The Civil Court Death Penalty: Only Thirteen States Allow Parental Rights to Be Reinstated, And That’s A Huge Problem
As another November has come and gone — both National Adoption Day and National Adoption Awareness Month are “celebrated” by thousands of child welfare agencies and professionals every November — , and as we find ourselves preparing to enter another glorious year in just a few weeks, I find myself feeling compelled to write this piece. As a social justice and parental rights advocate — and as a mother who has had my parental rights unjustly and erroneously terminated by Ohio DHS — , I have written extensively about our “child welfare” system and the racism, trauma, and legally sanctioned destruction and/or cultural genocide of the black family through needless removals and TPR’s; all of which are direct consequences of such a flawed and poorly executed system.
Termination of Parental Rights (Also known as TPR’s) Are On The Rise
Most child welfare scholars and reform advocates, myself included, know and understand that the Adoption and Safe Families Act (also known as ASFA), signed into law 1997 by then President Bill Clinton, has greatly contributed to and/or increased removals and TPRs in every state — with a large number and/or over-representation of those removals and TPRs aimed at and/or targeting poor black children and families. ASFA accelerated case-plan timelines in response to concerns that too many children were languishing in foster care. ASFA mandated that DHS agencies file for TPR when a child, regardless of age, has been in out-of-home care for 15 of the last 22 months. There are three exceptions to this requirement: (1) if the child is living with a relative; (2) if the state agency documents a compelling reason why filing for TPR is not in the child’s best interests; and (3) if the state has failed to provide the family with the services necessary for reunification. However, DHS workers and courts/judges rarely if ever enforce any of these exceptions and/or rules, and thus they have little effect on removals, placements, or TPRs. It is an open secret within the child welfare system that these exceptions/rules are almost universally ignored by case decision makers.
According to University of Michigan data, in a single four-year period (2010–2014) over 307,000 children lost their legal relationships to their parents in Termination of Parental Rights (TPR). That said — and considering the unconstitutionality of many TPRs and all of the research and facts (such as the graph above) that suggests that the number of erroneous and needless TPRs continue to rise often times creating “legal orphans” that are never adopted and instead languish in state care until they age out, it boggles my mind that there are only thirteen states in the country (thirteen states out of fifty) that have made parental rights a priority, and as such, have made reinstatement of parental rights an option for parents who have had their rights terminated by the state and have bettered/improved their circumstances. As of now, the states that allow reinstatement of parental rights include: Alaska, Colorado, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, and Washington; and while state statutes vary and each has its own terms and conditions when considering restoration of parental rights, it is possible in each one of these states.
I find it beyond unacceptable that most states — whether purposefully and deliberate on behalf of our elected officials or through sheer neglect and simply not giving two shits about the fact that thousands of poor and overwhelmingly black parents and children are forced to endure having their families and sacred bonds needlessly and permanently severed by overeager DHS workers and spineless rubber-stamping juvenile court judges — have yet to introduce and pass legislation that would give birth parents the legal chance and ability to have their parental rights reinstated. It is even more maddening when you consider the fact that parental rights are both alienable and constitutionally protected, hence, TPRs have been justifiably called the “death penalty of civil court,” and speaking from personal and professional experience, it really is. Once a TPR is granted by the court/judge, the birth parent(s), and the entire birth family in most cases, losses all contact — unless the DHS agency and prospective adoptive parents mutually agrees to an “open adoption” which is rare especially when the birth parents are black — and decision making ability, and the child officially becomes the legal property of the state until he/she is formally adopted (which is by no means guaranteed and in many cases never happens, especially of the child is older and black) or ages out of state care.
Long Lasting Negative Effects of TPR’s
The negative affect of “parental loss” on the (black) children is enormous — including but not limited to PTSD, depression, and other mental health and behavioral issues. The negative effects of TPR, and removals in general, on children is often exacerbated when older children (that is, children 10-years and up) steadfastly object to the TPR and nothing is done to prevent it; which is not uncommon — all three of my eldest children objected to the TPR and were all but ignored by both DHS and the Court. However, DHS workers, GALs, and CASAs routinely fail to take the child’s wishes seriously or into consideration at all, especially if those wishes differ from their own. Moreover, most states allow the court/judge to overrule and/or veto the child’s objection if they determine that the TPR is in the “best interest of the child” — the all encompassing and justifying magical (and utterly arbitrary and ambiguous) legal term/standard within the child welfare system that the court and DHS workers use whenever they want to remove and/or keep children from their parents and families. That said, the negative affects on the (black) parents and families are similar and just as devastating as it is for the child/children— including high rates of PTSD and depression, I myself struggle with PTSD stemming from the cruel removal of my children and systematic termination of my parental rights.
In Conclusion
All and all, I wouldn't wish such an experience on my worst enemy — not even on the indifferent and jaded individuals that subjected my family, and hundreds of thousands more across the country, to permanent separation. And while in the two in a half years since I become a child welfare reform advocate, I have chosen to focus most of my time and advocacy on the American Child Welfare Act — federal protective legislation similar to that of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. That said, and in addition to federal protective legislation for black families, I believe that it is way past time for the legislators in the remaining 37 states, including and specifically Ohio and Michigan — both states are states that I have spent a significant amount of time living in (Ohio is my home state) and both states are among the states with the highest number of child removals and terminations of parental rights — to do what California, New York — and the rest of the other thirteen states — have done for all parents and children that have experienced a (traumatic) separation due to TPR (i.e., to pass parental rights reinstatement statutes).
A Call to Action…
I’m calling upon social justice and parental rights advocates, families/parents at-risk, and woke child welfare professionals everywhere — those who are really ready to make a positive difference and combat the cultural genocide of African American families, and indeed all families, all across the country — to call and write the appropriate committees and/or state legislators and tell them that you will not stand for this injustice. Please call or write your representatives and request that parental rights restatement legislation be introduced — and if already introduced, supported — in YOUR state.
#NAFPAorg #KeepBlackFamiliesTogether #AfricanAmericanChildWelfareAct #ChildWelfare #SocialJustice #BlackFamilyMatters #BlackLoveMatters #BlackLivesMatter #BlackFamiliesBelongTogether #BlackHistory #BlackFamilyMatters#CASASoWhite #LivingWhileBlack
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Latagia Copeland-Tyronce, MSW, CADAS, is a longtime parental rights and social justice advocate, child welfare reform activist, writer/blogger, and journalist whose work has been featured in BlackMattersUs and Rise Magazine. She is the founder, president, and executive director of the National African American Families First and Preservation Association (NAFPA) a groundbreaking 501c4 nonprofit origination, the first of its kind, devoted exclusively to the protection and preservation of the African American (Black) Family though policy and legislative advocacy.
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