Yesterday I was in court with a mom (we’ll call her Anisa) and dad (we’ll call him Chidi) whose child was removed from their custody at the pediatrician’s office. It was a sting. The doctor called her in for a well check. CPS was there, waiting.
I have started doing this work now. Talking to and writing about families separated by CPS and CPS overreach.
Their lawyer, who had been talking to them through the evening the previous night, went dark in the early hours before court (They have a go-fund me to raise lawyer funds and this lawyer encouraged them to do that). The lawyer no-showed at the court house. He left them to fend for themselves in front of the judge.
Fortunately, the judge was kind, patient and earnestly wanted to do right by the baby, a baby (we’ll call him Obi) around 3 months old, who has been struggling to gain weight and also has a serious case of eczema, which the parents refuse to treat with steroidal cream and prefer a more natural ointment course. But Obi has struggled to gain weight and the eczema has raged uncontrolled, influencing the babies sleep, his skin health and stalled his weight gain. It’s not just a skin thing, it can be systemic.
The judge spent a long time sussing out facts and gave the parents copious time to speak and make their case. In fact, of all the times I had gone to court for the biological families of the kids in my home as a foster parent, I don’t think I remember a more thoughtful evaluation of the facts of the case. I am thrilled to report this. Sometimes court appearances feel hasty and one-sided, like everyone is plowing through the docket. This did not.
The caseworker, who appeared in court on a TV, was more direct, unwavering in her desire to remove the baby and less flexible. She was told by the doctors that she “had saved the life of this baby,” and once she said that the judge really couldn’t send Obi home with Anisa and Chidi without looking at more evidence.
The whole thing reminded me of when our 17-year-old, Edie, who, as a toddler suffered with severe eczema. It was severe enough that she sometimes had open, bleeding wounds from scratching and she refused to take baths because the pain was so overwhelming when anything touched it. David and I ordered non-steroidal cream from Australia (his home country) to avoid the use of steroids. This was 2006 and the internet was only starting to be flooded with discussions about research and what is and isn’t safe. We were newish parents, with two toddlers, and wanted to make the right decisions. We were unsure about using steroids because we had read that the steroids enter the blood stream and can weaken the child’s immune system, and since it is already weakened with eczema this seemed problematic. Of course now, reading physical research from prominent researchers and having more widely reported information, I see now that generally shorter-term use of steroidal creams generally doesn’t have much impact. The National Eczema society says: These (steroidal creams) can reduce the body’s production of natural corticosteroids, weaken immune responses and affect growth.” This is probably enough to make young inexperienced parents, like us back then, and Anisa and Chidi now, nervous and searching for alternatives. In the end, when Edie’s eczema got out of control we used steroids to briefly to get it back into control, but switched as soon as we felt we could to the Australian non-steroidal cream. No one called CPS.
And for years I assumed, like most people, that kids don’t get taken unless there is “a reason.” And we all think this because the alternative is unthinkable. And yet the unthinkable happens all the fucking time.
The issue for me isn’t whether steroid cream is good or not, but whether firstly, babies should be removed from young families when there is no intentional or egregious neglect?
Because neglect itself is kind of an eye of the beholder thing. Is letting my kid go to and from the park alone and manage themselves there, free range or neglect? (Mothers have had their kids taken for less.) The answer is based on lots of factors, of course, but mostly it is about how you, the observer, see danger and what you think proper parenting is, and that can look different to different people across cultures, race and class. It can become particularly difficult when caseworkers, who tend to have strictly middle class sensibilities, are judging the parenting of poorer folks.
And secondly, I’m wondering whether non-compliance with a medical treatment protocol from a doctor or hospital should end with having children removed from the home?
It seems like there should be an intermediate step to help parents make medical appointments and meet the needs of the child without separating them all. Like if they’re doing something wrong, how are they to learn if they are not guided? And who knows if they are wrong anyway? How many times do people for good reason struggle to trust doctors and people in positions of power, particularly poorer and marginalized folks?
