I am pleased to see the majority of comments and especially the most recommended ones strongly reject the bias toward the needs and desires of the drug addict mother of this piece and instead correctly understand the needs of the child are paramount. I really wonder why the moral compass of the Times is so off on pieces like this.
28
The vast majority of the comments support the foster system's intervention on behalf of the best interests of this child. Why would The Times publish an article like this which appears to have great sympathy for the addict mother but not so much for the child? Of course she has a sad story, don't all addicts? But she is just starting out on her latest sobriety, and she continues to live with her partner who is still using, not a good signifier for her long-term sobriety. To The Times: Listen to what your readers are telling you. There are stories where it will be clear that an injustice has been done to the mother; this is not one of those stories.
23
What an irresponsible and biased article -- NYT doesn't get off the hook just by labeling it "Opinion". I have fostered children in two states; kinship placements are always preferred, so there is almost certainly a very good reason why relatives were not approved to foster this little boy. It's wonderful that the mother is clean and sober -- now. When she wasn't, and even after the child was placed in foster care, she and the child's father clearly made decisions that endangered him. The best interests of the child, not the mother's regret, is the sole criterion for decision-making when it comes to kids in care. As it should be. A responsible journalist would have included some stats on what happens after a child is reunified with a substance abusing birth parent. All too frequently, those children wind up back in care after experiencing further neglect and abuse. And by that point, they are considered by many people to be "unadoptable."
25
I am a professional journalist who has also taught journalism at the university level. I am amazed that a member of the New York Times editorial board would take at face value, with no real verification, a self-interested person's account of her own victimization by other people whose perspectives aren't reported.
Interlandi's attempts to multi-source the core Brayden story are minimal. Unmentioned is the tragic history of children left adrift in foster care for years by courts giving fifth, sixth, seventh and 15th chances to addicted birth parents. Unmentioned are the children who die at the hands of "boyfriends" or in other circumstances after their mothers get yet another chance. The missing context is appalling.
I realize this is advocacy, but advocacy journalism is also bound to the fundamental processes of truth-telling. That the editorial board thinks we should take this piece seriously undermines my faith in its judgment.
35
As someone in a similar situation I have no sympathy for her. You use drugs while pregnant you do not care about the child. Period.
14
Not adding up, this portrait of a young woman “facing addiction” and “losing” her child.
Heroin addict having babies with another heroin addict and gushing about love and cute baby clothes. Get real.
So much of this narrative is blatantly biased and uses language intended to persuade, not to inform.
Particularly offensive is “facing addiction.” Like it’s a natural disaster, not a nightmare of her own making visited on her two little kids.
13
So where was Lindsey's concern for Brayden when she was shooting up heroin while pregnant with him? She made poor choices and it cost her. It is strange that other family members or friends couldn't act as Brayden's foster parents until Lindsey found her way out of addiction; but we don't know the full story. Brayden's in a safe place now. We need to be concerned for his sister Hailey.
14
we adopted our grandson his mother, had relapses to heroin. there wasnothing more heartbreaking when his mother, my daughter did not answer her door at the scheduled time to visit. he only began to heal, connect and feel secure after we stopped visits. each child has only one childhood. it is unfair for them to wait for love and security. what a biased article. my heart goes out to the agencies and families who stepped up
23
While I feel for this mother, this article is written from a perspective that is willing to sugar coat the preventable tragedies that can and do occur when young children are in the care of parents struggling with addiction. I do hope this mother is able to continue on her road to recovery and reunite with her daughter, but we can not overlook the incredible risk of leaving a baby alone while their parent overdoses on heroin. I appreciate the author's intention to humanize this family, but shedding such a negligent and malicious light on the system that is trying to support this child is unfair and unproductive.
13
A few months sober is not a validation that she is off heroin. Like most heroin addicts relapse is only a short step away. The fact the father has relapsed only provides further proof for social workers that the child should not be returned to that environment. Ms. Jarratt should focus on the child she has and pray that her son will be adopted by a family that will give him a loving and stable family environment.
12
I can't believe the number of people willing to risk the future of a child with a drug addict who happens to be sober at the moment. She is NOT the victim here. Her child is the victim of her bad choices and everyone should be worried about what is best for that child first and anyone else a distant second.
21
This article strikes me as a perfect exemplar of the western, backwards view of addiction and addicted people: we apply a moralizing religiosity to the mental and health issue that is addiction.
By that rigid measure, the mother in this situation deserves to have her child removed: she doesn’t deserve to have support and help to keep her in good health so that she can recover from her addiction and find reasons to stay off drugs, including being able to take care of her son.
People don’t become addicts for kicks. They often go through periods of depression, illness or some other life difficulty that they are ill equipped to process and deal with in a healthy way, and drugs are always there to offer escape. Addiction is a slippery slope that any one of us can fall down; we ignore that basic fact at our peril.
Give an addicted person a reason to live, to connect with their life, and give them lifelines to develop the coping skills they lack, and they will almost always choose to stay off drugs. But we seem to prefer to think of people with addictions as criminal or deserving of scorn, not as human beings who need help.
2
@RM I disagree with your assessment. People aren't saying the mother doesn't deserve support to keep her off drugs. They just believe the child's best interests should be more important than hers.
You indicate that she should be allowed to take care of her son to help give her a reason to stay off of drugs. A child isn't a tool, though. Her son shouldn't be used for the purpose of keeping his mom sober.
Custody issues should be decided by what is best for the child, not what is best for the parent.
I think a lot of people have compassion for the mother and want her to do well, but also acknowledge that being a capable parent goes beyond simply wishing to be one.
17
I understand your perspective, but children are too fragile to be used as experiments to test whether or not their parents can use them as an incentive to recover from addiction, which as you said, is an incredibly crippling disease.
8
Why didn't the writer of this article interview the foster parents and the social services who worked on the case? Without the full picture we can't possibly know what is the most sensible decision among a sad set of choices. Only time will tell, of course, but as a matter of sound journalism, this is so one-sided (and of course heart-rending.)
13
To me the child's mother should be thankful for the people who are taking care of her child and the best way to show her love to her child and the foster parents would be staying away from them. The child is having a real chance in life and the mother should never take that away from him. I am sorry for the mother, but she had the freedom to choose the child and had choosen heroin instead. That is the way life works!
12
This article is written to suggest the big, bad Child Protective Services swooped in to take her baby. It sounds like CPS saved her baby! The article is also missing a lot of facts. Biology is not the be all and end all of parenthood. Love, nurturing and care are more important and one has to wonder if she can provide that for 2 kids for the next 20 years, given the tough road of a heroin addict.I wish her well with her treatment, but don’t believe she should sentence her kids to that journey.
12
If your parent is an addict - even a sober one - you live always waiting for the other shoe to drop. No matter how good their behavior, you wait to be blindsided when the addict reverts. I grew up in a household dominated by my father's addiction to alcohol. He could con anyone into believing anything. He ruined so many years of my life that I can't count them. The priority here is the child. The parents made their choices and will no doubt make them again. All they have to do is wait until the child turns 18 and they can re-connect and upend his life then. 16 or 17 years is not that long a wait. At least at 18 he will have a support structure and a fighting chance.
17
Adoptees, their biological parents and their adoptive parents have worked out a variety of accommodations that allow for visitations and more. When I've read about such interventions they seem quite humane. Maybe it makes sense to attempt some of these before an either/or decision is made.
1
This story is obviously biased. I’m disappointed it was published.
19
When a parent loses parental rights, it usually takes 3 years. I was a foster care family specialist with the hardest cases involving newborn babies addicted to crack or heroin on my caseload. It is hard to understand and hard comprehend but the statistics are relapse is inevitable, especially with the pressures of parenthood. What I observed is that in NY State, County family court judges are not consistent when it comes to reunification. When family members are available, DSS does place youth/babies with the family. However many times, Family members to have issues, are deemed unfit, or dont comply with the terms of visitation of the biological parents. Laws are structures with safety first of the child.
11
I don't understand why the child was moved from his first foster home. If he was happy there, and well cared-for, then this was a bad move emotionally for the child.
The story seems to imply that the child was moved further away to keep his biological family -- and especially his mom -- from visiting him. That is just WRONG.
And something seems off about the family that wants to adopt. Since the parent's rights haven't been terminated, there is no way that they could be sure they would be able to adopt. Why insist on being called "mommy" then?
3
This article raises more questions than it provides answers. Why wasn't the boy placed with the grandmother? That's been a pretty common solution during this opiod crisis and the grandmother clearly cared for the boy and visited him (or tired to) often. I disagree with most commenters- the boy should be his mother if she's clean. After all, she's raising another child right now so it's not reasonable to say she's incapable of doing it. Heroine is one of those drugs that people really should just never try. But if the mom stays clean she should be able to raise her children.
2
How long will she stay clean?
6
The National Institute on Drug Abuse says that relapse rate of drug addicts is in the range of 40-60%.
NIDA also says "treatment for drug addiction usually isn't a cure, but addiction can be managed successfully" enabling people "to counteract addiction's disruptive effects on their brain and behavior and regain control of their lives."
Ms. Jarratt has been clean for only a few months, and there are further risks associated with rejoining her son's addict father, so it seems prudent to wait longer to ensure they both can remain clean.
Of course Ms. Jarratt wants her son Brayden returned to her. However, Child Protective Services has a legal mandate to represent society's interests and those of the fostered son, but cannot for reasons of confidentiality present its side of the case for keeping Brayden in a foster home. Given the regulations CPS must follow, it seems unlikely that it is arbitrarily keeping Brayden separated from his mother.
It is odd that the article tries to develop sympathy for the mother, yet says little about the father who I presume is not married to the mother--yet they have had a second child. Is there something about the father that CPS knows that the author of this article does not? Is the father as anxious as the mother to have Brayden back? Why doesn't he marry Ms. Jarratt? Is the father too unsympathetic to fit the story the author is trying to tell?
So many important and unanswered questions lead to an unsatisfactory article.
9
She is on solid ground now for several months ! Really ? The social worker should know , and probably does ,that addiction is an illness of relapse . If the kid goes back to mom , with only a few months clean ( she says ) and something happens to the kid because of the recurring active addition of mom the social worker , besides being devastated , might lose her career . You gotta give time , time . Easy does it !
6
This article reminds me of the campaign in the early 1980s by New York liberals led by Norman Mailer to get Jack Abbott released from prison: Abbott's prison writing proved he was a sensitive soul who'd been rehabilitated, advocates said. Keeping him locked up was simply the reactionary impulse of the system to deny freedom.
Authorities bowed to the pressure and released him, and of course Abbott stabbed to death a young waiter named Richard Adan six weeks later.
The stakes are too high to override the professionals on the basis of how well-intentioned people "feel" about this situation.
Who is going to take the responsibility if this child gets harmed when his mother crumbles again under life's pressure and resumes her addiction?
17
Its really hard to know what's going on in a case like this from a newspaper article and so I would hesitate to judge anyone really. I'm a volunteer advocate for children in cases just like this in WA State. Certainly I feel heartbroken for the Mom in this story. She really seems to have turned things around. And, if she really has, I truly hope she can regain custody of her child because children do best with their parents if their parents are able to care for them. But these are complex issues that may not be able to be fully explored in a newspaper article. I found some of the information in this article misleading or suspicious. To say a hearing was postponed 'without reason' seems very odd...that just doesn't happen in my experience. Hearings are legal events. The court needs to sign off on a postponement and provide a reason. Certainly if that happened that would be very unusual. Also its important to know that if a parents rights have been terminated that means that after a long period of time (usually at least 3 years where I live) a parent was not able to convince a court she could adequately parent her child. Children need permanency and 3 years is a long time to wait for a child. I don't know the details of this case but a child needs a permanent home and parents do not have an unlimited amount of time to get their life together. I sincerely hope that both parent and child in this case can find some peace and well-being in their lives.
10
A sad situation and certainly state agencies can be too zealous in given cases. However, a few months clean don't prove much when the addiction is heroin.
And the father is an obvious problem.
6
I am skeptical about this mother’s good faith. No, “they” have not sold away her son. She is not the hapless victim here. Her behavior set things into motion and she is living with the consequences. Sadly, the act of tattooing a child’s name on one’s arm does not mean that one is a committed parent. Instead, it’s the sort of grandstanding that is often exhibited by neglectful and/or abusive parents. A trial court had enough evidence that the mother was unwilling or unable to parent her son and TERMINATED HER PARENTAL RiGHTS. As a retired lawyer who used to represent children in these cases, I’m surprised that she has been permitted any visitation pending the outcome of her legal appeal.Once her parental rights were terminated, all focus shifts to finding an adoption for the child, who needs permanency.
Even though her rights to her first child have been terminated, the law gives her the opportunity to adequately parent the new baby. Thankfully, she appears to be adequately parenting her second child. Sadly, it’s not at all certain that the mother will remain drug-free, unentangled with a drug-abusing partner and provide care to this second child that rises above the neglect threshold or is not actively abusive. Time will tell. One hopes that this mother will work with parenting coaches and social workers, and her own mental health professionals and/or substance abuse counselors, for the mother’s well-being and the well-being of the new child.
14
What they are doing is making Lindsey more prone to relapse. I agree that "Recovery" is a lifetime job. IMHO - Mishka Terplan's opinion would REALLY matter.
1
Another anti foster care article from the times... What is the goal of these? I wonder if there are any positive stories of fostering, or maybe ones about negative outcomes for kids of addicts that were not taken into care? That was a rhetorical question btw.
6
I think all the former druggie moms should be dealt with after we deal with all the sober, never druggie dads that hardly can see their kids. I was given about 25% of my daughters time and the recommendation was made by a psychologist that had a drug conviction for a form of cocaine!!! We are quick to blame dads, but very slow to fight for their parental rights and more importantly fight for the rights of children to have equal access to their parents.
Another boring article pressing the point that "Mom" is the number one brand. This would be like another article saying how great being heterosexual is.
NYT is really not staking out new ground here for an over looked victim. Its not even clear that mom is the victim. There are 1000's of victims in the USA called dads that pay to raise children, pay on time, and don't get 50/50 custody.
Why not be original and help Dads and the kids that love them?
2
A few months of sobriety does not give you your child back, no matter how many fluffy, puffy adjectives a NYT's writer can ply into one story. Here in this typical take, the system is bad, the foster parents are evil and everyone is working against a woman who endangered her child. Stay sober for another year, then talk about getting your kid back. Good luck to her.
9
It’s hard not to be annoyed by a piece like this — the demographics of the opiate crisis encourages sympathy toward addict mothers. It is a travesty that this (white) woman has lost her beautiful (white) boy. We are to feel terrible about this.
But this isn’t new: during the crack epidemic, a disproportionate number of black women had their own beautiful (black) babies wrenched away, yet this was automatically seen as deserved. They were “crack mothers,” inhuman machines of drug use, and they were considered utterly irresponsible, unworthy of sympathy, beyond any help.
Of course this present situation deserves our empathy. But I think we should ask where this empathy was two decades ago. Did the NYT ever publish such a thoughtful piece about a crack mother? Would anyone have read it or cared?
10
@Jennifer S
Must have forgotten Hollywood flick: "Losing Isaiah".
2
Cam you please include more than one sentence about the father?
5
The fact that CPS would not consider any relatives or family friends for kinship care or legal custody indicates that some critical facts have been omitted, perhaps due to the privacy rights of those interested parties. It suggests that there are systemic problems within the mother’s family and circle of friends that would disqualify them. If not, CPS is being unnecessarily punitive to the mother and not acting in the best interests of the child.
15
Even if the mother is correct and the hearing was moved because of the timing of the father's release, I don't know why anyone would be upset about this. Two addicts reuniting after getting clean and one being in prison would be a huge stressor. And it's well-documented that newly released addicts have much higher rates of relapse and overdose. It seems like a court *should* take this into account when deciding custody instead of rushing a decision right before the family is about to go through a huge change that statistically leads to a lot of relapses.
