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Monday, June 15, 2009
In search of stability
By Juan Carlos Rodriguez
Copyright © 2009 Albuquerque Journal
Journal Staff Writer
Beth and David Nailon's home felt empty after five of their six kids grew up and moved out, so they decided to look into adopting one more.Nailon said she and her husband were determined to adopt through the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department rather than a private agency.
Becoming a foster parent
New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department: (800) 432-2075 or visit www.cyfd.orgLand of Enchantment Foster & Adoptive Parents Association: (575) 746-4661
National Foster Parent Association: (800) 557-5238 or visit www.nfpainc.org
"We feel those children are the ones that need a home the most," she said.
But after becoming foster parents to two sets of siblings, the Nailons decided one just wasn't enough. Now they want to adopt all six children, three kids each from two families. Their application is pending.
Last year, CYFD recorded its highest number of adoptions ever, with 503 children in state custody being placed with a permanent family. That compares with 219 in 2003. The increase is due to CYFD's effort to provide kids with a permanent home as soon as possible, agency officials said.
"They (CYFD officials) have done a really good job with a new, innovative model to really focus on kids who are lingering in foster care and get them adopted," said Susan Lambiase, associate director of Children's Rights, which sued the state in 1980 over its foster care practices. "From what I've looked at over the course of the years, they've made progress in that area."
Chief among complaints in the lawsuit was that too many kids were spending years in the system without being adopted into permanent families.
The suit was settled in 2005, and since then CYFD has taken a number of steps to help children find a permanent home more quickly:
It uses adoption resource teams that help caseworkers find good homes for kids in a timely manner.
It focuses on providing permanent homes by relying more heavily on "concurrent planning," in which a foster parent agrees to help the state reunite the child with his birth family. If that doesn't work out, the foster parent agrees to adopt the child. In May, the department started emphasizing the program for its youngest children, infants through four years old.
It started working harder to rehabilitate birth parents. That sometimes includes building a relationship between the foster and birth parents.
New Mexico's foster care system served more than 4,400 kids, 17 and younger, last year. At any one time, roughly 2,000 New Mexican kids need a place to stay because their parents can't or won't provide one.
"New Mexico has continued to get children who need permanent families adopted and has increased the numbers repeatedly since 2003. And that's a really good thing for kids who languish in foster care, which has historically been a problem for New Mexican kids," Lambiase said.
But, she said, the state should move even faster to get children placed.
Concurrent planning
The Nailons signed up as concurrent planning foster parents so they would be considered first when the children they cared for became eligible for adoption.
Under the program, children who return to their biological parents but are taken into custody again go back to the concurrent family's home.
"I think it's in the best interest of the child. At least, they're going to have something steady. Otherwise, their lives are just up in the air," Nailon said.
Jared Rounsville, acting director of CYFD's Protective Services Division, said that the concurrent planning program has been around for several years but that the department is now making more effort to use it.
Critics say the method boxes foster parents in by asking them to commit to a particular child before they have a chance to really know him or her.
"I know when you birth a child you don't have much choice of their personality, but our feeling was that we had to be kind of a match," said Marsha Smith, a former foster parent.
Another drawback is the emotional roller coaster for foster parents if a child they have agreed to adopt does go back to the biological parent's home. Both sets of siblings the Nailons are now trying to adopt have returned home once.
"That nearly broke our hearts. It was hard to handle," Beth Nailon said.
Lisa Burk, foster parent of an 18-month-old, signed on to the concurrent plan and said she understands why it is in place. "You learn that there's a million reasons why kids come into foster care, and a lot of it really is just giving the parents an opportunity to reassess, to hit that restart button," she said.
Rounsville said CYFD's goal, in most cases, is to reunite families. Adoption is a second choice because if families can be repaired, they should be, he said. More than 75 percent of children who are taken from their parents are returned to them within 12 months, according to CYFD statistics.
But when that's not possible, the state's adoption resource teams are deployed. Their job is to regularly review case files of children who can be adopted and make sure everything is in place for a speedy permanent placement.
In 2008, the average stay in state care was about 20 months.
The road back
When the state took Victoria O'Hara's three children a year ago, she faced a tremendous task to get them back. She said she was lost in a dead-end existence that had begun years earlier when she became involved with a violent man and started using drugs. After she suffered a particularly brutal beating, CYFD took the kids.
Her children gone, the man in jail, deep in addiction, O'Hara said she hit the proverbial rock bottom.
"I felt empty. I didn't eat for two weeks. I didn't get out of bed for two weeks," she said.
It took her six months in a haze of crack houses, isolation, drug and alcohol binges, and transience, but she had a breakthrough moment and realized, "I wanted my kids back more than anything, so I would do whatever I had to do that."
Now nine months clean and sober, O'Hara has reclaimed her kids and is doing well, according to CYFD staff. And she has maintained a relationship with Carmen Murdoch, the woman who fostered two of her daughters. The girls, 5 and 6 years old, are still emotionally attached to Murdoch, and that's fine with O'Hara.
"She was a blessing," O'Hara said. "This woman took care of my kids for the past year and showed them love."
Recently, CYFD has been encouraging foster parents and biological parents to communicate soon after kids are moved from one home to the other.
"We believe this will engage the biological parents at a greater level earlier, because they will know what happens if they don't complete their plan successfully," said Brenna Dotson, office manager of CYFD's Bernalillo County Protective Services Division. "The old practice of splitting the biological parents and the adoptive parents didn't work because it created barriers."
At those "icebreakers," the biological parents bring a child's favorite stuffed animal or blanket. They tell the foster parents what the child likes to eat, what his normal schedule is, and any other considerations the foster parents should know as soon as possible. The goal is to ease the relationship between the two sets of parents and better protect children in custody from the divided loyalties they experience. The hope is that the better the parents get along, the less stress there is for the child.
"That was a problem in the past, with the kid getting caught in the middle of foster/biological parent battles," Dotson said.
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