To the End of June : The Intimate Life of American Foster Care (9780547999531) Read Free Page A

down the fitted blazers and silky blouses she wears, even on warm days. Next to Bruce’s baggy jeans and T-shirts, Allyson’s leather boots and stockings render her the sophisticate at first glance. But she’s the one doing the dirty work: changing diapers and making dinner, wiping up the endless spills. “Then you have this other parent, who’s been through hell and back—the dad, the mom, any one of them—say they want to turn their lives around. It would be very inappropriate of me when I have the right to raise my own children to not give him that fair chance. Why would I want to take away his one little thing when I’ve got four of my own?”
    But that was at the beginning. That was back in the fall, when the case with Allen’s dad was still theoretical and it looked as if the courts would lean in Allyson’s favor.
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    Bruce and Allyson fell into foster care the way anyone falls into the traumas or miracles of their lives: by a mix of happenstance and hope. The year was 2000, and they already had three kids of their own at home—two little boys, Jaleel and Bruce Junior, and a daughter named Sekina who was just becoming a teenager. (Allyson’s other son, born to a different father, was back in Belize.) Then one night, they got a phone call from the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS)—the organization that handles child welfare for the five boroughs of New York. Bruce’s sister’s kids, then two and four, were being removed from their home; it wasn’t safe for them to even stay the night. Could Bruce and Allyson take them? Of course, they said. Anyone would.
    Bruce, who looks a little like Jay-Z with his bald head and soft jaw, stayed pretty private about the exact circumstances surrounding his sister’s ordeal, but typically, this is the way a child is removed:
    First, anyone who suspects abuse (by seeing marks, hearing shouts, noticing absence from school, and so on) can call a hotline. There are certain “mandated reporters”—doctors, police officers, teachers, daycare workers, and social workers, mainly—who are legally obligated to make these calls, but really, anyone can do it. The local city or county agency sends an investigator to the house to interview the parents and the kids, and to look around the rooms. A child abuse investigator can enter anyone’s home at any time without a warrant.
    Usually, the investigator just opens a file on the family and follows up on anything that seems suspicious or untoward on that first visit, but if the parents pose an immediate danger, he can take the kids then and there. This is what happened with Bruce’s nephews.
    Then the investigator has to find a place for the kids to go. He brings them back to the office, where a social worker starts making calls—usually to family members. In child welfare–speak, this is called “kinship care,” and New York State law requires it as the first line of outreach, though this law is often ignored.Still, it’s why the boys were placed with the Greens. If the child is older, say, a teenager, he might be able to indicate some adults with whom he could stay,
if
they’re willing to foster him. This works in only some places, however; several states require that all foster parents be licensed via weeks of state-approved parenting classes before they can take in kids, even if they’re related.Luckily for the Greens, ACS provides emergency licensing; Bruce and Allyson could shelter the boys first and take parenting classes later.
    Once a child is settled for the night, his case gets passed from ACS to one of the roughly thirty foster care agenciesthat ACS contracts with, each with its own mission, style, budget, possibly a religious affiliation, and so on. At this point, ACS pretty much gets out of the way, and the foster agency handles the licensing, any troubles with the kid, connections with his birth