proceed?’ in English. The story of the song addressed a time of strife that existed between families within the community, and the community decided to come together and address the issues. It was a clear, calm, beautiful sunny day. The people put on their kamiks (boots) and gathered and danced. Relational healing took place. The community resolved the issues and moved forward in a good way. This is what connectedness is all about.

The questions we must ask ourselves and our community members, is how shall we proceed? We all have challenges we must face. The solutions are going to come from within us. We can make the changes necessary to get through

our issues together. I believe that I am applying the Connectedness Framework as best I can in my life and work. I’m working with my Tribe on developing a connectedness curriculum to teach our community members our ancestral knowledge that is specific to us. Our hope is that this will assist with prevention and well-being efforts and that it might become an evidence-based practice down the road so that the Tribe can access Family First Prevention Services Act funding to support their program. I have presented on the Indigenous Connectedness Framework to the State of Alaska and shared some ideas on the ways it could be applied to child welfare. For example, case plans could be done differently to focus on relational well-being and bring in the extended family and community more to support the child and family. The way safety, permanency and well-being are understood could shift in relational ways. Maybe, instead of recruiting foster parents to care for foster children they could shift to fostering other families. Relatives and community members could be recruited to be stand-by safety plan participants. Perhaps relatives and community members could become ‘cultural’ teachers for children to help them maintain a sense of who they are and where they come from as a spiritual/cultural being. Connectedness could help Indigenize the five protective factors framework. Prevention and well-being policies could be developed and funding could be increased. Changing to a relational connectedness paradigm could lead to drastic and lasting changes in child welfare. Perhaps in pockets of the country where they are already seeing improved outcomes, evaluation could determine whether the success is due to the connectedness that exists within that community.

Change within child welfare needs to happen inside the system and outside of it. I believe that while connectedness can provide helpful guidance on ways to lessen the trauma for children in the system, we should build something entirely different to eventually replace that system altogether. Our kinship networks could be strengthened. Cultural healing practices and knowledge sharing could be the central focus to address mental health and substance misuse problems. I don’t know what building something new looks like exactly, but I’d love to talk with people about what the possibilities are and decide where to start. We are powerful cocreators with different gifts we can share to make this world a better place. So much unnecessary loss, pain and suffering could be prevented. Everyone is doing the best we can, given what we have been through, and every person is a guide and teacher on how to do this collaboratively in a good way. No one person can do it alone.

All of this research and learning has definitely influenced my life in amazing ways. My heart is healing. I have taken my power back and now I’m doing everything I can to plant seeds and share this knowledge with the hope and prayer that it can help our sacred children be themselves fully. The more each of us engage in relational repair and healing, the more potential we build for a healthier world. The work of each of us on our own healing has a ripple effect on collective well-being. I’ll never forget defending my dissertation and my daughter asking me if all grown-ups are children too because we have parents. She had a powerful point to make, the Indigenous Connectedness Framework is not only about children from ages 0-18, but all of us. She was also a powerful teacher for me when she made a meaningful painting for me on my 40th birthday. I had set an intention that day to heal my broken heart. She didn’t know that, but she intuitively gave me one of my first lessons that set in motion a powerful healing experience. Her piece of art reminded me that “love comes from the light inside” (Figure 5). Our children are sacred! It’s time to protect their well-being as much as we provide them with safety. Now is the time to have courage, face the challenges, use the relational practices that help us reconnect, and know who we are and where we come from. It’s time to fix the policies and practices that promote disconnectedness rather than connectedness. It’s going to take hard work to make these changes a reality, but I promise you, the effort will be worthwhile.

References

Kawagley, A. O. (2006). A Yupiaq worldview: A pathway to ecology and spirit. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.

