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Foster Care System Gives Parents a Bigger Role


When Philneia Timmons’ children were placed in foster care, the last thing Timmons felt like doing was the one thing she was required to do to get her kids back home: cooperate with the very system that had broken her family apart.

“I felt angry,” she wrote in Rise, a magazine by and for parents involved in the child welfare system. “The system offered me no help before taking my kids, and my side of the story didn't seem to matter. I felt robbed, cheated and railroaded in every way.”

Many parents whose children have been placed in foster care have similar reactions, putting parents and child welfare workers in a difficult, often adversarial relationship. And often parents have been shut out of this discussion. But now, the city’s child welfare system is relying more and more on parent advocates to help foster care agencies work more effectively with parents. For their part, the agencies have begun to recognize that children benefit when the system works with birth parents -- especially since the goal for most kids in foster care is to return them home to their families.

WHAT THE PARENTS DO

Today, Timmons is actively involved in this effort. She first became involved at the Child Welfare Organizing Project, which helps parents with kids in New York City’s foster care system advocate for themselves. Through the project, Timmons learned about her rights as a parent with children in care and how to work with the system to get her kids back home. She also got emotional support from other parents in a similar situation.

Eventually, her interest in the Child Welfare Organizing Project went beyond her own needs, and she became an advocate for other New York City parents whose kids had been placed in care. Timmons urged caseworkers and supervisors in the foster care system to remove kids only as a last resort, and whenever possible, to offer services to help keep the family together. She used her own experiences to explain just how traumatic it can be for a family to break apart, and how difficult it is for parents and kids to build a relationship after the kids have been removed.

Timmons is not alone. In the last five years, partly as a result of CWOP’s work, dozens of agencies have hired birth parents. Today, approximately 60 parent advocates work at different foster care agencies in New York City. These parents, many whom are paid advocates, work hands-on with other parents whose kids are in foster cares, run parenting classes and support groups and give one-on-one support to parents with kids in care. They meet with child welfare leaders, help train caseworkers and speak at conferences about the foster care system.

WHAT THE PARENTS OFFER

The parents, says Dana Guyet, director of Advocacy for New York City’s foster care system, are revolutionizing the child welfare system. “I’ve always tried to take a more progressive view of how we can work with families,” says Guyet. “But the parents have more direct knowledge about their community, clients and cultures. On a regular basis, they point something out new.”

Guyet oversees the Administration for Children’s Services Parent Advisory Workgroup, whose members meet regularly with ACS Commissioner John Mattingly to discuss issues relevant to birth parents. Now the group is looking into the possibility of securing subsidized guardianship in New York City so that relatives can help a struggling family without going through the foster care system.

Lynne Miller, a paid parent advocate at Seaman’s Society, says that if birth parents can talk to someone who has been through what they are coping with, they will be less likely to act out their anger and frustration and more likely to cooperate with the demands of the court and the city government. “They’d probably be more willing to admit they had problems, and more open to getting help,” she says.

Miller says that almost half of the new birth parents she works with are in denial about why their kids are in care. “They like to place blame anywhere and everywhere except on their own shoulders,” she says. “It’s hard enough to admit to yourself that you might have done something wrong, never mind admit it to strangers who are now controlling your life.”

Miller helps the parents work through their resistance by letting them talk and vent all they want. But she also lets them know that it is possible for them to get their kids back and uses her own experience of getting her son out of foster care as proof.

When the time comes, she talks to the parent about how difficult it can be for a child to return home. A child coming out of foster care usually has lots of anger and resentment to work through, says Miller, and many need therapy. After the kids of Miller’s parents return home, she stays in touch, offering to visit or talk. Sometimes she volunteers to look after the kids when the parents need a “little breathing space,” or feel overwhelmed.

And she encourages the adults to do what feels counterintuitive to most parents with kids in care: stay in touch with their child’s former foster parents. “Foster parents aren’t the enemy,” she tells the parents she works with. “They can be more like the Red Cross.”

