[Emily K. Broggi]

Hello--

I am not exactly clear on what this statement is saying. Personally, I am a firm believer in Family Preservation whenever and where ever possible. If a child needs to go into Foster Care for a LITTLE while while their parent(s) get things together, then by all means...personally I believe in that case a child should stay if at all possible with a relative temporarily, but if what a parent needs is just some help, a leg up for a temporary amount of time than WHY should he/she or they ever place the child(ren) for an adoption?

Parents should NOT place their children to avoid Foster care, the should place their childrenif they really feel that's whats best. I happen to be very well aquianted with the Foster care system (through my very best friend), and it is not a 'good' situation for a child, as in you would not 'want' your child(ren) in Foster Care, but it is there for temporary help if needed. The objective at ALL times is for the child(ren) to end up back witht heir biological parents.

I'm sorry Ijust don't understand the logic in avoiding foster care by placing the child(ren) instead...If you feel you CAN get ony our feet andbe 'best' for your child(ren) than do so, if you need to use foster care,that is unfortunate, but it does not (always) make you a bad parent and it does not always mean you should place your child(ren) for adoption.

Can anyone help me out here, maybe I am looking at it wrong?

Thanks!
Emily Broggi
First Mom Author/Poet

[debsdone]

So that I can better understand this topic.........Could you give me a few examples of what situations would require a parent to have children in foster care? And what would qualify as "a little while"? What sort of help or "leg up" would a parent need in these situations? Perhaps if I understood that part of things, I could better understand what all this means! Debi

[Emily K. Broggi]

Being that I am not directly involved with the Foster care system, i will not pretend to be an expert, but I am very well aquainted, and heres what I have:

Reasons for a child to be in Foster Care:

- Having ben taken forcefully from parents due to neglect or abuse of any kind, anything from leaving an 8 year old to babysit an infant (example) to sever sexual abuse, etc.

- The parents are drug addicted and incapable of caring for child while on drugs (neglect).

- The parents are ignoring the child, paying no attention, not bathing or sending the child to school, changing diapers, etc.

- A parent takes it upon themslevs to ask for their child to be placed in a foster care situation while they attempt to get their stuff together in order to be capable of caring for the child better.

- A parent refuses to sign rights away as in an adoption because they do want rights to their children , whether out of love or irresponsibility.


A "Little While"

- 0-6 months is considered a 'little while' more than 6 months a parent should have their sh*t together, they give them lots of help.

a "Leg Up"

- Parenting classes

- Government help, financal

- Emotional support

- Detox programs

- Charity, food, money, etc.


This is about what I get from the foster care system and it's agenda. I have seen children who just need a true home, who are bounced around all their lives in Foster home after Foster home, their parents never get things together, have no plans to and still will not place the child with another family...still I have seen true struggling families that want to stay together, but just don't have the reasources to, or don't have them anymore. Like I said not *ALL* children on foster care need to or should be adopted.

Hope I help a little bit.

Thanks,
Emily Broggi
First Mother Author/Poet

[Snackey]

i have also seen children being placed in foster care temporarily when the sole parent is charged for a crime or if the sole parent is in a car accident and is in the hospital and no family is around.

[Sharon]

Just a speculation...perhaps biological parents place their children to avoid foster care because of the perceptions (and/ or misperceptions) that they have of foster care. Perhaps they are so terrified of the foster care system that they (mistakenly?) believe that the only way to avoid exposing their children to foster care is to sacrifice them permanently to adoption, where at least they may have a permanent, loving and stable home. I am a birthmother, by the way, with no inside knowledge of how the foster care system works. I only know that the media portrayals and the general public's perception of it are not at all positive. I personally would be horrified at the thought of my child being in the foster care system for any amount of time. I know that foster care systems differ from state to state...but for me, I can't help associating foster care with all the horror stories I've read or seen on the news about children being warehoused, abused, neglected, or simply disappearing without a trace (as happened recently in Florida). So perhaps some parents just feel safer, if they cannot keep their child for whatever reason, entrusting the child to an adoptive couple of their own choosing...rather than to a State agency that obviously has serious problems. These are just my thoughts. Sincerely, Sharon