Mohatt, N. V., Fok, C. C. T., Burket, R., Henry, D., & Allen, J. (2011). Assessment of Awareness of Connectedness as a Culturally-based Protective Factor for Alaska Native Youth. Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, 17(4), 444–455. http:// doi.org/10.1037/a0025456

Ullrich, J.S. (2020). Indigenous connectedness as a framework for relational healing within the Alaska Native child welfare context. ProQuest Dissertation Publication. https://digital.lib.washington.edu/ researchworks/handle/1773/45544

Ullrich, J. (2019). For the love of our children: An Indigenous connectedness framework. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 15(2), 121-130. https://doi. org/10.1177/1177180119828114

WAVES

Holly Lazo

Life has been coming in unexpected waves of pain, loss, depression, and death. But sometimes, the light breaks the waves, and I am glistening as bright as the sun. The sky is painted with a kaleidoscope of purples, oranges, and pinks. But what if I told you I was swimming with a broken arm and wrist, just trying to escape the abys. I have been swimming to the island of dreams and hopes for years. The water is rocky, cold, and filled with sharks. I am attacked from each side. But I swim forward with tenacity and perseverance.

These past days the depression has eaten me from the inside out. These pills are supposed to help, but I struggle to take them most days. I become numb, like I am not here in this body. I float through the days. Most days, I am just feeling lost. It’s hard to want to work when you can’t help anyone. These sad stories and programs barely have funding to meet the demands or needs. I almost lost my job, but I just smiled. I have been telling myself to stay strong as life flows. But I am not sure if I can carry the weight of the world. It is crushing my should, hopes, and dreams.

February 11 was my mom’s birthday, and it is still hard to breathe after five years. I can’t sleep tonight, and I am collecting my thoughts like I am an astronaut catching shooting stars. Mom, tonight I will sit by and talk to the moon, looking for you. Can you hear me? I just want to get to you. My grades are excellent, but I can barely remember to function and eat food. Breathe in and out, don’t forget to work out. Due dates are spinning, and bills are chasing me. I am screaming in this adulthood. Is this the state of the world? Is this the meaning of life? Why is it so cruel and cold? My water bill is $217.00, and I must pay to fix the pipes. I want to pull the trigger and kill myself tonight. Fuck mom, now I understand why you crawled in bed for years and never came out. I want to run away from this. Please let me die tonight in my sleep. Please mom tell me why you never loved me enough to stay. Why did you leave us? Why does everyone leave me? Why am I never enough? I wish someone would love me. I wish I had a home. But I am jacked up on drugs. I am washed out. DCF tossed me aside like I was trash after seven years. No one has called me in years. I am worthless. I have too tired to keep treading deep waters of pain, anger, and loss. So, I look up to the starry night sky and let the water take me.

Photo by Ann Dinh

Nurturing Freedom Dreams Through a Principled Struggle

Corey Best Founder

Tiffany Csonka Parent Knowledge Curator

It’s been said that freedom arrives “when we are no longer afraid.” What if we struggled without fear? What if we heeded lessons from historical truths? What if we believed that the way we damage people impairs and destroys the collective us? What if the invention of race didn’t dictate who we deem deserving and capable? Dammit, this brings more questions, right? For depth and texture, let us try this frame: We believe that you know the immense harm caused by our interconnected human services institutions (because you are, or have been complicit in causing them). And that you are ready with all the earnestness at our command to be fearless and thorough. Ready to mount new ideas, solutions, resources and thinking that equal the magnitude of the harm. This belief connotes that we have grown a mutual understanding of our duty and have collectively embodied compassion and empathy for the “other.” Ready to be bravely on our way to becoming a society that measures its worth based on a sense of justice, liberation, and belonging. Rather than reducing people to widgets and thrusting them into programmatic categories associated with a prejudiced degree of risk.

Christina Romero Parent Knowledge Curator Pasqueal Nguyen Parent Knowledge Curator

Frederick

Douglass taught us; “Power conceded nothing without a demand.”