That they're upset about this type of thing, instead of accepting it as reality, indicates to me that they're not fully there as far as long-term recovery.
12
Compare this store to this one:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1989/08/06/crack-babies-the-worst-threat-is-mom-herself/d984f0b2-7598-4dc1-9846-3418df3a5895/?utm_term=.7b4d3209e970
Or this one:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/letters/crack-mothers-children.html
The message:
drug addicted mothers are demons if they are black but victims if they are white.
6
@Umm..excuse me. Well, if it makes you feel any better, most folks in this comment section agree that all drug addicted mothers are demons - regardless of race.
6
Many here have a knee jerk response to this tear jerking story...
"she is the biological mother"...really? THAT is all it takes to become a mother?
see: https://www.ajc.com/news/national/baby-death-ruled-homicide-after-parents-overdose/T0H5ZyXjcBFrT9gkMDao8I/
Yes, a 5 month old baby died of starvation when both her parents overdosed on Fentanyl, in the U.S., in Dec. 2016. It took the baby four days to slowly starve to death in her crib.
10
Using H while pregnant is the deal breaker..
Sorry lady..
14
Children are not an accessory, and can not be used as currency anymore. Not in 2018. Simple fact. Children have rights now. They, and their rights must be protected.
16
I speak as someone whose parent was on and off and on and off of drugs until I was 12 and went to live with someone else. It was a wretched, abusive life that she and her many men friends subjected us to. I wish we had been removed for good much, much earlier. A year to a child can be half of their lifetime, but only 1/24th of a lifetime to the parent. The timeline should be by the age of the child, not the desires of the parent.
26
@fireweed
Thank you.
4
Giving birth is a biological fact that doesn't involve a skill. Loving your child is not enough to make you a good parent.
Being a parent is a never-ending,24/7 job that lasts for decades, and takes dedication and sacrifice. I don't doubt that Ms Jarrett loves her babies. But does she love them more than her own needs?
If Ms Jarrett can stay sober & successfully parent her daughter, excellent, and if so she should have visitation rights to her son. But I think that the odds are higher that she will lose her daughter as well
And yes,why are none of her relatives considered to be guardians for her son? Either the reporter didn't do a thorough investigation, or she is leaving at part of the story.
16
Let us consider that CPS cannot speak aboyt this case due to privacy concerns.
While it is commendable that this young woman is wirking to stay clean and to rebuild her life, she has also chosen to remain in a relationship , and to have a second child with, a young man who is an addict with a criminal record.
Being biologically capable of reproducing does not mean people are capable of being parents.
9
How nice addicts are suddenly human once they're white.
10
Think about what the life Brayden's parents lived during his first year while he was in their sole care. What did they do to raise money to live and to buy their next fix? Did they arrange for a sober caregiver while they shot up? Did others engaging in drug use or criminal behavior have access to the child? Were the drugs and needles always safely stored out of reach of the toddler? Their behavior endangered little Brayden. Brayden's father is still using and is criminally involved. Does giving custody to Lindsey mean he will have parental rights, and that she will be entangled with him for the next 18 years? The court must make a decision that is best for Brayden, but the reality is that Lindsey's chances of remaining sober - a long hard slog - may be better if she has only her self to care for and is no longer entangled with her ex.
9
The strange thing is the timeline. I can understand a social worker's reluctance to return a child to a newly recovered addict. However, why is there a timeline for parental termination? That doesn't make any sense. The legal assumption is all addicts, and therefore all addiction, are the same. They are not.
You also have to wonder why social workers would allow Ms. Jarratt to retain custody of her daughter if the government views her as too risky for the older son. This seems like a contradiction. Either take both children away or give both children back. Why one but not the other?
This sounds like an example where the law is too rigid to adapt to individual circumstances.
3
We took guardianship of our granddaughters as my daughter struggled with addiction and I don’t understand why this agency would not place the child with the grandmother. In Georgia dfacs had the same policy of not giving the child to family, their thinking was that if you had an addicted child you must be to blame. That policy was successfully challenged. We kept our grands away from their mother while she was using but now with them in their 20’s and her getting sober they are trying to rebuild a relationship,
7
Actions have consequences. I feel like today's young generation doesn't understand that. If you screw up, you can learn from it, but you cannot escape the consequences. When an innocent child is involved, his or her well-being must take precedence over the adult's feelings and desires.
12
It's not clear to me why the grandmother or another relative was not given physical custody of little Brayden, perhaps as a foster parent with some caveats relating to Ms. Jarratt. That would allow the child to be in a secure environment with a loving relative, and could allow the mother to see the child under supervision. Assuming she remained sober, it would be a natural path for Ms. Jarrett to eventually regain physical and legal custody of her lttle fellow. And it would provide a measure of continuity and stability for the child in the process. Certainly there should be restrictions as to the distance the foster parents can be from the natural mother. It sounds as though they are deliberately taking all steps possible to create an environment where a court would find "continuity" for the child with them. And that is not fair to Ms. Jarratt nor to Brayden.
2
For once I applaud the Social Workers in continuing to put the child’s future, health and safety as a priority - even if that means that child has a few scars!
Heroin addicts most of the time relapse! And when they do, they don’t tell people and it goes undetected until they get caught or die.
Chances of this lovely lady relapsing is over 50% while we can not predict what the future holds. If she does relapse, the life of the other child will also be in limbo!
I am saying all of this as last year I lost my best friend to heroin overdose. I didn’t even know he had relapse but his immediate family knew. They were hiding it from everyone. I saw my friend many times when he was apparently high but never knew. I found this out after he passed away. He was a heroin addict and had relapsed.
My heart goes out to this mother but I hate to say that she should accept this and be happy that her son has a safe and secure future. Maybe this is all she can do for him. Now.
I know I may be saying this against public liking. But it’s best this child is raised this way.
8
Sorry .
Not buying it.
- child was "taken by strangers" - some of the best people I know are foster parents.
- "baby clutched her shirt [and screamed]'" - babies do that.
- "[mother] weaned herself off heroin .. slowly" - still struggling with addiction .
Look, MA has a HUGE safety net for people in recovery.
And a few years back we found a toddler in a trash bag washed up in Boston Harbor
Unemployed Mother with a long history of addiction was "trying" to stay clean.
When does the kid take priority ?
That kid found in the trash bag is not around to wish she had been adopted.
18
Does Ms. Jerratt have a steady job? Is she training for a job that would pay her an income where she can support two children - alone, if necessary? Does Ms. Jerratt have a home of her own or is she living with her mother? Ms. Jarratt does not sound like she is on “solid ground” to me. At this point, if her son was returned to her, there would be two infants to take care of - could Ms. Jerratt and her mom handle this? I dont think so. Learning not to bury one’s feelings is a long, long way away from having the maturity or the ability to provide a safe and loving home for two young children.
12
Sure, the parents love the child but do they love him more than heroin? It comes down to one or the other.
17
She brought another child into the world while trying to stay clean. This woman makes really poor choices and her children are suffering because of it. She should be not having any children and should be focusing on staying off drugs. The children’s welfare has to come first and foremost not the irresponsible mother’s. I can’t get over the fact she OD’d in the presence of her child. Her choice of a partner is in out of jail and on drugs ... no more children stay focused on staying clean.
21
Having been a foster parent myself, I can only speculate as to what CPS told the foster parents. In my own experience, CPS took a strangely adversarial approach to foster parents and it is quite conceivable that they have been misled about this child's availability for adoption.
1
Wow this is a tough one. I feel for Ms. Jarratt but at the same time her child's life cannot be put on hold. I question the wisdom of having a second child when she was incapable of mothering her first child. This poor woman has some serious lapses in judgement. The child needs to be in a stable and safe environment, something Ms. Jarratt cannot provide at least not consistently.
12
If parental rights were terminated, the Court has given Ms. Jarrett many chances to work her treatment and regain her son. At some point, in the best interest of the child, permanence is required! Termination is an extreme remedy and only done when all other avenues are explored, once termination occurs, the biological family has no further rights with regards to the child.
9
Perhaps it's not known, but I wish the essay discussed why the case workers refused to place her son with her mother or cousin. Seems like placing him with a family member would have been better for every one.
And given the mom's obvious commitment to sobriety, she and her son should be reunited asap.
My heart breaks for both of them. I hope the NYT follows-up on this story and let's readers know if this article results in a positive outcome for mother and son (that is, being reunited).
He looks like an absolutely adorable boy, so it's easy to understand why his foster family may want to adopt him. But if there's a chance he can remain with his biological family, it should be taken.
And what if she relapsed, which is statistically likely. At what point do you look out for the child? Do you think biological connection outweighs a home where Daddy is overdosing?
3
Not sure about adoption laws but it seems a stretch that a foster family can adopt a baby without the child's mother or family consent. I was in foster case from 8-18 years old and adoption was only an issue when I turned 18. My foster family was loving and nurturing and my biological mother was disabled by alcohol use disorder. My biological mother always loved me however was unable to care for me and my brother. She quit Alcohol many times it was staying quit was the problem. I myself had a long slow recovery from alcohol use disorder and the impact of substance use is devastating. For me the foster care system worked and I'm grateful. Not sure why this woman is having a difficult time. Maybe she should get a good family lawyer. Something is missing from this article, it's not like to government wants to snatch kids from their mothers and keep them separated. The aim of foster care is alway reunion. As I say not sure what the law is in that state.
2
@Carl Kent - "Ms. Jarratt's parental rights were terminated." Based on her history of "drifting" in and out of sobriety and the court system, we should be able to understand why.
Perhaps the issue we have is the "aim of foster care"? The aim of foster care should be the long-term health of both the parent(s) and the child(ren). If that includes reunion, then so be it. But reunion should not be the driving force as it unintentionally leads to overestimating the depth of recovery and underestimating the likelihood that the child(ren) would need to be removed again following a relapse. Thoughts?
8
This article, unfortunately, comes across as drastically biased in favor of the mother. We're told that the grandmother was not allowed to have custody, but we're not told WHY. Major red flag there, since kinship placements are preferred. We're told that the mother had father had difficulties, such as shoplifting and an overdose with the baby present, but we're not given any details. Was the baby lying next to drugs that he could pick up during the overdose? Did the baby go without food for hours while his father was unconscious? Did the mother flee a store to escape arrest with the baby in the car? Did the baby get neglected while the mother was high? Can't tell from this article. It feels like the writer is trying to make these transgressions seem minor. If something did happen to the baby while he was with her mother, the press would be all over authorities. I'm not saying the child won't suffer from being taken from his mother, but I'm not going to assume that authorities made that decision lightly or with little reason.
32
Even the headline of this piece is dishonest. Nobody "was addicted" to heroin; opiate recovery is an ongoing, life-long journey.
11
Articles likes these only tell one side of the story because CPS keeps their files confidential. The mother may absolutely have grounds to appeal, but there may be more to her story that she's not telling this reporter. This simple fact should be mentioned in this piece.
7
You learn, addicts can’t be trusted. The odds of success are not on the side of an addict. 1 in 4 perhaps. Put a husband and wife together and the odds go to 1 in 8 that both stay clean long term. These are not people that belong around children.
13
This is not reporting. It is advocacy, and should be stated as such.
Every word carefully chosen: Even if the first sentence "live with strangers." He lived with licensed foster care parents who did not have drug problems that threatened his life.
A few months of sobriety? How many peoples' New Years' resolutions last "a few months?"
This child deserves stability. And if the child was placed back in the mother's care and she relapsed? Would Ms. Interlandi write an article apologizing for being wrong? No. And it would be the child who would pay, as she went on to write another article about the mistreatment of women.
Go work in child welfare for awhile. Live with mistakes where children end up being dead because of poor care. Then write an article.
41
The NYT should do better than write as shallow a story as this. While I wish this young mother the best, she continues to make bad choices. This baby has been in 3 homes during a time when he needs stability the most. I am glad she is sober, but why pregnant again, and still with the father? Children should not be sacrificed for their parents. If none of her relatives were chosen as foster carers, there is a reason. This reporter shows a naivete about child development, addiction, and foster care that is disappointing.
30
Ms. Interlandi is sentimentalizing Ms. Jarratt and her illness portraying her as the victim of rigid, unfeeling CPS workers. The fact is that addiction has a devastating impact on children socially and emotionally leading to a lifetime of dysfunction. I have complete confidence in the ability of professional social workers to make informed decisions regarding the welfare of children whose parents suffer from addiction disorders.
This story is told from Ms. Jarratt's perspective through Ms. Interlandi's biased viewpoint Even so, there is more than enough information here for any reasonable person to conclude that Ms. Jarratt has no business being a parent at this time in her life. What's missing here is any discussion of Ms. Jarratt's journey thru Virginia Family Courts. I can only imagine what the court-ordered social study in her custody case must contain. Courts, not CPS, order family separation and they do so with good reason.
Would be nice if Ms. Interlandi put cloying sentimentality aside long enough to analyze issues such as these with greater objectivity and perspicacity.
18
This is a (sad) one-sided story. I'd like to hear from the other side: Social Workers & Foster Families. Why didn't the State allow other family members to care for the child? Is this a Virginia thing?
I feel the information given is incomplete and would like to to know more and frankly - I am thrilled the Mom is doing so well - but I would be wary of a months recovery and would be more comfortable with a longer period of time before restoring the Mom's rights.
7
i also wish the article discussed why the grandmother or other relative was denied custody.
4
I'm conflicted. I get that the mother has worked very hard to recover and be a good parent but... then we also hear that she had a second child around the time the dad relapsed. With the mother knowing full well, the power of heroine, did it not occur to her to do everything in her power to ensure she did not bring another innocent child into this world, without waiting a few more years for both of them to be clean? It's not clear how long Mr. Jarrell was clean/relapsed/clean again, etc.
My point is, some people are far too lackadaisical when it comes to bring life into this world. Yes, contraception is not foolproof, but far too many take it lightly, or say they can't 'afford' it...that having money for heroine is more important.
I am sick to death of so many children being brought into this world and into situations which are doomed from the get-go. Having children is not a god-given right. I myself love kids, and so it angers me so much to see all the suffering of children, all because of selfish, reckless, irresponsible adults.
13
She did not "lose" her son. She and her husband were deemed to be unfit parents by virtue of the multiple horrible choices they made. Ms. Jarratt has no one to blame but herself. We also have no idea of whether her mother or any other members of her family are responsible caregivers.
Then she goes and has yet another child?
If there are any victims here it is the children. All children deserve to be raised in a stable environment. Excuse me if I don't consider a few months of sobriety, a history of criminal behavior, a new tattoo and a father in jail to make the cut.
22
Amen
3
In these comments I see mostly anecdotes about successes or failures. I'm sure most people can point to anecdotes on both sides here.
It seems that there are a couple larger and more structural questions. The notion that a mom can be declared de facto not a parent is problematic. The timing of such a hard decision seems very challenging. The best interest of the child criteria really isn't so great. What would happen if the new home became problematic? Could there be a 60:40 weight decision in favor of adoption that changes to 40:60 when other conditions change? Finally, what is the justification for letting an unfit parent keep another child? Is that an admission that the experts really don't know what to do, or is it a recognition that no immediate crisis needs to be solved? It's very troubling and I hope the underappreciated and underpaid folks making the decisions know how important their work is.
I like the notion that more parents is probably better and a structured plan to keep everybody connected might be best. Jarratt may never be able to parent appropriately, but she should be able to visit.
Such a shame.
3
" Several friends and relatives had offered to take custody themselves, but representatives from Child Protective Services said in a recent hearing that they would not consider any of them for guardianship." The writer is doing us a disservice here by not digging further, seeming to imply that this is Child Protective Services out of control. Perhaps there are good reasons, and CPS is concerned about the welfare of the child? This is a very biased article.
