Kind and Connie

On February 20th, the words coming from the mouth of the Honorable Judge John D. Herron, of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia, Orphans’ Court Division, was music my ears. I was again appointed co-guardian of my Aunt, Constance C. Clinton, an honor taken away from me by the infamous and corrupt James M. Tyler, the first court-appointed guardian. And to add icing on the cake, the second guardian, Darryl Irwin, was silenced as he attempted to petition the court to force me to pay a debt from the Simpson House, debt created by James Tyler when he locked her in that institution. Read and enjoy!

Kind Essence

For more information about Kind Essence’s struggle to care for her aunt at home, click here

Note the Bill # is H.R.1096 – “To provide funds to State courts for the provision of legal representation to parents and legal guardians with respect to child welfare cases.”

Contact:
Nicole Y. Williams or Staci Cox
(202) 225- 4572

Washington, D.C. – Today, Congresswoman Gwen Moore (WI-4) re-introduced a bill that will take important steps towards ensuring that parents and legal guardians are afforded legal representation in all stages of a child welfare case.

There are over 400,000 kids in the foster care system in the United States, many because their parents or guardians are accused of abuse or neglect. Professionals and parents agree that removing a child from his or her family can be traumatic and foster care, in many cases, does a poor job of preparing children for adulthood.  For this reason, child welfare law is structured, through federal law incentives, to limit removal of children from their home unless absolutely necessary for the child’s safety, and promotes their reunification with their family. New research powerfully supports these goals by showing that children often have better life outcomes when efforts are directed towards keeping a family together.

“A vast majority of current federal dollars are spent towards the administrative costs of running the system and the overall cost of foster care, yet very little funding is designated towards ensuring that parents – especially low-income and minorities – have quality legal representation throughout all stages of a child welfare case,” said Rep. Gwen Moore. “High quality counsel helps parents access necessary services, advocate for increased visitation, negotiate reasonable and realistic case plans, and provide parents with someone who is on their side. It is for these reasons, that I have introduced this legislation to ensure that parents are afforded quality legal representation across all stages of child welfare proceedings.”

One of the most fundamental arenas for ensuring the safety, stability and permanence for abused and neglected children is through our nation’s court systems.  Recently reauthorized under the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program (IV-B of the Social Security Act), The Court Improvement Program (CIP) has been instrumental in improving child welfare outcomes in state courts.  The CIP has helped reduce the caseload delay, and also worked to stimulate fresh approaches to improving the court outcomes of children and their families.

“This legislation builds upon the successful framework of the CIP, adding an additional component for parental legal representation,” said Rep. Gwen Moore. “Child outcomes improve and courts function more effectively when all parties have quality legal representation.  This legislation gives parents, alongside officials and judges, a voice when the best interests of their child are at stake. 

“Our overall goal is to keep families together, not tear them apart. This legislation is a positive step towards sustaining the American family.”

Please leave a comment on the original article, which appeared in the Philadelphia Tribune on Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Written by Nathaniel Lee Wednesday, 13 March 2013 12:14

The case of Carolyn Hill, center, whose young nieces were removed from her home by the Department of Human Services (DHS) and placed in state care until eventually placed in the custody of relatives, was the topic of a forum held at the annual International Women’s Day at Tabernacle United Church in West Philadelphia. –SUBMITTED PHOTO

Tabernacle United Church celebrates
International Women’s Day

The plight of women around the world was the topic of a forum held at the Tabernacle United Church in West Philadelphia on Friday March 8, in honor of International Women’s’ Day.

Attendants listened to speakers representing various groups and organizations as they discussed the continuing fight for equality.

Documentaries, which detailed various struggles around the world, including Europe, Africa and South America were also presented.

While repression and other inequalities were addressed, the case of Carolyn Hill, whose young nieces were removed from her home by the Department of Human Services (DHS) and placed in state care until eventually placed in the custody of relatives, was the topic of a forum held at the event.

According to Hill, the children, aged 5 ½-months and 1-year-old, were placed in her custody by relatives who decided she should care for the children in the absence of their parents. Hill, who raised five children of her own and has also cared for other relatives in her home in the past, agreed to do so.