MFG’s Parent Knowledge Curators (PKC’s) are not naïve or pollyannish to think that by simply demanding that our systems stop subjecting families to structural violence, that it will happen. Hence, the reason why we must continue writing this piece, while approaching old struggles in rooted, truthful ways. For our preparation, we gathered through Zoom and asked ourselves a few questions: What are families in our networks saying about glimpsing justice in their interactions with punitive systems? Do we believe that punitive systems are actively focused on connection and belonging? And why does the designed menu for “systems change” seem to include the familiar ingredients that produced a racially capitalistic, exploitative, carceral, and colonized society!? To go further into dreaming, we decided to imagine that we were making that demand. And therefore, we asked ourselves, what would that mandate be? The demand is for you to STOP the oppressive practices! Can it be that simple for our systems to actively empathize with what the most impacted have experienced? If it were, the writing would end here. And our future gatherings and conference dinners would be filled with revolutionary discourse.

Too many dreams have been deferred because of racism. History teaches us that Race + Prejudice (baked-in anti-Blackness; anti-other) + Abusive Power = Racism. And it is even more mystifying to know that racism predates race. Sheesh! As with many recipes (ideologies), there are several ways to adjust the flavor while maintaining the intended impact. After all, racism and white supremacy is what we all have consumed. It is the background condition that inspires our notions about humanity. And to some degree, we reproduce the ideas that drive policy, behaviors, and outcomes. Yes, many of us are actively inoculating the residual effects, lingering taste, prolonged sickness, and contagiousness of the dominant ideology and framing. The thing about upholding a system that advantages white and white adjacent bodies is that, unlike a cook in the backof-the-house, you don’t need a “safe food handlers’” certification, Michelin star rating, or “Hell’s Kitchen” popularity to reach the consumer. In fact, you don’t even need to know how to cook.

We are born with the transferrable skills and abilities to other, to punish, to lock up, to dismiss, to dehumanize and to be racist. Even when we think we’re not. Like any “good cook” who follows the Chef’s recipes, we have become completely willful and short-sighted about the fact that what we are pushing out of kitchen is potentially causing REAL, very deep, oppressive harm to our collective bodies. Similarly, to the cook, you have a job. For the cook, that job is to get food in the window and get it up there fast. That is the outcome! See, the cook realizes if they follow the recipe or formula to specifications, the chances of consumer complaints are minimized. And when the consumer does complain, the cook doesn’t have to deal with it head on. There’s a crew lead, a manager, and let us not forget about the server. Typically, in these cases, the complaints are about timeliness or more overt mistakes that cooks make. Consumers don’t usually complain if the garnish was positioned at eleven o’clock instead of two. Or if the dish isn’t plated as advertised in photos on the website. This may generate an emotional reaction that feels confusing, and the consumer may begin to internalize the effects of the environment. We’ve all said or heard: “I don’t want to be that consumer;” “I’ll just eat it;” “Maybe I forgot to remind the server,” “I will just remove the onion and it’ll be fine.” The list of excuses we make to justify the harm being caused to our bodies IS a part of that sickness. Similar to being the subject of slick- ass racism, the consumer will take notice at the table with their close, mono-cultural group when something seems to feel or be a bit “off.” To unravel this analogy, the cook is completely removed from the consumer. The consumer trusts the cook to push out a palatable product. And the cook is following the design that has been shaped and created by the owners of the restaurant. And the Chef is both the gatekeeper and expeditor. Getting it now?

For vivid clarity, the formula MFG embraces for racism has robbed us of the ability to consciously notice, with precision, that what we consume has been a slow drip toward severing our ability to embrace our full humanity. This slow drip impedes our personal and collective aptitudes to become maturely brave in the relationships that we have with ourselves and other bodies. One of the biggest costs associated with consuming white supremacy and racism is the assault on our relationships with one another. This cost is one we continue to pay in our work to advance “outcomes” versus impacts for and with people. Especially, when we are devaluing their humanity and choose not to be brave because of self-interest or our oblivious dependence on a set of false narratives that maintain our comfortable and advantaged ways of life. The cost of justice and freedom is quite high. One way of understanding what that cost might be for you is to simply ask yourself: “What has racism cost me?” Grappling with what was stolen, stripped, and shattered may serve you with the much-needed fortitude to fully hustle harder in reclaiming your humanity. To become equipped in pulling from the best of who you are. This inside job will require courage in the face of resistance; right and accountable relationships and challenging your core assumptions about who you are and who you are becoming. Ibram X. Kendi reminds us; “A coward is someone who recognizes the danger in doing what’s right and therefore doesn’t do it.”