24
The tone of this article is dishearteningly biased and harsh. It feels like the article’s intention is to blame CPS for family separation and vilify foster parents. I understand the mother’s frustration at family members not being allowed to have custody, because my family and I took custody of my nephew when my sister was unable to care for him because of domestic abuse and addiction. However, that is a privilege, not a right. If you lose your child, you don’t get a say. If CPS believes that your family will not follow the safety plan to the letter, they have every right to place him somewhere else.
“Months” isn’t enough time for a recovering addict. I know they’re trying to make things right and reconnect with their family, but they need a full 12 months, minimally. Relapse is a part of recovery and continuity of loving and adequate care is more important than the mother getting her child back the minute she is clean. Reunification is the goal of foster care, but sobriety success needs to be proven long-term (at least a year) before you disrupt a child and risk him falling back into the system soon after reunification.
I feel for this young mother. The system does need to be altered to stop these speedy adoptions when the parents are following their parenting plan toward reunification. However, she needs to realize the full consequences of her actions and the depth of her disease. She may be a rare case without relapses, but that is so rare. She needs to realize that.
14
As much as I want this mother to succeed, I want this child to have a safe and stable home. As mentioned by others, her length of sobriety is too short and her chance of relapse too high to put this child in harms way. I genuinely feel for her as a mother, but feel more strongly for her child as a person who was removed from her birth mother’s home for addiction and neglect. This child, any child, does not deserve any of this. Hopefully he will be able to remain in a stable, loving environment, one where love is not simply words and empty promises but reflected in the actions of a parent putting the child’s needs before their own.
7
This article should be titled "Me, Myself and I." It includes nothing about the needs of the child. One parent is back in jail, the other clean for just several months. No jobs. The qualifications for parenting in this case seem to be a general feeling of love plus excitement over being presented with a blue onesie and a second out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Only folks who have have had addicted parents that do nothing to further their education or prospects (that would be me) understand how vital it is to keep them away from children.
19
This is a really one-sided article. As a foster parent who adopted in OH, I know that CPS makes every considerable effort to place displaced children with kin. Only if that is not possible, due to lack of appropriate placements, is the child then placed with strangers. This article leaves many questions unanswered, such as why there were no appropriate kinship placements; similarly, the “maybe” speculation about why the appeals hearing was delayed is irresponsible—the court system obviously gave a reason for delay, and it is only the laziness of the author to discover what it was. I severely doubt several of the events were arbitrary, as that wouldn’t pass legal muster. As always, the courts must balance the rights of the parent, with the rights of the child. Let’s not judge those who suffer the disease of addiction, but let’s not hear only one side of the story either, please.
23
These cases are seldom as cut and dry as the media like to portray them. I expect better than this from the New York Times. You present the mother's story and that is important. However, these cases are highly confidential. State agencies, courts and even attorneys cannot offer commentary or fill in the blanks when children are in state custody. It is a rare case that is limited solely to issues of addiction. There are always underlying issues of mental illness, domestic violence, trauma and a host of other issues. Ultimately judges terminate parental rights after a trial where they hear and consider witnesses and evidence. Nothing is final until a parent has the opportunity to seek appellate review of a trial court judge's decision. We may not have all of the facts surrounding this family, but we do know that this mother was accorded and exercised her constitutional due process rights. I don't see an injustice here. I just see sloppy journalism, designed to elicit an emotional response and utterly lacking any serious effort to address the complexity of addiction in the child protection context. It is truly disappointing that the New Times decided to print this.
13
Whatever happened to compassion and salvation? This woman deserves a second chance.
1
@Fed Up - yes, the mother is entirely deserving of compassion and salvation. But given the realities of addiction, why throw the defenseless child up as some kind of star on her addiction-recovery chart? Where is the compassion for the child's welfare?
8
@Fed Up And her son deserves his first one by being raised in a stable home.
10
I have seen another side of this kind of situation: one of my daughter's best friends has been with the same loving, stable, amazing foster family since she was 4 days old. They are the only stable family she has ever known. The birth mother disappeared at some point. The birth father couldn't get his act together over a protracted period of time and finally relinquished parental rights recently - just a few months shy of the child's 4th birthday. The foster family is still waiting for a court date to finalize the adoption.
As time went by as I have known this child, I was outraged that even at the age of 3 (or older!) there seemed to be the possibility that she could be removed from her foster family because her birth father would not relinquish parental rights. I cannot even fathom how traumatizing that would have been for the child. My point being: there has to be some kind of reasonable cutoff in which the wellbeing of the child in terms of continuity of care takes precedence. For birth parents to drag things out so long becomes selfish at some point. There has to be some accountability: the child was taken because the birth parent messed up. Things have to be really bad before child services step in. This article mentions how child services opted not to place the baby with a family member of his mom. Some readers seem to think this is cruel and unreasonable, but there has to be a reason that other family members were not deemed appropriate.
10
The use of the term "strangers" in the first sentence of this article sets a very harsh tone against the people who work in good faith trying to rescue children from unfortunate circumstances. No one wants a child taken from his or her mother; such a result is the worst outcome for all parties. How many stories have we heard on the news about a child that CPS failed to protect? One loss is too many - and usually addiction (and mental illness that is usually the precursor to severe addiction) is the root cause of caregiver atrocities. It's not clear what should happen with this poor child, but the connotations inspired by this author does make it seemed quite biased against the authorities.
17
A full year of sobriety is the minimum requirement. Recovering addicts are told not to make any major life changes until they have been sober for at least a year. And, that would include having a baby and getting back a child. The reason: an addicts brain is not sufficiently recovered until a year mark. At that point, there is a higher probability of continued recovery.
20
I worked with women addicts (mostly heroin) for over ten years, first as a therapist and then as the director of a long-term residential program. As tragic as addiction is for the mothers --most of whom have been the victims of chronic childhood trauma -- their children are truly the "innocent" victims. Kids are not guinea pigs and the vast majority of addicts relapse repeatedly, even when they have loving hearts and the best of intentions. Not many babies form secure attachments to their addicted mothers -- this I saw again and again. As a society, we need to focus on providing caring, rich, and stable environments for the children of parents who don't have the wherewithal to provide for them themselves. Otherwise, we just create another generation of addicts.
25
It is almost as if the writer of this article failed to consider the most obvious probability:
This woman, who continued to use heroin while pregnant (she stopped 'gradually' so as 'not to harm the baby.' I've never heard anyone say that a mother doing heroin was good for a growing fetus) and who used it after the child was born likely was able to stop temporarily because she no longer had the added stress in her life of an infant child.
Nothing in this one-sided op-ed suggests to me that the woman is capable of staying clean if suddenly confronted with the difficulties of caring for a helpless baby.
At best, leave it to the state officials charged with evaluating the case who have both sides of the story to make a decision. There are too many tragic outcomes of a child being returned to a 'clean' heroin junkie too soon.
15
It is the child's interests that must take overwhelming precedence in matters such as this. Period.
Speedy adoption is the right course. The mother may or may not get her mess of a life untangled at some point in time.
The child deserves a chance for a stable future, free from the self-inflicted wounds of his addict mother.
12
The title of this piece is deceptive and manipulative. Another family separation? Really? And then "a mother fought her heroin addiction?" If you read the piece, you know that the mother has been clean (supposedly clean that is; she lied about being clean when pregnant the first time, so who knows?) for a few MONTHS. Anyone with addiction experience as a user or addiction counselor or family member of an addict will tell you that a few months is nothing. This woman used while she was pregnant, used with an infant in her care, and got pregnant again after losing a child to the foster system because of her drug use. She has not "fought" the addiction. She may be currently fighting it - but the fight is very much a present and ongoing battle that could be tripped up by any number of emotional stressors.
15
This is shameful and VA social services should reverse course. In the name of child protection, it is (unfortunately) not unusual for workers to act like tyrants.
They should be forced to defend their decisions on the standard of “best interests of the child.”
so when does she get to get her kid back? certainly she hasn't forfeited her rights forever.
@Jim New York’s actually the termination of parental rights is exactly what it sounds like — the parent loses all right to the child forever. This can be appealed, but once you lose parental rights, legally speaking you can no longer legally claim to be the child’s parents. The adoptive parents then become the legal parents and they have full say in whether the biological parents ever see the child again.
So to answer your question, if she doesn’t prevail upon appeal, she possibly may not see her child again.
3
Having a biological tie to a child shouldn't entitle you to its custody. A great many more children should be removed from their horrific parents than currently are.
13
Interesting how little attention the child's father receives in the article or the comments. Is it better for this boy to be with his recently-sober birth mom with his birth father in prison rather than in a stable home? I don't know. I do know what is it to be abandoned by your dad at a young age, and that, too, can have lasting and damaging effects to your emotional well-being, regardless of how together your mom is. The ability of both parents to parent should be discussed here.
6
Words matter. From the title, to the tenor of your opening, to the conclusion where there is a reference to selling a child, exposes your deep prejudices, misunderstanding and harmful generalization of what it means to be a foster parent.
My wife and I are foster parents. We were called one day by a Child Protective Services worker who said that they have a four year old in need of placement who was not potty trained, could not speak intelligibly, hit his siblings, and was sometimes violent to himself. He was being removed because of severe neglect by his drug addicted parents. Would you take him? Our answer was YES.
YES! Every Foster parents I know fosters out of a sense of selflessness and a heartfelt concern for children at risk. We go through a process that enforces upon us that our role is to vigorously defend the best interest of the child. We take hours upon hours of required child training and spend our own resources to meet this obligation.
We develop a strong bond with the child and that too is part of the fostering. It is an essential part of the process to letting the child know that he is important and deserves to be loved. Our boy is now almost six, he has developed into a happy regular kid who is looking forward to going to kindergarten. We love him, and he loves us.
Should he go back to mom if she gets clean? Only if it’s in the best interest of the child.
20
Thank you Ken, for making a difference. I may sleep a little better tonight knowing that there are people like you out there!
2
I am stunned that this child has an extended family who would love and care for him while making sure that mom is doing well. I've worked in the past as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for CPS, and the idea is always to keep the children with biological family before considering such drastic measures as adoption. I have seen children returned to mothers who had no business raising them, all in the name of keeping family together. But this case is different. Mom has clearly been doing the work she needs to be a good mother. If she is so bad at it, why is she allowed to keep her baby girl? This little boy should go home, where he belongs.
2
Your idealism is endearing but you’re being hopelessly naive here
1
"She remained sober during her pregnancy..."
Not likely.
It's harsh and seemingly unfair but a drug addicted parent, including one claiming that her admirable journey from addiction to sobriety deserves a "do over" is too much risk for any child to bear.
12
"heroin has a way of erasing time"
How quaint...and poetic...and unhelpful.
Heroin has a way of destroying all of the lives it touches. All addictions have a day-by-day ruinous affect on those closest to the addict. The addict, in the grip of addiction, is not easy to understand, much less forgive, but to blame them is like blaming an earthquake for the destruction and expecting mother earth to be more considerate next time.
There are no good options sometimes. There are addicts who will die in their beds with drugs in their veins and their children sleeping in the other room. Foster parents, too, can and often are flawed. The social workers, even on their best day, know they hardly move the needle, and yet they show up, day after day, and try to help the children.
I am an adoptee, who spent time in foster care, and as a recovering addict with 33 years of continuous sobriety, I could flaunt my opinions of when and where and how I think this story should end. But it's not that simple. It's never that simple.
Dr. Terplan seems like a great find for Ms. Jarratt, and it's wonderful that she has made progress. The story, while one-sided in many way, also is all too common.
It's a worthy op-ed. We should think about and discuss these issues. Changes should be made.
I'd only recommend one thing we can do to start: stop blaming and shaming both the addict and those who want to help the children. Both are humans, fallible. Let's choose give all the benefit of the doubt.
7
Agree with comments about relatives.
A related question is money. In a more middle class family, a relative would have stepped in informally— without involving social work agencies or getting the foster care stipend.
I would encourage the author to explore the role the foster care money plays.
Social work agencies parrot that the stipend is small. That is just not accurate. Children are regularly labeled special needs children, which I believe doubles the stipend. The stipend is tax free and comes every month like clockwork. Moreover, Grandmothers not yet old enough for social security become entitled to various housing and other benefits because they are taking care of a “special needs”child (who has been do designated with an eye towards the money.
Social work agencies know full well that the money is the driving factor for many caregivers. They try to differentiate from the money hungry ones who will do their duty by taking care of the child and the money hungry ones who will skip taking care of the child and lay claim to the stipend snd every other possible benefit.
Apparently, the extended birth family in this case didn’t pass this test.
If the author really wants to delve Into this further she could explore the horrendous problem of teenage runaways who are not reported missing because that could stop the almighty check
7
About 2003, my wife & I were unsuccessful having a baby, having tried over 2 years. As both of us are recovering alcoholics and/or addicts, I believe this to be relevant to this article. At the time, we had been clean & sober over 10 years, each. Therefore, we tried to adopt a child through NY City's adoption program, which was (& may still be) virtually free; there was a small fee, about $100. There were close to 2000 children up for adoption, and I would estimate over 98% of the children were of color. I mention this because we are white. Also, about the same number of children were about 7 to 14 years old. Typically, almost everyone wanted a baby; however, this is extremely rare. We had to go through the most thorough background check I have ever been through (& the rightly). As I recall, 1 thing we had to list was every residence in which we had ever had lived. My wife is younger than me, & only had 4 or 5. I had 15. I did it, too. We were approved to adopt (or to even be foster parents; but we didn't want this). My wife brought a unique perspective to the class: she & her identical twin sister together were a "blind adoption", only 9 days old. She answered many questions from people. As it turned out, we were unsuccessful, but I learned 2 major things: How important sobriety is to be a good parent, & how many children are bounced around foster homes in NY City & elsewhere. 2 years later, we had a terrific daughter together. Although divorced now, we're still very close.
6
The article gives quick mention to CPS being under fire for "quick adoptions." The harsh reality is that the goal of reunification often results in kids languishing in foster care waiting for parents to be ready to care for them. Or they are returned too quickly to the biological family and removed again when parents relapse. Once all resources are zapped, the result is often an older child who is difficult to adopt and has suffered trauma and attachment issues. Science bears out that the best environment for a child is one that is stable, loving and consistent. The bouncing around from foster placement to foster placement, or back and forth with their parents in the early years creates often irreparable harm. Quick adoption often harms the biological family that wants the child back. Reunification often damages the child that is denied early and secure attachment. There are no easy or "right" answers.
9
This article is heavy with emotion, but very light on facts. Presumably, there was a trial after which a judge ordered that parental rights be terminated. Yet this article says nothing about the Final Judgment, or the facts upon which that Judgment was based. The child is entitled to permanency. The child's best interests come first. I only wish the Comment writers would find their local Guardian Ad Litem organization and volunteer to serve in cases just like this one. Get involved. Dedicate a few hours a month to help the system determine a child's best interests. I am a volunteer for three cases at the moment, and there is nothing unique about the family described in this article. I only wish the focus of the article had been trying to get readers to volunteer as Guardians. In my county there are 1,000 kids in need of a Guardian. In other words, they are dependents of the state and have nobody advocating for their best interests. That is the real crisis.
17
The article is one-sided. As has been stated, other family members must have had their own issues or would have been first to get custody. It made the sound of the clock ticking very ominous but there was reason the period to resolve cases was made shorter. The timeline of childhood is short and shouldn't be spent in limbo.
18
Confused about a system that says a parent is not healthy enough to raise one of her children, but can keep the other.
