Tag: DHS

Don’t Be Negative

A question was asked today in my all things adoption and foster care group – Should foster caregivers be allowed to attend court hearings and/or speak to the judge ? What are your thoughts and why ?

I appreciated this response from a foster and adoptive parent –  I believe there is a rule to allow foster parents or relatives speak at hearings. Usually the judge asks if we want to say anything after they are off the record. I only share 1 minute of positive things about the child. Everyone in the room already knows of any hard stuff, so that’s not my place. It’s almost more awkward to decline to speak than to share some positivity. There are times I’ve spoke up to throw the Dept of Human Services (DHS) under the bus though. When I’m fighting with a case worker to do their job, I will tell the judge “I’ve been advocating for ….. and the team is having a hard time following through”. The judge will make it an order and DHS has to move forward, so that’s helpful. There’s also been a few times I’ve asked for a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) to really make DHS mad. When the worker doesn’t like the parent and won’t budge on expanding visits, things like that.

A foster parent should never ever speak negatively of a parent in court. When they do, the judge dismisses all their comments and keeps a note that they are a pain in the $ss. And sometimes speaking only positive and seeing a parent at court and being kind helps build a bridge to great relationships. A lot of times we don’t see parents much, so any positive, supportive and kind interactions can really help. Which makes reunifying much easier.

I’m also a mentor (so I try to drill this in new foster parent heads) and work on the legal side to help parents get reunification faster, so I do spend a ton of time in court. A word of advice from experience – If you’re going to just speak mean or negative, don’t go!

Still Separated

The good news is that just under 3,000 of the 4,000 children separated from their families by ex-President Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy at the southern U.S. border have been reunited. That policy was lambasted as cruel and inhumane by critics. It has taken years for government officials to reconnect relatives with their young children.

Nearly 1,000 children still need to be reunited with their relatives. It is the second anniversary of the task force created to help with the reunifications. Many of those kids are Central American migrants who were separated from their parents at the border and placed in detention centers. That method was part of the Trump administration’s hardline approach to immigration and was meant to deter millions of migrants from seeking asylum in the US during his term in the White House.

“We understand that our critical work is not finished,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “We remain steadfast in our commitment to fulfill President Biden’s pledge to reunify all children who were separated from their families under the ‘zero-tolerance’ policy to the greatest extent possible, and we continue to work diligently to incorporate the foundational principle of family unity in our policies and operations.”

“We have made significant progress toward reunifying families and providing them with necessary services and support,” the Dept of Homeland Security said. “This critical work will continue until all separated families that can be found have been provided the opportunity to reunify.”