[KellyStacy]

My opinion on foster care is that it literally destroys a child emotionally.Foster care should only be used as a temporary alternative.A limit of a year or less should be enough time for bioligical parents to get themselves together.I know of children lingering in the system for over 3 years,5 years and longer!!! These children are passed from foster home to foster home.I find the best interest of the child is definitely not used in the foster care system.It seems to me the biolical parents have more rights then the children.Look at the data base of children waiting to be adopted through the foster care system none seem to be under the age of 5 and if they are their are serious medical,or emotional problems.The older children nobody seems to want to adopt.However, if these children were given one year and then put up for adoption quickly things would change.The children would have a chance! but instead the child has to be passed to foster home and foster homes waiting for the bioligical parents to get their act together and unfortunately years are passing by their is no stability for the child,the child is sometimes emotionally damaged and sometimes cannot form a proper bond with people who could truely love him/her because of years spent from foster home to foster home.Its a little upsetting for me because these children wait for a bioligical mom or dad for years and sometimes the day never comes that they return to their bioligical parents.If the bioligical parents cannot get their act together in one year then apparently the child is not on their top priority list.That child should automatically go up for adoption where the child would be instantly loved cared for have stability and can form a bond .

[KristieMaureen]

This thread prompted me to do some research. I, too, wondered why someone would voluntarily place their child in foster care, considering that children in foster care are 10 times more likely to suffer abuse than children in their own homes.

What I found was significantly more shocking, in my opinion... the number of children in foster care who should NEVER have been removed from their homes to begin with. Based on studies conducted throughout the 80's and 90's, the conclusion by industry experts (social workers, children's law attorneys, and the courts) is that 1/3 (the conservative statistic) of all children should never have entered the foster care system. With approximately 500,000 children in foster care, this means that at least 165,000 children should be in their own homes - they have no substantiated instances of abuse, they haven't been neglected, and now they're being subjected to numerous foster care placements, disruption of their family, and are being put at risk for abuse/neglect in the system.

"Under questioning by a Congressional subcommittee, Digre admitted to legislators that about half of the removals of children from their homes in his system are due to poverty, and not abuse or neglect." (This is the Los Angeles foster care system)

Studies in Seattle, Los Angeles, and several Illinois cities found that 1/3 of children are removed for the protection of caseworkers who fear liability - they don't want to be the person who leaves a child in a possibly dangerous situation, so they err on the side of caution by removing more children.

Studies further found that, once in foster care, most states are not making the appropriate efforts at family reunification. I know someone here is going to say that biological families have lots of support, but the studies done by court systems, advocacy groups, federal government units, and even various State social services departments (who have a vested interest in covering their own behinds) found that there ARE NOT enough services, and that appropriate help is NOT being offered. 8 times more money is spent on keeping a child in foster care than on family preservation.

The reason I bring all of this to the attention of this thread is I have tremendous concerns over the federally mandated time limits for moving children from foster care to adoption that were mentioned. We seem to be assuming that all children in foster care are there justly, and we should move on to finding them "forever" families. But 165,000 are NOT there justly - do we ignore that, move for more swift termination of parental rights, and quickly adopt these children out - forgetting that there was no reason for their removal in the first place? Is that in the best interests of the child? And where are the federally-mandated safeguards for families to prevent wrongful removal to begin with? If we reduce the number of inappropriate removals, we reduce the caseloads for social workers helping to ensure more adequate safeguards for children who are justly in the system - we reduce the judicial backlog helping to ensure more timely permanent solutions for children who really need them.

It just seems to me that we're focusing on getting children out of foster care - when we should first be focusing on keeping children out of foster care.

Kristie
Adult Adoptee

[KristieMaureen]

I just recalled some conversations I've had with the local public defender in regards to an open adoption bill that was before our legislators last term. One of the provisions of the bill was the removal of the State Mutual Consent Registry, which she vehemently opposed. The reason for her opposition might be another one of the reasons parents voluntarily relinquish their rights to children already in foster care (although not a reason for relinquishing TO foster care).