6
The problem with stories like these is that the agency and foster families are bound by confidentiality. We never hear their side of the story. I worked in child welfare for over a decade. The parents' stories were always the same. They were great parents. They didn't do anything wrong. CPS just swooped in and stole their kids. We made commissions for placing them in foster care. Etc. They never, ever shared with the media that their caseworker came by their house and found them passed out with a needle in their arm while their children roamed the house hungry and filthy in a two day old diaper. Or that episodes like that had happened on multiple occasions. So many unanswered questions here. Why was nobody in her family considered? What were the wishes of the father? What was the child's level of adjustment to the adoptive family? How did she and the child interact in their visits? Her rights are terminated. There is no reason why her young son should not begin calling the woman who's been and will likely continue to raise him "Mommy".
21
@SpaceCake: Thank you. Exactly.
2
This is joke, she and her husband should not being have more children when they had their first one removed from them! You can feel no empathy for them, their child needs to be put first and removal of that child did exactly that. Jail and drugs, does not equal a good environment. No one is perfect but these people do not deserve the right to have children.
11
A few months sober is not enough. Come back in two years and the case can be reviewed again.
5
Denying a child’s right to privacy to proclaim your “sobriety” is, perhaps, a good parental fitness test. So to the editorial team.
7
How naive. Addicts are among the best at manipulation and creating feelings of pity towards them. Despite her professed love of her child- there's nothing she loves better than getting high. The writer believes she's ready for her baby back, and she may actually believe it herself, but I'm not sure I do. You just can't tell with addicts.
12
maybe dont do heroin while having a baby and after having the child and you wont have them taken away. The mother feels like a victim but the only victim here is her children. what's the purpose of this article?
9
I don’t get this piece. Where is the other side of the story? No input from the caseworkers or the foster parents? There is no ambiguity in the situation — just straight-up injustice and bad treatment by the government? I think it would be more responsible for The Times to be more balanced in stories like this. Hard problems should be portrayed as hard.
27
If you kept the same story but used pictures of any minority family, the comments would be different. All of this empathy would shrink the size of a pea!
Who am I kidding, an article like this would never been written about a family of color.
2
Read the comments. There's not that much empathy. (Nor should there be. This couple should not have had the first or second child, and their primary focus now should be long-acting or permanent birth control.)
7
I don't know if my mother was a junkie or not, but when I was kid, she wasn't around. I was fortunate to have my grandmother raise me. Did my mother love me? Perhaps, but she was ill equipped and lacked the discipline to raise a child. We give too much credit to biological parents and that does a disservice to real parents who raise a child regardless of who birthed it. Your mother isn't who pushed you out, it's who raised you. Ideally they an be both, but the latter is far more important. In retrospect I am extremely grateful that the woman who gave birth to me was out of the picture. I can only imagine how screwed up I would have turned out otherwise.
9
This is a very sad story, but just wondering why the grandparents, or other family members were not allowed to have custody of the child. Were they interviewed and determined to be unacceptable? After working with many many children, I found that they have a deep need to know about their birth parents. They may not be able to express it until they are older, but at some time they will be researching to find them. With the Internet, it is becoming available to children at a younger and younger age. They just need to know how to use a search engine! I sincerely wish this child. his parents and the adoptive family a healthy peaceful life!
Ok. Odds are she wouldn't have had parental rights terminated if she had been following her treatment plan which no doubt included stay sober, staying away from other addicts, providing a safe environment ect.. And it is odd that none of the other family members were considered ( or maybe they were and were found to be unsuitable - the story didn't really go into her family that much)considering it is pretty standard to look for family members first in a removal. I say this because, if a mom is following a treatment plan and corrected the conditions, there generally is a push to reunify by CASA, mom's attorney. I feel there is a little more to the story than depicted.
10
There is a middle ground and win-win-win here. Foster care costs taxpayer money. Create a highly supervised and outcomes-based reunification program and process with clear accountability on the part of the mother and CPS. Use the money spent on foster care to fund it. If the mother can’t provide the stability and consistency that the foster system can, then it’s clear who should have custody. Give the mother another chance but this time with resources that help her and the father be successful. Look at a 2-year process. Determine the cost of foster care for that period. Use those funds to create a parenting, child development, addiction control, ability to create and maintain a stable growing environment to keep the family together, and education program for this family. The mother and father deserve a chance since she is doing well with the second child. But, she can’t do it alone. Be creative Virginia CPS, and for the mother, be willing to step up and defy the naysayers and show you can be held accountable. Foster collaboration and partnerships. Everyone wins: the child, the parents, the family, the system, the community, and taxpayers!!
1
@Carl Johnson But does the child really win? What you're proposing is to put the child in a very uncertain situation, where the mom may or may not keep her act together. If she doesn't, then the child is in the care of a relapsed drug addict, before being removed ONCE AGAIN to another family's care.
I sympathize with the mother, but kids need stability. It's not right to gamble their lives and well being just because we want to give the mother another chance.
9
Wondering what the writer's point is here. This article is simply a description of a routine-sounding child welfare case of the kind that plays out every day across the country. Is the intent to inspire sympathy for the mother? I'm pretty sure this is presented so preferentially toward the parent because the child welfare agency is prohibited (properly) by confidentiality rules from discussing the background it considers in making these decisions. Please approach these important child welfare issues with more insight and understanding of the process and the wide spectrum of considerations that go into every difficult decision agencies must make.
14
I'm sure the courts know that recidivism rates of addicts is very high: only 10% make it to a year. I don't believe "a few months" is enough time.
13
She's there, she's well, she's on meds (usually 4 to 5 times people relapse). The fosters are running the clock. Fostering is reuniting when safe to do so. She's met those requirements. It's time for visitation and reintegration of this family while keeping child stable with the fosters.
1
Thanks to all who helped shared this story. A focus on the approach of child protective services in cases like this is needed. Hopefully, agencies across the county do a better job of finding family placements than was done in this case. Remaining with biological family can serve children like Brayden in the long term as their parents do the work necessary to provide a safe home for their children.
1
This article is an indirect argument for prison nursery programs in more states. With a good peri-natal therapy for mother with babe in arms, the anxious attachment which led to mother seeking drugs, the risk of relapse is lessened and the risk of inter generational transmission of mother’s emotional problems is lessened as well. Many recovering addict mothers cannot stay clean unless they are institutionalized and engage in such a program while unable to drug seek. Otherwise something simple like infant cries can send them into relapse once again.
3
This case sounds as though the baby should go back to his mother because she is staying off drugs.
1
I know this may be considered very un-pc, but I am being both serious and sincere, and even caring, in offering Lindsey two words of advice -- birth control.
I do not recall any mention of her educational status, whether or not she is employed or employable, where she lives and with whom, or how she pays her bills. We know her son's father is also addicted and a convicted felon, which is not a good situation in which to raise children; no clue if he is also the daughter's father. Perhaps it is in everyone's best interests that you NOT bring a third child into this mess.
Lindsey, do yourself and everyone else a huge favor and see a doctor about the best birth control method for you.
17
This article is a disgrace and a sham. If one did not know better, one would think that heroin chose here rather than the other way around. It is written as if this woman were an innocent victim. The fact is, she chose heroin; although the consequences may be harsh and heart-rendering, there is such a thing as accountability. Where is it>
13
What about the child? The well being of the kid is more important that his mom wanting to regain custody.
148
@James The well being of the child is very much part of his being reunited with his birth mother whose illness is under control. Based on facts in this article, as young as he is the boy knows very well who his grandmother is, even if it does not discuss his relationship to his mother now.
8
@James It sounds as the well being of the child is not being considered at all. Ripping him away from his grandmother when he reaches for her can only have traumatized him further. Why not allow the child to live with any number of sober friends and relatives, instead of shipping him off elsewhere. They are screwing up this child big time with their alleged 'helpful' interference.
18
@James Please, please, please learn more about family bonds and foster care. What's best for the kid IS to be with his birth family. I say this as a former foster mom who was dumbfounded 20 years ago that our abused kid wanted nothing more than to be with family--and she would have been better off if the family unit had been supported.
14
How does The Times know that it knows everything the child welfare people in Virginia know about this situation? You don't in fact know and, in greatest likelihood, by law they can't tell you.
Until we stop regarding addicts as sympathetic figures our society will never resolve this. Chances of re-addiction are infinitely greater than recovery. That we know. We should know too that it is wrong to send children into homes (including the extended family) where there has been addiction, where there is greater reason to believe there will be again then there is to believe it will not recur.
10
Very one sided article. Child Protective Services are only doing the best thing for the child. They do not get some kick back from adopting the kids out. Heroin addicts very rarely get it together for long.
9
This is not something most want to talk about, but the relapse rate for opioid and heroin addicts is extremely high--so high that there is almost no chance they won't relapse. I recall when deciding whether to divorce or give my first husband another chance reading a statistic that put it at 98% relapse within 1 year. I chose divorce and am so glad I did. He will battle his addiction for the rest of his life and no child (or spouse) deserves to live with that. I also have an uncle and his kids (my cousins) who all have battled heroin addiction. They are now in their 60s and cousins in their 30s and keep relapsing. They are clean for a year or two, then relapse. Rehab and "drug treatment" is just a revolving door. I realize that many people will hate this comment, but some people do not have a realistic shot at a clean life and heroin junkies are amongst them. They certainly have no business being parents. We should be focused on long term birth control.
17
@Julie: the average heroin or opioid addict requires 12 OR MORE rehabs at $30-$60K each, and even then...most never get clean for good.
Meaning, they can consume easily $500K to $750K of medical care -- on the public dole! -- but never get well. Meantime, we also have to pay for jail and welfare and foster care for the kids they abandon.
Anyone who wants "single payer health care" -- pay attention! we can't have it if we waste every dime on hopeless cases who make their own problems.
3
It would be interesting to read this story from the child's perspective. The interests of children, who cannot protect themselves, must come first.
13
There are so many layers to this and they are all emotional but I think the point of foster care is to eventually reunite children with their birth parents—and we as a society should honor that.
Although I take issue with many facets of this one-sided column, I take issue most with the title - "Another Family Separation". To compare this situation to the family separation at the border (which is obviously the implication) is irresponsible.
The family separations at the border are a cruel violation of human rights, leveraged against families that are already trying to escape inhumane conditions. This "family separation" is the result of a woman's addiction, which is a nuanced (albeit tragic) issue. Although it is a legitimate medical condition, this woman brought the "family separation" upon herself in many ways, most notably by failing to even ask for help during her pregnancy. To compare this "family separation" to the separations being imposed on immigrant families irresponsibly downplays the humanitarian crisis occurring at our border.
14
@Abbie yes, and it's also a story of a birth father's addiction. The title really is quite shameful.
1
A few months of sobriety is an achievement for anyone who has been severely addicted to drugs (I speak from experience), but recovery is a long and delicate process that is often fraught with relapse.
Addicts deserve compassionate care and support — but so do their children. It's great that they love their kids, but it doesn't sound like they're well-equipped to care for them. I'm not saying they never will be, but it's not fair to keep the kid in limbo while Ms. Jarrat learns how to live again.
Drug rehabilitation services should be available to anyone who needs it, and women need access to safe and affordable (free) birth control. I'm so tired of reading these stories. Addiction IS a disease, but we all must deal with the repercussions of poor choices.
Signed,
An adopted kid and former junkie
203
@Jen
This, thank you! We can be compassionate while minimizing the harm to others. Many adoptions from foster care are now open to varying degrees. A biological parent can still be part of their child's life if they are able to be safe (not necessarily clean).
17
@Jen being an adopted former junkie does not make your opinion more valid. BUT, are you a parent? Because only then will you understand how physically connected you are with your children. She should not be punished for being a kid who made some mistakes. She clearly showed the will to be with her child and get sober. Government/State agencies should be banned form interfering in family matters. I would take the opinion of a professional psychologist who has personal knowledge of her treatment over a defunct agency worker any day.
3
@Dan I don't consider my opinion to be "more valid," but my experience does inform my perspective (which I believe is nuanced, compassionate, and moderate). What I know is this: it takes years — not months — to recover from a severe drug addiction.
As many others have stated, the article doesn't give an adequate look at both sides. I don't claim to know what should have been done differently, if anything, but I think it's foolish to rush to one side or the other.
My greatest wish is that our society do more to support addicted women and get them the help that they need before the stakes get this high. The policies that informed the rehab worker's decision to flush Ms. Jarratt's Subutex are a prime example.
Nevertheless, there's still a child's well-being to consider. It's not about punishing the mother; it's about protecting the child.
25
What I'm troubled about when I read these sorts of stories is how one-sided they are - we learn about the point of view of the parent and their perception of the events, but no information - corroborating or otherwise - from the agency responsible for planning for the child, nor the judge responsible for making the decisions including terminating parental rights.
Ms. Jarratt likely has a great deal of documentation she might have shared with the reporter that would have included service agreements with the agency and the legal justification for terminating parental rights. In Virginia the court can appoint an attorney for a parent, or they may pursue their own - but the bottom line is she had an attorney at all legal proceedings.
Although Ms. Interlandi implies the child protective services agency is dismissive of Ms. Jarratt's admirable efforts to sustain sobriety and unfairly terminated parental rights, she made no effort to corroborate that information. In short, what we're reading is completely one-sided - we actually have no idea what the situation is, and why CPS have taken the steps that they have, nor why a judge ruled in favor of TPR.
Typically that's considered irresponsible reporting, but it seems like when it comes to CPS, confirmational bias will do. That's unfortunate, as that does CPS and the clients they are mandated to serve a terrible disservice.
27
The mother is not the victim here. The child is. Foster families are saints.
12
@Chris
Not all of them. Some are abusive and greedy.
1
Do not give this little boy back to the mother! She is still in a relationship with a user and she will use again unless she is willing to cut ties with him. My daughter is addicted to heroin and I am sick at the things my grand daughters went through before we realized what was happening. PROTECT the CHILD!
20
The best interest of the child is to be with his mother. Full stop. The point of foster care should be reunification. This woman has stopped doing drugs. The boy is her child. Give him back.
68
@BNYgal At least allow him to be in the care of her mother or other sober family members or friends. This child knows who loves him and has been torn away from the embrace of his family to the extent that the trauma will live with him for years, if not for the rest of his life.
4
@BNYgal - do you have any sense of the life of a child who lives with a heroin-addicted mother? Spend some time at family court, or court-mandated parenting groups for heroin addicts, and learn about it before making such a simplistic comment. It is a horrible abusive life, not one that the mother in this article would likely subject her children to when sober; but when using, an addict is not making the choices. The heroin is choosing her behavior, and it will not favor the child.
48
@BNYgal - what a fantastic pronouncement of wisdom based on ??? - right, nothing. The only truth is that the best interest of the child is being raised by parents who are sober, financially stable, and willing to make the ongoing sacrifices for his welfare. There is simply no empirical evidence that "being with the mother" is once and always the best option for a child, especially a mother whose own recovery hasn't even lasted a fully year yet. Ms. Jarratt's recovery and current sobriety is to be fully celebrated and supported. But that does not equate to putting a child back into what could be a dangerous situation.
18
In my experience as a teacher in the public schools (10 years) the most abused children were those in foster care.
5
I am curious, this story presents the government as callous and unfeeling. If the baby stayed with the mother, and ended up dead who would the author blame?
14
My wife worked in CPS for over 30 years. THere is always the balance of permanency and reunification. I question why relatives were not considered as a placement option. Protection is not only about keeping the child safe but also should include the child’s emotional well being. The story clearly shows that this mom may have lost her son due to the scales tipping toward adoption. Adoption is a viable option for kids when clearly the parents fail to rehabilitate.
8
How many formative years do children get? How many of those years should be wasted trying to wait for an addict to get well? How much suffering should a child be allowed to endure? I have empathy for the mother but the best interests of the child should be our 1st priority. The mother has decided to build a life with an active drug addicted father and how long before he brings the mother back down with him. The odds are strong she will return to heroin as long as the father is involved and not clean.
