With many bipartisan allies, Rep. Gwen Moore (D. Milwaukee) is calling for child and family allies to prevent a looming tragedy of permanent family destruction—the lifelong termination of the legal parent-child relationship. Families are fearful that the national and state public health crises brought about by COVID 19 has created nearly insurmountable obstacles to maintaining family legal ties if parents don’t meet a specific deadline. H.R. 7976, introduced on August 7, 2020, will suspend that deadline and give vulnerable families a chance to maintain and restore precious family bonds.
Current Law Creates a Special Hardship for Families During the COVID-19 Crisis. COVID-19 has had a pervasive impact on national and state economies and family life, with particularly severe impacts on already vulnerable children and families. Families involved in child welfare systems are already experiencing strain in parent-child and sibling bonds and face uniquely detrimental effects from physical distancing measures employed by child welfare agencies, courts, and support service programs. Such measures pose extreme barriers to reunification of families—particularly families of color—during a time when contact with loved ones and access to support is as critical as ever. While no one doubts the necessity and seriousness of limiting the exposure of children, families, and agency staff to COVID-19, these measures should not require permanently sacrificing the future of these families.
Federal law for over forty years has been centered on the principle that children’s best interests are served by meaningful efforts to keep their families together whenever safely possible. A duty is imposed on states to prioritize family reunification when children are removed from their parents’ care, by affording parent-child contact and rehabilitation opportunities for the parents to remedy the reasons for removal of their children.
The COVID pandemic has created a situation in which too many children and parents are unable to visit each other and attachments are strained., Families report an inability to access services, loss of housing, loss of childcare, and severe disruptions in relationships with their children (and sometimes between siblings if they are placed separately). This situation requires accommodations both during and after the end of a public health crisis to rebuild family relationships and move forward to reunification, so that children experience a lifetime of stability rather than a permanent disruption in their family ties. As housing instability and job insecurity deepens, families are increasingly unable to engage in services needed to secure reunification as rehabilitative services and other supports have closed or waiting lists increased. As a result, parents now face an often-impossible legal barrier to maintaining their family relations that only Congress can fix.
The Adoption and Safe Families Act(“ASFA”)(codified at 42 US.C. 671(a) and 675(E)) passed in 1997— requires that states file a Termination of Parental Rights petition for any child who has remained in a foster placement for 15 of the previous 22 months, with limited exceptions. This deadline operates as a threat to federal funding under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act if states do not seek this drastic action. Parent-child relationships end with a termination of parental rights permanently and irrevocably, as do sibling, grandparent, and other familial relationship. . While this federal law’s purpose is to create permanency and stability for children currently in practice it is serving to create impermanence and instability for thousands of children during a pandemic or other public health crisis.
H.R. 7976 Will Give States and Families A Lifeline Simply By Suspending the Timeline in Times of Public Health Crisis Including COVID 19. We must afford parents a reasonable opportunity for reunification with their children, and their children the chance to have a permanent life-long relationship. This is both a basic right and an issue of racial justice, given the disproportionate rates at which black, brown and Native American children are separated from their families and placed in foster care.
What the Bill Does
- The legislation creates a “public health crisis” exception to the federally-mandated deadline for termination of parental rights under the 15-out-of-22 months-in-foster care requirement. The legislation makes explicit that public health crises that have been declared by the federal or a state government suspends the mandated timeline.
- The legislation also makes explicit that a declared health crisis constitutes a compelling reason for jurisdictions not to have to file a termination of parental rights petition, and thereby avoids inconsistent and discretionary determinations as to which families are worthy of protection and which are not during times COVID or other declared public health crises. .
- The legislation instructs jurisdictions on options and alternative means for them to provide reasonable efforts towards reunification for families. This legislation promotes the federal policy goal of helping children who have been removed from their parents achieve permanency by providing ways for families to engage in services.
These provisions will allow States the flexibility to address families’ needs without risking the loss of federal dollars if they suspend termination proceedings during the pandemic.
The urgency of this legislation will grow as courts, programs, and businesses begin to reopen and as state agencies make up for lost time by pressing the reopened courts to adjudicate petitions under the belief that failure to do so will cause a loss of federal funding.
On June 23, 2020 the Children’s Bureau issued guidance consistent with the legislation, but since , HHS cannot direct a change in the law, only Congress can tell states that their funding is not in jeopardy if they temporarily suspend termination proceedings during the pandemic.
Learn More
Amid Pandemic, Congress Considers Giving Parents More Time to Reunify with Kids in Foster Care
One parent’s story about why it is so important to pass H.R 7976
For more information, contact Diane Redleaf or Andrew Brown, United Family Advocates Co-Chairs.