Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You.
[00:00:05] Hi, and welcome to A Politics of Justice. It's me, Amy Austin.
[00:00:10] Merry Christmas and happy New Year.
[00:00:14] So let's go on to chapter 25.
[00:00:19] So chapter 25 of judged is titled Special Needs. And the reason that I titled that chapter is because one of the things that I found that happened when I was practicing in Cleveland is that children who were taken into foster care suddenly developed a whole cluster of diagnoses, which was one of the things that made it hard for their parents to get custody back.
[00:00:51] The parents were accused of ignoring diagnoses, and then further on, not being able to handle the diagnoses. So ADHD or ADD was a popular diagnoses, as were others.
[00:01:05] So whether or not every child who's in foster care has some diagnosis is a different thing. But it put a hurdle into place for parent reunification that felt fundamentally unfair because we don't live in a society that has, like, active health insurance and especially does not have insurance for any kind of, like, mental.
[00:01:34] Let's see, Mental. Mental. Mental health care.
[00:01:37] So the parents were charged with these taking care of problems for which there was no care.
[00:01:48] And the county was happy to provide that care as long as the children were in custody. But needing ongoing counseling because you're taking them away from your family is sort of at odds with reunification. And I'm not saying children didn't have some special needs or could not use some kind of special educational support, but if they were with their parents, those supports don't exist. And I would have preferred or still would prefer to live in a society where those supports are provided to children regardless of who has custody of them.
[00:02:28] Moving on. So Sheila is subject to this same rigamarole, even though I think that she would have obviously have had the ability to provide those supports.
[00:02:40] So one of the things they're suggesting is that because Olivia's grades aren't matching her, like, IQ or whatever, that then Sheila had neglected her daughter in that sense.
[00:02:53] So they've enrolled her in these programs with her foster parents and in work to chapter 26, where she's in Euclid Hospital, where there's not in Euclid Hospital, but they're doing some of the care at Euclid Hospital.
[00:03:11] So we started 26, where it's a Sheila chapter. And the highlight is, without Olivia, the apartment was always dark and cold. Given the mess I'd made of my life, I deserved a little rum with my cola to take the edge off. They couldn't take my daughter away twice.
[00:03:24] And the note I had is that there's Something sad about Sheila's defeatist attitude. But I did see that with parents because at some point it seems like an overwhelming burden to get your child out of foster care. You can't do it immediately. I mean, they can take your child away immediately, but you can't have an emergency hearing to get your child back. So you're forced into this process that can last months or years before the law changed and still then not have access to your child in your daily life. And routine that had surrounded like child care and child raising is fundamentally altered and really, who wouldn't be depressed?
[00:04:05] So.
[00:04:07] So now we're dealing with the issue of Olivia's diagnoses. And the highlight is in two days I had assembled a file on Olivia's so called illness. Immediately after I put two and two together, I called Casey. They diagnosed Olivia with attention deficit disorder. I said to Casey, without preamble or introduction, I heard Casey shuffling through papers. That's not any discovery. How did you find out?
[00:04:29] Health insurance records. We've been to the clinic before. Who hasn't? They probably put it in her Social Security number and it linked up. But why didn't the county, the people supposedly caring for my daughter, tell me about this? Despite my attempts to modulate my voice, I could hear it rising. We need an second opinion. Our own physical examination. ADD and ADHD are diagnoses that a bunch of people throw around. An excuse to move black kids to remedial classes, get them hooked on drugs, Adderall, Zoloft. She's already taking these things.
[00:04:58] Judge Grant, the diagnosis itself is not the problem. The biggest, bigger issue is that the court will take it seriously. It will impact your ability to get your daughter back.
[00:05:06] I would want my daughter back no matter what kind of disability she may have. Do people give up their children if they were damaged goods? So we're not going to get into the damaged goods problem because people do give up their children if they feel that they cannot care for them. They have laws about surrendering children. Not only can you surrender babies at the fire station, you can surrender older children to the system. But the book's not about that, so we're not going to talk about that.
[00:05:33] So the note says children in foster care and temporary custody were often diagnosed with an Alphabet list of conditions that always made the parents look as if they were unfit. Over diagnosis was not considered a valid defense, which is unfortunate because there are structural problems in place with diagnosis issues. But parents who lost their children were not in a position to attack or address those, which is unfortunate.
[00:06:01] So Olivia goes to the hospital because she finds out there's an appointment. Because honestly, the numbers did link up. I mean, it's. I mean, even in LA there are systems, and if you put in anybody's name, all their future appointments and past appointments come up. So it's kind of hard to keep secrets if you're like, at, like UCLA or Cedars.
[00:06:22] It didn't take long to find the education center in the pediatric wing of the hospital. I signed myself in next to Olivia's name on the list, introduced myself to the nurse instructor, and took a seat in the windowless room. The empty chairs filled up quickly with parents and children. A severely dressed black woman and Olivia were two of the last to enter.