For many parent advocates, working for the foster care system that once took their children from them requires a big adjustment. But for Miller, the difficult memories from when she was a client of Administration for Children’s Services fueled her passion for her job as an advocate. “The way I see it,” she says, “my job is to help parents see the agency and the foster parents as supports, and to help the agency and the foster parents see the birth parents’ strengths, too.”

Timmons agrees. “ACS is starting to develop a relationship with parents and to understand our perspective,” she says. “I see the very beginnings of a change here.”

This article is adapted from stories in Rise, a magazine by and for parents involved in the child welfare system, which is published by our partner, Youth Communication. Read stories from Rise at www.risemagazine.org.

Helping Foster Children Become Better Parents


Amy Cooper sits in a circle with seven pregnant women and one new mother demonstrating the techniques of infant massage. Massage, she explains, can be a valuable tool to help a newborn deal with tension and stress, sleep more and cry less, and connect with a mother in a physical way.

One woman seems surprised and slightly nervous about the idea that babies liked to be touched.

"Some of us have negative experiences with touch, like if it was used to punish us," Cooper says. "For moms who haven't had good experiences, baby massage can be a positive way to respond to your baby when he or she is upset. Rather than neglecting or hurting your baby, you can massage.”

The women in the group understand: They are all teenagers, all live in foster care, and most have experienced abuse and neglect themselves.

Cooper’s class at Inwood House, a group home for pregnant and teenage mothers, is one of a handful of initiatives in New York City that aim to stop generational cycles of abuse by working with young moms. Like the massage class, many of these programs focus on educating mothers living in foster care.

HELPING CHILDREN WITH CHILDREN

Although teenage pregnancy has decreased significantly in the last 10 years, it remains common for girls in foster care. By age 19, nearly half of all girls in foster care have been pregnant, and 31 percent have had a child. (Nationwide, 12.2 percent of girls have had a child by age 19.)

The national Nurse-Family Partnership has long helped low-income, first-time mothers learn to parent. In October, it started a special project in New York City to recruit girls who are in foster care, homeless, or coming out of jail from Rikers Island. The program works with the youth development programs at the Administration for Children’s Services and at foster care agencies to reach the teen parents.

“We’re targeting them because these moms are more vulnerable,” says Julia Carter, a supervisor of the program. “They have all the questions any new mother would have, but less support.”

Each expectant mom in the Nurse-Family Partnership is assigned a nurse, who visits with the mother while she's still pregnant. The nurse helps the mom get prenatal care and tries to help her cut down on unhealthy habits like smoking. Later, the nurse teaches the mother how to care for her baby, helps her to who her child is, and how they can form a relationship.

A SAFE PLACE TO BE A MOM

But the partnership does not reach every young mother who needs help. When a young mom named Melanie (not her real name), started feeling like her two-year-old son was too much to handle, she thought she would have to give him up. As a single mother living in a homeless shelter, she didn't believe that she was able to take care of her toddler.

So Melanie was relieved when her shelter sent her to the New York Foundling’s Crisis Nursery, an organization dedicated to “saving, preserving, and building families” that dates back to 1869.

The lower Manhattan nursery -- which offers up to three weeks of free childcare to parents facing a crisis, emergency cash and goods, and counseling -- found out that Melanie was a victim of domestic violence and feared she couldn't keep her son safe.

The Crisis Nursery helped Melanie obtain an order of protection against her abuser. They also gave her counseling on domestic violence, and connected her to a support program in her own community. Melanie is now living with her child and continues to stay in contact with the organization.

"She feels more capable of meeting her son's needs," said Victoria Peña, the director of the Crisis Nursery. "And she knows she can always count on us for support."

Peña says that facing a crisis without support can be more than even the most well-meaning parent can handle. And too often, such events send some children into foster care. By caring for the parent as well as the child, the Crisis Nursery hopes to make the family safer now and in the future – and enable the children to remain with their parent.

