Coalition Seeks Hidden Foster Care Stories
Every year, we estimate that hundreds of thousands of children are removed from their parents and sent to live with relatives or friends in order to prevent foster care with strangers. Considered a “voluntary” placement, it often involves coercion or threats: “Send your children to live with this relative, or we will take them into foster care.”
Nationally and in most states, there are no statistics for how often this happens or how many children this affects. And often there is no court oversight, no exit ramp to get those children back home. Once children are “safe with relatives,” the Department can wash their hands and move on to their next case.
In a 2020 law review article, Professor Josh Gupta-Kagan called this “Hidden Foster Care” due to its lack of transparency or oversight.
Your Parental Rights Foundation is part of a national coalition, aptly named the Coalition to End Hidden Foster Care, to collect data, learn how extensively this practice is used, and bring it to an end.
Sending children to live with relatives voluntarily to help parents get through a rough patch is a positive and powerful option. But pushing parents to separate from their children involuntarily, without court oversight or a reunification plan is devastating.
And some of you know what I’m talking about.
Right now, the Coalition to End Hidden Foster Care is looking to gather stories from those who have experienced this practice first-hand.
Perhaps you are a parent whose child was sent away. Perhaps you were the child. Perhaps you are the relative caregiver, pushed to take in your nieces and nephews, your grandchildren, or your neighbors’ kids and then left without support or an exit plan.
Whatever your experience, if Hidden Foster Care is part of your story, I’d like to invite you to visit the Coalition’s website and enter your story in their form here.
The Coalition will honor your privacy, and no story will be published unless we get back to you first and secure your consent.
Ideally, we will be gathering stories that we can share with lawmakers to educate them on the scope of hidden foster care and the problems that arise. But even if your story is too sensitive or is one we cannot share for some other reason, consider this an opportunity to vent what you have been through safely.
Further, I invite you to forward this email to anyone you know who has been through or is now in a hidden foster care situation.
By working together, we can bring attention to this traumatic practice and secure supports for kinship caregivers and due process rights for parents and children.
We can protect children by empowering parents in situations like these.