This public defender represents bioparents in termination of parental rights proceedings. The children of her clients are already in the foster care system, and their situations are to the point where reunification is no longer an option. Instead of going through the costly, lengthy procedure to terminate rights, this public defender encourages the bioparents to voluntarily relinquish their rights by talking up the registry as a means of reunification once the child reaches 18. Bioparents then sign relinquishment and register with the consent registry, waiting around 10-15 years in the hopes that their relinquished child will one day register as well.

In addition to saving costs and court time, and more quickly moving children from foster to adoption - voluntary relinquishment is also pitched to the bioparents as a means of saving themselves the stigma of having a tpr order. I don't know as fact that avoiding the stigma of a tpr is a concern for these parents, but that's the theory of the public defender. And apparently it's been pretty successful for her - she has more instances of parents who voluntarily relinquish now than she does tpr cases that appear before the court.

Kristie
Adult Adoptee

[HappyMomAnna]

PART I. THE ADOPTION AND SAFE FAMILIES ACT OF 1997

On November 19, 1997, the President signed into law the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. This legislation, passed by the Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support, represents an important landmark in Federal child welfare law. It establishes unequivocally that our national goals for children in the child welfare system are safety, permanency, and well-being. The passage of this new law gives us an unprecedented opportunity to build on the reforms of the child welfare system that have begun in recent years in order to make the system more responsive to the multiple, and often complex, needs of children and families. The law reaffirms the need to forge linkages between the child welfare system and other systems of support for families, as well as between the child welfare system and the courts, to ensure the safety and well-being of children and their families. The law also gives renewed impetus to dismantle the myriad barriers that may exist between children waiting in foster care and permanency. By implementing the new law in the context of an ongoing commitment to strengthening all aspects of the child welfare system, we will make a meaningful difference in the lives of children in foster care and in the lives of children who must come into contact with the child welfare system in the future.

ASFA embodies a number of key principles that must be considered in order to implement the law:

The safety of children is the paramount concern that must guide all child welfare services. The new law requires that child safety be the paramount concern when making service provision, placement and permanency planning decisions. The law reaffirms the importance of making reasonable efforts to preserve and reunify families, but also now exemplifies when States are not required to make efforts to keep children with their parents, when doing so places a child's safety in jeopardy.


Foster care is a temporary setting and not a place for children to grow up. To ensure that the system respects a child's developmental needs and sense of time, the law includes provisions that shorten the timeframe for making permanency planning decisions, and that establish a timeframe for initiating proceedings to terminate parental rights. The law also strongly promotes the timely adoption of children who cannot return safely to their own homes.


Permanency planning efforts for children should begin as soon as a child enters foster care and should be expedited by the provision of services to families. The enactment of a legal framework requiring permanency decisions to be made more promptly heightens the importance of providing quality services as quickly as possible to enable families in crisis to address problems. It is only when timely and intensive services are provided to families, that agencies and courts can make informed decisions about parents' ability to protect and care for their children.


The child welfare system must focus on results and accountability. The law makes it clear that it is no longer enough to ensure that procedural safeguards are met. It is critical that child welfare services lead to positive results. The law requires numerous tools for focusing attention on results, including an annual report on State performance; the creation of an adoption incentive payment for States designed to support the President's goal of doubling the annual number of children who are adopted or permanently placed by the year 2002; and a requirement for the Department to study and make recommendations regarding additional performance-based financial incentives in child welfare.


Innovative approaches are needed to achieve the goals of safety, permanency and well-being. The law recognizes that we do not yet have all of the solutions to achieve our goals. By expanding the authority for child welfare demonstration waivers, the law provides a mechanism to allow States greater flexibility to develop innovative strategies to achieve positive results for children and families.
There is much to be done in the coming months as we work together to implement this multi-faceted new law. This Program Instruction is the first of the communications that the Department will send to assist the States in meeting the requirements of ASFA. We will also be consulting with State representatives and other experts in the field to help guide our work in implementing the new law. Working together, we have the opportunity to dramatically improve the lives of children and families.