Proximity + Right Relationships + Vulnerability = Belonging

We invite you to embrace JUSTICE as an acknowledgement of one’s humanness. Proactively pursuing healing systematic harm, while repairing fractured relationships from the past, equity of voice and personhood. Moving with this recognition and awareness so that people are seen and able to contribute to positive social impact. Justice is supporting one another to build trust and empathy through holding ourselves accountable to embodied (not declared) anti-racism. LIBERATION is defined as freedom from oppression and restrictions to creating a life that is unique to one’s individual wants and needs. While embracing the needs of other bodies. Having the fortitude to be truthful with experiences that grow and nurture solidarity. And BELONGING as being accepted and valued for our authentic selves as part of a larger community--our humanity matters in all spaces.

MFG strategizes with history, meaning, that the past shapes our present. The past is happening to us all. And in the present, we can dream and imagine what a more just future will look like. We acknowledge areas of our lives where we have played the coward. Where

fear gripped us up, shook us to the core. We can dream accountability. What if we embraced accountability as a reflection of our undeniable incredible, tender humanity? We see the environments in which we attempted to shape-shift, actually prevented us from pulling from our best selves. Either way, we know that proximity alone will not lead to justice and belonging. In our work, we have a proclivity to gravitate toward the easy and/or the known. As an example, we tend to amplify the need for more “diversity.” Depending on your frame, this may mean many things. Let us be reminded that the plantation was one of the most racially diverse environments we have ever seen. We’ve come a long way from Victor H. Green’s “The Negro Motorist Green Book.” The most recent edition of that publication was released in 1963. Or have we?

Our work environments have lots of diversity, inclusive of race, ethnicity, orientation, and other subjugated identities. We fail miserably at cultivating a culture of justice, liberation, and a sense of belonging. If we leverage diversity as a goal/quota, what exactly are we diversifying from? The answer to this question has already been given. That would mean that we are clear about moving from a mono-cultural existence to a multi-cultural identity. Getting the right frame helps us understand where to go to find areas of elasticity and discretion. If our vision remains cloudy, diversity will continue to show up as tokensim, taco Tuesday, collard green Thursday and rainbow flag Friday. None of this is sufficient to do what is just and pure for families. Afterall, DEI is where anti-racism and justice goes to DIE.

To challenge us to be BIG, and then become even BIGGER in our quest to think culturally versus strategically, we will walk you through a nuanced way of understanding what the principled struggle for “justice doing” looks like in public. It looks like love! The body of work that Bryan Stevenson has accomplished through the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is what nurturing freedom dreams can look like for us. As you recall Just Mercy, consider what it took for one human who visits and represents predominantly Black bodies being held captive, on death row, to embody the core belief “that we are more than the worse thing we’ve ever done.” Pause and try and think about the group or groups of people you like the least. Are you able to see their humanness in yourself? Stevenson also believed that we had to get proximate to people to value and honor the gold within human beings. Well, proximity is not the end of the journey. Despite the fact that we live racially segregated lives, we get close to people who have all types of differences.

Some of us invite parents, youth, and community members to our meetings. Some of them even get to lead conversations. Many parents who have been ravaged by the family policing system have been physically close to us. Researchers have extracted information and written tons of articles about

minoritized groups of people. All because they have gotten proximate. But what has changed as a result? More voyeurism, spectating and charity? If we believe that being in the vicinity of human “difference” is the standard, our thinking is myopic at best. Going back to Just Mercy and EJI, we witnessed an age-old formula at work. A formula that accelerated a sense of belonging with the downtrodden, the disappeared, the “less deserving.”

