by Beam, Cris
13. [>] group home facility than in a family home: Different studies cite different figures, as costs can vary widely depending upon whether the foster care is enhanced, or on what type of congregate care is offered. One report claimed that group home or residential care can cost between three and seven times more than family foster care: Madelyn Freundlich, Time Running Out: Teens in Foster Care (Children’s Rights, Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society and Lawyers for Children, November 2003), 133. Another report said the monthly cost could be six to ten times higher for institutional care, or two to three times higher if the family is providing treatment foster care: Richard P. Barth, Institutions vs. Foster Homes: The Empirical Base for a Century of Action (Chapel Hill, NC: Jordan Institute for Families, June 17, 2002), ii.
14. [>] disproportionate number of minority children in care: Ramona Denby and Nolan Rindfleisch, “African Americans’ Foster Parenting Experiences: Research Findings and Implications for Policy and Practice,” Children and Youth Services Review 18, no. 6 (1996): 523–55.
7. Chutes and Ladders and Chutes
1. [>] or the birth of a new sibling: See, for instance, Howard J. Bennett, MD, “Nocturnal Enuresis: Bedwetting in the Older Child” (Charleston, SC: The National Association for Continence), http://www.nafc.org/online-store/consumer-leaflets-and-pamphlets/for-parents-and-children/nocturnal-enuresis-bedwetting-in-the-older-child-3/; and “Secondary Nocturnal Enuresis,” an information page published by the National Kidney Foundation at http://www.kidney.org/patients/bw/BWbedwetSecondary.cfm.
2. [>] the child, back in control: Good descriptions of this phenomenon abound in Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz’s The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love, and Healing (New York: Basic Books, 2006). A succinct description is on page 55.
3. [>] “Hey, Clarence”: Name has been changed.
4. [>] punitive diagnostic centers for months and months: In the eighties, kids were known to stay in diagnostic centers for years, as bureaucratic i’s and t’s were dotted and crossed, and better beds elsewhere were slow to open up, according to Michael Oreskes and Sara Rimer, “Youths Languish in Diagnostic Centers,” The New York Times, March 27, 1987. http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/27/nyregion/youths-languish-in-diagnostic-centers.html?pagewanted=all.
5. [>] they may land in a hospital: In May of 2010, the Legal Aid Society launched a lawsuit against the city of New York for detaining children in psychiatric hospitals, in locked quarters, after doctors had recommended their release. The suit also claimed that ACS and its agencies had been using psychiatric hospitals as detention centers, sending children there for disciplinary reasons like breaking curfew or running away. A. G. Sulzberger, “Foster Children Mistreated, Suit Against City Claims,” The New York Times, Late Edition, May 13, 2010, “Metropolitan Desk.”
6. [>] kids in out-of-home care live in RTCs: “Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Model Programs Guide: Residential Treatment Centers” (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice). http://www.ojjdp.gov/mpg/progTypesResidentialTreatment.aspx.
7. [>] had a history of psychiatric hospitalization: This study looked at sixteen RTCs and found, interestingly, that all three groups had nearly the same rate of substance abuse. Nan Dale, Amy J. L. Baker, Emily Anastasio, and Jim Purcell, “Characteristics of Children in Residential Treatment in New York State,” Child Welfare 86, no. 1 (January/February 2007): 16.
8. [>] behavior on the wall: Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, Leah Rae, and Shawn Cohen, “Throwaway Kids: Part of a Journal News Special Report on Residential Treatment Centers: Mental Health Care Lacking for Traumatized Kids,” The [White Plains, NY] Journal News, October 28, 2002.
9. [>] serious emotional disturbances: Ibid.
10. [>] psychological or otherwise: Charting a New Course: A Blueprint for Transforming Juvenile Justice in New York State: A Report of Governor David Paterson’s Task Force on Transforming Juvenile Justice (New York State, December 2009), 29.
11. [>] first two years at Holy Cross: The data in this paragraph covers 1998 through May of 2000.
12. [>] “high levels of vandalism”: Alan G. Hevesi, Comptroller, A Report by the New York State Office of the State Comptroller: Office of Children and Family Services: Contract C-500158: Pius XII Youth and Family Services, Inc. 2001-R-5 (Albany, NY, 2003), 16.
