dependency court

A group of newly hired parent advocates in Los Angeles with a past in the child welfare system are providing advice and assistance to others with children placed into foster care.

During a virtual town hall last week, parents asked gut-wrenching questions to child welfare leadership. “When can I see my kids again?” “I was having unsupervised visits with them. Why can’t they come live with me?”

This week, I received word that many courts – including the juvenile court in which I practice – were closing. That is, for the indefinite future, my court would not be holding any hearings, other than emergency hearings, to address whether a child needs to be removed for their immediate safety.

I opened my inbox to find an email titled, “I can’t take this life anymore.” My heart sank. These were the words of a former client, a young adult who had aged out of foster care after living in more than 10 placements.

The child welfare system has a problem that is rarely mentioned in the literature. Children wait too long for permanency, and the problem is exasperated by the age of the children.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been reading transcripts from child protective hearings. Hundreds of pages of transcripts. I’ve seen examples of clear legal errors. I’ve read many lines of parents’ lawyers grumbling and complaining.

At around nine o’clock on a Tuesday morning, two days after giving birth to her second child, Vanessa left a hospital in Queens, New York, and boarded the subway. She was headed to the borough’s courthouse on a mission: to regain custody of her newborn daughter.

I spent more than seven years as a trial court judge in San Francisco addressing the needs of children and families. I was tasked with formulating a plan to address the harm before me.