Black Parents Fight to Keep Their Children: Foster Care Bias Splits Black Families (cont.)

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“Going to them was the worse thing I could have done,” said Sherman, a child-care worker in Manhattan who is a plaintiff in the People United for Children Suit. “I was upset and confused at the time. I wanted them to take the baby until my daughter could get herself together. And if not, I said I would take her.”

A few months later, when she realized that her daughter would not finish rehab, Sherman said, she requested her granddaughter’s return. She was denied: caseworkers warned that the baby would be at “imminent risk” because of the grandmother’s initial, agitated state, according to court documents. Nevertheless, they acknowledge that her grandson was well cared for.

Sherman’s granddaughter was placed with a foster mother “somewhere in Brooklyn,” she said. Sherman’s last visit was June 11, 1998. The child was adopted that September. Today she’s 9. Her brother, 11, often asks about the sister he remembers from visitations. Sherman has asked the courts to allow her and her grandson to resume visits with her granddaughter. “I want her to know that we didn’t give her up,” Sherman said. “She should have a voice in this too.”

Ironically, children may be worse off in foster care than they were in the parental homes where they were allegedly abused and neglected. Jones recounted one of her girls’ tales that their first foster mother’s boyfriend “rubbed his wee-wee” on her until “white cream” came out. Jones called ACS and the children were removed. The children then went to a home with five other foster children. From there the eldest girl complained of rampant bullying, roaches and rats. Two homes later, one child came to visitation with a case of ringworm, dressed for summer in December, and plagued with a hacking cough. In all, the girls moved five times in the last two-and-a-half years.

After they were placed with a cousin in suburban Long Island, Jones’s visits with the oldest child were cut off, because, the caseworker reported that the girl was agitated by her mother’s irate remarks. The daughter still calls home occasionally, hoping to speak to her Mom.

As Jones headed back to court in July, she steeled herself for yet another round with the city. The foster care agency’s petition for a permanency hearing indicated that its preference was to terminate Jones’s parental rights and put the children up for adoption.

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