Anisa and Chidi came to court yesterday to fight for Obi. Except it didn’t feel so much like a fight. They are kids, really. Anisa is 24, Chidi is around the same age, I suspect. They came to court ready to explain everything, armed with binders, paperwork and copies off the internet. They were organized. They came to court to bring Obi home.
Chidi is tall, has a slight Nigerian accent. He was dressed in a dark suit with a red, white and blue, stars and stripes tie that set off the suit and sent a message that he loved this country. It was a great choice. Anisa is Honduran, and formerly from Miami first, then Utah, where she practices the Mormon faith. She wore a mid-length black dress and strappy heels. She worked for a public defender in Utah and she knew not to expect much: “My boss rarely looked at the case files he was given,” she tells me, wary. Her dad, Moro and his wife, were there. They came up from Miami when CPS got involved. He rented an apartment here immediately.
When I watch Chidi outside the courtroom, I see a young man who is gregarious, open and smiling. His friend has come with him, a Nigerian man around his age, and supports him. They make jokes and laugh off the tension in the waiting area. Before the day ends he has hugged me, a stranger, and graciously thanked me for being there for them, even though I have done nothing but observe. I had decided to stay out of the way, and sat in a corner chair, but Anisa came over to me and filled me in on details of the case.
She believes, I think, the way most people might feel after the terror of being separated from your baby happens - they believe they can explain it away and convince everyone of the rational, of how it came to be, how they are misunderstood. They believe they can turn everything around. She expects they will figure this out and she will get to bring Obi home with them.
I prepare her for what could happen, mostly because the lawyer bailed and she has no idea what to expect. I tell her to get Moro into place to take Obi if needed, so at least he will stay with family and they won’t have to manage the relationship with a foster family hell bent on trying to adopt him and undermine their efforts, which happens enough in foster care that it feels ubiquitous.
The judge at one point listens to the caseworker explain how perilous the child’s health condition is, and then wonders aloud why a medically fragile child, who has just been saved from the clutches of “failure to thrive,” has been removed from his parents and is now at Child Haven? (Child Haven is a residential campus in Las Vegas for kids who have not been placed into foster homes yet or returned to their families. It is a benevolent, over-crowded institution. Everyone is kind, trauma-informed and loves kids there, but it’s still an over-crowded institution.)
It is a great question from the judge: Why is this baby in institutional care and how can that be better than being with his family? How bad off was he really when he can just be put into a facility?
Anisa says she is concerned that Obi has lost weight in the two days he has been in state custody.
The “you saved this babies life” comment from the doctor, plus the medical corroboration is too overwhelming for the judge to dismiss. I can tell ihe is very conflicted about not giving the baby back to Anisa and Chidi. The judge is keen to send the baby home with Moro. And although this doesn’t feel like a win for Anisa, Chidi and Obi, it really is, and I tell them this outside the court room later.
“When they take your kids, it’s like everything stops,” she says. “Your heart stops. Everything stops. Then you’re trying to figure out what the hell to do next. What do I do? Once they take them, you don’t have no reason to be here no more. Your kids give you purpose.”
From, “When Should a Child Be Taken from His Parents?: In family court, judges must decide whether the risks at home outweigh the risks of separating a family” The New Yorker, 2017.
Anisa cries. Her naïveté has been shot apart. Her son won’t come home. But Chidi has his hand on her back and he is smiling. “It’s okay,” he says, “this is a win for us.” He makes her calmer. He is so solid for her.
I want CPS to protect kids. Maybe this young couple needs medical support. Maybe intervention can help Obi? But isn’t there a better way than through removal? It’s so obvious they adore their son and are thoughtful and devoted parents. Isn’t that enough? Must we be fucking perfect now too? If you make a decision, and you’ve really tossed it around, and it’s the wrong one, should someone remove your child?
In our conversation, Anisa mentions that she believes this is partly a case of racial profiling. Not that it should matter, but she and Chidi have degrees. They both work professional jobs. Anisa knows race was involved on some level with the medical staff. I am working with another Black mother whose child was taken from the ER, and she too, feels that racial bias is partly at work. They are correct. There are landslide levels of racial bias in child removal. And class, intersectional with race, plays a significant role here as well. Doctors live in their own bubbles of affluence. I suspect it plays a huge systemic role in decisions made at the doctor and hospital level.