13. [>] references had been checked: In the comptroller’s report, auditors found that when residents filed a claim of abuse or neglect, it took the state an average of 183 days to launch an investigation—exceeding the requirement by more than four months. Ibid., 8.
14. [>] conducted site visits at both facilities: Ibid., 1, 15.
15. [>] “corrective action plan” to improve safety: They also temporarily closed intake and removed twenty children, to reduce pressure on staff. Ibid., 16.
16. [>] they’d get some response: Ibid., 18.
17. [>] shuttered the Chester facility of its own accord: Ibid., 1.
18. [>] special ed is all they get: In a 2003 study of RTCs across New York, the advocacy groups Lawyers for Children, Children’s Rights, and Legal Aid found that most RTCs in New York offered only special-ed schools. Madelyn Freundlich, Time Running Out: Teens in Foster Care (Children’s Rights, Juvenile Rights Division of the Legal Aid Society, Lawyers for Children, 2003), 128. http://www.childrensrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/time_running_out_teens_in_foster_care_nov_2003.pdf.
19. [>] a dozen kids staged a riot in 2009: Melissa Holmes, “Riot at Randolph Children’s Home,” WIVB.com, Channel 4, June 2, 2009. http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/local/Riot_at_Randolph_Childrens_Home_20090601.
20. [>] cost taxpayers an estimated $210,000 per year: Charting a New Course: A Blueprint for Transforming Juvenile Justice in New York State: A Report of Governor David Paterson’s Task Force on Transforming Juvenile Justice, 10.
21. [>] half of what was paid out to Graham Windham: David Satcher, Surgeon General, “Therapeutic Foster Care,” in Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General (Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Mental Health, 1999).
22. [>] those in residential treatment centers: Ibid.
23. [>] died at the hands of two adult aides at the Tryon School for Boys: Jennifer Gonnerman, “The Lost Boys of Tryon,” New York magazine, January 24, 2010.
24. [>] shoulder separations and displacements: Letter from Loretta King, Acting Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, to David Paterson, Governor of New York, Re: Investigation of the Lansing Residential Center, Louis Gossett, Jr. Residential Center, Tryon Residential Center, and Tryon Girls Center, August 14, 2009. http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/NY_juvenile_facilities_find let_08-14-2009.pdf.
25. [>] “choice of absolute last resort”: Charting a New Course: A Blueprint for Transforming Juvenile Justice in New York State: A Report of Governor David Paterson’s Task Force on Transforming Juvenile Justice, 11.
26. [>] “be replaced with a service-based, family-like model”: Freundlich, Time Running Out: Teens in Foster Care.
27. [>] with close to six hundred beds: Administration for Children’s Services, “Administration for Children’s Services Unveils Major Initiative to Strengthen New York City’s Child Welfare System,” press release (New York: Administration for Children’s Services, February 3, 2005). At the time of this press release, ACS had already closed 473 beds and had plans to close 121 more within the next six months.
28. [>] by April of 2011: Julie Bosman, “City Cuts Ties to Catholic Agency That Provides Foster Care,” The New York Times, May 4, 2010.
29. [>] the most serious or violent offenders: Julie Bosman, “City Signals Intent to Put Fewer Teenagers in Jail,” The New York Times, January 21, 2010. Also see “Children’s Services and J
uvenile Justice to Integrate Operations,” press release (New York: Administration for Children’s Services, 2010). http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/html/about/news_djj.shtml.
30. [>] from one of punishment to one of support: For more information about the creation of the OCFS, see John A. Johnson, “Organizational Merger and Cultural Change for Better Outcomes: The First Five Years of the Office of Children and Family Services,” Child Welfare 83, no. 2 (March/April, 2004): 129–42.
31. [>] abused or neglected children were more likely to be arrested: The Child Welfare League of America’s Juvenile Justice Division claimed in 2002 that abused or neglected children are more likely than other children to be arrested at a rate of 27 percent to 17 percent. Cited in Children’s Services Practice Notes 12, no. 4 (August 2007). http://www.practicenotes.org/vol12_no4.htm.
8. Arrested in Development
1. [>] a study on a single state (Illinois): This Illinois study was conducted by the National Association of Social Workers and was cited in Dorothy Roberts’s book Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2002), 205, as well as by Beth Azar, “Foster Care Has Bleak History,” APA Monitor, November 1995.
