D.C. Tackles Case Backlog In Foster Care

The 14-year-old District boy was placed in foster care at age 11, when his mother was suffering from depression and neglected him. Since then, he has been caught in a bureaucratic backlog at the city's child welfare agency.

His foster parents, a Maryland couple, expressed interest in adopting him more than a year ago. At one point, the boy told social workers that he wanted that to happen. And they felt that it would be risky to reunite mother and son because of her mental state.

Social worker Paige Schultz, left, Sarah Maxwell, deputy director of programs at the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, and social worker Doris Baidy discuss the case of a 14-year-old boy who has been in foster care since age 11. (By Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)

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But the D.C. agency made no move to seek the termination of the birth mother's parental rights so an adoption could proceed. The boy continued to visit her, and he later changed his mind about adoption after his sister discouraged the idea.

In a recent meeting, a team of social workers and city attorneys came together to make up for what they did not do before. For 45 minutes, they discussed the boy's case and the steps they needed to take to break through his ambivalence and set his future on a clearer course.

After years of delay, D.C. officials are beginning to tackle the cases of hundreds of children who have been in the city's foster care system for years but are not actively being considered for adoption because the rights of their biological parents have not been terminated.

The city's Child and Family Services Agency created the backlog by not following the federal time limit on deciding the permanent placement of such children, according to child advocates and the court monitor appointed in a class-action lawsuit against the city.

"The longer they stay in this limbo, the more damaging it is to them," said court monitor Judith Meltzer, who is deputy director of the Center for the Study of Social Policy. Officials in the city agency, she said, "need to -- after a reasonable effort to reunite a family -- get these children adopted."

The D.C. agency, which has about 2,700 foster children in its custody, has been under federal court scrutiny since 1989, when the lawsuit, now known as LaShawn A. v. Williams , was filed. For a six-year stretch that ended in 2001, the agency was removed from the city's control and placed under a court receivership.

While the city made progress on other goals set by the judge in the case -- including hiring more social workers, reducing the number of foster children in group homes and speeding investigations of abuse and neglect -- the backlog of foster children in legal limbo persisted. The child welfare agency and the city attorney general's office, which files court petitions to terminate parental rights, even disagreed on the number of unexamined cases.

Last fall, as child advocates and the court monitor raised the problem again before the judge, the two city departments joined in a new effort to address the issue. They sifted through 1,742 cases in which parents' rights had not been cut off even though the children had been found by a judge to be candidates for adoption or had been in foster care longer than 14 months. Under the 1997 federal Adoption and Safe Families Act, the city is required to decide on the permanent placement of abused or neglected children within 14 months of their removal from their homes.

From that five-month review, officials identified 132 children for whom termination petitions could be filed immediately. Some of the children had been in foster care as long as five years, officials said.

In March, officials began focusing on 443 cases that needed to be immediately considered for termination of parents' rights but required closer review. After a one-day training session, the teams of social workers and lawyers began their examination of those cases, meeting almost daily in agency conference rooms. As of April 30, they had reviewed 200 of the 443 cases and found 68 children for whom parental rights should be terminated.

Meltzer and lawyers for Children's Rights, the nonprofit advocacy group that filed the lawsuit, have praised the progress.

Deputy attorney general Catherine Motz said the effort has been successful because of a new sense of urgency.

Social worker Paige Schultz, left, Sarah Maxwell, deputy director of programs at the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, and social worker Doris Baidy discuss the case of a 14-year-old boy who has been in foster care since age 11. (By Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)

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"We have this sort of SWAT team approach," Motz said. The office dedicated five lawyers full-time to the effort, which includes attending the reviews, filing termination papers within 30 days and preparing for trial. D.C. Family Court judges, who ultimately decide whether to cut a birth parent's ties, have been quickly setting trial dates, Motz said.

"At the end of the day, it's children's lives, and the point is to get children adopted while they're still children," she said.

The termination of parental rights is a crucial legal step but does not ensure that the children will be adopted. About 400 District children already are waiting for adoptive homes.

But a child who is "legally free" is more likely to draw interest from adoptive parents, said Sandra Jackson, administrator of the agency's Permanency and Family Resources unit. The agency can also recruit more widely for a child whose parental ties have been cut, Jackson said, by putting his or her photo in national adoption listings without a parent's permission, for example.

Robin Nixon, executive director of the National Foster Care Coalition, said that although children should not languish in foster care, the services that would help birth parents get their children back -- such as drug treatment -- often are unavailable or have long waiting lists.

"I think families have a legitimate argument in saying, 'If the community can't provide the services that I need to recover and be a good parent, how can you justify termination?' "

Officials huddled in an agency office on a recent afternoon to consider what they should recommend in the case of the 14-year-old boy living with foster parents in Maryland. A reporter was allowed to attend the meeting on the condition that the youth not be identified.

A judge had said in 2003 that the boy should be a candidate for adoption. But now that the boy is 14, he has the right to object to being adopted.

A city attorney asked if anyone had spoken to the sister who had talked the boy out of adoption. There was a quick ruffle through the piles of paperwork. It seemed that no one had.

"You can see where he might be conflicted," said Sarah Maxwell, deputy director of programs at the agency. But perhaps after some counseling from adoption staff, she said, he might change his mind again. "It might be worth it having a meeting with him again to explain the process," she said. Maxwell also suggested that the agency contact the sister and mother.

The group's recommendation: Papers to terminate parental rights should not be filed at this point.

Maxwell put the decision on an "outcome sheet," reading aloud as she wrote: "The child is 14 and does not consent. However, we will continue to explore adoption by said foster parents."

They were done for now, until another child with another set of questions came their way.