FORGOTTEN FATHERS…

Even as policymakers promote “fatherhood initiatives” and bemoan the alleged irresponsibility of “deadbeat dads,” the New York City father who comes forward because he loves his children and wants desperately to care for them may well be viewed as suspect.

The law actually is on the fathers' side.   Case law in New York says if a child is taken from the mother and a father steps forward, ACS must either give the child to the father – or prove him unfit.   But in practice, the burden is on the father to prove himself worthy in the eyes of the agency and the judge.

And in depositions collected as part of a lawsuit filed by attorney Bruce Young, ACS workers revealed that they were clueless about their obligations.   According to The New York Times , “One supervisor said the legal standard did not require a parent locator service, which tracks deadbeat parents to collect child support, and another maintained that publishing a ‘John Doe' notice would suffice in some cases.” [i]

The city evaluates private agencies in part on how quickly they file petitions to terminate parental rights under the so-called Adoption and Safe Families Act. That creates another disincentive to spend time finding fathers.

In a story about the lawsuit filed by Mr. Young, the Times reported on what several fathers – and their children – had to endure.  

The problem predates even the creation of ACS.   In one case, in the mid-1990s, when a child was being brutalized in foster care and openly longed for his father,   a caseworker at the private agency handling the case told him:    "Don't think your father is going to come and rescue you, because your father's dead."

The worker either was ignorant or lying.   The father was living in Queens, with a listed phone number – and desperately searching for his children.

And in the years since the creation of ACS, the problems have continued.

Consider the case of Luis Abreu, described by the Times as “a divorced Navy police officer who had faithfully paid child support and sued to enforce visitation, yet after a yearlong search for his son and stepson, discovered that they were in a Bronx foster home, father listed as ‘unknown.'   Abreu   …   said that when he complained, a caseworker retorted:   ‘We go by what the mother tells us. We don't have to notify the father.'”

The Times reported that “Another father, David Nieves, was also classified as ‘unknown' and nearly lost his son and daughter for good last year, he said, despite paying $81.31 a week in court-ordered child support and visiting them at the home of a maternal aunt.

“Mr. Nieves, a Federal Express worker, learned 17 months late that the aunt had legally become the children's foster mother and that the Children's Aid Society was planning their adoption.    Philip Coltoff, director of Children's Aid, would not discuss the case, except to stress its happy ending. A petition to end Mr. Nieves's parental rights was withdrawn, and the children now live with him and his fiancee in a blended family.”

Still another case involved “a Florida father, Jason Rudy C., who had sought his children for 18 months when he learned late in 1995 that they were in a foster home in the Bronx.   Mr. C., then a nurse's aide, immediately drove to New York to try to reclaim Jason Rudy Jr., 4, and Tatiana, 3. … ‘My son jumps up on my lap – “Let's go home, Daddy,”   said Mr. C. … I was just bawling, and he was, too. I was ecstatic to see them, and heart-wrenching miserable because I couldn't take them home.'”

Mr. C's children couldn't go home with their father until after a two-year court battle.   During that time they were shuffled through three foster homes.   When the father took a more aggressive stance in fighting for his legal rights, ACS retaliated by charging him with neglect – based on the fact that he admitted using drugs when he was a teenager.  

As the Times reported:

“Because he had been honest about his teenage drug use, Mr. C . said, he decided the only way to win was to do whatever the system demanded, including biweekly drug tests for six months.    So many appearances were required that he moved to New York, lived on a friend's couch in Queens for a year and scraped by as a street peddler. The low point, he said, was being arrested and fined for peddling without a license. The crowning glory was a 24-hour Greyhound bus ride home: ‘Two kids, five bags, all of our belongings.'”

Mr. C. won a settlement from ACS.   He's using it in part to help pay for the children's psychotherapy.

But it's not always ACS workers who are at fault.

In some model child welfare systems, child protection workers work hand in hand with income maintenance workers to help families.   But not in New York City, as this case, from the files of the city Public Advocate makes clear:

An ACS Child Protective Specialist assisted a single father trying to raise his young daughter after the mother abandoned them due to drug problems. ACS helped the father establish paternity and obtain legal custody. After a stay in the shelter system, he was able to secure housing and employment.

But when he then told the city's welfare office that he had a job, his case was closed and his child care subsidy was stopped. That was a bureaucratic error.   But without child care, the father had to quit his job and re-apply for welfare.

It took weeks to get through the application process, and after additional weeks of waiting, the father discovered that   his application had been lost.   He had to re-apply all over again.

Meanwhile, the father had become destitute and frustrated. He was borrowing money to buy food.

The ACS Specialist helped him get emergency funds while advocating that his case be reopened.   … Eventually, the father was denied public assistance because it was determined that he was capable of working. But he couldn't work because he didn't have child care. Because he was now unemployed, he no longer was eligible for child care vouchers.

The ACS Specialist gave him a list of food pantries but they were mostly unable to help the father because of high demand. The father applied for a state fair hearing but it was scheduled for months in the future.

Now completely demoralized, he was sinking deeper into debt from the money he borrowed. He was threatened by a loan shark.   Public Assistance was finally on the verge of approving some help for the family, but the father gave up. He left his daughter with a neighbor and disappeared. The child was placed in foster care. [ii]

[i] Nina Bernstein, “When the Foster Care System Forgets Fathers,” The New York Times , May 4, 2000, p.A1.

[ii] Office of the Public Advocate, Families at Risk: A Report on New York City's Child Welfare Services , December 2002.