VelvetBlade
September 6th, 2003, 12:57 PM
This story just broke my heart...
~AW
A mother, her sons, and a choice
State child welfare agency pressures woman to decide her future as a mother
By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff, 8/24/2003
First in a series
The conference room table was bare, except for two sets of documents and a red pen. Nearby stood a lawyer and a social worker, nervously awaiting the arrival of Barbara Paul. Everything was set. But where was Barbara? The 38-year-old single mother had been due at the Worcester social service office at noon -- 10 minutes earlier. Would this, they wondered, be the appointment Barbara would miss?
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Seconds later, a woman with tousled red hair entered the room, walking with a broad side-to-side gait, like a wrestler. On good days, Barbara greets people with a big hello and a grin; on this day she was silent. As she approached the table, she looked at no one.
Barbara was being asked that day to sign away forever her rights as the parent of her two boys; the state had decided she was not up to the job of motherhood.
She could fight it out in court, hoping to hold onto the only two people in her life who ever made her feel lucky. But if she lost, she might never see her sons again. Her final court hearing was just two hours away.
The only certainty would come with the signing: If she voluntarily gave up her children, sparing the state a trial, she would be guaranteed two visits a year with her boys, each lasting at least two hours. She would also be entitled to occasional correspondence, a Mother's Day greeting, or maybe a birthday card.
Barbara had thought such a cruel choice could hang over only child abusers, drug addicts, or drunks -- and she was none of these. The accusation against her was child neglect.
Why, the state's social workers asked, did she send the boys to school in such filthy clothes? Why was her refrigerator sometimes empty? Why was her house such a mess? She sat at the conference room table, her face flushed. This much she knew: Her boys always told her they loved her.
And she had done her best. Even after a horrific rape plunged her into a dark world of flashbacks and sleepless nights, she had raced to food pantries and Goodwill stores for food and clothes. She never ordered her sons to sit for three square meals, but she swears they had plenty to eat. Barbara and her two little buddies watched wrestling on TV, went fishing, and played video games. Seeing her sons was, she felt, the best antidepressant, far better than the pills she took or the group therapy sessions that social workers told her to attend.
How, she often wondered, could those fresh-out-of-college social workers ever understand a life such as hers?
As she considered her options that day in February, Barbara knew there was a married couple from a Boston suburb who hoped to adopt her boys, ages 16 and 11. This couple had so many things that Barbara did not - college degrees, good jobs, a house with a swimming pool.
Next to criminal prosecution and imprisonment, states exercise no power more profound than the severing of parents' rights to their children. On this day, Barbara felt alone with the full weight of that power.
She stared at the two sets of documents and the red pen. A signature would erase her motherhood.
Addressing neglect
There are hundreds of thousands of mothers like Barbara across America, women whose stories lie behind most of the nearly 1 million child protection cases filed each year.
These are not, by and large, the most extreme cases, the parents who draw headlines, chaining their children to radiators, or otherwise abusing them. For every case of child abuse, there are at least two cases of child neglect.
Society has long wrestled with how to deal with those accused of child neglect, most of whom are unwed mothers like Barbara, raising their children with little money and under great emotional strain. Their lapses often aren't monstrous but more like the miscues in any busy family's life - the missed parent-teacher conference, the unwashed clothes, the unreplenished pantry.
But when such lapses become chronic, the question arises: Who is to blame? The mother who failed her children, or the society which perhaps failed her? And when should the government draw the line?
These women brace themselves for the knock on the door from the state's child-welfare agency - a knock that, now more than ever, signals the start of a race against time, a race they will often lose.
In one of the nation's most ambitious social experiments, the states, beginning in 1997, started terminating parental rights more often and more quickly. And courts began clearing children for adoption at a faster rate; there are now about 65,000 children under government supervision whose legal connection to their parents has been dissolved.
The theory is that the best way to break the cycle of poverty and fractured families is to move children, and swiftly, out of troubled homes.
The hardest of these cases are also the most common: They involve mothers such as Barbara. She has struggled and often failed at some of the basics of parenting. She has rarely been able to hold a job. She is burdened by depression.
Still, her children are devoted to her. And she could not love them more.
When is it time to sacrifice the rights of one generation - hers - to try to save the next?
A child in need
Understanding Barbara's choice means understanding the road she has traveled, how she grew into motherhood, and how her dream came undone.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2003/08/24/a_mother_her_sons_and_a_choice/
PART 2
Parental pangs lead to a race with time
By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff, 8/25/2003
Second of three parts
"I've failed the boys."