20
White or "white enough" babies have always been a commodity to corrupt state systems. My grandmother was taken from her family when her family brought her to the hospital to treat pneumonia - a common issue with asthmatic children in the 1920s, but declared to be enough to steal her. She ran back to her family, and her family moved shortly after that. Sounds like West Virginia might be stuck in the Great Depression.
2
From the article, it sounds like CPS was correct in removing the child from his situation. However, the article feels incomplete, and there are some unanswered questions that judges should be trained to ask and examine.
1) If relatives were available, why didn't CPS place the child with relatives?
2) Why are foster parents permitted to have children refer to them by the name mom or dad?
3) If Ms. Jarratt didn't have all of her visitation she was entitled to and was able and willing to exercise it, why didn't CPS provide it? (And this lack of contact should then not be held against the parent.)
4) If it's true that CPS doesn't return phone calls in a timely manner, why not?
Like it or not, the prevailing standard for raising children is not the best interests of a child. If that's the case, many people wouldn't be parents.
2
Every month, there are children who are murdered not only by their fathers, or stepfathers, but by their mothers as well, who have previously had multiple visits by social services. This happens in California, Minnesota, New York, and every state in the country. With young children, you shouldn't get a second chance to have them in your custody, see them with supervision, yes, if there is a period of a year or more that one's destruction behavior to oneself or the child, is taken care of, and if the child wants to even see the adult in their life. We have this myth, that we can easily fix people with the right services, enough money, programs, etc., and that is one of the most untrue statements that has ever been made. If one reaches the age of junior high with lots of anger, criminal charges, drug abuse, outbursts, running away from home, etc. the tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of dollars,expended on these individuals, the courts, etc. are often for naught, it is sad to say. Parenting is a job, not an idea of just giving birth, which shouldn't really give any female, or male automatic rights. Children are not only vulnerable, but impressionable, as well, and they imitate bad behavior, as that is all they know.
19
The needs of the child are much more important than the needs of the parent. I believe in forgiveness, but not at the risk of the child.
My wife and I have an adopted 4 year old. He came to us through foster care. He was 4 months old when he was placed with us and had twelve broken bones, all healing at a different time.
I believe my boy's biological parents can be forgiven, but not at the expense of him going back into that household.
43
I don't see how anyone can make a judgment based on this article. My take is its a sad story for young people and there should not be a definitive decision made for a couple of years; time to see if the mother can live properly and 'clean' ; not just 6 months and then decide.
2
@Jean louis LONNE So the child should be raised by another family for those years, establishing relationships and bonds with those families? And then, several years down the road, the child should be torn from the family that has raised him also his entire life and sent back to live with someone who is essentially a stranger?
It's horrible to keep a kid in limbo. They need stability and long-term relationships.
This is the challenge with addiction. You don't know whether someone is long-term clean until they have been so for several years. But, in the meantime, the kids are growing up.
6
Reading this article and the diversity of these comments leaves me with one abundantly clear conclusion: there are no easy answers here.
It is tragic to take a child away from his birth parents who love him and are struggling with all their might to overcome their shortcomings and provide a good and decent life for the child they love. But is it more or less tragic to allow that child to return to that home, where the mother's risk of relapse is much higher perhaps than the risk of the foster parents falling into addiction?
I've found that, due to the enormous stigma attached to addiction, it's often helpful to consider a comparable case with some other disease. For example, if a parent were diabetic, and had experienced several severe episodes of diabetic emergencies over a year or two, would we be as eager to tear the child from a loving mother's arms? If not, then are we more concerned with the child's safety, or with punishing the mother for her addiction?
I would dearly hope that, no matter the outcome, Brayden's birth parents and his foster parents would focus all of their attention on one thing: the best possible outcome for Brayden. And most important, that they all respect the final decision, and spend the rest of their lives supporting Brayden in every way possible.
I would also hope that everyone who reads this will understand the desperate need in this nation for a better health care system that can help us better deal with situations like this.
4
I would agree with except for your presumption that life with the disease of diabetes is inherently more dangerous for a child in the house than addiction of the parent to heroin.
In the balancing act, the child's safety and welfare should prevail.
5
I walked away from this article not with an strong opinion about which outcome is "right", but just sadness that decisions like these have to be made again and again.
It's easy to vilify CPS or the judges, but they have a small child's life in their hands, and no crystal ball can tell them how any situation will turn out.
I've seen addicted parents try to raise kids, and it's heart breaking. They may love their children, but the power of addiction all too often renders them neglectful, and exposes the kids to a seedy life, with lack of stability.
It's great that the mom is sober now, but how many times has CPS and judges seen sober parents relapse? I can understand the temptation to seek a more stable and safe environment for the kid.
On the other hand, foster care can be a bad situation itself, and the pain of being torn from a parent is great. These things should only be used when absolutely necessary.
Mostly, it's terrible that we need to make these decisions every day in America. I wish our elected leaders would do more about drug abuse.
13
I would hope that your conclusion, Itsy, is what all reading this piece should come to.
1
Outcomes are heavily influenced by the dedication of the court system to affording parents all the rights due them. Where I live, there is a panel with a limited number attorneys who receive training in these cases who take appointments where the local legal aid office— which under difficult circumstances does an outstanding job— and who over a few of years have developed expertise and savvy in dealing with all of the moving parts of the system. We have managed to significantly reduce the number of terminations of parental rights. Parents with addiction, however, have to be mindful that while they struggle (or not) with addiction their children are growing and learning and socializing, and they too have a right to stability and parents who demonstrate they care for them. I am often pleasantly surprised at how often parents with mind-boggling addiction or mental health problems overcome them within a year or two so they can give their children a meaningful home.
3
We adopted a baby out of foster care who was placed there because she was born addicted to heroin and cocaine. We’re in touch regularly with her birth mother who feels guilty for her habits but clearly still loves this adorable girl. Birth mom still uses and is grateful we have her/our girl. So are we. I cannot imagine raising this energetic girl while battling an addiction. It would be ugly.
This article feels irresponsible to me. No case is black and white. I love the NYTimes, but please trust your readers enough to expose them to the harsh ambiguities in foster cases. Treating the mom as an innocent victim of her own addiction seems naive. A foster family is loving this boy and wants him forever. At least honor that.
350
@Alison I agree. I, too, am a foster parent, and this article feels extremely one sided to me. Is the assumption that it would have been better for the child to have been left in the care of a mother battling addiction with a partner who was relapsing? Foster parents who take care of infants exposed to drugs in utero and born to parents struggling with addiction give the parents a chance to recover. An enormous gift and opportunity. It is hard enough to take care of an infant when you are well and stable -- imagine trying to do so when fighting addiction. This article makes it sound like CPS just took the child for no reason. It ignores the stability the foster parents provided the child. Parental rights are often terminated as a last resort. I don't understand why other perspectives were not considered in this reporting. In these situations there is often not an option that is 100 percent good for everyone. There is loss and confusion and grey area and heartache.
48
@Alison The birth mother in this case is under continuing care and has had her addiction under control for months. Why she and her baby should not be reunited is beyond my comprehension. Would you feel the same way if she had a chronic heart condition that prevented her from running after a two-year-old? I don't think so. The child deserves to be with his birth mother. That the foster mother is already trying to usurp the birth mother's role by calling herself "Mommy" suggests to me that this foster family should be ineligible to care for the child during this interim period. Indeed, the original foster family was willing to care for the boy. This new family wants to adopt him. There is something unpleasant about the Virginia foster care system here that you have missed.
14
@EMiller, addiction is a medical condition, but it’s not like a chronic heart condition. It is more like un-medicated schizophrenia. We can support the addict while recognizing that the addiction made her do things that put her child in direct danger. A heart condition doesn’t do that.
28
Ms Interlandi, the title of the article should be “Another Successful intervention by CPS”
18
I think this article would be more objective if the author had interviewed some of the people on the other side - those who rescued this baby from a drug addict and her family. That's in the Journalism 101 textbook. I find it hard to believe the NYTimes would publish this rambling emotional piece. A baby's life is at stake here.
Things that resonate with me about Lindsey Jarratt that are glossed over by this writer:
1. She was able to stay sober while pregnant but went right back to drug use after she had her baby.
2. She had a second child with a junkie who is now in jail.
3. She hid her addiction from everyone.
I don't blame the system for not trusting her. Addicts will lie to get whatever they want - and, in my opinion, Lindsey Jarratt lied to get this writer to leave her objectivity at the door.
My fear is foremost for this woman's children. For that reason, I would have like to hear the other side of this story.
52
There are many things that DSS has done wrong in this case. They are legally required to consider placement with family members before a foster family. Also the ticking clock ticks for everyone, the hearings cannot be postponed under the Best Court Practices issued by the VA Supreme Court. I am a retired attorney who worked on several foster care cases in VA. This mother’s termination may well be reversed on appeal, which should be considered a win for everyone. Unfortunately some social workers get a power trip and play games to keep the child in foster care. Sometimes they encourage placement with their own relatives to get them an adoption subsidy. It is truly evil but I have seen it. I wish this mother the best.
7
Wow, the hyperbole in this article is extreme. Really, NY Times? You only spoke to Lindsey, you have no way of knowing WHY children's services does not want Brayden placed with any of her family members. There may be a good reason. The fact that she got pregnant not once but TWICE with children she does not have the resources to care for while in the throes of addiction speaks volumes about her fitness as a parent. That and the fact that her children's father is in jail.
The children are what matters. If she can get her act together and get him back, that's best. But even this sympathetic article said she drifted on in addiction while her kid was in foster care. Time doesn't stand still for anyone, and Lindsey clearly has been unable to prioritize her son's best interests.
She expresses no gratitude to the people who have cared for her son when she couldn't. Who have loved him and looked after him. Addicts are often selfish and do not see things clearly. A few months of sobriety doesn't fix the bad thinking of years of addiction.
It is not her fault she is an addict, but she is the only one who can choose to get better. Maybe instead of blaming people who have done their best to help her son, she could think of him and think of her daughter, and go to a meeting. And maybe the NY Times could write less inflammatory, click-baiting articles.
40
That is what makes addiction so damaging and toxic for people surrounding the addict, especially children: addicts are self-centered and nothing and nobody are more important than getting their fix.
8
The child should be with her mother. She's straightened out and all of the doctors and therapists are vouching for her. The family trying to adopt the child should just stop it. This woman obviously loves her son and has the proper support now to be a good mother. Giver her the chance. Give her child that chance.
49
No. Why does she get "another chance" when she did not give her unborn son even one chance as she had no problem getting high while pregnant? That is unforgivable and should be automatic termination of parental rights. And in spite of all the support, she is still making bad decisions and bad choices, like getting pregnant again! very likely while high even though she had already lost custody of one child, by her addicted lover. The boy and the baby girl deserve the chance for a normal life better than she deserves a second, third, fourth, fifth "chance". Hopefully a new baby will not be involved with every new "chance" she gets.
27
@kay because the reporter included no other information but that provided by the parent, we really have no idea what the full picture is. It's entirely possible there's more to the story.
19
Kay, a “chance?” You don’t gamble with a child’s life.
20
I hope Lindsey keeps it together but she has no business having children. No child deserves to grow up with this.
27
With direct experience raising two children whose parents rights were terminated due to their addictions this scenario will have no winners though it may take 15-25 years for the losses to become self evident.
78
The article neglects to state whether Ms. Jarratt has a job (althugh she trained for one). Mr. Jarratt is back in jail . They had a second child.
Ms. Interlandi, a member of the editorial board obviously sympathizes with Ms. Jarratt.
It would have been nice to get more of a response of those involved in the foster care process.
Parenting requires responsibility above all, even before love. A junkie can love a child but lack responsibility to care for one.
21
A 2nd child? really? Why does the state have to pay for all this? One child seems plenty enough given this debacle. And I have a drug addict sister with a toddler so I am living this in real time. I would be furious if she got pregnant again. Shameful and bad parenting--sorry. Drug addiction is an illness as is metastatic cancer. If a woman had end stage breast cancer, no one would support them being pregnant.
21
Lindsey, I’ll speak to you as an older, experienced Auntie. Please get yourself some long-acting Birth Control, such as an IUD or Implants. You will never, ever be able to improve your life if you continue having more children. It’s only going to get more difficult, and increase the chances of losing the child you have.
Good luck.
37
Ms. Dalmatian, I would like to add that the pressures that this young woman with two kids, an ever-sinking standard of living, facing an iffy employment future, at best, will face.
Will she be strong enough to handle the challenges?
Certainly possible, but the odds are not in her favor.
10
@Phyliss Dalmatian very good advice!!
8
The last thing this couple needs is another baby. how irrresponsible.
18
There are consequences of being a junkie. You just don’t return to life expecting all you had before.
The state needs to let the children from junkie parents as heroin is a tough addiction and one that she’ll probably fail to beat based on statistics.
10
It is hard to find justice without some kind of punishment.
2
When you abuse drugs and decide to have children, injured hearts for parent and child and foster parent (and a huge bill for taxpayers) are the only outcome, even if it’s possible to reunite bio parents and child. However, I have been involved with the foster care system (we adopted a child, age 12 at placement with us, three years ago) enough that I recognize the reporting in this story as shockingly weak. Kinship is best practice. If zero members of the family are eligible, that sets off huge alarm bells for me, and should have been followed up on before this story was run. The reporter seems to have lost objectivity (or filed the story too soon). The state cannot give its side of the story due to confidentiality which is in the best interest of the child. So do your reporting and find out why and also perhaps consider next time not naming the children. If parental rights have been terminated then bio mom does not have the permission to give and Google is forever. This article is not up to the standards I’d expect from the NYT. It should be followed up on with a bit of a harder eye toward the details and greater privacy for the two children mentioned.
33
Some people should not be allowed to have children.
8
Blacks are about four times more likely than whites to lose custody in these circumstances. That makes this an atypical case which probably doesn’t tell us how things usually work and does not address the substantial racial prejudice in the system.
3
The needs and best interests of the young boy trump the desire for this mother to regain her parental rights.
It sounds as though the fostering family is providing a stable and loving home for the young boy. The foster family is instilling in the young boy that is is safe, secure, and loved. The foster mother calls herself “Mom.”
Why disrupt this child again? Why disrupt this child in returning to a known dysfunction home environment with the biological mother? A biological mother who still remains in a relationship, by her conscious choice, with the father who remains addicted to heroine, with a police and jail record? What is the biological mother’s plan for providing for her son? How does she plan to maintain gainful employment and financial solvency? Does she have job skills?
What we do know is that the biological mother is able to get pregnant and give birth. Not once. But twice. When all around her, her personal life was in a turbulent tailspin. The biological mother continues to need the support of outside agencies and addiction specialists to keep her sober. She is barely treading water.
To return the young boy to the biological mother, and returned to the extended family from which the biological mother turned to heroine as a maladaptive coping mechanism, is to place the well-being and potential of this young boy at risk. The young boy deserves better and should be allowed to be adopted by the foster family.
272
You should really research addiction. You don’t just keep a child away from a mother because she had addictions. Treatment is life long. I’m a child of substance abusers, and I know the outcomes. But I’m not so narrow minded to think having once had an issue means you always abuse. Separating children from parents is a last resort, not a first.
71
@Karen J. So, who are you to pass judgment on parental fitness on the bases of having a job, financial solvency and birth control? And you made lots of assumptions on the fitness of the relatives? Have you ever heard "blood is thicker than water"?
9
@Karen J.: I was somewhat sympathetic up until the point that Ms. Jarratt got pregnant AGAIN, before getting 100% clean or even 1 year of sobriety and her boyfriend being still addicted. OK, I get that she was trying to replace her lost baby, but still. It shows tragically poor judgment, and now another baby is "at risk" and my guess is she will go back on drugs and lose this baby too.