[KristieMaureen]

The law talks nothing of preventing children from entering the child welfare system... only of goals, targets, and funding for moving them quickly out of the system. Where are the goals for reducing the number of children unjustly removed from their homes? Where are the plans for a unified, scientifically sound checklist to assist social workers in making removal decisions, rather than the current untested, unscientific, and widely-varied by State "risk matrices" that leave social workers with no option but to err on the side of caution? 1/3 of all children in the foster care system should never have gone in to begin with... where's the emphasis on that problem?

And implementation of ASFA, at least in my state, overwhelmingly emphasizes the goal of doubling the number of children adopted from foster care, leaving out the portion of the law that states doubling the number of children adopted OR in permanent placements (which would include reunification).

If you walk into our local social services office, prominently displayed on the wall you will see a bulletin board titled "2003 Adoptions Placed" with an updateable number. There is no corresponding bulletin board for "2003 Successful Reunifications", or more importantly, "2003 Children in Safe, Permanent Placements" listing the number of children regardless of whether it was an adoption or family reunification.

It's a nice media blip to say you have a goal of providing safety to children by increasing adoptions... but it ignores one of the major underlying problems of the foster care system. Where's the media blip about providing safety to families by reducing the number torn apart by inappropriate removal of children?

Kristie
Adult Adoptee

[Howdy]

Having been a foster-mom myself, I can't feel that foster-care is a bad thing. But, if I had a fatal illness or was looking at a long jail sentence and I had children, I'd think it was preferable to search for a permanent adoptive home rather than let the children go into foster-care due to lack of planning. Aside from avoiding putting the children through multiple moves, there would be a better chance of matching culture and value-system.

As far as foster care statistics go, I wonder how they figure out the numbers. I'm aware of three foster kids that do not need to be adopted or returned home. One is a kid of one of my coworkers, he has a family, but due to having sexually abused his little brother and the fact that his mother doesn't want to run the risk of losing custody of her other children if he moved back home and it happened again, he is now living with a foster family. He's 15 yrs old and will eventually "age out" of the foster-care system, but although as a statistic it would appear to be a very sad situation, the real situation is not sad. He likes his foster family and has known them for years before they became his foster family, and he has good relations and contact with his regular family.

Another one is a boy whose mom died when he was young, and his grandmother took on all the children. Unfortunately his grandmother had a bizarre 12 yr limit, and as each kid turned 12 she would lock them out and not let them live with her anymore. One of the kids when this happened to him called the police and after some time in a group home found a foster family (with a coworker of mine at my previous job). They did not adopt him, but he is their forever son anyway (I think because they have two other children to put through college, they might have kept the foster-child status so he can qualify for more financial assistance). So, I suppose statistically his situation will appear to be another sad "aged out of foster care without ever finding an adoptive home" one, yet the reality is quite good, and if the system had tried to move him to an adoptive home to make the statistics look good, that would have been bad for him (because he is happy and bonded with his foster-family).

The third one is a pre-teen who is living in a group home. The caseworker is not even trying to find her a foster or adoptive family, because with her attitude she would not adjust and would probably run away. The mom will maybe be in jail for the next 30 yrs, and although there is a bio-dad willing to accept her into his family, her mom raised her with a lot of negative misinformation about him, so for now she is not willing to go live with him. I don't know where this kid would fit in the statistics, but if they count the bio-dad it would look like the system is hanging on to a kid that has a perfectly good bio-family.

I wonder on the California info what the definition is of poverty versus neglect when they say half were taken from their homes due to poverty.

[HappyMomAnna]

KristieMaureen -- I was not intending to be answering the last post alone with my post. I agree with you that ONE part of this issue is to work on the issue you bring up. To be perfectly honest I myself experienced a period of time in my own childhood where my two little brothers and I were placed into Foster Care for issues that had not been properly investigated first. It did take my own parents some period of time to get us out of care--it cost money--and it was actually very horrible for our whole family.