2. [>] though reputable sources: For instance, see Mike Wereschagin and Reid R. Frazier, “Foster Children Face the World at 18,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, November 28, 2005. The Freddie Mac Foundation makes this claim too, in “Foundation Sponsored Groundbreaking Documentary Sheds Light on America’s Foster Care Systems,” press release (McLean, VA: Freddie Mac Foundation, 2004).
3. [>] the state’s adult inmates came from child welfare: This comes from California Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal, representing California District 54, promoting bill AB 719 in September 2009, which would grant food stamps to foster kids who had aged out for one year after their eighteenth birthday. See “Bonnie Lowenthal’s Foster Youth Bill Heads to Governor,” press release (Sacramento, CA, September 9, 2009), http://asmdc.org/members/a54/news-room/press-releases/item/2567-bonnie-lowenthal’s-foster-youth-bill-heads-to-governor; and “‘Aged-Out’ Foster Youth at Terrible Risk,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 2, 2009, http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Aged-out-foster-youth-at-terrible-risk-3287718.php.
4. [>] state’s criminal justice system were former foster kids: Fred Bayles and Sharon Cohen, “Chaos Often the Only Parent for Abused or Neglected Children. Families: Drug Addiction, Poverty and Teen-Age Pregnancy Overwhelm State Protective Services. And Failures Can Be Fatal,” Associated Press, April 30, 1995, run in the Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/1995-04-30/news/mn-60640_1_drug-addiction.
5. [>] a careful 25 percent: ABC News, “Facts on Foster Care in America: A Grim Picture for Many Kids, but There Are Reasons for Hope,” May 30, 2006. http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=2017991.
6. [>] family, the Taylors: Name has been changed.
7. [>] up to the mother to initiate: Michelle Chen, “A Tangle of Problems Links Prison, Foster Care,” Gotham Gazette, April 13, 2009.
8. [>] more than fifty miles away from their children: Only 17.4 percent of state inmates and 7.5 percent of federal inmates live less than fifty miles from their children; 20.7 percent of state and 8.5 percent of federal inmates live fifty to one hundred miles away; and 51.2 percent of state and 40.7 percent of federal inmates live up to five hundred miles away. And 10.7% of state and 43.3 percent of federal inmates live more than five hundred miles away from their kids, according to 1997 data collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics policy analyst Christopher J. Mumola, Incarcerated Parents and their Children, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, August 2000), 5.
9. [>] family’s hearings in family court: Julie Kowitz Margolies and Tamar Kraft-Stolar, When “Free” Means Losing Your Mother (New York: Women in Prison Project of the Correctional Association of New York, February 2006), 10–12.
10. [>] between an order and an appearance are endless: Ibid.
11. [>] termination proceedings for incarcerated parents more than doubled: Keach Hagey, “Dodging ASFA’s Hammer,” Child Welfare Watch 15 (Winter 2008): 24.
12. [>] learn critical mothering skills: A good discussion about the efficacy of prison nurseries can be found in Chandra Krinag Villanueva, Mothers, Infants and Imprisonment: A National Look at Prison Nurseries and Community-Based Alternatives (New York: Women’s Prison Association, May 2009). http://www.scribd.com/doc/80686032/Mothers-Infants-and-Imprisonment-Prison-Nurseries-Community-Based-Alternatives-2009.
13. [>] watching the clock tick by on ASFA’s deadline: In 2010, New York State Governor Patterson signed into law the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) Expanded Discretion Bill, which gives individual caseworkers some leeway with regard to ASFA deadlines. They can decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether to refrain from filing a parental termination petition if a parent is currently incarcerated or attending a residential drug treatment program. Again, though, under original ASFA law, caseworkers always had discretion to defer filing if it was in the best interests of the child. See Correctional Association of New York, “A Fair Chance for Families Separated by Prison,” June 16, 2010. http://www.correctionalassociation.org/news/a-fair-chance-for-families-separated-by-prison.
14. [>] aggression, isolation, and depression: A few of these studies are discussed in Eric Eckholm, “In Prisoners’ Wake, a Tide of Troubled Kids,” The New York Times, July 4, 2009.
