Tuesday, October 24, 2006

 

Forgetting Fathers

I came across this short article, "Forgetting Fathers," at the North Carolina Division of Social Services and Children's Resource Program. A sad story of a woman leaving her husband for parts unknown and taking their two children with her.
Her estranged husband, a limousine driver, searched obsessively for his children. He posted rewards, enlisted help from a retired police officer, and hired a private detective, all to no avail.

As six years passed, he took to driving slowly through residential neighborhoods, looking for two blond children who looked like him.

[---]

Instead they were in foster care. In 1991 the authorities had found the children alone in their mother’s apartment. They were emaciated and had evidently been abused.

But for three more years, through 33 court hearings, multiple foster placements, and the children’s complaints of new abuse, the foster care system failed to tell their father.

[---]

In fact, the father was living nearby with a listed telephone number.
By the time the children were re-united with their father, they no longer remembered him and failed to adjust.

To many social service agencies and worker, fathers are less than afterthought. The lives of two children ruined because social workers didn't think to call the parent.

Comments:
There is no question that fathers and fatherhood have become something of an afterthought, despite their absolute importance in the life of family and children.

That being said: this particular instance is perhaps best blamed on a bureaucratic model than an ideological one (as so many of our "examples" tend to be). Is this a tragedy? Absolutely! It is not only a tragedy for the family in question, but is a terrible waste of valuable resources for the taxpayers who foot the bill for the courts and foster care, as well as the reputations of many well meaning social workers who undoubtedly will be smeared by this story.

I mean, how many times must the folks working the system see a case: mother & two kids, mom abandons kids, father ran off long ago? You see enough of that, you (unfortunately, and tragically in this case) begin to make assumptions about the situation. Especially if you're dealing with a particularly heavy workload.

Or, things could have been messed up from a completely different standpoint: kids never fingerprinted for ID purposes while with their father; ID databases not merged between the "missing children" and "foster care;" the kids weren't in the system before mother left the father, so system has no record of father (ie: father does not exist for purposes of the case).

There are so many cracks for this to fall through, and that is the tragedy of case working - there are so many things you need to look at, and often get it right, but people focus only on the times you get it wrong because those mistakes, more often than not, are spectacular ones. This being one of those examples.
 
Who was he paying child support to, if he was unable to find his children? If someone was getting money, and knew the situation of the children not living with their mother, then -yeah- intent sounds pretty prevalent in this case.

O the other hand, If he was paying the courts, and they were forwarding that money to a DFACS like structure where they didn't know the situation, however, the bureaucracy breakdown could still strike.

In either case, it sounds like he has cause for some massive litigation that would pull the heartstrings of families across the country.
 
http://womenasmothers.blogspot.com/

Check out the above site. Simply disgusting. I'd love for you to take her to task.

Lindsey
 
russellindsey - Interesting site, in a bad way. She seems quite upset that women are starting to face some of the same parenting and custody obstacles that men have faced for decades.
 
Yeah, I know what you mean. She seems extremely hateful towards all men.

I found the item on anonyblog.com, which normally isn't worth reading anymore.

More later.
Lindsey
 
Thanks for the site, Lindsey.
 
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