Yes, it was terrible but, also it was not impossible. Typically there is an event or situation that leads a casewroker to remove a child from the parents. And, from time to time there are problems in 'proving' suitibility on getting your child returned. But, generally speaking the children who remain in foster care for extended periods of time have parents who in one way or another do not stand up and do what it takes or what is required by the State in Order to have the children returned.

Failing of drug tests, faiure to get a job, provide a decent home, or to end domestically violent situations. It does NOT require a great deal of programs or large dollars to be spent in order for the vast majority of parents to meet the minimum requirements. Not taking drugs in order to have your children returned can be accomplished by the person who wants their children returned.
There are many ways to get help if it is important enough to the family.

Getting a job and providing a safe place for a child to sleep eveynight is something any parent would consider important. There are many programs in each state and through the federal government for people to access to help with this. Yes, it requires going out and finding it---completeing paperwork on time and sending it to the correct place, and basic record keeping skills. There are programs that provide many supports for a MOTIVATED person to use to their own advantage.

Not allowing violent and dangerouse people to be around a child is as simple as not allowing it. A parent who is unable to protect themselves or their child from abuse does not need to be raising a child. If reunification requires cutting abusive people out of your life this does not require a 'program' to accomplish. And having been a victim of domestic violence I can promise you there is a VAST amount of support.

I agree there are children in the system who should be with their families. I know because it happened in my life. But, my parents would have moved moutains to get their children back. If thay had been asked to stand on their heads for a week they would have. Most parents who have their children placed in Foster Care are given a program to work--a set of requirements to have their children returned--most of the requirements are BASIC and most families who love their children can and will work hard to meet the requirements --where there is a will there is a way.

The Safe Families act does set a goal for ending years and years of children living in the system. One part of the law provides that states may now move to terminate parental rights if a child spends 16 out of the past 22 consecutive months in Foster Care.
The reason the federal governments has made these limits is that too often children come into and are left in the Foster Care system. Our society has also come to understand that there is a large number of parents when given a way to get their children back still cannot meet the most BASIC of standards or give up the damaging behaviors.

To the original poster---I think it is not good to have the parents pushed to the adoption porcess to avoid Foster Care. I think every parent should be offered every chance possible to reunify with their child..... I find it sad and I have seen it talked about where preasure is placed on the parents--the real question about 'getting back on their feet' is what does this include. In our state a parent is allowed to--not have a home--it takes more then one strike to move toward adoption......

[KristieMaureen]

RE: How does California define neglect vs. poverty

I don't know what California defines specifically as abuse/neglect vs. simple poverty, but the DSS Dept. head in California gave this testimony about the problem with neglect vs. poverty:
"It gets down to those very specific issues about a place to live, food on the table, medical care, and thing like that," he explained, adding, "about half of the families are not physical abusers, not sexual abusers, not people with propensities to violence but simply people who are struggling to keep ends pulled together and are eminently salvagable."

Other states have the same problem with misidentifying poverty as abuse/neglect it appears. The former head of New York Social Services reported the following: "For the most trivial reasons families are destroyed. If the furniture is broken down or the house is messy, CWA workers will remove the child. When in doubt, the safest practice for the workers is to remove the children and then to file neglect charges that never have to be proved in court."

Based on the above testimony given by industry experts, if you end up homeless (which in my area of the country you have a 1 in 50 chance of), if you're having trouble keeping food on the table, or if you're not able to provide appropriate clothing for your children... you risk losing your children. These are all poverty situations - not intentional abuse/neglect.

A situation I personally ran into would bear some of this out as well. I work at a non-profit legal aid organization which provides civil assistance to low-income people. About 40% of our cases now deal with housing issues (illegal evictions, lockouts, unsafe housing, discrimination, etc). The week before Christmas a client came in because he had been served with an eviction notice (illegally, his rent was paid up through the middle of January 2004). He's an aircraft mechanic, but has been unable to find a job since the massive layoffs in the airline industry and elsewhere. He and his wife have 5 children. His biggest fear was not that he and his wife would be homeless: "I can survive on the streets if I have to, but my kids can't... social services will take them away". He's not abusing his children in any way... but because of poverty he fears losing them.