For tonight, the family is okay, holding their own. I went to the Las Vegas foster parent FB group and got them a crib and mattress from another foster parent. They are so competent - I expected to pick it up for them. But no. They went out and got the crib and set it up before the caseworker got there the next morning.
I’m left to think about all the families who are not so amazing and together and the ones without so many privileges, who are not as eloquent or educated, or have mental health or addiction issues, or are poor and stressed and not reacting and thinking well, or who have themselves been both the victims and perpetrators of generational trauma? How do those people fare trying to keep their families in tact against these odds? How do they make the rent at the weekly hotel while putting food on the table and pulling together their case to get their kids back? How do you keep your kids in the face of allegations without a car? Or a house? Or a job? Or extra cash? How do you keep yourself from losing your shit on people when they are telling you that you suck as a parent and you are never listened to or heard?
Should we leave kids with their families if dad uses the belt to spank them? What if there is no food in the fridge or the apartment is a hoard of old food and vermin? What about babies with fractures and contusions? Caseworkers have big caseloads and they are expected to get it right. I’m sure there are obvious cases with obvious pathways, but I wonder about the ones that fall in between these fuzzy lines where the solutions aren’t so obvious.
Caseworkers have nearly impossible jobs.
It’s leave the child or take the child. We are missing a huge chance to help and support families in the middle between these two options.
….But, on the privileged side of town in all parts of America, children are raised by drunks, by drug addicts, by violent people. We don’t care how privileged children are raised, because we’ve arranged our world around the fundamental principle that the state doesn’t intrude on the family. Equality requires that we give the same freedom to underprivileged children as we give to privileged children—to be raised by crappy parents.”
From, “When Should a Child Be Taken from His Parents?: In family court, judges must decide whether the risks at home outweigh the risks of separating a family” The New Yorker, 2017.
When I think of this issue, I can’t help but think about my own son and youngest daughter’s mom, who was so inundated with mental health challenges, poverty, addiction and homelessness, she couldn’t actively and healthfully parent her kids. (I wrote a chapter about our (hers and my) relationship in the book.) I ask: Didn’t she deserve to still be in their lives? To be there for them in the ways she could? Why was she given a gauntlet to run through that she could never run through, instead of meaningful rehab and mental health support? My kids still pine for her. She is their mother. Even though she is gone now, she is still their mother, and she always loved them and they always loved her.
Sometimes kids have to be removed for their own protection. Sometimes kids can’t live with their families of origin because the abuse, dysfunction and neglect are so entrenched. But those cases should be the exception. We have to be more uncomfortable removing kids and dissolving families. We have to shift our whole mindset about what we are willing to tolerate because family separation hurts families and communities, it ups the distrust, it makes people feel surveilled, it keeps young moms from taking their babies to the ER, it creates a fissure of worry and stress that makes people not trust their government, worry about every knock at the door, and as long as that happens it crumbles our sense of safety in the world.
And frankly, this is everything.
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ENDNOTES:
Here is a piece from Gabrielle Blair (Design Mom) about her niece and nephew who were removed by CPS this summer due to a medical neglect claim.
This well-written New Yorker piece also lays out the issues from many angles, caseworkers, parents, judges, kids.
This is a piece on steroid use with stats from the National Eczema Association.
I am currently reading this on the impact of child removal, 2019, by Shanta Trivedi, University of Baltimore School of Law.
Also, these are the demands of The Black Mother’s March on Washington DC, a coalition of Black activists with the sole purpose of rescuing kidnapped children from state custody and changing policies around child removal and family separation. I have learned a lot from them.
I’m a middle school teacher and a CASA in Las Vegas. I’ve seen this first hand. I sometimes use the term “guilty until proven innocent” to describe how these children ended up in the system which not only traumatizes them but decimate their families emotionally and financially. It’s a CYA situation all around. Thank you for sharing your truth ❤️