What we learn from Bryan Stevenson and his leadership, is that it is less about “how” to make impact and more about “where” to make impact. We witness his ability to mine for gold; sometimes having to sift through pounds of dirt to find that one ounce of gold. To intentionally give up parts of his existing ideology so that he was able to be an active participant in right and accountable relationships. This requires deep vulnerability and bravery. On the one hand, he had to trust himself enough to be seen by another human. On the other, he had to trust himself enough to see another body in their humanness and not flinch. The formula that MFG uses with community members, parents, and systems leaders is the same: Proximity + Right Relationships + Vulnerability = Belonging. In our work, we build culture around these non-negotiable elements. They have become what we use to inoculate white body supremacy. Because just getting close isn’t enough. In order to do more with families, we have to be willing to bend ourselves in new and often awkward ways. This should happen at every decision point and at every meeting. Putting the reps in for a glimpse of this level of liberation is what got us to legal humanity for Black bodies in 1964.

Collectivism is a non-linear and emergent process. There is no script. It is where orientations are rocked to a fourth dimension. We can’t put a timeline. It is where we experience life forward yet understand it backwards. The rigid confines don’t exist. It is the process of holding weight and charges to hold change. Listening, reflecting, noticing, pausing, truth-telling, and growing the way forward to extract the essence of who we are becoming. Embracing the messiness. Explore a deeper understanding of what we are saying YES to. That helps us to know what to say no to. And this…this is how we nurture freedom dreams. A simpler way to better outcomes: STOP causing harm and struggle with the people for real change!

Silent Tears

Sawara Robinson I cry inside heavily, only I know the reason why Yet on the outside I’m smiling, not a tear in my eye I haven’t felt this way in all of my years For deep inside I’m crying, crying silent tears

There are days I feel I can’t go on, people using are using my fears Giving me false hope, having not one truth

Not being sincere

Wanting me to trust and fall, to not even care Surely I’m really crying, crying silent tears

I want to scream and shout, so that all can hear I’m strong, I’m important how you feel I don’t care! Whether you believe in me, I will make it there And all along I’m crying, crying silent tears

From this day forward, I do declare To spread the knowledge, to all who dare Stand up and fight, for what is theirs I’m done with all the crying, crying silent tears

No more will I cry, cry silent tears! No more will I cry… cry silent tears

Photo by Ann Dinh

Can I just be myself?

Sawara Robinson

Can I just be myself for a minute?

Can you handle my real, really listen for a minute?

Hear my soul cry out for a minute?

Mistakes have been made

I own my wrongs, take my blame

Realize my fault, addressing my shame

Constantly taking and under shade

Being called everything, except my name

Walking, smiling, yet in pain

But you don’t acknowledge. You changed the game

Changing rules, like a child made to behave

Gaining monetary, my child on the slave trade

Running in circles, forced to obey

The future, my life, will never be the same

I am a child of God, stay in your lane

Can I be myself for a minute?

Can I be myself for a minute?

Let you know me for a minute?

Can you tell the truth for at least a minute?

You knocked on my door over a rumor, a lie

Anxiety building up, can’t fathom why

Nieve to my rights, its obvious in your eyes

So you violate. Disrespect, and degrade

All with a smile

Hands behind my back, forced to comply

My life misconstrued, my future compromised

Yet you kiss your kids, sleep well at night

I’m left restless, no hope in sight

Wanting me to stay in dark, have no chance of a winning fight

But you got me fucked up,

I’m coming in this with all my might

You won the last battle, but I will win the war

I refuse to be a number, my life is mine, yours no more

My family is mine, I will have victory

Until that day comes, I will continue to speak

Can I be myself for a minute?