According to Hill, initially there was no problem until the agency was changed and another childcare agency assumed review of the case. That was when her troubles began, she said.

While it is against the policy of DHS to discuss ongoing cases or to even acknowledge the existence of particular cases, Alicia Taylor, a DHS employee, suggested the agency doesn’t decide whether or not children are removed from a home. This, according to Taylor, is in the hands of judges.

“Whatever we do is court ordered,” she said. “What happens after that depends on the situation.”

In fact, Taylor noted even when there are allegations of abuse or neglect and such cases have been substantiated, DHS still would not have authority to remove a child.

“We would have to contact the law department, they go to court and they issue the order for us to remove a child,” she said.

Even in such cases when a child is removed from a home, foster care is a last resort, according to Taylor.

“Our first goal, always, is to keep a child with family,” she said. “For instance, if a child is removed from parents, we are going to look for other family resources: uncles, aunts a grandmother, before we place a child in foster care.”

Taylor would not discuss details about the Hill incident.

During the forum, advocate and organizer Celyne Camen, of the group “Every Woman Is A Working Mother Network” spoke about the circumstances of Hill’s case as an example of the need to continue fighting for the equality of mothers.

Camen described her group as an organization, which fights for the right of mothers and against welfare reform laws and has taken up Hill’s case after she contacted the group last year.

“They had taken the children without giving her any notice and, from what we can see, no reason,” she said. “To this day DHS has not given us a real reason why.”

According to Camen, one reason given for the removal of the children from Hill’s home was she did not have a general equivalency diploma (GED).

“We found that to be biased. If you are going to do that than you are going to be taking a lot of children out of families,” she said.

Camen added she has worked with Hill for quite some time and described Hill as very articulate and a compassionate person.

“I would leave my child in her care; she seems to be a regular person,” she said. “There seems to be something else going on here.”

Hill said that she was given no reason why her nieces were removed from her home but a subsequent hearing on the matter was held at family court.

She was not allowed to speak during the proceedings.

According to Hill, she could only sit and listen as allegations were made against her.

During that time, Hill said she has never faced eviction from her home and there were never any allegations of abuse in her case. Hill noted she was in the process of adopting her two nieces when they were removed from her home April of last year. She continues to fight for their return.

“They started lying about everything, saying I was being evicted from my home,” she said. “I was in my home for 14 years.”

For immediate release
March 6, 2013 

International Women’s Day Week kicks off as Women’s Groups hail reintroduction of RISE Out Of Poverty Act in Congress 

Contact:

West Coast: Margaret Prescod, 323-646-1269
East Coast: Pat Albright, 267-254-4467 

Women’s groups, in the US and other countries, laud the reintroduction of the RISE Out of Poverty Act in Congress on the occasion of International Women’s Day Week. The RISE Out Of Poverty (RISE) Act was reintroduced in the US Congress Monday, February 25 by Congresswoman Gwen Moore of Wisconsin (http://gwenmoore.house.gov).  A former welfare mother herself, Representative Moore, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, first introduced the bill on December 6, 2011.  Grassroots women in several states have formed a national network to gather support for the legislation. They will be highlighting the importance of the bill for ending the poverty of children and their mothers at events to be held on or around International Women’s Day March 8.  RISE has also received recognition in the British Parliament with an Early Day Motion put forward by John McDonnell MP.  

The bill acknowledges the caregiving work that mothers and other carers do, and that such critical work of a society has not been supported or even acknowledged by governments local and national.  The result is that the caregiver and those she or he cares for are barely surviving.

