Reunification Gone Wrong
I used to be involved in a local nonprofit that placed newborns and infants taken from their mothers into foster homes with families qualified to adopt. “Family reunification” was always the goal in dependency court, but 75% of the time, the birth mother’s demons were too strong, and she would lose parental rights. The baby would then get adopted by the foster parents.
Twenty-five percent of the time, the mom was able to overcome addiction and get her baby back. It was crushing for the foster parents, but understandable that if the mom was stable, she should be able to raise her own child. Sometimes the story didn’t end there. Sometimes things took a dark turn. One of our couples raised a baby girl from two days old.
After four years of court hearings, rotating social workers, supervised visits, and family therapy with the child and birth mom, the court eventually decided to reunify the birth mom and the child permanently. But that wasn’t even the worst part. Unfortunately, she was removed again from her birth mom’s custody within a year, but our foster parents couldn’t get her back.
She ended up in a foster home with strangers who mistreated her so horrifically that she lost her life within months of placement. It was terrible watching it play out—yet it was totally constitutional. Everyone who works in dependency has a story like this. The real lawful evil is how badly we, as a society, treat the most vulnerable people in our population, over and over.