"If we had programs like this in the outer boroughs abuse rates would drop and neglect would drop,” says New York Foundling Director Bill Baccaglini.

But not all young moms agree. Some worry that accepting services will make their kids more likely – not less -- to get caught up in the city’s children’s services system. Young moms who have been in care themselves or have had negative experiences with city agencies can also find it hard to trust outsiders offering them services, especially ones connected to foster care. Because the Crises Nursery gets funding from the Administration for Children’s Services and must report evidence of physical abuse, for instance, some mothers fear that their children may be taken away from them.

But the program’s organizes say they work to win the trust of the young mothers with histories of foster care. Then, the organizers say, the real work begins. One of the main challenges is teaching a young mother who had been abused or neglected how to communicate and bond with her baby in healthy ways.

“The hardest thing for any new parent is realizing that this little baby is a person with its own personality,” says Carter of the Nurse-Family Partnership Program. “As new parents, you have to learn to work with that personality so that you can communicate and understand what your baby needs from you. I think when things go wrong is when there's no communication.”

THE POWER OF COMMUNICATION

When Cooper teaches infant massage to the soon-to-be-mothers at Inwood House -- demonstrating on a seven-month-old named Madison -- she explains that babies communicate with their mothers and the environment through body language.

"Some of us get disappointed when we're looking at our baby and he or she looks away,” Cooper says. “It's not that they're rejecting you, but they're saying 'that was a lot to take in, give me a moment.’”

Toward the end of her massage, Madison gets restless and begins giggling. She squirms while her mom tries to massage her face, and her mom has to stop.

"That's OK," Cooper says, explaining that massage is simply a way of connecting and relaxing, and every baby has her own limits. "She's showing you she's had enough."

This article by Natasha Santos and La Quesha Barner both writers at Represent, a magazine written by and for teens in foster care, is adapted from the pages of our partner Youth Communication. Additional reporting by Sasha Chavkin. 

Helping Young Mothers Help Their Babies and Themselves


When Sheena Persaud became pregnant at 17, the Queens resident did not know much about taking care of a child. She did not have a high school diploma or many other resources.

Such difficult circumstances can often threaten the well being of both mother and child. But Persaud decided to try to improve her odds. She enrolled in the Nurse-Family Partnership, a free city program, and began getting weekly visits from visiting nurse Carol Coleman. Together, they discussed parenting techniques, healthy nutrition and communicating with infants.

"The program taught me what to expect when being a mom," Persaud said. "If I didn't join it I wouldn't know half of what I know when it comes to taking care of a baby."

Now a graduate of the program, Persaud has earned her GED high school equivalency certificate. She is working in a bakery and but hopes to train for a career in nursing. Her daughter Serena is two.

THE HIGH RISKS OF POVERTY

Children such as Serena face daunting challenges. More than half - 54 percent - of children of single mothers in New York City are poor. And, according to the Children's Defense Fund, poor children are more likely to die before their first birthday than more affluent children. Once they start school, they are twice as likely as to have to repeat a grade and three and half times as likely to drop out.

A lack of parenting skills can take a more immediate toll. New York City government recorded more than 65,000 reports of child abuse and neglect in 2006. In the first 11 months of that year, 40 of the children suspected of being abused died -- though not necessarily because of that abuse.

A SIMPLE REMEMDY

The Nurse Family Partnership takes a simple approach to such overwhelming problems. Under the program, a registered nurse visits a low-income, first time mother, starting during the woman's pregnancy and ending after the child turns 2. The goal is to help mothers have healthier pregnancies, to improve the child's health and development, and to assist the mothers in becoming more self-sufficient. During the visits, which take place every week or so, the mothers learn how to breastfeed, create a healthy environment for the child and plan their future pregnancies. The nurses also listen to the mothers' concerns.

The visitors "give young mothers the sort of cajoling and practical wisdom that in other times would have been delivered by grandmothers or elders," David Brooks wrote in a recent New York Times column.

