As Parental Rights Transfer:

Mapping Out Phases in Family Healing

Transfer or termination of parental rights severs a legal relationship between adults and children, but not emotional ties that persist long after a child has left a parent's primary care. Termination of parental rights (TPR) is often experienced as failure by parents, family members trying to support their kin, professional helpers who tried to keep the family together, and the children themselves. TPR is often the end of the line for permanency planning services, leaving family members with few resources to help make sense of their mixed emotions or new relationships, as children go to guardianship or adoptive arrangements. Questions regarding continuity of family relationships are not often answered. How does a custodial grandparent handle contact with her daughter whose rights have been terminated? How do two sisters continue their relationship when one is "adopted out" and one stays home? Family members need a safe place, outside of adversarial legal or child welfare systems, to grapple with these questions and develop action plans that produce lasting permanency arrangements.

A Proposed Map For Systemic Family Healing

This article is a result of two family therapists' struggles to work effectively with children and families at the end of the permanency line in St. Paul, Minnesota. Our clients represent a broad spectrum of families with long histories of involvement in the county child protective system-families, from a variety of cultures, who share common threads of poverty, mental illness and drug abuse. Assisting these families to move on through termination or transfer of parental rights presents continual challenges, and few tools exist to aid parents, kin, foster families, child welfare workers, or children with this process. Once a parent begins to move away from reunification efforts and a termination case needs to be built, child protection and mental health workers, attorneys and family members move into the role of evidence gatherers, labeling successes and failures and pitting winners against losers in a hard to define, but very real battleground. As systemic family therapists, it was difficult to gage exactly who our client was, especially as children moved from place to place.

We began to piece together a new map that could better guide our interventions with families for whom parent-child reunification was unlikely due to parent's expressed ambivalence and/or lack of progress in achieving the goals in the agency's reunification plans. We drew from elements of Etter's therapeutic mediation model and Katz's concurrent planning model (see Simmons and Price articles in this issue) to form a process that can produce workable contact arrangements and enhance child well-being in therapy. This process helps whole families-children, birth parents and kin or other adoptive parents-pursue other permanency solutions. The goals are to: (1) increase the number of voluntary transfers of custody; (2) decrease the number of permanency decisions that go to trial; and (3) reduce the potential for problematic behavior in children and disruptions once children move on to live with new family arrangements. Our primary concern is to honor the children's need for continui ty in their attachments whenever possible.

The map that emerged is a four phase intervention continuum: prepare, negotiate, decide and continue. Families can enter into services at any phase in the process as individual circumstances dictate.

Phase 1: Prepare. Adults who are important to children for whom permanency is a question are brought together at several key points in the final stages of decision making when a transfer of guardianship to kin or open adoption arrangement to a new family is being contemplated. This helps the adults begin to prepare for the possible impending changes.

Phase 2: Negotiate. Specific sessions are designed to help families sort through what happens when the parent's role changes, address the grief and loss associated with transfer or TPR, and redesign family roles and boundaries. Honoring attachments, explaining changes to children in ways they can understand, promoting reality versus fantasy, and spurring clearer communications among adults are key.

Phase 3: Decide. Birth parents receive coaching around dealing with loss, creating a vision for their future, and maintaining dignity within the family. Themes around multiple losses, ambivalence, and "psychological erasure" (the need to bolster one's own parenting by devaluing or invalidating others) are anticipated, and alternative options for dealing with loss are explored. Those considering gaining guardianship or custody of the children have an opportunity to explore ramifications within their own lives of taking on the children in question. Specific arrangements around degree of contact with birth families, and agreements around how families can communicate are made.

Phase 4: Continue. New guardians or adoptive families are given support within groups and offered individual sessions to deal with children's behavioral challenges and the impact of change on their family. They receive information on the birth family's history and tools to promote understanding about the child's world before coming to the adoptive home. Families are also made aware of how they are now contributing to children's histories and identities, and tools are offered on how to approach this intentionally to help children continue healthy development.

Map Application

Ideally, these services will be provided through a collaboration of community service providers who can take on distinct roles in the intervention continuum. This collaborative should include county officials responsible to the court for final recommendations; an independent, trained family summit facilitator from the community; and mental health professionals able to work in home or in clinic with families and children individually and in groups. As in any collaboration, roles and communication between players need to be spelled out in advance. It must be made clear to county workers and families that the community facilitator and therapist roles are not to gather evidence for the court decision, but to be persistent advocates for the children's best interest, throughout and following the court process.

Prepare

In this first phase, the community facilitator identifies key family/system players who have a stake in the pending permanency decision. The child's extended network is contacted and prepared for participation in a family "summit." A family liaison, someone respected by family members to call a summit meeting, can be chosen to direct the gathering process with the facilitator's assistance. (In a separate meeting, the county permanency worker and legal representatives of the family clearly present the various legal options.) During the family summit, the trained facilitator uses techniques of therapeutic mediation to lay out permanency arrangement options and reaffirm overall family values and competencies.