I keep looking for data from somewhere in this decade that would suggest that the problems of misidentifying poverty as neglect are changing, but no luck so far. If anyone else has solid research/reports that suggest the tide is turning, please share them.

Kristie
Adult Adoptee

[KristieMaureen]

Proving Suitability

In every area of American law there is supposed to be a presumption of "innocent until proven guilty". Except that this doesn't appear to be the presumption when children are placed in the foster care system for purported abuse/neglect. There is normally a precipitating event/report, but once a social worker removes a child from a home the burden of proof shifts away from the agency to the biofamily. It's now up to the biofamily to prove they are fit parents, to prove they have not abused/neglected their children, and to follow through with a case plan put in place by the social worker who removed their children - even though in 1/3 of the cases the children should never have been removed. That doesn't seem like any form of justice or protection of children to me. Shouldn't it be the burden of the accusing party (the State) to prove these parents are unfit?

Reunification Plans

On the surface it would appear that complying with a reunification plan should be easy - there are tons of services available, you just have to be willing to use them, right?

Two problems with this theory that I see.

1) Elements of reunification plans are arbitrarily set by social workers who lack appropriate training and supervision, and completion of the elements is not necessarily designed with the new time-frames in mind. Let's take the example of a "typical" drug-addicted parent. The elements of his reunification plan would normally contain the following:
a) completion of a substance abuse program and compliance with its recommendations
b) completion of a psychological exam and its recommendations
c) completion of a parenting class and demonstration of proficiency in parenting skills
d) evaluation for anger management and compliance with recommendations
e) evaluation for individual counseling and compliance with recommendations
f) monthly contact with DSS
g) follow reasonable requirements of caseworker
h) provide DSS with a list of relatives names, addresses, phone numbers
i) maintain adequate housing and demonstrate financial ability to provide for the child

A typical substance abuse program is 12 weeks, so there goes 3 months of the 16 month timeline. Scheduling a psych eval, comleting it, and establishing recommendations typically would take another month. We're down to 12 months. A parenting course is another 12 weeks, so we're now down to 9 months left. Anger management and individual counseling... at least another month to get those into place. You now have 8 months in which to find a job, find a house, and bring in some cash so you're "financially able". A minimum-wage job is unlikely to provide the income required for "adequate housing", let alone financial ability. And this timeline doesn't take into account the time the child is in foster care before the case plan is in place, nor the additional court appearances, counseling sessions, and "other requirements of the caseworker". Even someone extremely well-organized would have trouble getting all of this done. (This was an actual case plan for a father where there was absolutely no substantiated abuse/neglect - he did have a substance abuse problem).

2) Necessary supports are not available to the extent needed in most communities - and substantial waiting periods exist for those services that are there.

On this one, I speak from personal experience in the non-profit community for nearly 10 years.

There are 16,000 people elligible for services at my legal aid organization, but we only have funding for 4,000 each year. That means 3 out of 4 people aren't getting the help they need. For those we are able to see, it's usually about a 2 month wait from the time they contact us to the time we're able to deliver any services.

While I don't have specific number available to me at the moment, conversations I've had with local substance abuse treatment centers, family counseling programs, food pantries and domestic violence organizations indicate a similar level of under-service and waiting periods.

How is a bioparent supposed to complete a reunification plan in the allotted timeframe when he/she has to wait 2 months or more to enter each particular service?

Drawing this to a close - there are serious institutionalized impediments to parental reunification that go far beyond an individual's "willingness" to complete a reunification plan. And the federally-mandated timelines for "permanence" endanger a significant number of families who were torn apart by inappropriate removal of the children to begin with.

Kristie
Adult Adoptee

[HappyMomAnna]

I agree there can be a fine line between seeing poverty and seeing abuse or neglect.