Also, it is poor journalism to not find out why the ENTIRE Jarratt family was rejected for foster care. It must be pretty bad, because that is more typical than for a child to be fostered out to strangers.
80
Before writing this excellent opinion column, Ms. Interlandi co-authored a brilliant series of editorials, which I discuss, and link to in this column for the trade journal Youth Today: http://bit.ly/2VYktYm One of those editorials focused on how media-fueled hype and hysteria over so-called “crack babies” bred a hatred of their mothers that only hurting the children by consigning many of them, needlessly to the chaos of foster care.
Another part focused on how, years after the science proved the hype wrong, the mythology still poisons our approach to cases involving parental drug abuse. The well-meaning comments on this column prove her point.
Yes, by all means let’s put the best interests of the child first. But that means we have to recognize the study after study showing that, in typical cases, children do better in their own homes even than comparably-maltreated children placed in foster care - and when children really must be placed kinship care is the best option.
That was another lesson from the crack era. Researchers found that even children born with cocaine in their systems did better left with birth mothers able to care for them than in foster care.
The editorials quote Barry Lester, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Brown University who specializes in opioid addiction. He said: "We love to hate these women. But our hatred is not accomplishing anything.”
Richard Wexler
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
www.nccpr.org
7
Ms. Interlandi makes very substantial accusations of professional misconduct, civil rights violations and law breaking against the county child welfare agency involved in this case. As just one example, she writes that family members were not considered as caregivers and foster care was imposed instead. Is that true or did she make that up? If true, such action would create both criminal and civil liability for the county agency. I urge the NYT to take a close look and follow up on this story. Something is very wrong here - is it the agency or the writer?
16
@Mary Ann As a former journalist, I can tell you that the story fails on standard journalistic practices -- but then it is an opinion piece. But the Times should have demanded more -- but politically no one dared.
3
If she was serious about family she would be getting an education and a job, not having more babies when she can barely take care of herself.
15
Virginia has had a history or corruption. Seems to be continuing.
2
@Hank
Dude our whole country has a history of corruption. Oh wait, it is STILL engaged in corruption. Look no further than this joke of an administration.
2
So now we have to ignore the qualified social workers in family protection services (my wife is one of them, has a pile of book a few feet high on the subject and a decade of experience) and instead believe liberal media who now mischaracterize this as "family separation" thus demonizing the social worker and blowing that Trump dog whistle? Is Trial By Media the future of humanity ?
12
I am stunned by the leadoff to this story, that the mean, punitive social workers ripped the child away to "live with strangers." I would be very interested to hear the facts of the case history here. Contrary to this enduring and slanderous myth of child protective and child welfare workers breaking apart families at first chance-- or leaving them at home until they are further abused or killed -- the goal is family reunification and a balance must be struck between this and safety for the child. It aint easy. And relatives are almost always the first resource turned to when the safety issues require removal from the birth home. My guess is that there weren't any relatives who stepped forward or were determined safe for the child. Walk in the shoes of a social worker dealing with child protection and foster care/adoption. You will find it's a lot easier to write about it. I did this job that American society so poorly recognizes for 12 years, in the height and aftermath of the crack epidemic. I could not do this job today, with the explosion from opiates and its impact on American families. Since this literary resort to demonizing the courageous, caring professionals who try to bandage American society's gross dysfunction remains so easy to journalists, at the very least try to find a success story to celebrate, Ms. Interlandi. A caseworker could share one or more with you Shame on the NYT that this comes from within the editorial board.
33
Lindsey if you're reading these comments please pay no mind to the pontificators. Funny how everyone has an opinion about what best for your child isn't it? You must feel like the whole world is against you sometimes but I respect you for your perseverance in making the necessary life changes to get Brayden back and the courage to share your story. There are people who care about your struggle. Keep up the good work and good things will happen for you. Stay strong. Your boy is worth it and so are you.
2
What would you say to Brayden whise mother was doing heroine while pregnant and continued to do so after he was born and countless other Braydens, small and grown, who are out there living with/have lived with an heroin addicted parent and suffering the consequences?
4
I believe this woman's story. I stepped in when my niece was taken away. I am a professional woman and mom, with no criminal record and a job at a very reputable company. Despite all of this, they did not contact me prior to her removal and did not answer calls for days. This isn't legal; they are supposed to look for relatives first. They make mistakes. Not looking at her family seriously is criminal. The system also relies heavily on one person's opinion: the social worker's. It is inherently without many checks and balances, as judges are overwhelmed and major decisions, such as relocating a child, are made without judges. In additoon, in our foster parent classes we saw practically nobody else but black grandmothers. In a city that is sub 7% black. It's clearly an inherently racist system.
1
I have worked with many families in crisis like this. What frustrates me about this story is the implication that CPS is somehow at fault. The reason we don’t hear CPS’ side of the story is that they are bound by law to protect the privacy of everyone in this case. So pls remember that this reporter only presents one side of the story. CPS saves lives. Period. They try to keep families intact whenever possible— both as a moral imperative AND as a more efficient way to do business— they’re work is astronomically harder once a child is removed from a home! This story is a tragedy any way you look at it, but I shudder to think of the story that would have been written (and has been written, too many times) in which CPS is held responsible for seriously neglected (or dead) children who were NOT removed in a timely way. Addicts and drugs destroy lives. Not CPS! They deserve our gratitude for a VERY difficult job.
26
The best thing for this child is to be adopted by loving parents who are not drug addicts or former convicts. All the best to that baby.
11
Why do we place children with their grandparents when the parents have messed up? It seems like an opportunity for the grandparents to mess up yet another generation; we need more adoptions & foster homes. Those on drugs rarely, if ever, get better.
4
It's a real shame that the NYT commentators have seemingly endless sympathy for immigrant children seperations but almost no sympathy for American parents who hit hard times and then do the work to get better. The children being brought across the border are subject to molestation, violence and unending chaos. If an American mother took her young child on a similar trip to cross into Canada she would be arrested for child abuse and neglect. Many act like these immigrant mothers are mother of the year for subjecting young children to such a dangerous journey. And no, they don't have to make this journey. There are many safe places between Central America and the US. The mother in this article is trying her best to undue past mistakes. Her family should be together, not separated by the government. Many, many parents make serious mistakes. IMO, if the parent works to get their life back on track and provide a stable home for their children, they should get their children back.
3
@Laura
The NYT commenters who "have seemingly endless sympathy for immigrant children seperations" (SIC)
are likely the ones to be open minded about a mother recovering from addiction.
"almost no sympathy for American parents who hit hard times and then do the work to get better" comments are most likely from those are anti-immigration pro wall, Republican voters.
As the adult child of a parent who was addicted to opiates, I support the state intervening and wish someone had intervened on my and my brother's behalf.
340
@Kate I wish you would tell us more, Kate. I think people should know how your parents failed you. Maybe they would then understand these situations more fully. I am sorry we could not protect you. I have had to say this to too many children. Our hands are tied. The system does not protect children. Parents have all the rights.
37
This is the kind of story all those chastising everybody else for "not giving the mother a chance" need to hear. It is easy to be "sympathetic" and "understanding" when you are not the one who is living with the consequences of that nightmare that what life with an addict is.
32
@Kate The National Institute on Drug Abuse says that relapse rate of drug addicts is in the range of 40-60%.
NIDA also says "treatment for drug addiction usually isn't a cure, but addiction can be managed successfully" enabling people "to counteract addiction's disruptive effects on their brain and behavior and regain control of their lives."
Ms. Jarratt has been clean for only a few months, and there are further risks associated with rejoining her son's addict father, so it seems prudent to wait longer to ensure they both can remain clean.
Of course Ms. Jarratt wants her son Brayden returned to her. However, Child Protective Services has a legal mandate to represent society's interests and those of the fostered son, but cannot for reasons of confidentiality present its side of the case for keeping Brayden in a foster home. Given the regulations CPS must follow, it seems unlikely that it is arbitrarily keeping Brayden separated from his mother.
It is odd that the article tries to develop sympathy for the mother, yet says little about the father who I presume is not married to the mother--yet they have had a second child. Is there something about the father that CPS knows that the author of this article does not? Is the father as anxious as the mother to have Brayden back? Why doesn't he marry Ms. Jarratt? Is the father too unsympathetic to fit the story the author is trying to tell?
So many important and unanswered questions lead to an unsatisfactory article.
13
Clean for several months isn't good enough. If you can't get your act together after you give birth--indeed, when you get pregnant--and continue using after your child is born, then the child should be adopted out. According to the story, a social worker reminded Ms. Jarratt, several times, that the clock was ticking, that she needed to get clean or she'd lose her child.
She's had her chance. Brayden deserves his. And being with a mother who, by all appearances, put sobriety off until the last minute isn't in the best interest of the child. Ask kids who grew up in households headed by addicts.
Here's hoping that Ms. Jarratt stretches these several months of sobriety into a lifetime of being straight. But a kid's life is too important to take the gamble that she'll make good on her third, fourth or whatever it is chance at cleaning up.
8
I work with families in crisis like this. CPS gets such an undeserved bad rap. If this baby had been left with these parents, imagine the neglect he would have faced. And we don’t know CPS’ side of the story here because they have to protect everyone’s privacy and can’t speak to reporters. CPS saves lives— and when it’s in a child’s best interests, they work hard to keep families intact. With the opioid epidemic in this country wrecking lives, I would hope that we would appreciate the hard work of child protection officers even more. This article does a disservice to them. Of course I feel sorry for the mother. I’ve seen this kind of desperation up close. But I can picture the article that would be (and has been) written if the state hadn’t rescued the baby in time. We don’t know the full story, and it’s tragic either way. But lay off of CPS— they deserve our gratitude.
172
@B.Agree with your comment. I spent 4 years on a Foster Care Review Board. The author of this article and most of the comments show a very naive understanding of what CPS has to deal with.
20
@B. CPS did not place the child with any of the extended family who were willing to care for him. That is totally irresponsible and cruel. Nowhere in the article is there a mention of CPS' rationale. Given the description of what they've done here, I don't think your defense of this agency is warranted.
3
@B. Well said!! It's irresponsible of the reporter to offer such one-sided reporting - and I suspect the parents of this child have plenty of documentation they could have shared with her that would have offered us all a more complete picture of the agency and the court's reasoning in taking the actions that they did.
15
Bad choices made all the way around.. My heart goes out to the Mom- If she is in fact "clean" more power to her- how about while she waits for her son she enrolls in a Junior College and starts educating herself? A Tattoo is about $75 bucks - one JC class and text book is about $150 .. I'm sure she could get tuition assistance from the State assistance..
Better yet look what I just found...
"A tuition-free college education could soon become a reality for some residents in Virginia. The University of Virginia's new president, Jim Ryan, announced during his inaugural ceremony that some in-state students will be able to attend the school tuition-free.Oct 19, 2018"
The tools and help is there ... Stop being a victim and do something to become the responsible mother you want to be!
4
The article alone tells you this addicted mother is nowhere near "the path to recovery". This is still all about her and not her victims, her children. She is the victim. She is the one being wronged. She is the one "suffering". Having the boy back so she can stop "her suffering" even if that means taking away the best chance for a good life that boy will ever have. Even the way she choose to "honor" the child: a tattoo? Seriously? Guess a picture would not be enough to keep the attention on her.
2
Ms. Jarratt has another chance with her daughter. I wish them both well. I wish her boyfriend and the children's father well also, but he seems more fragile. Perhaps Brayden will look up his sober and healthy biologic mother when he is mature.
2
it is the welfare of the child that is paramount.I do feel empathy for ms jarrett but she has relapsed more than once, the child deserves stability.
8
As a parent who both adopted from foster care and had biological children, this story is insanely irresponsible. I highly suggest the author spend some time looking into the attachment disorders and the abuse that children of drug addicts who aren't removed from their parents custody are subject to. She had a deadline and failed to meet it, the well being of the child is much more important than how she feels about her extensive failures.
16
There is really nothing more demanding and nothing more important than adequately parenting a child. Children are completely vulnerable to our mistakes as parents. They deserve and need attentive care from parents who are not on dope, not in jail, not running around on each other, not consumed with mental health issues. Being a mother of young children is the hardest thing I have ever done, and I can’t imagine trying to do it impaired. I say this as a career woman, with a home that tries not to be too “child-centered”. There is just a basic level of love, support and security that a child needs and deserves.
Someone exposing a developing fetus to illegal drugs is really not ready to care for an infant. The NYT has had several articles recently with the slant that the mothers’ right to get high somehow supersedes not hurting the child. It’s some odd reporting.
16
Many years ago I married a drug addict who fooled me (they are some of the world's most convincing actors) that she was done with that way of life. Shortly after our marriage, she was caught (a second time) forging a prescription (a felony in Ohio). Prior to our marriage, she regained parental rights from Children's Services to her six month old daughter Maria. My ex was given a three to five year sentence and my divorce was automatically granted and my ex surrendered her parental rights to her daughter who was immediately adopted.
That loss of Maria hurt me at the time because I had grown close to her feeding her and changing her diapers while her mother preferred to smoke cigarettes and drink coffee all day rather than care for her daughter.
But as I look back after all these years, I now know that it was the best thing to happen for Maria. I was in no shape to raise a daughter. Too young with too many years left for me to go on with my life. Eventually I put all that behind me.
I will always remember the short time I was given the opportunity to be a father to Maria but I now know giving her up was the best option for both of us. But to reach that conclusion, I needed the years to learn that my emotional attachment to Maria was selfish on my part. And really caring for her was to give her to someone else who would be better suited to be both a mother and father for her.
29
This too much like email " glurges " that used to spread sob stories designed to evoke emotions absent thought or a complete set of facts.
Maybe Child Protective service workers in Virginia are incompetent, cruel or failed in their responsibilities, and refused to follow federal guidelines that mandate evaluating family members as a resource, via custody or as Kinship foster parents. It happens.
CPS apparently DID adhere to regulations when they repeatedly advised her that time was running out to either return Brayden to her care or to terminate parental rights, and place him for adoption. Usually parental visits do stop after rights are terminated, a long and difficult process, with court oversight. It sounds as if these visits continued, after her recovery.
It sometimes takes addicts years to get control of their addictions, if ever: the general idea of time limits is that children cannot wait so long for a stable, permanent home. They were set in effort to prevent the "permanent" foster care or the foster care bounce: Home, relatives, foster care, repeat. Even good ideas can backfire when rigidly applied.
In NYS ANY relative can walk into Family Court to apply for custody, no attorney needed. The Court then orders a study of the home to be certain that the child would be safe there, and makes a custody determination. Not CPS.
Imagine an alternate story: Brayden depending on parents high on heroin. I hope that with supports, Ms Jarratt does well with Hailey Mary.
4
There is no perfect solution to this situation. Not ideal for the child to be removed, not ideal for the child to stay. So what to do? The scale must weigh on the side of what will hopefully be the most stable and caring environment for the child- knowing there are no guarantees. I also do not believe biological parents are due or owed their children by virtue of biology or love. The ability to provide for and nurture a child has to be present. This story does not address her ability to provide a nurturing environment, as wonderful as it is that she is currently sober.
I was adopted at birth, and while this may or may not have its own issues (for me, not too much), I’m grateful I was not raised by my biological mother (the father was never identified). I know she cared about me; 50 years after the adoption she contacted me through the agency that handled our case (this was at a time when adoption records were sealed). I was glad to have contact with her. Even so, I know her environment at the time of my birth and for years after was exceedingly chaotic. No matter how great her love for me, my life would have been challenging, to say the least, had I grown up with her. My parents (the people who raised me) gave me a loving, reliable and stable home to grow up in, which is everything. I’m grateful to my biological mother for my life and for contacting me. I’m also grateful she made what was an agonizing, but also loving, decision- to let others adopt and raise me.