[00:06:40] My heart sped up as adrenaline flooded my veins. With monumental effort, I held back the tears that nearly leaked from my eyes. If I hadn't cried the day Peyton got married, I wasn't going to cry now. My daughter ran to my arms as soon as she saw Tell me, Mom, what are you doing here? Olivia asked. I'm here to see you, poppet, I said, hugging my daughter. The feel of her flesh and bones was as familiar as my own. Even under some awful perfumed soap, my daughter's smell was unique. It's good to see you, I whispered into my daughter's hair, thick with afreshing. I hate swallowing pills. It's so hard. But Aunt Linda says it's supposed to make me do better in school. I was taken aback. My sister was Deirdre. Keith had no siblings. Linder, I purposely admitted the term of address. Our brief union was cut short by a firm hand in my upper armor of voice of steel. Excuse me, ma', am, the instructor said to me. I need to talk with you in the hall. Are you speaking with me? I asked. Hugging my own child was not against the law.
[00:07:34] Are you Sheila Grant? The nurse asked when I nodded. Another hospital employee took Olivia by the shoulder and walked her to the woman she'd come with, the putative Aunt Linda. While the instructor led me to the hall, then disappeared back into the classroom, an orderly with a fistful of noisy keys locked the door, barring my readmittance. This time, the person who joined us was in a pantsuit and pearls. What's this about? I asked. Ma', am, I don't have to get in the middle of anything here. We got a call from the county social worker saying that you don't have custody of your daughter. The woman your daughter came here with today is her foster parent and legal guardian. There's been A huge mistake. I'm fighting with the court right now to get my daughter back. I'm her mother. It's my right to come down here and see what medication she's taking. See for myself what kind of behavior modification you're using on her.
[00:08:16] Ma', am, I understand your concern, but we're public hospital. We must abide by the county's request. The burly orderly crossed his arms and barred the door like a bouncer at an over 21 club. My next question was her profferous, but I asked it anyway. Are you saying I can't go back in there? I asked. No, ma', am, you can't. This is a hospital and we don't deal with child abuse cases. I suggest you talk with your daughter's social worker. If we get the okay from her, you can come to our other education sessions.
[00:08:43] All right with her, I said, my voice rising. That's my daughter in there. You keep your voice down. This is a hospital pants suit. And Pearl said, keep my voice down. You're sending letters to me. My daughter is sick, but you won't let me participate in her care? Are you crazy? The echo of my voice up the sterile walls and furtive glances of everyone around us alerted me. I gotten too loud. Ma', am, you're gonna have to leave voluntarily or I'm gonna have to call hospital security. If you have a problem, I suggest you take it up with a social worker or the court.
[00:09:14] The note says, while parents are often accused of not caring, they're often excluded from care. They complain, rightly so, that it's not a system set up for reunification success.
[00:09:22] It's true. I mean, so they tell you that your children have this, like, laundry list of conditions.
[00:09:28] And some parents are like, okay, I understand this is hard, but I don't have my child now, so I have a lot of time. I'm ready to jump in. And they're excluded from that care.
[00:09:38] So it'll be like. Even if they're like, certain things, let's say the child, I don't know, has something that requires like injections or testing.
[00:09:46] And you have to be educated on how to perform those tests or whatever it is. The biological parents are excluded from that training while the foster parents are receiving that training. And then when the parents go to court, of course, the prosecutor says the parents are unable to care for the child because they haven't taken the training on how to care for the child. It's just.
[00:10:07] It's. It's a little.
[00:10:09] It's Sad. Anyway. Chapter 27 client interview. This is a Casey chapter.
[00:10:15] And what I've highlighted is that Judge Casey has to deal with a. A judge client, a lawyer client who wants to fight the system.
[00:10:29] And Judge Grant is continually surprised of the lack of sophistication, I guess I'd say, of the parents or the clients that Casey has and is surprised that more parents don't fight the system.
[00:10:45] And it's hard to explain, but Casey, the highlight is white shoe lawyers were always surprised by what happened outside the castle walls. So there's a hierarchy in the legal system. Large law firms are up here, and I would say at the bottom, the system's workers comp.
[00:11:04] So in between, there are a lot of different tiers of lawyers, and they don't integrate. Like, there's not like a level of integration.
[00:11:14] Lawyers from a certain.
[00:11:17] From certain places feel that they're in certain classes, and lawyers from other places feel relegated, and they don't mix.
[00:11:26] So white shoe lawyers, I mean, if you're practicing with rich corporate clients, you would never encounter poor, needy people.
[00:11:40] And so the never. The two shall mix. So I have found in my experience that white shoe lawyers were always very surprised at how the rest of the world worked.
