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We read a lot about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FAS) here on the blogs from adoptive parents dealing with the issues their children live with after their pre-birth exposure, and this article from Canada expands the conversation, looking at the damage down the road.
Starting with a 19-year-old with problems in many aspects of her processing life as it comes, and going on to call FAS an “under-recognized national disaster”, the report says that one percent, that’s about 300,000 Canadians, have some form of FASD.
Also from Canada, this story about social services’ obligation to children.
A Supreme Court ruling in a case over the Children’s Aid Society and a family’s decade-long fight and $40 million lawsuit against the province and the social worker involved in removing the child decided that they “… owed a duty of care only to the girl and not her family.”
And this in response to an earlier article about more kids coming into Provincial care from a foster parent frustrated over a system that is apparently less than helpful.
If the department has people wanting so desperately to provide strong parenting to children with clearly diagnosed and life-threatening special needs, why does it seem to be working against us instead of with us?
Still on the topic of foster care, here is a look at the system in Michigan and how a decade-old policy that was to make positive changes has had the opposite effect.
“…We now have more rootless children, children without any legal family ties, than we had in the entire child protection system prior to these laws,” Wexford County Probate Court Judge Kenneth Tacoma told lawmakers this spring.
Now the Annie E. Casey Foundation has released a report called KIDS COUNT that is asking the state’s lawmakers to re-examine foster care laws.
A lawsuit was filed against the state by the group Children’s Rights for “subjecting foster care children to an endless series of temporary homes, some of which were dangerous and abusive”. In settlement talks, the state said it had no money for reforms and asked that the suit be dismissed, a request that was denied by the US DIstrict Court judge in charge.
Our state – Kansas – has a stated policy of not severing parental rights unless the child has an adoptive resource identified. They will sometimes accept a relinquishment or sever rights if a social worker will state that the child is adoptable. A tricky balance with the current federal mandates regarding permanency.