Imagine the foster care system from the other point of view

This week, I was confronted with two instances of foster children interacting with the legal system that is supposed to protect them. Each of the incidents raised a question about what we mean when we say we are protecting these children. Rather than discussing the legal niceties of definition or function, I thought that it might be useful to contemplate the child's view in these types of situations.

Imagine that you're a child, with normal child activities: homework, running around with pals, longing for junk food. Too young to be back talking Mom. Wishing you knew your absent father. You see police cars on the street, but you've never interacted with the guys who drive them, or who walk around with batman belts and guns. You don't really know what they do, other than scare some people you know.

Imagine that you come home from school one day to find those uniformed men in your yard, telling other men to move all your property out to the sidewalk. Not just your mom's kitchen pots and pans, but your clothes, your Xbox, your bed, even the few candy bars and comic books you had hidden in your closet. When you try to stop them, they grab you and take you to your mom, who is standing, crying, with some of your neighbors, watching it happen. They order her to "control" you, like you were a stray dog or something.

Your mom tells you that the landlord has kicked the family out. The sheriffs are there to evict you. They have a court order telling the family it can't live in what you thought was home anymore. This is your first exposure to what the men in police cars do.

Imagine that it's a couple of years later. You've been put into a foster home because the court says your mom can't take care of children. You love your mom, but the court was right, she never had meals ready. She didn't do laundry or clean. She has violent outbursts, and the police have come when she has attacked people for no apparent reason.

The foster home is very different. You share a room with only one other boy. He's a lot older than you. He's in high school. The lady who runs the home makes breakfast in the morning and dinner at night. She always has food during the day. She makes you go to school every day, and won't let you watch television until you do your homework. She makes you do laundry, and take a shower at least every couple of days. You have to do laundry because she took you to the store and got you enough clothes to have clean ones every day.

Imagine that you've been in the foster home for six months. The lady who runs it has never hit you. The social worker that comes by from time-to-time hasn't hit you or even yelled at you. The man who lives with the foster mother is white, but he's not violent like a lot of white men. He talks to you. He doesn't yell. He doesn't tell you that you're stupid. When other boys in the house break things, or clog up the plumbing, he fixes it. He even lets you help with his tools. He drives when they take you for your weekly visits with your mom. She's still getting violent. You still love her.

One Monday, the social worker comes to the house. She tells you that you can't go to school the next day, because you have to go to court. The people in the court want to know whether you should be taken to some other place to live. The social worker doesn't know if they'll give you back to your mom or to some new home.

Why? You've been behaving. Sure, you yell sometimes. But you don't break stuff, like some of the other boys in the house, or slam your door. You don't stay out at night like they do - you're only 10. You don't want to go to court. You don't want to go back to your mom - you love her but she's still violent and can't give you a real home.

You're sorry, you'll do whatever you need to to get to stay here. You'll change, you'll be better. You're crying. You beg your foster mom, you tell her that you'll try harder. She says that there's nothing she can do. Her white man is retired. But he used to work for the city. He probably knows people who can talk to people in the court. You beg your foster mom to ask him. She say's you ask him yourself.

You go to him. At 10, you're a big boy and shouldn't cry. But you do. You tell him that you'll try harder to be better. He says the city isn't the same as the courts, and he doesn't know anyone in the courts. Even the social worker won't talk to him. But he says this is your home, and if the court says it's OK, then you will come back here and be welcome. He says he knows you love your mom, and is happy that you have your weekly visits with her.

The social worker says the court has strict rules that you must obey. You can't be late. You can't misbehave. The bus for the court will pick you up at 8:00 a.m. and take you to court. So be ready.

Imagine that 8:00 a.m. comes and goes, with no bus. Imagine that the bus finally arrives at 9:30 a.m., and you know that you'll already by in trouble with the court for being so late. It's not your fault, but history proves that they'll blame you for it. It's not your fault that you're not at school. But the teachers, and the tests, will blame you for it. When you get there, the same uniformed men who evicted your family when you were 7 1/2 are there to tell you where to go and what to do.

If the court hearing, and the missed day of school, and all the terror and tears and apprehension about being kicked out of the foster home, the first stable, safe, healthy environment the 10-year-old had ever known, turns out to be a simple "review" hearing, with a judge being "pleased" that the child is making progress, and making an order for the child to stay in place, will "being pleased" do anything to erase the terror in the child's mind? Will it do anything to allay the fear that "I must have done something wrong" or "I don't know how to try harder"?

On the same Monday afternoon that the social worker told the 10-year-old that he had to skip school to go to court, the new presiding judge family law judge in the superior court held a meeting for the family law bar, exploring ways to make the operations of the family courts better and more efficient. But how children in the system are treated wasn't part of the discussion. We have specialized courts to deal with children from really troubled families. We don't clog the family courts with them.

In another meeting the same week, someone observed that we don't have enough money to provide enough trained social workers or enough time to really work with children from broken homes and in the foster care system. What money we choose to spend we spend on prison guards, to supervise the same children when they grow up, angry and scared and uneducated. We use our funds to treat the disease in full bloom, rather than to prevent it at the start.

Thomas M. Hall is a certified specialist in family law practicing in West Los Angeles.