33
Termination of parental rights is typically not completed without a lot of steps happening in the process. Typically, the parent is supposed to complete certain steps over a course of months/years. If he/she doesn't, then they stand to lose their parental rights. Children wait in limbo for years while their parents try to get their lives together. Typically the extended family is evaluated for placement. Why in this case were they not, or were they found to be unacceptable? It's a shame from any angle. And it's a shame that this story doesn't go into detail about the complexity of these cases.
19
As others have commented here, the story feels one-sided. As a mother myself I can imagine this mother’s heartbreak. I also can imagine that Braydon’s life will be forever marked by the loss of his birth mother. But the slant of the story seems to ignore statistical reality: that heroin addiction is a beast, and relapse is, unfortunately, likely. One of my partner’s nieces was adopted in similar circumstances and there is no doubt that she is better off now than if she had remained with her birth mother. There are consequences to some actions and in this case the courts are making a decision to act in the best interest of the child, not the mother. If the courts did not award custody of the child to any of her family or friends, it would have been more balanced for the reporter to explore why this decision was made.
The slant of the story extends to the photographs. As a graphic designer who searches for and manipulates images every day, I note the creative cropping in the last photo of this mother with her new baby. It looks like she is smoking a cigarette, a plume of second hand smoke just barely visible. It does take away from the presentation of this woman as a wholly fit mother.
I sincerely hope this mother can remain drug free for the rest of her life. However there is a reasonable chance that this second child will also end up in foster care. Motherhood is stressful in the easiest of circumstances. And this woman is not raising her new baby in easy circumstances.
20
It is borderline child abuse to let children live with addicted parents, or parents stuck in a cycle of addiction and recovery. The woman has only been sober for a short period of time, she clearly still has relations with her partner who is a user (increasing her chances of relapse) and she already let her first son down so many times. Parenting isn't a thing where you get a million chances. Children need parents who are stable enough to care for them, not parents going through recovery.
My former boyfriend is a recovered addict. His mother is a current addict who constantly went through recovery cycles. If addicts can recover that's great for them, but they are rendered permanently unreliable and totally unfit as parents. You can never trust an addict. How do these reporters know she tried to get sober while pregnant? Because if that's just what she said, I don't buy it for a second. When you're an addict, nothing, not even your children, can compete with the next high.
You can't risk a child's life and the stability he needs to grow and thrive just because his mother wishes she could have a do-over.
27
For every story like this, there is a story where every effort was made to keep the child with its biological parents, and the child ends up dead.
44
@J. Waddell
For every story where reunification was prevented there is a story where reunification ended in death of the child? Wow. Could you please cite your source? This is a tragic enough situation without the fake news.
@J. Waddell Please cite your source.
I meet a lot of these families. My colleagues and I are often frustrated by the number of opportunities that bio families get in these situations before the state acts in a way that best benefits the child. Foster families who would like to adopt are kept in limbo for years sometimes.
On the occasions when I meet bio parents, they often speak with good intentions about their desire to care for the child. Unfortunately, most of them do not follow through with their actions. I feel sorry for them, because I feel that they have an emotional bond with their child, but their other issues, whether it is addiction or something else, are too overpowering for them.
My primary focus, though, is on the child. Meeting children who are delayed meeting developmental milestones due to being contained in a car seat all day long, who always seem hungry due to months of poor nutrition, or who have unusual behavioral issues likely due to neglect or abuse, has reduced my concern for a bio parent being re-unified with these children. I want to see them in a safe and nurturing environment and if foster / adoption is the answer, so be it.
49
My daughter was a Child Protective Service social worker for years in Virginia and dealt with many cases like this. Nearly all the time the child taken from a mother like this would go to the care of an immediate family member unless there were compelling reasons why these other family members could not be trusted. So there probably is another side to this story.
45
@john I agree. I can't understand why kinship placement wasn't offered here, except to guess that there's more to the story than was presented. If not, then it's wrong. If biological parents can't parent (and that's not clear here), then kinship placement really should be considered.
2
@john The data suggest otherwise. Here in Virginia we have one of the worst records in the nation for using kinship care. Nationwide about a third of placements are with relatives; in Virginia it’s about six percent. (Have a look: http://bit.ly/2SOpYH6) -- even though study after study says such placements are better for children than what should properly be called “stranger care.” So it’s more likely that the child protective services system bias against families extends to extended families.
Richard Wexler
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
Alexandria VA
www.nccpr.org
1
I am an attorney who has litigated such cases in Pennsylvania. The story about Lindsey is not unusual, but it is all about Lindsey. The standard applied under such circumstances is the best interest of the child, not the addicted mother. Lindsey might struggle with drug addiction with multiple recoveries and relapses for the next ten years - is Brayden to be 'parked' in foster care (quite possibly in multiple homes and with families) for the sake of Lindsey and her personal demons? Child Protective Services (in Pennsylvania, called CYS) can be arbitrary and capricious and individual caseworkers grow angry and retaliatory; but there was nothing about this story that suggested that was the case here. "Her little boy was slipping away" - heartringing words, but the child is not a toy to be tussled over, a prize for staying clean for six months. CPS' adoption process has to be reasonably efficient and get to a conclusion in real-time; other people (the child himself, the adoptive parents) have their emotions and lives engaged also. And its 'Child' Protective Services, for a reason.
135
@Tom Wolpert I am an attorney from California. Still, in this case, it is not clear whether CPS had obstructed placement with a relative. I have seen numerous cases where CPS would lie and fabricate evidence to prevent relatives to apply for placement.
Again, it's SAFA and the $5,000 to $8,000 federal incentive money that is really in the real interest of CPS and state legislature in the case of young and easily adoptable children. Just like puppies and kitten.
8
@QTP yes, but the writer dodges the issue as to the fitness of other, close family members. Why did the family not step in and taken over the care of this child before he was taken away? Where were they? This family was on the state's radar. Apparently, Brayden's well being wasnt a serious concern for the child's grandmother or others. Love is only one piece of parenting.
33
@Suzanne yes, my question too. Why did the court deem family/friends unfit? The story is slanted through ommission of important information.
18
Very sad story. Unfortunately when the state has to intervene because the parents messed up in one way or another the parents get and should expect rough justice. Who the heck really knows what’s best for the child at this point? Child took its first hit of heroine in the womb and not by choice. That one ain’t on the state. Mom is now sober, and that’s to be commended, but what is the likelihood of relapse? Statistically it’s quite likely, and what then? The state has to retake the child again until mom gets her act together as determined by the state? Life is hard, and in no way am I unsympathetic to someone who self medicates to deal with hard times, but the path leading to an addiction is undoubtedly a choice. One does not, at the risk of stating the obvious, become a heroine addict overnight. Rather, a series of decisions are typically made over a period of years that brings someone to that point. I would also point out that the article seems to praise the addict mom and condemn the state and its decision makers who are simply trying, however imperfectly, to make the right decision for the child. This is not a position anyone wanted to be in, and the mom clearly caused this situation. I actually draw the exact opposite opinion about the state and its decision makers from what seems to be the view of the author. What a benevolent society we live in that the state actually has a process for letting a woman who’s messed up to this degree regain her parental rights.
34
This article is so one sided and partial. There is obviously more to the story that should have been presented in order to portrait an accurate picture of the situation. Interestingly enough, even though this article was obviously written to garner sympathy for the addict, there are so many "red flags" that indicate the state did the right thing by the child. I wished this kind of articles would also include the point of view of adult children of addicts who lived through a similar situation so we can truly understand how devastating addiction really is for the children of addicts.
74
@Rosie - As the adult child of an addict, I’ll weigh in: It’s a terrible way to grow up.
4
Its is hard for me to understand the behavior of the state agents (social workers) in this matter. If had the ability to investigate I would look for a money trail and/or a group of self-righteous religious people driving the baby transfer process.
3
@old soldier Yup, this is a billion dollar industry. There are people who earn their living by fostering and adoption.
4
@old soldier
We’re only hearing one side of the story here. We have no idea how well this mother has actually followed the plan outlined by the state. We have no idea if those family members who are willing to take the child are appropriate placements. (Do they have a history of drug abuse themselves, have they had a case with CPS, do they have felony convictions, do they have an appropriately clean and safe home?) If the state didn’t wan to place them with relatives, there is probably a good reason.
14
Yes! I always suspected that people went into thankless social service jobs for the money.
13
As a mother grandmother and retired NYC teacher I find this story very disconcerting. I pity everyone most of all the poor child and since I don’t know any of them I can’t judge the situation. Being an addict is horrific and how long is long enough to prove being truly clean? Saving the child is the most important but it’s a total tragedy and I fear for him no matter the outcome.
11
It’s hard for me to have much sympathy for this woman. Her addiction to heroin (and other misdeeds) is the cause of the removal of the child from her custody. I feel for people trying to get clean, but how did they get there in the first place? And if you really loved your child, wouldn’t you want to do what is best for him? Sometimes these things are difficult, but with a addicted dad in jail and sober (for now) mom, it’s tough to want to put him in her home. I wouldn’t want imagine growing up in that house of horrors. And a lot of details are missing from this story too. It takes a lot more than conceiving a child to be a mother or a father.
50
I have all the sympathy in the world for Ms Jarrett. But I also have sympathy for her children and the foster family caring for her son. What dedicated, loving people the foster family must be if willing to take this young boy into their care for the rest of their lives. The authorities MUST prioritise the child's interests over all others. Reading between the lines, I suspect that's what is happening here, and so it should. Ms Jarrett might have sobered up for her daughter, but its seems she wasn't sober for her son's first year. which was one of the most important developmental stages in his whole life.
58
There is a lot of missing information here. Generally, states want to place children with relatives because it is cheaper, even when those are the same people who raised the troubled parent. If the other family members had issues that would not permit them to qualify to foster the child, or if CPS had reason to believe they would just take the child and then give her back to the offending parent except on the days the social worker was due, then they would not be eligible to care for the child.
The current laws that curtail the amount of time a person has to get it together and regain custody are a reaction against the bad old days when kids sat in foster care for decades, waiting.
60
We think too narrowly about things. Black or white, this or that. What child doesn't deserve more parents rather than less? I am the adoptive parent of two daughters, both now in their twenties. One is blessed to have access to her birth family. I adopted her at 2 days old, and I see myself as her mother, but I can't imagine not also seeing her birth parents as parents. I like being part of the continuum of love that surrounds her. Parenting isn't about being right, it's about love.
58
@Gigi P
I love your answer. It is about not seeing children as belonging to anybody. The more loving people in their lives the better. It takes a village...
1
@Gigi P
Imagining you have a mother who simply couldn’t care for you is far better than being consistently let down by a heroin addict mother. Hopefully she gets and stays clean, but she hasn’t proven that she can and love isn’t the only emotion that can flow from parent to child.
She doesn't deserve a medal for getting sober once she got pregnant. She is simply going through what many minority women have endured for years, with no one to feel sorry for them. The fact is, odds are high she will relapse & it doesn't seem clear that she's aware that she has a lifetime problem which is NOT a disease & that will always need to be managed. Between that & her boyfriend the felon who suffers from the same disorder, her enabling family & the other child she now has, she has more than she can handle on her own.
She has mortgaged her son's future enough. It's time to let him go, get beyond denial of how badly she messed up & focus on her daughter. Providing an environment that will foster better emotional & lifestyle habits in her 2nd child is the only way family history won't repeat itself.
Addiction is a result of the interplay between, biology, the social environment & learned coping habits. It's a lot for one person to change & that's the reason her son is not coming back. BTW, there is no cure for addiction,unlike a disease. It has complex causes that interact in different ways & the social settings that result in addiction need to be taken into consideration. Calling addiction a disease, like a viral or bacterial infection, lets society off the hook for the role it plays in the problem. Something about this girl's life led her to reach for instant, guaranteed relief for her inner tensions & that is a learned response, not an innate defect.
59
@ursamaj The presence or absence of a cure doesn’t define what is or is not a disease.
12
@Mbrown By limiting the concept of addiction to the disease model, it certainly brings up the idea that there is a cure, that a person can walk away from the problem by taking their suboxone for instance & that nothing in the person's environment contributed to the development of the problem. It is too reductive, lets too many people off the hook & creates a false hope that one day there will be a tweak in the brain, a device, a patch or something that will make the problem go away, without anybody having to change a thing.
Essentially, I am advocating for a biopsychosocial approach to addiction, so I do not want to get bogged down in the semantics of disease, when what I really want to say is that the sin model, the willpower model & the disease model of addiction is not adequate to provide an etiology or a description of the problem.
8
@ursamaj I live with an addict, so I guess you would call me an enabler. Let's continue the cycle, the labels, the demonization, the ripping families apart. I've tried it all. You, on the other hand, I must say, know it all don't you. You've been there, you've done that. You know all about the interplay, the biology, the whole one size fits all way to treat addiction (disease or not, it's sure a problem). I don't know what you're profession is, but I sure hope you're not in the business of helping people. You think from the past and not the present or future. Laura
3
Perhaps Family Preservation 365 or Save Our Sisters can help. Two wonderful organizations fighting for mothers to keep their children. The Child Welfare System in this country needs much reform.
10
I strongly doubt this story. Everything is based on what this woman says and is the opposite of actual state laws. I have seen both sides of foster care, both parents losing custody and foster parents placed with kids, in my own family. Often parents who've lost custody have a distorted view of the admittedly imperfect foster care system. Even if we look at addiction as a medical condition that does not provide some protection against losing custody. People can and do lose custody if they are unable to take care of their children for medical reasons. The only way they would not have placed the child with relatives would be if they could not pass a background check or provide a basic, safe home. Legally biological relatives and friends od the family have preference UNLESS they have commited serious crimes or are unable to meet their own basic needs.
I feel this article is iresponsible and provides a very unrealistic view of the foster care system. There are real changes that need to be made but a factless article will not change anything. We live with the effects of prenatal substance abuse every day because my partner's mother abused many drugs. I applaud efforts by parents to improve themselves but they have still damaged their children. Parents can move forward but their child may forever have serious damage. This woman has a 2nd chance. She's clean, she has another child, she can push for post adoption contact. I hope she makes the most of it.
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@JJ It is a well-known secret that the California law is rigged against parents. The California Supreme Court even went against a U.S. Supreme Court case (Kramer v. Santosky) requiring clear and convincing evidence of parental unfitness to terminate parental rights. In theory, relatives have precedence over stranger but in practice, the counties will try their best to deceive and obstruct relative placements. There are many horror stories of children being abused, neglected and even killed in the foster system. It's really all about the state getting federal matching money. Billions of dollars. Social workers are underpaid and overworked so they take shortcuts. Lawyers appointed by the court to represent parents make about $65 a case a month. They carried an average of 150 cases at the same time. So they are just potted plants and they will likely throw their clients under the bus. If not, they'll starve with that kind of compensation.
14
@QTP
Well that seems odd because in my California county the majority of kids are placed with and adopted by relatives. If they system is so rigged why are relatives being given custody most of the time? Horror stories are often just that...stories. Foster care is not pretty. I have known many people who were in and out of foster care. There is so much that can be improved. But most of the time relatives do get custody even if they are not what most people would consider fit parents.
6
Several of my siblings went through foster care due to our father's heroin addiction. For some, it was a marked improvement; for others, even worse than before. I don't know if the foster care system has improved over the decades since then. I doubt it's become great.
But this article almost certainly downplays the risk of letting Ms. Jarrett raise her own daughter. It's a tempting move for those devoted to pointing out systemic injustices (and ignoring the great damage that ordinary individual people can cause).
I think Ms. Jarrett's daughter is facing pretty bad odds anyway you play it. Breaks my heart. I feel for Ms. Jarrett too though, just not in the way this article intends.
