[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 56 (Monday, May 5, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3947-S3948]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           REASONABLE EFFORTS

  Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I want to call the attention of everyone 
in the Senate to a very important article that appeared in yesterday's 
Washington Post Magazine. The article profiles a woman by the name of 
Diane Hendel. Diane Hendel was the foster mother of twins who had been 
abandoned by their natural mother. In telling Diane Hendel's story, 
this article paints a devastating portrait of the foster care system, 
the foster care system not just in the District of Columbia, but the 
foster care system across this country.
  It is Diane Hendel's story, and it is told from her point of view. 
But much more important, it is really the story of these two children, 
these twins, and what our foster care system did and is doing to them. 
It tells the story of these two children who were abandoned with 
serious physical problems, and it tells the story of the foster mother, 
Diane Hendel, who for 2\1/2\ years nurtured them, loved them, kept them 
going, became their mother.
  Then this article tells the story of a foster care system bent on 
family reunification, that when these little children were 3\1/2\ years 
of age, that system decided the natural mother, who had abandoned them, 
was now the person that they should go to. It tells the horrifying and 
sad story of these little 3\1/2\-year-old children being taken away 
from the only mother that they ever really knew, to their new mother. 
All in the name of family reunification. All in the name of protecting 
the rights of the natural mother, without, in my opinion, any 
consideration for the rights not of the foster mother, but for the 
rights of those two little girls.
  Mr. President, there are 450,000 children in foster care across this 
country today. These children are spending far too great a portion of 
their lives in a legal limbo. Early childhood years are a crucial time 
in the development of any child. Indeed, there was a recent White House 
conference devoted to this very subject. It seems to me that as we pay 
more and more attention to what we all intuitively know--and that is 
how important the early years are in a child's development, and there 
was a whole magazine, in Newsweek, this past week, a special issue 
devoted to early childhood development. We realize, more and more, how 
precious and important those first few months, those first few years 
are, to the development of the child and who we become, and what we are 
is shaped in the first year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years.
  Is it not time that we reexamined in society how cavalier we are 
about having children who have been taken away from their parents, then 
sit in sort of a legal limbo, for a year, 2 years, 3 years or 4 years, 
all the while we, in society, we adults, try to reunify these families? 
But all the while, all the while, these children are growing up.
  Mr. President, children do not have a second opportunity to have 
their childhood. You never have a second chance to be 2, 3, or 4. What 
is happening across this country in too many cases is that children are 
taken, put in a foster home--sometimes multiple foster homes--all the 
while we, as a society, wait until that magical time when the parents 
have been fixed--the natural parents. They have been cured, they no 
longer snort cocaine, they no longer drink alcohol all the time, they 
no longer abuse their children, and some day we hopefully will put them 
back, put these children who have been removed, back with these natural 
parents. I think, Mr. President, that we have to start worrying about 
the children's rights and less about the rights of the natural parents.
  Every piece of new evidence shows us, Mr. President, that the system, 
the foster care system, is keeping children in foster care for too 
long. I think this should spur us to action. If any of the Members of 
the Senate want to become horrified, want to see what is wrong with our 
foster care system, let them read this story. I think it would shock 
any American to read it.
  The Washington Post article that I just referred to outlines how the 
principle of making reasonable efforts to reunify troubled families is 
too often misinterpreted to mean reunifying families at all costs--even 
abusive families that are really families in name only. Abusive 
parents, abusive birth parents, are, today, Mr. President, given a 
second chance, a third chance, a fourth chance, a fifth chance, and on 
and on, to get their lives back together so then they can welcome their 
children back home. All the while, while they are trying to get their 
act together, their lives together, their poor little children are 
shuttled from foster home to foster home, spending their most formative 
years deprived of what all children should have--a safe, stable, 
loving, and permanent home.

[[Page S3948]]

  The article that I just talked about describes a case where two 
children, twins, were abandoned by their natural mother, a natural 
mother who had serious substance abuse problems. These children were 
then placed in foster care for 3\1/2\ years while efforts were made to 
fix the mother, efforts were made to reunify that family. These 
particular children happened to be fortunate. They are probably the 
exception, because they spent the majority of that time with one 
person, Diane Hendel, who wanted to adopt them, Diane Hendel who nursed 
them back to health, who helped them get through some very, very tough 
times.
  But now, Mr. President, the system says they cannot stay with the 
only person that they have known as their mother. They have to go back 
to their natural mother, the person who abandoned them in the first 
place. Mr. President, does that really sound like a good idea? I do not 
think so.
  The article quotes child psychiatrist Marilyn Benoit of the Devereux 
Children's Center in Washington, DC:

       Three and a half years? And then the biological mother gets 
     the children back? You have now disrupted the emotional 
     development of those children. You, the court, have created a 
     new abandonment. You have deliberately interjected separation 
     and loss into their lives. What we know that does is disrupt 
     development. You have depression. You have regression. You 
     undermine a sense of trust. You introduce a sense of 
     powerlessness. Children that age, what they want to develop 
     is a sense of mastery, and you have done everything to thwart 
     that, and you have really compromised that child's ability to 
     move on.

  Mr. President, I think that comment by a child psychiatrist confirms 
what all of us know, any of us who know anything about children. 
Children need a stable and permanent home, a permanent home where they 
will learn the skills of love, the skills of friendship and survival.
  Mr. President, I think that Sister Josephine Murphy, who runs a home 
of severely abused children in Hyattsville, MD, is also exactly right. 
She is quoted in the article as saying the following:

       I know what they say, blood is thicker than water, and it 
     is, but we're adults, and at some point we have to have the 
     guts to say, ``This is it. No more.''

  No more, Mr. President. Enough is enough. Who benefits from the 
current bias toward reunifying abusive families? Certainly not the 
children. Whose interests were taken into account when the decision was 
made to rip these two children away from the only mother that they ever 
knew? Was it the children's? I don't know any rational person who would 
say that was in the best interest of the child. In conclusion, Mr. 
President, let me quote from this article. There is a portion of the 
article on page 10 that describes the scene when these children were 
taken away from their foster mother.

       . . . Off they go. Goodbye to the toys. Goodbye to their 
     drawings. Goodbye to their bedroom. Goodbye to the house. 
     Goodbye to everything. Just like that. And then, goodbye to 
     Diane. Who leaves the children, as ordered, so they can say 
     hello a moment later to their new mother, who is the woman 
     who conceived them and abandoned them and was charged with 
     neglecting them and now, 3\1/2\ years after they were born 
     and 2\1/2\ years after Diane took them in with the hope of 
     adopting them, has been declared legally fit to take them 
     with her to a new place, a strange place, their true home.
       Just like that.
       Goodbye.
       Hello.

  Mr. President, we have before us in this Congress several bills, one 
that just passed the House, the Camp-Kennelly bill, one that has been 
introduced in the Senate, which I am a cosponsor of, the Chafee-
Rockefeller bill. Both of these bills, while they will not solve this 
problem, I think will help because they say quite simply what we all 
know deep in our hearts the fact should be, which is, yes, whenever 
possible, whenever reasonable, we should try to reunify families; but 
while we do that, we should not forget what our ultimate goal should 
be, which is to be concerned about the safety and welfare of the 
children.
  I think, Mr. President, if we focus on the child and focus on what is 
in the best interest of the child, we will have fewer crazy, ludicrous 
decisions, such as the one we have seen recounted in the Washington 
Post story of this past Sunday.
  Mr. President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

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