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// That was all Barbara Paul could think after she had dashed back to her Fitchburg apartment to find her two sons gone, taken from her home by the state.
She collapsed on the porch, and, as darkness fell on that dreary winter day, listened as her neighbors described the scene she had just missed: The boys crying as they were led by two social workers to a waiting car. Police officers nearby in case violence erupted.
Barbara went into seclusion that night of Jan. 4, 2000, into a darker place than she'd known during her often bleak childhood in Winchendon, or her struggles as a young, single mother, or in the aftermath of rape. She wept and pounded the walls of the ill-kept apartment that was Exhibit A in the state Department of Social Services' case against her.
Social workers said the 35-year-old single mother had raised her boys -- Joe was 13, Art was 8 -- in an unhealthy environment and had neglected some of their basic needs. In a court filing seeking a judge's permission to remove the children, an action Barbara was unaware of, social workers described her apartment as "unsanitary," a chaotic scene of dirty dishes, trash, and smelly clothes.
A ceiling leak left a puddle on the floor. The report described Barbara, who often wore grungy clothes, as "sleeping a lot and not appropriately dressed." The youngest boy had severe tooth decay, apparently the result of Barbara's negligence about dental care -- her sons' and her own.
Social workers feared that the disorder of her home reflected the state of her mind. "The continuation in the home is contrary to the welfare of the children," the report concluded.
Joe and Art didn't see it that way.
They cried and yelled as Rissa LeVangie, the 22-year-old social worker handling her first child ``removal'' for the state, struggled to comfort them. Over and over, as they were driven away, the boys said they wanted to be with their mother.
That first night, the boys were placed in separate foster homes in Groton. But separation quickly proved too painful, even as a temporary step. Art, inconsolable, stared at a picture of his mother. He sobbed and said he needed his big brother by his side, and Art's foster mother, Peggy Geddes, eventually agreed to take in the older boy. The two would share a full-size bed.
Nearly six weeks went by before Barbara saw them again. She missed them desperately, but first had to tame her fury at LeVangie, and at DSS, which she blamed for her loss. Meanwhile, the boys kept telling their foster mother how much they ached for their mother, especially after one scheduled reunion was canceled because of bad weather. At last, a date was set: Feb. 14, 2000, Valentine's Day, at the agency's Leominster office.
When Barbara and the boys spotted each other that day, they ran into each other's arms. The boys kept saying, ``We want to come home.''
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2003/08/25/parental_pangs_lead_to_a_race_with_time/
PART 3
For boys, new home, new parents
By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff, 8/26/2003
Last of three parts
They rose before the sun on a crisp September day in 2001 and headed off on the long drive from Groton to Fenway Park. Sticking close together, and to the social workers who drove them in, Joe and Art found their way into the old stadium and out onto the mesmerizing green of the field.
ADVERTISEMENT
// It was their first time at Fenway. Meandering through a crowd of about 170 children, the boys munched on hot dogs, and soon found themselves standing on the pitcher's mound.
"This is bigger than I thought," said Art, a slender 10-year-old, as he surveyed the lush field.
Joe, 14, put a protective arm around him. The boys stared out at the crowd of some 1,000 adults who all seemed to be staring back.
This was, of course, no ordinary game day for the Red Sox. Where most kids go to Fenway to see Pedro Martinez pitch or Nomar Garciaparra hit, Art, Joe, and the others were there to find out if they might soon have new parents.
It was an "adoption party," one of the festive but controversial such events organized by public and private agencies. Interested adults were invited to scan the crowd of foster children from a distance and, reserving a measure of anonymity, ponder whether to take the first cautious step toward adoption.
Joe and Art were there because, 20 months after they were taken from their mother's apartment into foster care, the state had decided to begin finding them a new permanent home.
As their mother, Barbara Paul, struggled toward her decision to surrender her rights to them, the boys were launched on an epic emotional journey of their own.
Critics say the risk at adoption parties like the Fenway affair is that childen will feel rejected if they are paraded before the crowd and no one expresses interest in them.
But it was quickly apparent that this would not be a problem for Joe and Art.
A couple in their early 40s had spotted them, the stocky big brother so sweetly protective of the younger boy. They were intrigued. Most childless couples prefer to adopt babies, but Anne and Jim, feeling the creaks of middle age, liked the idea of caring for older children who can talk and walk. Adopting two brothers would also give them a kind of instant family.
