27 minute read
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
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” 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:
This loss can be compounded when the experience in foster care is worse than the conditions that led to removal. One young woman described her placement in foster care as the most traumatic experience of her life. She said her foster provider would “party all night long” and she and her brothers often went to bed hungry. When she described her life with her mother, she lamented, “I know my mom struggled with addiction, but I was always in a clean home with clean clothes. . . I was never hungry, made good grades, involved in sports, and my mom never missed a game.”32 Ironically, her foster provider also suffered from 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
This loss can be compounded when the experience in foster care is worse than the conditions that led to removal. One young woman described her placement in foster care as the most traumatic experience of her life. She said her foster provider would “party all night long” and she and her brothers often went to bed hungry. When she described her life with her mother, she lamented, “I know my mom struggled with addiction, but I was always in a clean home with clean clothes. . . I was never hungry, made good grades, involved in sports, and my mom never missed a game.”32 Ironically, her foster provider also suffered from 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:
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,
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 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:
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
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:
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.
References
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
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 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.
15 Gottlieb, supra note 11, at 3.
16 Id.
17 ASFA, supra note 8; Agnel Philip, Eli Hager, and Suzy Khimm, The “Death Penalty” of Child Welfare: In Six Months or Less, Some Parents Lose Their Kids Forever PROPUBLICA (Dec. 20, 2022, 8:30 AM), https:// www.propublica.org/ article/six-months-or-lessparents-lose-kids-forever.
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.newyorker.com/ magazine /2023/04/10/ living-in-adoptions-emotionalaftermath.
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. accounts-to-texas-senatecommittee.
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-fromthe-lived-experience-of-twotransracial-adoptees/.
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/ the-psychological-effects-ofbeing-separated-from-yourchild.html.
54 Unnur A Valdimarsdo, et al., The mother’s risk of premature death after child loss across two centuries, ELIFE (Nov. 12, 2019), 1.
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-to-fostercare-endangers-motherslives-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/0.1080/15548732.201 2.715268.
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, 814-815 (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.
67 Id. at 1682.
68 Id.
69 Geddes, supra note 58, at 814.
70 Broadhurst & Mason, supra note 7, at 25.
71 Id.
72 Id. at 26.
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/.
