(00:00:00) When William was 13, he had no idea what foster care was or why his family was being split (00:00:06) up. I was coming off from my baseball practice in my best friend and we're walking down the street joking making comments to kids our age always making all that not caring about anything except what we having for dinner and the next day at school who we going to pick on and I was walking out my friend noticed a couple of police cars in front of my house. He pointed we both ran to see what was going (00:00:26) on. William is 20 now and reflects on his first experience with foster care (00:00:32) when I got there. I seen my younger brother and my younger sister in the police car crying. I seen my oldest sister my mom sitting on a porch crying and she's all she can keep doing is crying to my house. She felt she felt that she wasn't that good enough mother now, we have to live with these people and the policeman walked up and I told him leave me alone, you know, and he kept walking so I had a bat my hand and I used to like, I guess protecting myself not knowing what his job was and all I know is this man come and take my family apart and He came as one go on it and I hit him in the shoulder and it's other partner. Grab me tackled me cuff me stuck me in the back of the car my little brother little sister and older sister and then we took a trip downtown and I thought you know, we were going to jail since and because only time you see people and back police cars when they're going to jail (00:01:16) William did not go to jail, but he did not go home either the court found his mother guilty of child abuse neglect and molestation. He recalls someone telling him he was going to be placed in foster care that he would be a foster kid (00:01:32) shut up fast and it was a substitute then we'll my my capacity being young is it was I assumed that I was a substitute for a kid, you know that now I'm not even a full kid anymore (00:01:42) the Child Welfare League says that last year in this country more than 400,000 children who are in foster care and in the first half of this year that number has risen to an estimated 430,000 in the majority of cases these children are Victims of neglect parents are not giving them proper care. The rest of them have been removed because of physical or sexual abuse. This is a case. (00:02:10) Where a young man. He ended up was he was showing some self-destructive Behavior cutting himself cutting this wrist things like that. And then some (00:02:23) Jim Huber direct Social Services in Southeastern. Minnesota is malware County when we're talking with (00:02:30) social workers in our County. We try to help give them the idea that they have to view in out-of-home placement in the same way that a surgeon would view an amputation of an arm or a (00:02:42) leg social workers routinely recommend and judges often agree that kids be removed from the home for their own protection rescue kids first sort out the details later, but that response is being challenged there is renewed interest among social workers judges and others in what's called family preservation. The idea is to help families work out their problems, so they will stay together. (00:03:09) I think it's starting to Dawn on people that work in the area of children and needy children that we've spent 20 or 30 years building up programs that only dealt with the child and that that was a mistake (00:03:22) Lou Ann nyberg directs the Minnesota Office of the children's defense fund. (00:03:27) The main nurturer of children is families children live in families, and those families need to be strengthened so that rather than taking the child away from the family and bringing them to the child psychologist for an hour a week. We need to find out what's going on in that whole family. (00:03:48) In some instances what is wrong with a family may be impossible to remedy the children would never be safe if return for them foster care is the only alternative but family preservation appears to work for many others more than 30 states have tried it in various forms over the past two decades the Child Welfare League says that family preservation is responsible for keeping together up to 80 percent of the families where children might otherwise have been put in foster care. Sylvia and her family live in a modest subsidized townhouse on the north side of Rochester on this summer morning 11 year old Eddie is finishing chores before heading out on his bike to meet (00:04:34) friends as you can tell Edwin is in his normal sad self (00:04:48) the cam appearance Outdoors Mass a real tension inside the house right now Eddie is the only child living with Sylvia his 15 year old sister Gina is back in foster care. She was taken away over a year ago because of truancy and behavioral problems this weekend. She spending some time at home though. It's early in the day the verbal battles between brother and sister already are underway. (00:05:16) Driving because they're here cuz how many other times have you ever grown in (00:05:20) me now? They've drawn their mother into the (00:05:23) battle. Shut the closet door son. I'm grounded for saying Jimmy has tattoos. Now you're grounded for calling me a bitch. I didn't call you a bitch until after that Mom and you know it right. Yeah, so can you ground me for that? Whatever you said that you? (00:05:50) Eddie storms out of the room and Sylvia offers and uncomfortable smile to apologize for the Outburst. This morning's fight is mild compared to the families physical battles over the years. Some of them have been serious enough to bring police and social workers to the scene to break them up twice