They collected some basic facts about the boys from the state Department of Social Services staffers on hand that day: No major behavioral or physical problems. Average students. Nearly two years together in a Groton foster home. Mother accused not of abuse but of neglect, mostly related to poor hygiene and poverty.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2003/08/26/for_boys_new_home_new_parents/
~AW
A mother, her sons, and a choice
State child welfare agency pressures woman to decide her future as a mother
By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff, 8/24/2003
First in a series
The conference room table was bare, except for two sets of documents and a red pen. Nearby stood a lawyer and a social worker, nervously awaiting the arrival of Barbara Paul. Everything was set. But where was Barbara? The 38-year-old single mother had been due at the Worcester social service office at noon -- 10 minutes earlier. Would this, they wondered, be the appointment Barbara would miss?
ADVERTISEMENT
Seconds later, a woman with tousled red hair entered the room, walking with a broad side-to-side gait, like a wrestler. On good days, Barbara greets people with a big hello and a grin; on this day she was silent. As she approached the table, she looked at no one.
Barbara was being asked that day to sign away forever her rights as the parent of her two boys; the state had decided she was not up to the job of motherhood.
She could fight it out in court, hoping to hold onto the only two people in her life who ever made her feel lucky. But if she lost, she might never see her sons again. Her final court hearing was just two hours away.
The only certainty would come with the signing: If she voluntarily gave up her children, sparing the state a trial, she would be guaranteed two visits a year with her boys, each lasting at least two hours. She would also be entitled to occasional correspondence, a Mother's Day greeting, or maybe a birthday card.
Barbara had thought such a cruel choice could hang over only child abusers, drug addicts, or drunks -- and she was none of these. The accusation against her was child neglect.
Why, the state's social workers asked, did she send the boys to school in such filthy clothes? Why was her refrigerator sometimes empty? Why was her house such a mess? She sat at the conference room table, her face flushed. This much she knew: Her boys always told her they loved her.
And she had done her best. Even after a horrific rape plunged her into a dark world of flashbacks and sleepless nights, she had raced to food pantries and Goodwill stores for food and clothes. She never ordered her sons to sit for three square meals, but she swears they had plenty to eat. Barbara and her two little buddies watched wrestling on TV, went fishing, and played video games. Seeing her sons was, she felt, the best antidepressant, far better than the pills she took or the group therapy sessions that social workers told her to attend.
How, she often wondered, could those fresh-out-of-college social workers ever understand a life such as hers?
As she considered her options that day in February, Barbara knew there was a married couple from a Boston suburb who hoped to adopt her boys, ages 16 and 11. This couple had so many things that Barbara did not - college degrees, good jobs, a house with a swimming pool.
Next to criminal prosecution and imprisonment, states exercise no power more profound than the severing of parents' rights to their children. On this day, Barbara felt alone with the full weight of that power.
She stared at the two sets of documents and the red pen. A signature would erase her motherhood.
Addressing neglect
There are hundreds of thousands of mothers like Barbara across America, women whose stories lie behind most of the nearly 1 million child protection cases filed each year.
These are not, by and large, the most extreme cases, the parents who draw headlines, chaining their children to radiators, or otherwise abusing them. For every case of child abuse, there are at least two cases of child neglect.
Society has long wrestled with how to deal with those accused of child neglect, most of whom are unwed mothers like Barbara, raising their children with little money and under great emotional strain. Their lapses often aren't monstrous but more like the miscues in any busy family's life - the missed parent-teacher conference, the unwashed clothes, the unreplenished pantry.
But when such lapses become chronic, the question arises: Who is to blame? The mother who failed her children, or the society which perhaps failed her? And when should the government draw the line?
These women brace themselves for the knock on the door from the state's child-welfare agency - a knock that, now more than ever, signals the start of a race against time, a race they will often lose.
In one of the nation's most ambitious social experiments, the states, beginning in 1997, started terminating parental rights more often and more quickly. And courts began clearing children for adoption at a faster rate; there are now about 65,000 children under government supervision whose legal connection to their parents has been dissolved.
The theory is that the best way to break the cycle of poverty and fractured families is to move children, and swiftly, out of troubled homes.
The hardest of these cases are also the most common: They involve mothers such as Barbara. She has struggled and often failed at some of the basics of parenting. She has rarely been able to hold a job. She is burdened by depression.
Still, her children are devoted to her. And she could not love them more.
When is it time to sacrifice the rights of one generation - hers - to try to save the next?
A child in need
Understanding Barbara's choice means understanding the road she has traveled, how she grew into motherhood, and how her dream came undone.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2003/08/24/a_mother_her_sons_and_a_choice/
PART 2
Parental pangs lead to a race with time
By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff, 8/25/2003
Second of three parts
"I've failed the boys."
ADVERTISEMENT
// That was all Barbara Paul could think after she had dashed back to her Fitchburg apartment to find her two sons gone, taken from her home by the state.