"A first-time mom isn't sure of what's going to happen, you don't know what life is going to offer you and at least this is giving you a head start on it," visiting nurse Eulanda Greene, who works in Jamaica, Queens, said.

The program is the brainchild of psychologist David Olds. Working in a day-care center in Baltimore, Olds thought the care and he and his coworkers were providing there was "too little, too late" and that children would be better served if their parents received some assistance earlier. In 1977, Olds and some colleagues came up with the idea to have a registered nurse visit low-income, first-time mothers.

This concept, Katherine Boo wrote in a 2006 New Yorker article on the program, "is rooted in a pessimistic view of the future that awaits an American child born poor -- a sense that the schools, day-care centers, and other institutions available to him may do little to nurture his talents. Shrewder, then, to insulate him by an exercise of uncommon intrusion: building for him, inside his home, a better parent."

GETTING RESULTS

Pessimistic or not, it seems to work. A study conducted in Memphis, one of the first cities where the partnership was implemented, found children whose mothers were in the program spent 80 percent fewer days in the hospital for injuries or swallowing something hazardous than other similar children. Three studies of participants in the program found an array of other benefits. For example, both parent and child were far less likely to spend time in jail than they might have been had they not taken advantage of the program. The RAND Corporation has figured that every dollar invested in the program produces a return of $5.70, coming saving society about $34,148 per child.

"When it comes to improving the odds for poor mothers and infants, it's hard to beat the Nurse-Family Partnership," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in this year's State of the city speech. "Through one-on-one nurturing and guidance, NFP helps first-time mothers build stronger futures for themselves and their children."

NEW YORK'S PROGRAM

Over the years, the program has expanded and today serves about 20,000 families in 300 communities across the country. It was first introduced in New York City in 2003 with an office in Jamaica. A year later the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene expanded it expanded to Harlem. The program is aimed at the parts of the city with the highest infant mortality and teen pregnancy rates: South Bronx, East and Central Harlem, Central Brooklyn, and Jamaica East. It also tries to reach young mothers in foster care, homeless shelters and at Rikers Island.

Now, Bloomberg has pledged to expand the Nurse-Family Partnership by 50 percent in New York City by the end of the year. That would raise the budget to $3 million, enough to serve 1,300 families. Currently, the program can visit 845 families, but only 420 take advantage of this free resource. Many others simply do not know the program exists.

One other obstacle to the program's further expansion, according to a report in New York magazine, is the city's shortage of nurses.

Though the program costs about $5,500 per family a year, Lisa Landau, director of the Nurse-Family

Partnership for the health department, said it will reduces costs for New York City taxpayers in the long term. "There are savings in health care costs, child neglect costs, juvenile justice and there are also lower arrest rates for children and their parents," Landau said.

A 2004 report by the health department anticipated, based on previous evidence, that in New York City, the program would reduce child abuse and neglect among participants by 50 percent, and increase the amount of time that mothers in the program wait before having their second child, a change that cuts the risk of the premature births.

Having worked in the Jamaica, Queens office for almost four years, Greene said she has already seen the effects. The young mother, she said, make real progress.

"We teach them how to understand the baby's cues," Greene said. "They find out that it's normal for babies to cry and always put things in their mouth. I even have them observe other mothers on the streets and they realize so many of the mothers are not really paying attention to their children. A simple thing one client told me is that she saw a toddler walking with his mom and the mom was practically dragging the baby. She has to know he has short legs and he can't walk as fast as she can walk."

After graduating from the program, Persaud said she learned how to take care of her daughter, but she also learned something she wasn't expecting: how to take care of herself. "The nurse always motivated me to do something with myself," Persaud said. "She would push me to do things all the time. She even picked me up and took me to get a library card one day so I could study. Because of her I have everything. If it wasn't for her I wouldn't be so active, I would just stay at home and take care of the baby."

 



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