Children in Alabama shouldn't languish in foster care when they can have permanent adoptive homes
The Birmingham News
May 20, 2008
THE ISSUE: Children in Alabama shouldn't languish in foster care when they can have permanent adoptive homes.
Eight years is a long time for a child. It's certainly too long to stay in foster care, especially when adoptive parents are available and eager to provide a permanent home.
Yet, that's how long Cheryl and Vincent Jones waited to adopt their two foster children, Brandon and Nicole. The children were 4 and 5 when their mother, who was at the time living in a car, surrendered them to the Department of Human Resources. The Joneses first asked to adopt the children two years later. But despite seemingly little reason for optimism, DHR continued holding out hope the biological parents would do what they needed to do to reclaim the children. By the time the adoption finally took place, Brandon and Nicole were approaching adolescence.
Their wait for a permanent home was longer than average in Alabama. But average here is still too long. Foster children in Alabama typically wait more than three years for adoption, according to a federal study due out this summer. Alabama's is the second-longest wait time among 47 states covered in the study, The News reported Sunday.
It's also outside recommended timelines for foster-care adoptions. National standards call for foster children to be reunited with biological families within 12 months or to be adopted within 24 months.
The reasons to rush are obvious. It's no secret stability matters to children. They need permanence. They shouldn't be bounced from foster home to foster home or just left hanging about what the future holds. While it's nice when families can be stabilized and reunited, childhood is too fleeting to wait years and years for a happy ending.
"The longer it takes, the more difficult it is for a child to make sense out of their life," said Jane Baker, a Decatur social worker who specializes in attachment disorder and has worked with foster and adoptive families for 25 years. "We talk about what is the best interest of the child. That is really kind of murky water, not always clear. But at some point, it is really not in the best interest of the child to be in limbo for long periods of time."
As Baker suggests, it's easier to talk about ideal outcomes in the abstract than to accomplish them in reality.
"Ideal" would be a stable family from the get-go, one that works to protect and nurture children so they can become healthy, happy adults. Unfortunately, DHR doesn't deal in "ideal."
The state agency steps in when things are already in chaos and children are in danger from abuse and/or neglect - sometimes because of a temporary crisis in their homes, sometimes because of a more fundamental problem.
DHR has the unenviable job of trying to figure out how real the danger is and, even more tricky, how to best care for the child.
The agency's commissioner, Page Walley, said it's not always the right thing to put the children in foster care, terminate their parents' rights and move quickly toward an adoption. Of course, he's right.
All things considered, it's best when children can grow up in loving, safe homes provided by their biological parents. But sometimes, that's just not a realistic option or hope.
In those cases, children need the next-best thing - a loving, safe, permanent home provided by adoptive parents. They deserve to have a real home and a place to belong. And they shouldn't have to wait until they're half-grown to get it.