divorce. Sylvia is the children sole parent. Their father is gone and has no contact with them since moving to Rochester. The family has split up several times both Gina and Eddie have been in and out of foster care, but the goal has always been to stick together. (00:06:26) I want the family to be three individual identities but in one common ground and this is the home this is the ground that I want them to be common in. I see it happening. It's so slow that when you're in it, you can't see it. But when you take a minute and step back and look it's there. (00:06:47) Preserving families who are in trouble is an uphill battle. There is usually more than one problem often with deep roots. Sylvia's can be traced back to her own traumatic childhood where sexual physical and emotional abuse were part of growing up and remained a part of her life until she left home. (00:07:07) A lot of people think the extended family is a blessing that they all help each other extended family for some people is like a cult Very damaging very demeaning. You can't live your own life. And that's the way mine turned out to be (00:07:24) Sylvia and her children fled her parents home in a Twin City suburb nearly four years ago. It was an unusual household. Sylvia's grown siblings their spouses and children all live there with her parents 27 people in all her mom and dad strictly limited contact with people outside the family Sylvia describes her parents as the king and queen the grandchildren were next on the ladder of authority last and least in Sylvia's view or Sylvia and her (00:07:56) siblings. Yes, my kids who their family and I'll go grandma grandpa. You ask me who my family is now say my children and I you know, that's what we I have to deal with (00:08:08) the move to Rochester was an attempt to escape from her parents by Sylvia's account. Our folks tried to take the children back with the move Sylvia hope to bring stability to her life. But at first the opposite was true, Jean attempted suicide Eddie became physically violent and Sylvia's anorexia and bulimia didn't go away instead of stability. The family was thrown into chaos at one point. The problems landed them all in the psychiatric unit at a Rochester hospital at the same time. That's when John Coleman entered the (00:08:42) picture. They're trying so hard. You can't have what someone never gave you they're doing the best they can and when you think about where they came from they do great credible head. He beheads Miami from backer well wings. Oh my kind of want to eat that they're good. I'm going to run over here and get (00:09:10) water. John. Coleman is a counselor and program director of Omnia a private agency in Rochester, which works with the tougher cases. Like Sylvia's like most family preservation workers Coleman does a lot of his work outside the office a fishing trip to a Rochester Creek gives Coleman a chance to talk with Eddie. They meet every week Coleman's a role model and counselor for (00:09:35) Eddie my concept of family preservation. Isn't an end product. It's a process. So we have for example the parents and child or parent and child are feeling alienated from each other. Maybe them just being able to sit for half hour and talk without getting mad at each other or at least not hitting each other. That's family preservation. It's also when children are removed from families. It's respecting the family's right to stay involved. It's not just on the basis of right but is a belief system that that caring parent has a right to remain involved with their child not because it's the law but because it's the way things are supposed to be (00:10:31) Bringing Sylvia's family back together is a slow process before they can live together Under One Roof. They have to learn how to be civil to one. Another (00:10:41) family is something he can't choose. You can't choose who your family is. It just happens. Yeah. Have trust and Trust does not come easy for me. I burned the hamburgers (00:11:04) Sylvia's daughter Gina is making lunch in her mother's small kitchen. It's one of the few things Gina enjoys doing with her mom. (00:11:21) Okay. I want you right now your brother's going to say something about it. Just don't like what he says. It's his problem. Not yours. (00:11:39) Gina's mood is detached. She seems ready to leave at the smallest provocation. In fact, she already has walked out the door several times this morning threatening never to return in between the comings and goings. She and Sylvia are trying to negotiate a plan for Gina to return home from foster care. (00:11:58) But you know, if you think about a lock on your door, just like if you're boarding from somebody else you share the kitchen facilities use Chad the bathroom facilities. You know, what you do in your room is your own thing, but as a renter, you'll have to follow the rental guidelines. (00:12:20) On the lunch menu in addition to the burned hamburgers are some vulgar exchanges between Gina and her brother Eddie is doing his best to infuriate genome the talk becomes so rough at one point that Sylvia tells Eddie to leave because he is upsetting her (00:12:39) and I'm having a hard time. I don't really seriously. No, I mean to have a vibrator up there. Oh Eddie and you must be having fun with I want you to leave. I really have had a very good day back last two days. I haven't thrown up at all. I don't want to get sick now. My point being is I'm not going to have my meal upset. And then you sit in Prime complain that I am still binging and purging. It's not funny. And you sit and cry and complain that I'm going to die anytime now because my heart muscle so weak. So let's have a nice