Child Abuse Prevention (Part III) Reunification services in rural areas

Previous posts in this series (here and here) discussed some of the impacts that rurality has on the child abuse reporting and response systems. This installment will explore challenges that arise when families who live in rural areas attempt to reunify with their children who have been removed from their home and placed in foster care. I argue that rural parents involved in the foster care system face distinct barriers that make it especially challenging for them to comply with court orders and successfully reunify with their children.

When the CPS determines that a child is in danger if he or she remains in the home, a social worker will remove the child from the home and place him or her in another family's home temporarily.  Meanwhile, the child's parents or caregivers are charged with addressing the underlying problems that initially created the harm to the child. A child welfare worker creates a reunification plan that includes action steps that the parents must complete in order to have their child returned to their care. Reunification plans can include many different case-specific action steps, which may include: rehabilitation, anger management and parenting classes, or sometimes even a requirement that one parent move away from and stop contacting an abusive spouse. Generally, if the child is in foster care, the case plan will also outline a visitation schedule so that the child can maintain his or her relationship with the parents while in foster care. If the caregiver completes the reunification plan within the time allotted by the social worker, a dependency court must find that the danger to the child has subsided,  and then the child will be allowed to return home. If the case plan has not been completed, it may be up to the courts to decide whether to grant the caregivers more time to complete the case plan, taking into account arguments from parents, CPS, and child's counsel. State law controls the time periods that parents have to complete their case plans, and time limits usually vary with the child's age (see, eg, CA. Welf & Inst. Code 361.5)

While the foster care system impacts many many families in both rural and urban areas, rural families may face more difficulties completing their mandated case plans. In September 2015,  427,910 were children in foster care. fifty-five percent of these children stayed in foster care for over one year. In rural communities, it may take rural parents more time than their urban counterparts to comply with case plans because they have to travel to access the services that they are required to participate as part of their case plans. Sometimes, a specific program that has been mandated in a family's case plan is almost impossible to access for rural residents. Even judicial officers in rural places have reported that it is difficult to find educational and training programs to help them understand the realities that rural families face.

Sometimes, the very nature of rural life is held against parents in dependency court. Judges (sometimes outsiders to the communities come into their courtrooms) are tasked with discerning what placement or lifestyle decisions would be "in the best interest of the child."   Judges have scolded parents for living in an area that is isolated from services, expressing the concern that children may be isolated and not get the help or support they need. (See also: this article by Lisa Pruitt, beginning on page 175). In some courtrooms, a stereotype exists that urban children are more involved in school events and receive a higher quality education.

All this is to say: rural parents and caregivers who find themselves involved in the foster care system face significant barriers to reunification. Is the case plan system with mandatory participation in social services a one-size-fits-most approach that doesn't quite fit some rural communities? I shall return to the related issue of foster care placement in my next post.