During this phase, therapists use life books, projective art, video tape, and role plays with birth parents and/or children who are potentially reworking their family roles or relationships with each other. They also use sessions with kin or foster caregivers to predict and assist with children's transition behaviors.

Negotiate

The facilitator and family liaison reconvene a family summit to review progress toward permanency and reiterate family values/culture that elders wish to pass on to children. The facilitator mediates agreements for birth family connection in the event of a pending transfer of guardianship to kin or an open adoption. Potential adoptive families may join in the decision making around future child-family contact at this point.

The therapist convenes specific sessions with siblings and extended family around negotiating new roles. Children participate in a group with peers also going through a separation decision, and birth parents and kin are linked to peer mentors or a peer group.

Decide

The facilitator and family liaison reconvene a family summit to produce a written contact and role agreements as a transfer of parental roles occurs. The therapist works with the extended network to help them begin to write a family life book for the child(ren), and convenes goodbye work with parents, kin, siblings, and foster parents, through use of writing, video, art, and ritual. Additional therapy sessions with birth parents focus on their loss and future possibilities, and therapy with kin or adoptive families help them incorporate new members into their household and anticipate transition behaviors.

Continue

The facilitator and family liaison reconvene a family summit as needed to rework role and contact arrangements. The therapist is available for assisting with children's developmental or behavioral transitions; reworking with children former themes around identity, loss, roles, and reforming family ties; and assisting the new family with recognizing the child's prior experiences as they go about forming new roles and rituals.

Case Illustration

Rene* was twenty-six when I, at the recommendation of her child protection worker, became her in-home family therapist. This was a critical time in Rene's event filled life. A "graduate" herself of the foster care and child welfare system, she was now pondering the fate of her four children in foster care. With the 12-month permanency clock about to expire, Rene had just completed a critical round of alcohol abuse treatment, located a small but decent apartment, negotiated gifts or loans of furniture from various friends and family, and wanted to do whatever was necessary to get her children back.

This was no easy proposition. How was a single parent, new in her sobriety, going to manage four children, ages 6 years to 1 year, who had suffered neglect of basic needs in their earliest stages of development and had acclimated themselves to new caregivers? Maggie, Rene's oldest, showed signs of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and dangerously attached herself to any adult who walked in the room. Lacy, age 4, who posed Rene's largest challenge, was hyperactive and prone to tantrums. It was Lacy's severe physical abuse by a cousin who Rene had brought in to babysit during her many absences, that had drawn Child Protection into this family's life over one year ago. Rene felt that she and her youngest two, Debby and Brad, barely knew each other. She had been so uninvolved in their short lives, and they were so attached to their foster parents.

Prepare

The first phase of our work centered on helping Rene define the challenges facing her and the steps, over which she had control, that would allow her to be a positive player in her children's lives. To begin, I needed to convey to Rene my neutral stance and lack of judgment about what had gone on before and my clear call for her accountability, from this day forward, regarding her children's well being. First, we made a map on paper of all those in her children's network, discussing who was helpful, who was not, and what resources could be added to her "team." I needed to be clear with Rene that my "client" was not she alone, but the network itself and its ability to protect and nurture her children, whatever decisions occurred.

With this stance, Rene understood my need to contact her children and their foster parents. We all had a session together to discuss the children's behavior before and after visits, normalizing how the children played out their anxiety. It was difficult to stay away from blame and hurt for both Rene and Sue and Bob, the foster parents of these four children. But the structured contact offered enough safety for questions to be asked and more concrete plans to be made around future contact.

Soon after this meeting, Rene brought the children home for a trial reunification, but it quickly proved too much for her. Within one month, she called her child protection worker in tears, asking for the removal of her children. She had begun to drink again and resumed a relationship with an old boyfriend who lost patience with the children's chaotic behavior.

Negotiate

We entered the Negotiate phase during these dark times. Having no community facilitator, I needed to work closely with the child protection worker to bring together a "summit" and lay out permanency options for Rene's children. Rene had few solid ties to her extended kin. Her cousins themselves had open child protection cases; her beloved aunt who helped raise her had just died; and her father was a drifter who was in no position to raise children. Bob and Sue, the foster parents, expressed their desire to adopt Debbie and Brad, the two youngest children. I met with them a few times as they anguished over their ability to commit to Maggie and Lacy as well. Meanwhile, Rene reentered chemical dependency treatment and reemerged with a clearer understanding of her own debilitating depression, which was treated with medication and group counseling at the county mental health center. At this time, Rene's child protection worker informed her that she would not be recommending that all four children be reunified with her, but that she would be willing to support the oldest returning, if Rene continued with intensive recovery and parenting support programming.