15. [>] nature or degree of these effects: For more information on what’s been said about incarceration’s effects on kids—and its limitations—see Jeremy Travis, Elizabeth M. Cincotta, and Amy L. Solomon, Families Left Behind: The Hidden Costs of Incarceration and Reentry (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, Justice Policy Center, October 2003, revised June 2005).
16. [>] she named Sharisha: Name has been changed.
17. [>] learning disorders per se: Deborah A. Frank, Marilyn Augustyn, Warida Grant Knight, Tripler Pell, and Barry Zuckerman, “Growth, Development, and Behavior in Early Childhood Following Prenatal Cocaine Exposure: A Systematic Review,” Journal of the American Medical Association 285, no. 12 (March 28, 2001): 1613. In the article the authors claim that developmental toxic effects that may have previously been associated with cocaine exposure are correlated to other risk factors, including alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana.
18. [>] top foster care agency in New York in 2004: “Children’s Services Commissioner John B. Mattingly Releases 2004 Performance Evaluation Scores for Foster Boarding Home Providers,” press release #050620 (New York: Administration for Children’s Services, June 20, 2005). http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/html/pr/pr05_06_20.shtml.
19. [>] No agency received straight As: Fred Scaglione, “Get Your Scorecard Here!” New York Nonprofit Press 9, issue 3 (March 2010): 9. In August 2012, ACS Commissioner Richter wrote an open letter to agency directors, explaining that the Scorecard system would be altered once again, to a quarterly model, with fewer questions, among other changes. The letter is available on the ACS website: http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/downloads/providers_newsletter/aug16/commissioner_richter_letter.pdf.
20. [>] twice as likely to be placed in care: Patricia L. Kohl, Melissa Jonson-Reid, and Brett Drake, “Maternal Mental Illness and the Safety and Stability of Maltreated Children,” Child Abuse & Neglect 35 (2011): 309–18.
21. [>] some form of public assistance in 2008: Brooklyn Community District 3, retrieved from http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/lucds/bk3profile.pdf. The report gives figures for 2005 and 2011, when 45.9 percent and 44.5 percent of all residents received income support, respectively.
22. [>] he’d shown tremendous progress: This therapist wanted to protect her client’s confidentiality so she chose to remain anonymous. Interview conducted in May 2012.
23. [>] trafficking of minors for sex work is on the rise: Kristin M. Finklea, Adrienne L. Fernandes Alcantara, and Alison Siskin, Sex Trafficking of Children in the United States: Overview and Issues for Congress (Washington, DC:
Congressional Research Service, June 21, 2011).
24. [>] pimps target girls in homeless shelters or group homes: Heather Clawson and Lisa Goldblatt Grace, “Finding a Path to Recovery: Residential Facilities for Minor Victims of Domestic Sex Trafficking,” prepared for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, September 2007. http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/07/HumanTrafficking/ResFac/ib.htm.
25. [>] often have no training about these types of predators: Finklea et al., Sex Trafficking of Children in the United States, 2.
26. [>] who in New York are often gang leaders: Karen Zraick, “8 Charged in Brooklyn in Sex-Trafficking Case,” The New York Times, June 3, 2010, A28.
27. [>] many experts claim that’s too low: Clyde Haberman, “The Sexually Exploited Ask for Change: Help, Not Jail,” The New York Times, June 12, 2007. http://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/nyregion/12nyc.html?fta=y.
28. [>] who sexually exploit women and girls: Zraick, “8 Charged in Brooklyn in Sex-Trafficking Case.”
29. [>] whose story was fairly typical: The foster girl I know has a story very similar to the one described in Zraick, “8 Charged in Brooklyn in Sex-Trafficking Case.”
30. [>] ran from the foster care system entirely: This is an unfortunate but all-too-common end result because there are only about four treatment facilities in the country for minor victims of domestic sex trafficking. Clawson and Goldblatt Grace, “Finding a Path to Recovery.”
9. Taking Agency
1. [>] more than thirty agencies contracting with ACS: Family Foster Care Awarded Slots by Borough, Contract Term Begins July 1, 2011 (New York: Administration for Children’s Services, September 27, 2010. http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/downloads/pdf/contracts/Family%20Foster%20Care%20Awarded%20Slots%20by%20Borough.pdf.