[00:11:54] What are you gonna do?
[00:11:56] Anyway, the note says there are two different justice systems, one for the rich, one for the poor. Rarely do the two meet.
[00:12:03] So Judge Grant was silent for a few moments, her look thoughtful. I stood and looked at the ship sailing on Lake Erie. Even when devastation wrought your life asunder, everyone else kept going.
[00:12:15] It's just a favorite line I have. It's just that in every.
[00:12:21] This applies whether it's law or not. But somehow when your life is wrecked, you feel like the world is wrecked, but everybody else is just trucking on.
[00:12:32] If their life's not wrecked at the moment, they're living their life while you're living yours.
[00:12:40] The next highlight is still from the same chapter with Judge Grant having a conversation with Casey. And she says, how much influence will the guardian have on the case? Depends. Not all judges weigh the information the same way. Typically, the guardians come in, say the kids is fine in foster care, and the judge says whatever they were going to do in the first place.
[00:13:01] So the note says one thing that makes guardian items feel like cogs in the works. And often that was true. It was just a rubber stamp. And so even though statutorily, morally, legally, like, in many ways, the guardian litem had a complete and separate obligation to the children, that obligation was often met in a very cursory manner.
[00:13:30] And the judge does what they were going to do anyway. So if I. In the cases, where was the guardian? If I was going to buck the system, I was not anybody's friend, let me just say so. The judge says to her, when will we meet again?
[00:13:47] Casey says, we're going to get some discovery, do some interviews, then I'll call you and see where we are and where we need to go. I paused. I'd been burned before. Is there anything you're not telling me? The judge's hesitation was so slight, I wasn't sure there'd been one. Judge Grant stood to put on her coat, put her hand on the doorknob, and she looked at me over her shoulder. No, Casey, you know everything. This is in your hands now.
[00:14:09] So the note says, some client expectations are a lot for any one lawyer.
[00:14:15] So that's an interesting note, but that's not the main thing. Actually, I'm thinking about what. Okay, well, first, Judge Grant did have a lot of expectations.
[00:14:25] Even though she's a lawyer and a judge, she still thought like, Casey is going to be the one that saved her in the same way that she thought that Peyton and her firm is going to be the one that saved her, whomever. And nobody's coming to save you.
[00:14:35] But the other thing is that what I found when practicing law is that clients omit things, and they omit things that are very, very, very important.
[00:14:47] I don't know if they're embarrassed. They don't think you're going to find out. They don't think it's going to change the case. It's so hard to know why people omit things, because by the time you find out about the omission, and the omission is material, the why doesn't matter. It's dealing with the omission that's really the issue.
[00:15:06] So this is just foreshadowing that clearly, Judge Grant is omitting something that's going to be very critical to the case, and you now know it. So chapter 28 is Metzenbaum. It's a Schieler chapter. Metzenbaum was. Oh, God. This is why I should read this ahead of time.
[00:15:29] It was, I think, the visitation center.
[00:15:31] It was a building.
[00:15:34] I don't think it was attached to the court, but I think it was nearby. Maybe it was across the street, where they had visitation for children in foster care. So the foster parents would bring the children to Metzenbaum center, and the parents would go to Metzenbaum center, and they would have their one or two hours. It wasn't much. Visiting their children in this very sterile cafeteria. It's probably what I talk about. I think I wrote here, sterile cafeteria environment.
[00:15:59] You know, it is what it is. I guess my memories haven't changed.
[00:16:06] So Sheila's visiting Olivia at Metzenbaum and the highlight starts with, who is us? I'm immediately suspicious. Jermaine and I. He's the other kid there. Olivia answered, Jermaine's in foster care. I tried to pull my mind from the brink. Maybe mixing sexes was standard in foster care. Yeah, he's kind of weird. How old is he? Fifteen. I don't know. Why is he there? I don't know, Mom. Olivia whined. Why are you asking about him? I'm telling you, it's awful there. And the school is bad, too. The kid's active in class. The work is about two years behind.
[00:16:40] I set aside my unease. Olivia was right. Jermaine wasn't the issue. Getting the girl home was.
[00:16:45] I couldn't think of what to ask my daughter. How could I pick one thing when I wanted to know everything?
[00:16:53] Parents of children in foster care find visitation hard. It's a very short period of time to connect with a loved one. It is. So, I mean, the.
[00:17:03] There are procedures in place to try to maintain the connection with parent and child, but hours when you have your child full time is.
[00:17:14] It's not enough. It's not enough. I don't even know if it's right, but it's just not enough.
[00:17:19] Chapter 29 the case plan. Oh, the case plan.
[00:17:23] So when they take your child, the social workers develop something called a case plan.
[00:17:28] It's okay. It's always printed portrait wise, and it's a list of things that you can do to get your child back.