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@Dave I agree; Odds are pretty even that this child will suffer no matter what at this point. But given that, the fundamental right of children and parents to have each other, and for siblings to be together, should win out, in my opinion. When you look at studies comparing the outcome of children in foster care versus children whose parents were able to keep them, foster care looks much much worse. Sometimes that's because the parents who were able to hang onto their kids were fitter than those who lost their children. But at least some of that difference is because foster care is often worse than even abusive or negligent parents.
This is a tough one. I believe the number one consideration must be getting the child into a stable home. A child living in a household with addicts is extremely likely to become an addict as well. This horror is frequently multi-generational. Anything that breaks that is literally a matter of life and death. Get the kids adopted and into a stable home. Sometimes, mistakes such as using drugs, have consequences.
46
My childhood revolved around my aunt's addiction --- my mother's obsession with saving her sister meant my life was one big drama after another. Nothing was peaceful, and my needs were secondary. I grew up believing life was one big emergency.
Children in foster care should not be shuttled around from one home to another -- that's just abuse. But this woman should recognize that her addiction makes her unfit and that if she truly loves her son, she will let him go to a stable home that loves him. She is not the baby.
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@KatheM
It sounds like this little boy only had one move. They likely placed him in the near by home because they were working to reunify. It sounds like that home was not open to adopting. Many people will not adopt young children who've been substance exposed because of the possible long term effects. Ideally a home close to mom who could adopt would have been available but when it's not, as it seems in this case, and the plan changes to adoption they have to find an adoptive home. Depending on the child's needs, which we don't know from the article, this can be difficult and may see the child moved far away, even out of state. If this little boy only moved once he's very lucky. In some states all families doing foster care must also be certified to adopt so as to discourage multiple moves. They don't have to adopt of course but being already certified to adopt makes it easier.
14
@JJ From the article, I believe he was replaced in a pre-adoptive home.
You are correct about the push to make all homes potential adoptive homes it's part of federal legislation. And at the same time foster parents are told to be ready to let go at a moment's notice -- an incredibly tough role.
3
Child Protective Services exists to protect children, like the Drug Enforcement Administration exists to enforce sensible drug policy.
I don’t know how we have what amounts to a nationalized child trafficking ring, operated primarily by social workers, but I certainly have read some mind-blowing accounts of their handiwork.
11
@ubique There is some truth in what you write...signed a former foster mother.
I’m an adoptive mom. Both my kids were adopted as young infants. They both exhibited signs of severe separation anxiety from the moment we brought them home. They still carries the scars of that pain today. In our case, the parents willingly placed their children for adoption. I believe the wounds of abandonment in adopted children are unfathomable. If parents are willing, our society should do everything we can to assist them in their desire and attempts to be good parents. Would-be adoptive parents will, sadly, have plenty of children left to shelter and love, if they wish.
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@Sarah Conner And what about the damage that might be done to a child’s psyche by removing him from a stable and loving adoptive or foster to adopt home after several months or years? Or the damage done to kids who are yanked out of their homes, returned to their parents, only to be yo yoed back to foster care yet again when the parents relapse? I’m sure adoptees do have abandonment issues, but kids are also damaged by their biological relatives. There are no perfect solutions, but I don’t think very small children benefit from such chaos. I also have to question why the mother had another child when her first is in foster care and her sobriety is a fairly recent thing. It might have made more sense to wait a few years until she is hopefully more stable. I hope she will not lose the second baby and can stay clean.
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@Sarah Conner you are so correct about the damage done to children thought separation anxiety. The risk to children whose parents may lapse back into drug abuse are huge. When under the influence of drugs, parents can not protect their children from abusers who may be in the home. These kinds of situations are not mentioned in these stories but I know, as a former foster mother, how common this senerio can be. It is a hard call.
20
@Sarah Conner
My partner was substance exposed both prenatally and during his early childood. That has left both physical (brain) and emotional damage he will deal with the rest of his life. He does not believe being left with his mom was the right choice. While some adopted children do have emotional scars there are ways to decrease this (open adoption being a main one) and the alternative is to leave children in often severely damaging environments. Seeing this first hand I would favor an adoptive home with an open adoption (if safe) vs leaving a child in a home with drug addiction.
40
I am not sure what the "right" answer is, but when I was considering adopting a child I felt that open adoption was the way I wanted to go... this way the child and biological parents can have contact if they want to. I grew up with a a lot of step parents etc around and I didn't find it confusing. Also, creating a romantic mystery for the child can make them want to run away to find their "real" parents later on, which is more dangerous than just letting the air out of the balloon slowly. This just seems the most compassionate way to go, unless the child is in danger of abuse.
20
Please don't think evil of people who become drug addicted. My best friends and next door neighbors had very minimal health insurance and could not afford all the operations required to rebuild the young woman's foot. When she had the wreck she was sober and the extreme pain she suffered made her seek Oxy as a means of controlling the pain. She died and now the mother/father are raising the 12 YO man as their own with home schooling. Many home school children parents are seeking to avoid any contact with religion they don't believe should be taught.
Many years ago when I joined Coca-Cola and was a charging young buck in the Brand Coca-Cola group because I could speak German. Up front we acknowledged the Metro Atlanta schools were horrible and offered to pay for private schools. THERE was not a racial element - the Germans had then and still now have an excellent school system. Fortunately STEM are the vast majority of specialized studies. We said that liberal arts bakes no bread.
The key is parental involvement - my mother worked 6 days a week and my father 7. I was a terrible student at Purdue. My favorite course was taught by Pete Kares a grad student. It was using mathematical models in making decisions. When it came time to present the results to top company and agency managers, my immediate supervisor, John Avery made such a hash of it he was told to sit down. Pete Sealey made the pitch - WOW they immediately approved a $100 adv. million increase.
1
I used to think adopting from foster care would be a great idea. After reading this and several other articles, I’m afraid the ethics of the system are too murky.
5
Even if you choose not to adopt there are many ways you can be a positive force for children in the foster system. Especially older children in foster care.
22
@Navah. Children are not the property of their parents. Even animals are removed from homes for neglect. But it is murky, i agree. Still foster care is filled with kids who kept going back to their troubled parents only to be taken away again. These kids are badly damaged. The goal is to release lids earlier for adoption and give them a chance at a mormal life. Why not speak to adults who were adopted out of foster care?
3
@Sutton Hamilton, MD
If there is a CASA program in your area, I encourage you to investigate it. Volunteers advocate for the needs of children in these situations.
4
I read the comment about speedy adoptions and wondered if the writer had ever seen the result of protracted custody situations. Kids bounce back and forth between their sometimes-clean parents, family members, and foster care. Suddenly they are too old to be adoptable and they become the sad pictures of 12 year old wards of the state looking for their forever homes with bios that indicate they are suffering permanent PTSD and destabilization anxiety. Seems like a speedy adoption to a good loving home is a move in the best interest of the child.
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@Liz Siler
To add to this there are no speedy adoptions in foster care. Parents legally have almost 2 years to show they are making progress. Only after that are parental rights terminated. The exception can be when older siblings have already had their rights terminated but often the parents get a whole new almost 2 year window with the younger child. Then the state must make sure they have an adoptive home for the child. Typically judges will not terminate rights until an adoptive home has been found. Then the child must live with the adoptive family for anywhere between 3-12 months depending on the state before they can move to adopt. Unless the parent willingly gives up custody (some do because they know they can't provide care or because it may allow them to avoid criminal charges) the path to adoption for a child is quite slow.
2
Heroin addiction is really tough. Most quit many times before they find sobriety. But, children want and need to be with their parents. Heroin addiction is a rocky start to life. Being taken from a parent or parents that very much want the child is not just a start, it is a whole life.
I have an adult child that had very little contact with his alcoholic Father growing up. In hindsight, I believe it would have been better for all of us if there had been consistent contact. There could be a sober person present while the child and addict are together.
I believe that we need to further research on how to keep children with their biological parents and how to support parents and children together.
23
@Lydia. You should speak with adults who were raised by drug addicted parents and see if they agree with you that they needed their biological parents.
156
@Lydia - this is one of the most irresponsible posts I have ever read anywhere. Working with drug-addicted parents who are in court-mandated behavioral health care, I cannot help but wonder why you would say any of this. A sober person "present while the child and addict are together" does nothing to prevent an addict from saying or doing terribly destructive, traumatizing things. Children want to believe that there parents/caregivers are good/normal/loving, etc., and will twist things up in their developing minds, often resulting in self-blame, confusion, and self-hatred for the conduct of others. To everything you are saying (other than that heroin addiction is really tough and most people take several tries before they get close to quitting), no no no. Children can only take advantage of their natural resilience if they have a chance to survive in the first place. No children remaining with addicts who are at statistically significant risk of abusing.
6
CPS agencies across the U.S. have a compelling reason to take away children and not placing them with relatives. It has nothing to do with the best interests of the children. It has to do with the $5,000 to $8,000 matching federal incentive money for every adoption and the matching funds for administrative and foster care. This is a legacy of the Clintons and their Safe Adoptions and Families Act.
Politicians, the media, pediatrician organizations, etc. are all worked up about immigrant children being separated from their parents but nary a word is said about the hundreds of thousands of American children being stolen from their families every day. For example, I wrote to Nicolas Kristof of the NY Times after he went after Trump and got no answer. The same with Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. There is very little due process in legal proceedings to take away children in state juvenile dependency courts. The proceedings are pretty much similar to what happen in the Soviet Union or China.
37
This may be a bit off topic, but my deceased grandparents in Boston had neighbors many years ago who were both alcoholics. Unfortunately, they both had terrible drinking problems. They had a young daughter who was being subjected to this terrible home life. The woman's brother and wife were able to adopt through the courts proving the family life was terribly unsuitable for the girl. It was a very sad and unfortunate situation for this youngster and her parents but the brother did not want this poor girl brought up in this environment. He was thinking of the child who went on to have a very happy life, married well and had children of her own. Not all children were as lucky as this girl.
My point is that we must put the wellbeing of children before the parents. Children are impressionable and drug addicted parents can scar a child for life. I know people who have been brought up in alcoholic homes and it is not something I would wish on my worst enemy. It can have a lasting negative effect that never goes away. The children must always come first. They are precious.
111
A child is always best reunited with his/her biological parent if the parent and child want this and if the parent has straightened out and is now responsible. It sounds like this is the case. Sounds like the state is holding her kid hostage.
19
Heroin addiction never ends, it requires a life time of management and success often remains fragile. Not using heroin for “a few months” is a long, long way from being ‘straightened out’.
This report is far more emotionally, rather than factually-based, but the story could perhaps provide an object lesson. One child of addict parents raised at home, the sibling in care would at least present a direct comparison of outcome.
18
I have never understood why kids of addicts are often placed with their grandparents. After all those grandparents have already raised kids that turn out to be addicts and have generally made bad decisions. Deciding to get clean once you are pregnant is hardly the correct decision. Deciding to get clean before you get pregnant and giving your child a stable environment to come home to, demonstrates the resolve needed to be a good parent. While this is a sad situation, the most important person in the equation is neither parent, it is the child. The critical years for a child are the earliest years, when a child's brain is growing and he is learning socialization skills. He needs a stable environment, not one in which his parents are making an effort. The effort should have been made before the child was born.
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@thewriterstuff
Are you seriously suggesting that it's 100% the parent's fault if someone turns to drugs?
How many families have several healthy kids, but one gets offered drugs at just the wrong time?
What a horrible thing to say. I know more than one person who tragically "lost" a kid to drugs but was able to raise their grandchild.
Drugs are not evidence of evil parents. They are a scourge that affects people at their lowest point. I'm truly shocked that someone would say that a grandparent shouldn't be able to care for a child just because one of their children made a bad choice.
14
Maybe because addiction isn’t always from bad parenting. Maybe she was raped. Maybe she has a non-genetic mental health issue. Maybe she fell in with the wrong group of friends. Good grief.
8
I'm shocked at the comments I see - your child should not be taken away and given to someone else. You are always that child's mother. The child was in a bad situation with the mom - fine, take the child until the mom can take him back. She is so lucky that she had such a support system - child services seems to think her whole family is suspect b/c Lindsey has issues. Let he who is without sin ... Everyone goes through dark times, that does not mean your parental rights should ever be terminated. The comments focus on the child, can you be so sure about the environment he'll grow up in? How about the adult and the problems this separation will cause long term.
We have so many problems in this country right now, but not terminating parental rights should be on someone's radar
82
@nm.lettersThese "foster parents" seem like opportunist adoptees, not child advocates. we have an opiate crisis which they are preying on.
3
@nm.letters - People that raise and provide a safe stable loving home are parents. Anyone can birth a child, not everyone can parent. And there are plenty of reasons for cutting off custody from a biological parent - severe abuse and neglect are usually the main reason. There is another side of the story that is not presented in this article.
19
@nm.letters
The comments here should focus on the child.
Do the family members also have a record? Normally I would think they might be considered unless they also have some history of drug use or foster care involvement. As for the child, he cannot be expected to wait for months and years while his parents go into treatment, relapse, and then go back to treatment. At some point, regardless of sympathy for the parents, enough is enough. I don’t know if it reached that point with this particular child, but I don’t think life with drug addicted parents would be in a child’s best interests.
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@Bookworm8571 I would love to know if any effort was made by Ms. Interlandi to verify the reason why the maternal grandmother was not considered for familial placement initially (or at any time before termination of parental rights). All of these decisions must be documented in the case file - not the random remark at a "recent hearing."
There is too much missing information for any real meaningful context here, starting with how Ms. Jarratt first came to the attention of CPS. If she was truly sober during the pregnancy, none of the blood tests would have triggered CPS intervention.
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@Bookworm8571
Legally they MUST give preference to family and family friends but if they have a serious criminal record (murder, attempted murder sexual assault, armed robbery, serious assault, any crime against a child ect), a recent (within 5-10 years) drug or DUI conviction or can not provide safe housing (running water, electricty, a bed) then they will not be approved. Often an otherwise eligible family member lives with or is married to someone who has an ineligible conviction and in that case they must either seperate or can not take the child. The majority of children in our county are adopted by relatives (who in our state receive the same compenation as all foster/adoptive parents).
17
I found odd that the tattoo is considered such a profound 'constant reminder' of her son. That, like many other sincere efforts is not sufficient to having the persistence of parenting. It takes a few hours to get a tattoo, it takes decades for a child to overcome such a rocky beginning.
You really don't get a lot of chances to get infancy and early childhood right. Their physical and psychological future is at stake.
97
Is she still with the boyfriend/father of her kids who has had a longer problem with heroin? The article seems not to take the little boy's welfare into account. Nice that the dad was excited over a onsie - but that has nothing to do with parenting. Addiction is terrible and we need to be compassionate. But addicts dont make good parents so i am not going to play the poor, heart of gold drug addict vs. bad, unfair system game that the reporter is playing. She lost custody of her son because of her addiction. Still, I hope this woman can get her son back. I also hope she has enough sense to stay away from that man. Together it appears they cant stay clean. They can make children but not good decisions.
167
@Suzanne
I agree. When I read that she was pregnant with another child with this same man, my sympathy waned. This represents poor judgment and poor self control - sadly, portents of problems in the future for her and her children.
15
While parents attempt to get their lives together, children continue to need love, stability and a safe environment. States decided to narrow the time parents have to clean up their act because that is deemed to be in the best interest of the children.
The fact that none of the mom’s family or friends are considered responsible guardians speaks volumes. Good for her for “months” of clean time. But that’s not really much of a track record to be give custody of a child.
Of course it’s sad. But the child’s future is given a higher priority by the state.
227
@Michael Haddon, if that were the case, the state would make more effort to help the mother and make sure she is united with her son.
3