meal. (00:13:33) Sylvia gets her way for about a minute and then it's back to more of the same after the meal ends Eddie settles down enough to talk about what he wants to see in his family (00:13:43) me and my mom living together with Gina and um, I don't know living together Perfect Harmony. How can I I can get along with my sister? My mom and Obey rules and obey my sister don't invade my sister's privacy and be easier. Because then I wouldn't have to strain my brain thinking of ways to burn on my (00:14:11) sister Advocates of family preservation argue that more children could be kept out of the foster care system. If they receive the kind of help offered to Sylvia's family. Sylvia did find some of the help on her own but she needed the guidance of others to get herself and her children out of the hospital into a home and connected with John Coleman at Omnia that level of attention is not being paid to most families where children are neglected instead. They get caught up in a government-run system, which removes kids from their homes and reunification is not the first priority (00:14:49) please rise. Residing you may be seated (00:14:58) when families can't work out their problems. They often wind up here in Family Court Mark Hardin is with the American Bar Association Center on children and the law in Washington DC. He says the system is backed up. But number of cases is increasing Court calendars are packed and they are not enough people to do the job. The courts have to have a lot more hearings than they used to have and more people are involved in each court hearing than used to be and that that that new added role is not matched by added people enough enough new Personnel in the court system and sufficient preparation and training you have situations where courts are assigned to periodically take a look and review what's happening in the case, but the reality is Is the court may have just three four five minutes. If you can imagine to review the case and make these vital decisions concerning the lives and future of (00:15:58) children. (00:16:05) The intent of the child protection system is to return youngsters to the parents in Minnesota 80% do go back to their parents or relatives. The record elsewhere is not as good in big cities like Chicago and Washington DC where Municipal budgets have been slashed and slashed again many children Drift from one Foster family to another sometimes for years as they wait for overloaded social workers to get to their case in some other states the long delays in handling child welfare cases and the shuffling of children from one foster home to another has been challenged the American civil liberties Union has filed more than a dozen class action lawsuits charging various child welfare systems around the country with neglect of the children. They are mandated to protect. Martial law redirects the ACL u--'s children's rights project and says lawsuits force people to pay attention. (00:17:05) Nobody pays attention to these children's needs and less one of them winds up dead and on the front page of a newspaper and even then the attention is really very short-lived and nothing very much comes of it except maybe some commissioner loses his or her job, but in terms of systemic reform, what you really need is the kind of sustained pressure that a court order can bring and so one of the things these lawsuits in the court orders do is move these children who really don't have many people to speak for them to a closer to the top of the priority list and closer to the top of perhaps legislative and administrative (00:17:43) agendas doing a better job of protecting children is expensive hiring more caseworkers and judges is costly for counties at a time when taxpayers are clamoring for relief. This is where Advocates of family preservation believe they have an opening foster care for one child May cost nearly six thousand dollars a year on the other hand the cost of counseling and other services for family preservation is about half as much in recent years Congress has considered legislation that would send money to States for family preservation. But Neil scheele isn't counting on much help given the lean times XI Li heads alternative treatment Associates an agency helping families in southern Minnesota and Northern Iowa. (00:18:32) It's interesting that we have looked at this program and and said but but is it successful and we got to prove that it's successful or we're not going to put any resources or money into this. It's a bit troubling to me because the philosophy and values behind this our family based family-oriented philosophies and values which to me are very common sense. Chuckle and ones that most people would agree with on the other hand when it comes to foster care placement children. (00:19:02) We have not asked the same question of (00:19:04) that field. We've not said prove to us that it's successful to take a child out of the home put them in a foster home to foster home put them in residential treatment center and bring them back home or have them go on to adoption and show us where that is successful (00:19:19) critics of family preservation argue. There is no time for questions when children continue to die every day in abusive (00:19:27) homes. We've given the liberal position the compassionate approach the preservation approach 25 years to work and we're still killing 2,500 children a year. (00:19:38) Dr. Richard Gillis is a child abuse expert who heads the family violence research program at the University of Rhode Island. (00:19:46) My argument is for the families who fracture the skull of a six-month-old who have sexual intercourse with a 12 