She collapsed on the porch, and, as darkness fell on that dreary winter day, listened as her neighbors described the scene she had just missed: The boys crying as they were led by two social workers to a waiting car. Police officers nearby in case violence erupted.
Barbara went into seclusion that night of Jan. 4, 2000, into a darker place than she'd known during her often bleak childhood in Winchendon, or her struggles as a young, single mother, or in the aftermath of rape. She wept and pounded the walls of the ill-kept apartment that was Exhibit A in the state Department of Social Services' case against her.
Social workers said the 35-year-old single mother had raised her boys -- Joe was 13, Art was 8 -- in an unhealthy environment and had neglected some of their basic needs. In a court filing seeking a judge's permission to remove the children, an action Barbara was unaware of, social workers described her apartment as "unsanitary," a chaotic scene of dirty dishes, trash, and smelly clothes.
A ceiling leak left a puddle on the floor. The report described Barbara, who often wore grungy clothes, as "sleeping a lot and not appropriately dressed." The youngest boy had severe tooth decay, apparently the result of Barbara's negligence about dental care -- her sons' and her own.
Social workers feared that the disorder of her home reflected the state of her mind. "The continuation in the home is contrary to the welfare of the children," the report concluded.
Joe and Art didn't see it that way.
They cried and yelled as Rissa LeVangie, the 22-year-old social worker handling her first child ``removal'' for the state, struggled to comfort them. Over and over, as they were driven away, the boys said they wanted to be with their mother.
That first night, the boys were placed in separate foster homes in Groton. But separation quickly proved too painful, even as a temporary step. Art, inconsolable, stared at a picture of his mother. He sobbed and said he needed his big brother by his side, and Art's foster mother, Peggy Geddes, eventually agreed to take in the older boy. The two would share a full-size bed.
Nearly six weeks went by before Barbara saw them again. She missed them desperately, but first had to tame her fury at LeVangie, and at DSS, which she blamed for her loss. Meanwhile, the boys kept telling their foster mother how much they ached for their mother, especially after one scheduled reunion was canceled because of bad weather. At last, a date was set: Feb. 14, 2000, Valentine's Day, at the agency's Leominster office.
When Barbara and the boys spotted each other that day, they ran into each other's arms. The boys kept saying, ``We want to come home.''
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2003/08/25/parental_pangs_lead_to_a_race_with_time/
PART 3
For boys, new home, new parents
By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff, 8/26/2003
Last of three parts
They rose before the sun on a crisp September day in 2001 and headed off on the long drive from Groton to Fenway Park. Sticking close together, and to the social workers who drove them in, Joe and Art found their way into the old stadium and out onto the mesmerizing green of the field.
ADVERTISEMENT
// It was their first time at Fenway. Meandering through a crowd of about 170 children, the boys munched on hot dogs, and soon found themselves standing on the pitcher's mound.
"This is bigger than I thought," said Art, a slender 10-year-old, as he surveyed the lush field.
Joe, 14, put a protective arm around him. The boys stared out at the crowd of some 1,000 adults who all seemed to be staring back.
This was, of course, no ordinary game day for the Red Sox. Where most kids go to Fenway to see Pedro Martinez pitch or Nomar Garciaparra hit, Art, Joe, and the others were there to find out if they might soon have new parents.
It was an "adoption party," one of the festive but controversial such events organized by public and private agencies. Interested adults were invited to scan the crowd of foster children from a distance and, reserving a measure of anonymity, ponder whether to take the first cautious step toward adoption.
Joe and Art were there because, 20 months after they were taken from their mother's apartment into foster care, the state had decided to begin finding them a new permanent home.
As their mother, Barbara Paul, struggled toward her decision to surrender her rights to them, the boys were launched on an epic emotional journey of their own.
Critics say the risk at adoption parties like the Fenway affair is that childen will feel rejected if they are paraded before the crowd and no one expresses interest in them.
But it was quickly apparent that this would not be a problem for Joe and Art.
A couple in their early 40s had spotted them, the stocky big brother so sweetly protective of the younger boy. They were intrigued. Most childless couples prefer to adopt babies, but Anne and Jim, feeling the creaks of middle age, liked the idea of caring for older children who can talk and walk. Adopting two brothers would also give them a kind of instant family.
They collected some basic facts about the boys from the state Department of Social Services staffers on hand that day: No major behavioral or physical problems. Average students. Nearly two years together in a Groton foster home. Mother accused not of abuse but of neglect, mostly related to poor hygiene and poverty.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2003/08/26/for_boys_new_home_new_parents/