A Discussion with Victor Sims

on the Power of Connection

Victor Sims is a father, husband, son, brother, social worker, law student, mentor and tireless national advocate for children, young people, parents, families, and the communities they live in. We sat down with Victor recently to explore his perspectives on why relationships, connection and belonging (relational health) are important, particularly for children and families in the foster care system, and the harms of not being connected.

From your perspective Victor, why are connections, relationships and belonging areas that we should focus our attention on in child welfare?

The child welfare system is designed to protect children from abuse and neglect and to support families in crisis. However, the system can be intimidating and difficult to navigate, leaving many families feeling disconnected and unsupported.

Someone who is close to me told me about a time when she lived only a street away from her biological aunts and uncles. Another friend of mine said that they did not know that they even had family. I believe that one way to show love and care towards children who are impacted by the child welfare system is to recognize that from the moment of birth, a child’s connection to their parents begins with the umbilical cord. This physical connection represents the bond between a parent and child that is essential for a child’s growth and development. As the child grows, this connection evolves into a more complex relationship, but the importance of this initial bond cannot be overstated.

Just as the umbilical cord provides essential nutrients to the developing child, so too, the connection between parents and children provides emotional nourishment that is critical for a child’s healthy development. This connection is especially crucial in the context of child welfare, where the safety and well-being of the child may depend on the strength of the bond between the child and their parents.

We must act on the importance of preserving and nurturing these parent-child connections. It isn’t enough to talk about the connection and the bond when we are also talking about termination of parental rights and who is going to adopt the child. I believe that it is important for us to have these same conversations when it comes to the separation of families - that we begin to ask ourselves, who in the community can we lean to for support in order to ensure that the family remains whole.

What has influenced your thinking about connections, relationships and belonging the most?

Going into the system at 3 months old and being adopted at 12, I lost my history. It is no wonder so many people who grow up in foster care say they felt that they lost a little bit of themselves. The fact of the matter is that they did. They lost every fiber and being that was written in their DNA, they lost the people who helped to make their genetic makeup. They lost the hot water cornbread recipe that was theirs to inherit.

I made a commitment that I would work with every family in a way in which it wasn’t about terminating parents’ rights, but about reconciliation and healing.

I worked with every child not from the perspective that they should have been removed, even when I personally believed it was the best safety decision. I worked with each one of them as if they should have never been removed. I looked for the systems in their family that worked, whether it was something as simple as getting children ready for school, or if it was the practice of making sure that their children always had clothes, or was it the fact that they lived 5 minutes from other family members that could support them.

Let’s talk about that a little more. You became a foster care social worker, supervisor, advocate and national consultant. How did your experience and thinking about connections affect your professional work with families?

One of the hardest things for me to do as a social worker was to leave my trauma at the door. The same system that I grew up in also created resentment for much of the system, created the nature of my advocacy and planted the idea that transformation was necessary. Working in the system, I realized the complex nature of the system. I read through the operating procedures, the state laws and statutes that governed child welfare, and then best practice. I learned that the things that were hard to alter were the statutes and state rules. I had the opportunity as a case manager to help influence change in operating procedures and I could be a case study towards best practice. At the infancy of my career, I began to challenge leaders all around me. I began to speak up and say this just doesn’t make sense. Why did we add on this guard rail? Why did we add this extra red tape? What needs to be done to change it? Who can I speak to in regards to influencing this change? Where did this procedure originate? Many times my leaders in the beginning would say things like, “Victor, it has been that way for as long as I have been here,” “Victor, it helps protect us,” “Victor, we don’t want to lose credibility in front of the judge,” “Victor, have you ever heard of CYA”, or “Victor, it is to prevent us from being on the news.”

Oftentimes, I would just walk away and tell them thank you. I was able to sit down and ask every time, why do we say that our hope was to strengthen families? I was motivated by that, I was encouraged by that, however it seemed that we weren’t focusing on that. We began to focus on our own protections, we began to focus on the pressures of a court system, or we just inundated our workforce, our judicial system and most importantly our families, with phrases such as “we can’t” or telling families, “you need to do more.”