The goal of the “Rewriting to Improve and Secure an Exit Out of Poverty Act” or the “RISE Out of Poverty Act” (H.R. 814) is to reduce child poverty, and RISE would get rid of some of the most punitive aspects of the current system.  It would require states to provide assistance sufficient to meet the survival needs of families, as well as provide benefits and services to families at risk of having a child removed from the home because of poverty, and stop the clock on the 5-year time limit during a recession.  Other provisions include:

·       Allowing mothers to keep child support on top of welfare;

·       Entitling family members to benefits who are caring fulltime for disabled children, parents or other relatives;

·       Expediting benefits for domestic violence survivors;

·       Supporting education by excluding student aid from welfare calculations and ending the 12-month educational limits so that mothers can once again pursue a 2-4 year college education;

·       Ending the lifetime ban on assistance for families where one member has not complied with work requirements/workfare as well as for ex-prisoners with a drug felony conviction;

·       Removing the 12-month lifetime limit on exclusion of single parents of infants under one year from the work participation rate calculation;

·       Protecting wages and working conditions by entitling mothers to refuse jobs below minimum wage or at work sites on strike or lockout.

TANF or welfare “reform” has been devastating and divisive to our families and entire communities:  since its passage in 1996, extreme poverty among women-headed households has nearly tripled. 1.46 million households live on less than $2 per person per day.   Those of us who are single mothers and our children, already the most impoverished, are the fastest growing population of those going to prison.  With no income, with the safety net in shreds, mothers have no choice but to do what we can to feed our children, including taking survival steps which criminalize us.  It is no accident that when welfare is cut the number of single mothers arrested for prostitution increases.

The April 9, 2012 New York Times article on the impact of welfare reform reflected some of what we know from our own experience and that of those around us “…poor people who were dropped from cash assistance here, mostly single mothers, talk with surprising openness about the desperate, and sometimes illegal, ways they make ends meet. They have sold food stamps, sold blood, skipped meals, shoplifted, doubled up with friends, scavenged trash bins for bottles and cans and returned to relationships with violent partners.”

Mothers have had children removed from their care after being charged with welfare fraud for working as a housecleaner while receiving benefits too low to live on. Others have had to choose between homelessness and returning to an abusive partner; and then if we are a victim of domestic abuse or become homeless, child welfare detains our children and places them in foster care or on a fast track adoption schedule, accusing us of failure to protect our children. In fact, welfare “reform” transferred money from welfare into “child welfare”, and the numbers of children removed from their homes and placed in foster care – especially from families of color – due not to abuse or neglect but to poverty have skyrocketed since its passage. Black children are more likely to be taken from their homes and placed in foster care, to stay in foster care longer and never returned to their families.

Contact us for more information, including activities planned on or around March 8, International Women’s Day.

Participants in the National and International Working Group on Welfare include:  

Black Autonomy Network Community Organization (BANCO), Benton Harbor, MI

DHS/DCFS – Give Us Back Our Children/Southern California & Philadelphia, PA

Energy Rescue, Omaha, NE

Every Mother is a Working Mother Network/Philadelphia & Southern CA

Family Advocacy Movement, Omaha, NE

Family Connection Center, Cleveland, Ohio

Georgia Citizens Coalition on Hunger, Atlanta, GA

Global Women’s Strike, Guyana, UK, US

International Women Count Network/Breastfeeding Network, UK & US

Legal Action for Women, San Francisco, CA & London, England

Massachusetts Welfare Rights Union, Mattapan, MA

Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, Detroit, MI

Military Families Speak Out, Southern California

National Welfare Rights Union, Detroit, MI

New Life Career Center, Hempstead, Long Island, NY

Parents Organizing for Welfare and Economic Rights (POWER), Olympia, WA

Payday Men’s Network, US & UK

Queer Strike/ US & UK; Red Thread, Guyana, South America

Single Mothers’ Self Defense, London, England

Survivors, Inc., Mattapan, MA

US Prostitutes Collective/San Francisco, CA

Welfare Warriors MaGoD (Mothers and Grandmothers of Disappeared Children), Milwaukee,  WI WinVisible (women with visible and invisible disabilities)/UK & US

Women of Color/Global Women’s Strike, Guyana, UK, US.

The above networks came together in response to a call by:  the Global Women’s Strike, Women of Color/Global Women’s Strike and Every Mother is a Working Mother Network.  www.globalwomenstrike.net   www.everymothernetwork.net