month old who polymorphously perverse Verse in their sexual behavior who have substance abuse problems who have housing problems who have a history of violence in their family family preservation is like asking them to play Russian Roulette and every time you put the child back in the home you put another bullet in the chamber. (00:20:18) I'll look at a social workers case load makes it clear that there are instances of unspeakable physical and mental abuse directed at children, but for many families, it's a lack of personal and financial resources that leads to problems of neglect. A striking statistic emerges as one looks at the child protection numbers minority family members are split up at a rate far higher than whites in Minnesota. For example more than a third of minority children are removed from their homes yet. They make up less than 10% of the total population of children in this state. It's numbers like these that prompted Minnesota to set up its families first program to help minority families stay together when Minnesota officials announced this pilot family preservation program 40 counties applied. However, there was only enough money to pay for 26 funny jaeckel a direct social services at the Fond du Lac reservation near Duluth. She says Families First workers. There are Native Americans who know the culture and the conditions of the people. They try to help (00:21:30) the families first concept is the closest thing to traditional Indian thinking that we've ever seen in family services. (00:21:40) Right from the beginning there were notable differences in the service the way it was received by the people. The workers are Indian people. They have some similar backgrounds some of the same things that they're (00:21:55) running into in their casework are things that occurred in their family or in their neighborhood and (00:22:01) that begins a trust level from the beginning Families First programs are intense. Social workers are on call 24 hours a day. They spend up to 15 hours a week for six weeks with a family they try to solve problems that range from dealing with anger to finding a refrigerator that works Inez Brown a family's first supervisor in Minneapolis says there is no guarantee. They will succeed in every case. (00:22:31) You become a part of the family and I think that you see what goes on and there are times when you have to make the decision that we're not quite Heading in the direction that we would like to see this. So all the decisions are not exactly in favor of keeping a family together. It's what's best for the family as a whole unit. Unfortunately every All Families will not be able to live together. But being in this program and being in the home is as much as we are we're able to deal with that and and kind of get the Hands-On idea of what what is going on. And so nothing is prolonged (00:23:09) last year alone Families First in Minnesota kept together over 90% of 400 families who otherwise would have been split up but family preservation programs in Minnesota are not able to keep up with the growing need the number of child protection cases Grew From 5400 in 1984 to an estimated 6800 in 1991. Also social workers. Say the prevalence of All and drug use among other things is making the case is more complex. Most family preservation Advocates see it as an alternative not as a replacement for foster care. The rub is that the two programs are competing for limited dollars and because foster care is established it has the edge in our County Social Services director Jim Huber argues that the initial investment in keeping families. Like Sylvia's together. We'll add to cost now but will net tremendous Savings in years to come (00:24:16) if we have positively intervened with this feeling we have likely saved taxpayers in this state thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars because if uninterrupted this way this system can lead into further in the judicial system costs a lot of money to keep a kid at home. It costs even more money to keep an adult in prison and there's all sorts of human costs as well as monetary costs. Not again, this is this is really the most conservative thing we can do is to prevent this from happening to intervene with families in this way and early on suit still met. That's my favorite picture. Oh that little green suits a PostScript (00:25:04) Sylvia Eddie and Gina still are not living together as a family Gina has not yet returned to live with her mother but that is not the end of the story the people who argue for family preservation insists. The process does not work overnight, but that it does work for families who want to stick it out Sylvia refuses to give up because she does not want to slide back into the destructive pattern of her old life. (00:25:34) My cousin says she goes I didn't think you'd make it she does. I thought you'd be here for six months in bumi be back in Minneapolis with your mom. And I said, I can't I cannot go back there. This is where it's going to be. I'm going to get my life back together. My kid's life back together before I make any more rooms. I'm going to say stay here until I do it my cousin Lucy. It's got everybody that's my cousin. That is bloody fighting for family is a production of que él se K Zs e Minnesota Public Radio Rochester and is written and produced by Carol Gunderson and Rebecca Gonzales editors Danielson and Lauren Emoto technical director Scott Yankees, the narrator Werdum a Grosvenor executive producer of fighting for family, Rich deepen fighting for family is made possible in part by a major Grant from nor West Bank's Rochester. I got it. I had a dog just like that name, too.