How do you think the power of connections should show up in the work we all do with families?

I learned quickly that I could influence outcomes for families, that I had an unusual power of instilling

hope into families and that I could be an advocate for hope. I would debate with counterparts that handled the hard and often unappreciated workers who handle investigations of families. They were tasked with life changing decisions based on interviews, pictures, a video, or a phone call. I remember one of the things that bothered me was when a colleague with a lot of experience told me to work every case in a way that could support a TPR. Make sure that you send referrals out monthly, and that you track the package.

This may seem uncomfortable for many of us, but I recognized something that we all had in common regardless of whether we worked in the houses of the families we served, the courts or the state houses. We all had a connection to people and we all were humans. I began going to court predisposition meetings with the investigators and talking about services that I could offer parents in their home. I asked whether it was necessary for us to separate the family or could we serve them in a different way, such as, could I see the family more often to ensure safety. I talked to policy and procedure makers and said the policy and procedure may have made sense 20 years ago, it may have made sense last year, for all I care it might have made sense an hour ago. In this moment it does not make sense. The same procedures that were meant to safeguard the protection of workers stripped the rights of families from having safeguards and the protection of connection.

I recognized that judges made decisions based on words more often than anything else - that the words I used to characterize a family could have lasting effects on the court’s decisions. I had to remove my own opinions and adjectives and state facts.

What are some of the major lessons learned from exploring the power of connections and the importance of belonging?

Throughout this year, I have been highly interested in learning more about different cultures around the world and have looked to long-standing values from communities and tribes. I have learned that, regardless of environmental factors, geographic location, social status, language spoken, we all share a value. We all believe in connection - religion talks about connection, science talks about connection.

One of the words that I learned a few years ago while helping the Center for the Study of Social

Policy develop their Youth Thrive Curriculum, was the word “Ubuntu” from the Nguni People: This is a concept in many African cultures that emphasizes the interconnectedness of all people and the importance of community. The word focuses on the cultural notion that I am what I am because of who we all are. Recently, I learned the phrase “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” which means a person is a person through other people. At that moment I just paused, I began to think, and then I took a breath, inhaling, and then exhaling. I knew I wanted to begin to breathe this thought process more when it came to families - a person is a person through other people. It made sense to me that the children and families served by child welfare felt disoriented in our system of care. It then made sense to me why, when I turned 16, I asked the vital question - who am I? I struggled to find out who I am and, as a matter of fact, I still struggle as an adult, because a part of me is the people I was originally connected with.

When it comes to connection, I am not asking for a transformed system, I am not asking for different jargon to be created to make us feel motivated and create the illusion that we are going somewhere while we are still running on the treadmill. I am asking that we go back in time, back to ideology that dates back before our birth and the birth of parents and grandparents, back to concepts like “It takes a village to raise a child”, or “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”.

Although I am optimistic, I understand that we cannot do this alone and that it takes a collective. We need to prioritize open and honest communication with families. By working collaboratively with families, child welfare investigators can identify potential safety concerns and develop strategies that are tailored to the specific needs of each family. This means identifying and leveraging family strengths, providing training and support, and fostering ongoing communication and collaboration.

It will take time and effort, but by working together with families and communities, we can create a child welfare system that is more effective, more just, and more compassionate. And that’s a goal that we should all strive to achieve.

That’s an incredible lesson and thanks for sharing it. How would you like to see the child welfare/ foster care system change to support this kind of lesson about connections and relationships better?

Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu

means a person is a person through other people

The FJJ features original artwork, poems, and other visual and audio works that speak to the experiences of impacted individuals in every issue of the journal, including the front cover. If you have a creative expression you would like considered for inclusion in a future issue, please write to info@thefamilyjusticegroup.org

The Winter issue of the FJJ is anticipated in December 2023 and will be entitled the Need for Belonging.

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