I can offer you something from this decade to help you understand that in some states children are NOT removed from their parents for poverty. In the state of Oregon it is NOT illiegal to be homeless even with your child. Our Daughter lived for the first four years of her life in a shopping cart---on the city bus, and up in the hills in an abandonded cabin without water, electricity or heat.

Her birthmother had 9 referals to social services due to the fact that our duaghter lived in a Safeway Cart......but, this situation in and of iteslf did not consitiute a reason to remove our daughter from her birthmother. When the birthmother gave birth to a second child and things got very hard for her and it was not as easy to live on the streets as it had been.

The 10-referal was when the birthmother was beat up by some guy---the 11 when the guy beat her up again,---the 12 referal was when they found birthmom and both children in the cabin with the baby under a pile a blankets and the mother passed out. The 13 referal was when they found the birthmother with the guy who beat her up twice before.

Finally, the state removed the children from her care.

She was offered one program after another in order to get her children back. She failed to show up for visits. She refused to get a job. She refused to get rid of the guy who kept beating her up. She failed to show up to her court appearance.

The children were each given an attorney. The mother was given an attorney. The state appointed advocates followed the whole case.

Right now in the State of California I have a brother who has three children. Even after several calls to social services no action is being taken. My brother has failed to provide a home for his children. It is not aggainst the law to be homeless. The state has repeatably told my family that without just reason for abuse or neglect they will NOT take the children. In this situation the ONLY GOOD THING would be for his three children to be in a Foster Home where they will have a bed, clean clothes, dinner and stability. We have witnessed 12-years of my brother wandering around aimlessly and making poor chioces.

I personally do consider it to be neglect to not provide a home for a child. I personally feel it is horrible abuse to expect an innocent child to sleep in the car because the parents have made decisions about their own lives that have lead to the whole family being in the situation.

I agree there are rare instances where unjust situations happen. It happened to me when I was 24 and we were illegally evicted---we did what we had to do---we found a way to move---we paid what we owed and when it was over we sued in small claims and had one heck of a Christmas that year---because we won and we had been unjustly evicted.

I am sorry---I was once a 22 year old mother of 2 children married to an abusive man.....living in poverty. I have 'camped' I have slept in my car and I have accessed the services. No matter what happened I would do whatever I had to do to take care of my children. Anyone who is willing to do whatever they have to do to take care of their children will likely NOT face the children being taken for adoption.

I am now raising a child who has been horribly damaged by not just POVERTy---but by her mothers own lack of ambition or effort to make any change in her life. If you do not believe that growing up in a shopping cart is abuse please feel free to come over and take my daughter with you the next time you go to the grocrie store----Or what about the fact that I have a beautiful five year old who can draw a perfect penis---she claims she saw them all the time when she 'lived on the bus.'

You have no idea what abuse this little girl has suffered and Porverty in itself was terribly abuseive in her life. I am glad she no longer lives the way she did......I hope NO OTHER child ever lives the way she did......and her birthmother just had another baby.......still has no job......still has no home.......and still runs around with a guy who hits her....... to me the birthmother made her own decision and continues to choose to live the way she does.

This past year a woman was arrested and charged with child abuse and indangerments because her 12-year old son lived in utter filth and mess. He could not take it any more and committed suicide. I am sorry it is a parents responsibility to keep the home clean. Not keeping the home clean is abuse and neglect.

I once helped in a kindergarten class for my oldest daughter and there was another child in the class who constantly tossed everything in piles on the floor next to her chair. Any trash, left over snack, projects, whatever it was she tossed it down..... The next year that families home burned to the ground. The fire department condemned the home because it appeared that years and years of trash and everything else had piled up on the floors of the home.....they even found a dead cat smashed flat between junk on the floor...... That is abuse and neglect and even if the parents had never hit her, or hurt her physically they ABUSED this child by not helping her function as a 'normal' person. They abused her by teaching her to behave in a way that was clearly odd even in Kindergarten. It was neglect to not keep the home clean and it was neglect not to teach their child the basic principals of living.