Decide

We had reached the Decide phase of our work. Rene was furious at her worker's stance. Her sense of self as a parent was crushed. She cried for hours and had difficulty sleeping. I had to work quite persistently to maintain contact with her, to coach her in tending to her grief, and to honor her goal of being a positive force in her children's lives. Ultimately, Rene revealed that she alone could not keep all her children safe, and that her greatest fear was that her children would experience what had happened to her as a child-going in and out of families and facilities as her parents came in and out of her life.

Rene agreed to voluntarily relinquish her parental rights to Debbie and Brad with the hopes of forming an open adoption arrangement with Bob and Sue. A family summit was reconvened so that Rene could make her decision clear to her network, which included Bob and Sue and her own father, with whom she was renewing contact. A play therapy session with the four children used pictures of houses to show how Maggie and Lacy would live in one house and Debbie and Brad would live in another, and how they would stay connected. Rene began to gather pictures for the children's life books, having me write the stories of their births and hopes for their futures during our sessions. This proved so emotionally draining that we moved our sessions to my office in order to "contain the pain" in the room and free Rene to get on with the tasks of daily living outside of our work. We received funding for a parent mentor to work intensively with Rene during Maggie and Lacy's visits to her home to assist her with limit setting and structuring the family routine. It became time for Rene to take Maggie and Lacy home, to try again.

Continue

The Continue phase of our work remains ongoing, even two years after initial contact. Rene, Bob and Sue use me selectively as key pieces of the contact agreement need revisiting, or as the crises of living arise. One such time was when Rene decided to also relinquish her rights to Lacy after struggling for months with her own depression and Lacy's challenging behavior. Once Rene's rights terminated, the agency's guardianship unit moved quickly to place Lacy in an adoptive home. New agency players determined that contact between Lacy and Maggie or Rene was detrimental to Lacy's mental health. Although Rene had no power to challenge this decision, we rehearsed and recorded a "goodbye" video for Lacy from Rene and Maggie that workers agreed Lacy and her new adoptive family could view when they were ready. Nevertheless, this cut-off reactivated Rene's grief, shame and drinking, and required revisiting Rene's prior therapeutic work. The parent mentor returned to assist Rene with keeping Maggie safe.

Despite her own cycling mental health needs, Rene was able to create a stable home for herself and Maggie. Maggie's special needs in school required us to help Rene build a new network of support as an Individualized Educational Plan was developed. Rene moved to a safer neighborhood, formed some key friendships with other women, and continued to facilitate visits between Maggie and her sister and brother, who were thriving in Bob and Sue's home. Rene hopes that she and Maggie will be able to write to, and perhaps visit, Lacy again in the future, as Lacy is deemed able. In the meantime, Rene has the support and confidence to keep at least inquiring about this possibility and working proactively, not destructively, for an answer. She has made very hard choices. Her children have permanency and a sense that their mother has been a positive force in their lives.

Summary

Family healing in the context of a parental rights transfer has come, for us, to mean that players within a child's world find a way to communicate, make sense of the ties they have to one another, establish workable boundaries, and create some common understanding of what is in that child's interest. This process is far from easy or straightforward. Differences in family style and comfort level with contact, financial strains, and chronic mental health difficulties that may have led to the need for a custody transfer must be taken into account. Powerful emotions are at play. Grief, shame, disappointment, fury and bitterness emerge as adults and children come to acknowledge that parents cannot meet their children's needs and others must shoulder that responsibility. Psychological erasure-the need to negate other adults now caring for one's children-as seen so often in a divorce process, is understandable as a defense against such emotion (Kruk and Hall,1995). The complexity and pain more often lead to relationship cut-offs that bar children from continued contact with parents, grandparents or foster parents. Sometimes, as in Lacy's case, when a child cannot manage complex, multiple relationships, drawing such a boundary may be necessary.

Rene's situation illustrates that, with a clear map and sufficient tools, children's emotional ties so necessary for identity and security can often be preserved through a custody transfer if adults involved are willing to work through a process. As states attempt to meet rapid permanency timelines for children in out-of-home placement, the process we have described may be critical for child welfare professionals and their clients. For the systemic family therapist with a passion for family reunification work, the map allows one to see custody transfers or termination of rights, not as failure, but as an opportunity for family healing. The ability, as a therapist, to shift gears to work with many players of the child's system can only aid one's work in helping family members to shift roles and expectations. The final goal adults can share is the essence of permanency in which children do not remain in limbo but are assured of their belonging.

References

Kruk, E. and Hall, B. (1995).
The disengagement of parental grandparents subsequent to divorce. Journal of Divorce and Remarriage, Vol. 23 (1/2)

© © 2003 National Abandoned Infants Assistance Resource Center