[00:17:39] But the plan is almost.
[00:17:43] I don't say it's cut and paste. They were all pretty much the same.
[00:17:49] So even though they are supposed to be individualized for that particular child, that particular family, that particular reunification plan, they were fairly standard.
[00:18:01] Lots of little boxes, lots of pages. I'd say they were like maybe 10 to 15 pages printed in portrait. And you'd flip through them and it was like visitation diagnoses, whatever it was. Parenting classes, like the regular stuff. So let's see what it says.
[00:18:18] So it's a Sheila chapter.
[00:18:20] What's highlighted is. I pulled a cord on the desk lamp to chase away the dusk. It was easier spending my evenings in my chambers. The apartment was preternaturally quiet without Olivia. I hated the constant drum of all those cable channels. Olivia so loved but without my daughter there, it wasn't a home. It was merely place to shower and sleep.
[00:18:37] And the note says, foster care is not like college, not like death. But a child listening from a home can affect a parent's psyche profoundly. I saw that the parents were, the children are affected and the children are children. So I mean, they are a special case, but the parents.
[00:18:54] The effect on a parent, I think, cannot be underestimated. Parents were really shook by not having their children and it wasn't something you could share. It's like, oh, my child's at day camp, or I'm sorry, overnight camp or my child's in college. Oh, I'm divorced and my child's like with their dad half time. These are things for which there's, I'm not saying they're bad regret, but there's, which there's sort of established precedent and people can like empathize with you on that basis. There's not a lot of people who can empathize with your child being in foster care because there's a huge blame game that goes on and it's not something that people share and they're really kind of mortified and embarrassed about.
[00:19:34] So she has the case plan, she says. I turned to page two of the case plan and looked at the list of county recommendations for action that would bring about family reunification. I shook my head. The county reduced 13 years of parenting to a form, and a bad one at that. The boxes on the left address the so called problems with my little family. Mom has parenting issues and mom has an alcohol issue, it read. To adjust their fabricated issues, the county proposed solutions. The boxes on the right outlined what steps I was supposed to take, all under the county supervision. They'd enroll me in a 30 day inpatient and drug and alcohol treatment program, enroll in a 16 week parenting class, and of course, to keep my house suitable and my job on an even keel. These look like the aspirations of a 20 something with little time on the job and middle class ideals.
[00:20:19] The.
[00:20:21] My note says the parenting plans are daunting, especially to a parent with a job or without other supportive resources. And it's true. Often they were like, you should go into inpatient care, but also you need to maintain a residence. And so without a job, there's no way to maintain a residence. And if you were receiving welfare, whatever the name changes with welfare, then often that's reduced or cut off.
[00:20:46] So you're supposed to do these things without a job, but also maintain a suitable home so that your child like could come home at any time. We're talking about three, four, five, six months a year in some cases. That you're to maintain all of these things without it's just it's nearly impossible. It's it felt like it always felt like a losing proposition to parents who didn't have resources. If they were like say, a stay at home parent and those who rarely lost their kids or how to support a family or family with money or family relatives they could move in with, it was a different situation. But if you were a single parent alone with several children and one job and a like a low rent apartment, it was not daunting, but damn near impossible.
[00:21:37] So Sheila, we're back to Sheila. I threw the papers on my desk in frustration. How in the hell do parents do this? I asked. The process doesn't seem geared toward keeping families together, but toward pulling families apart.
[00:21:49] Many clients have felt that frustration, Casey said diplomatically. Level with me. How many cases have you been involved with in juvenile court, even where you were the guardian at litem? I asked. About 250, more or less, casey answered.
[00:22:03] In all of those cases where the county was seeking temporary custody and the parents were making an honest effort at it, in how many of those cases have you seen reunification?
[00:22:12] Casey didn't respond right away. I could hear her breathing in the receiver squeak of the office chair as Casey leaned forward or back. Then Casey spoke. Her voice seemed far away, though the girl was less than a mile away.
[00:22:23] Truthfully, none. I've never seen a child go home.
[00:22:28] And the note says, even before the Safe Family and Children Act, a law that shortened the time a child could spend in foster care, it wasn't uncommon for children to spend an interminable time in foster care. It was true. It was Children rarely rarely went home.
[00:22:50] By the way, Judged, the book I'm talking about is free on every book platform. Grab it wherever you read if you're curious. While I'm talking about the story behind the story, my book Judged is actually free everywhere right now. Apple, Kobo, Nook, Google Play, Amazon. All of them. So you can read along.
[00:23:15] Also. So you know, Judge, the book I'm breaking down in this video is free on all platforms. I wanted readers to be able to jump into Casey's story without any barriers. So if you haven't read it yet, you can download it anywhere you get ebooks. It's also available in audio and at your local library.
