Broken Bonds | photography

Broken bonds: When the state severs family ties

•By Kathleen Phalen Tomaselli STAFF WRITER

Annette Thornhill is putting money aside for her Amtrak fare and a hotel room so that she can journey north to celebrate her grandson’s third birthday on April 8.The child is Thornhill’s son’s son.

“I want to bring him his present,” she said of the trip she must make from New York City to Rutland. “I want him to know me.”

The thing is, as of Feb. 4, the Rutland family court terminated her son’s parental rights. Now Thornhill must visit the baby she bathed after birth and nuzzled to sleep at his Rutland foster home, as long as the toddler’s foster mother gives her permission to see him.

According to the Vermont Department for Children and Families Commissioner Ken Schatz, there is little recourse for grandmothers and extended family once parental rights are removed.

“The law is specific to parents,” he said of appeals to the family court decision. “Regarding grandparents, there is no authority for official decisions, but there can be informal arrangements with foster parents.”

So Thornhill can no longer do grandmotherly things, like taking walks to her local park or frosting cookies with her grandson in her own kitchen.

“I must keep visiting,” she said. “Out of decency, let us keep visiting him.”

Nonetheless, Thornhill’s visits, Facetime chats with the boy, and a large extended family trying desperately to hold on to the boy they love, have done nothing to sway DCF caseworkers. Not to mention unsuccessful pleas to Gov. Peter Shumlin, Schatz, lawyers and advocacy groups. The wide-eyed toddler remains in state custody and is up for adoption. DCF calls it “permanency placement.”

“Even if they say his father and mother are not good enough,” Thornhill said. “If they are going to give away this child to somebody else, we have a lot of family here, and when he gets older, he’ll think we never visited him. ... They are taking my grandson from us.”

The case of the Thornhill baby is not an isolated one.

“It happens all the time; grandparents will go through all the steps, foster licensing and then DCF does not place the child with the family,” said Deborah Bucknam, a St. Johnsbury attorney and a board member of Vermont Parent Representation Center.

Advocates point to thousands of children and babies removed from parental custody by DCF or child protective services for myriad reasons who are adopted out of foster care and are never returned home.

“Vermont takes children at twice the national rate,” Bucknam said. “In the ages 0 to 3, more than 34 percent have had their parental rights terminated. In New Hampshire, it is 4 percent.”

In Vermont, there are 1,400 children in DCF custody and another 400 under supervision on a voluntary basis, said Schatz. In 2015, there were 191 Vermont adoptions out of foster care.

“When these parents are interfacing with the system, they (DCF) are diminishing the parents’ voice and dominating their every move,” said Tiffany McFadden, policy program research analyst for the Child Welfare Organizing Project in New York.

Still, parents can appeal the termination decision through the Vermont Supreme Court. On Friday, the high court overturned a Windsor family court decision, returning parental rights to the father. The court found the trial court’s conclusion was not supported by clear and convincing evidence.

More bodies, more money

The increase in foster care adoptions is about the money, McFadden said. Schatz denies the allegations.“Follow the money,” McFadden said. “They need bodies.”

McFadden is referring to federal cash incentives for states adopting children out of foster care. Under the Adoptions and Safe Families Act of 1997, changed in 2014 to the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Safe Families Act, the federal government pays cash incentives to states that exceed their base number of adoptions. For some states, this means big cash infusions to state coffers. Texas, for example, has received more than $73 million since the cash awards began in 1998.

Vermont, which has a dramatically lower population than the Longhorn State, received $860,216 in federal adoption incentives during the same period. Incentives — ranging from $4,000 to $10,000 per child — are allocated based on adoption increases from prior years.

“I expect we will draw more money from 2015,” said Schatz.

As of this date, Schatz said he did not know the amount of this year’s payment. In addition to federal adoption incentives, states receive Title IV-E funds along with other state and federal dollars for foster care and foster care adoptions.

The Thornhill baby

The family has been trying since early 2014 to complete DCF’s required kinship criteria, despite obstacles, denials and an ever-changing list of caseworkers.

“We want to bring awareness to this case. The rights of the family were not even taken into consideration,” said Alexis Thornhill, the baby’s aunt. “They are keeping him away from his family. He has a whole new world here and he is being deprived of his family. ... We consider it legal kidnapping.”

The Thornhills are West Indian American. Originally from Guyana, the family came to the United States more than three decades ago. The baby’s mother, who also lost her parental rights, is white. Both parents, according to Alexis Thornhill, struggle with opiate addictions. She said she believes because the young child’s extended New York family is black, they have been stereotyped and treated badly by Rutland DCF workers.

“Every time, the conversations were belittling,” she said. “And every time we had a caseworker who was helping us, the next time we called, that caseworker had been reassigned and we had to start over again.”

By October 2015, the Thornhills were no longer allowed to take him out of the state and they began visiting in Vermont.

“It seems like they are judging us from my brother’s case,” she said. Calls to DCF went unreturned and, in desperation, Alexis Thornhill called Schatz, who, in turn, had Rutland supervisor Jackie Pells call Thornhill.

“She begins to belittle me and asked me, ‘Why do my mom and I want my nephew so bad? Why do I want him, he is very sickly? Can we take care of him with his condition,’” Alexis Thornhill said, adding that she and her mother are certified nursing assistants. “She tried to say we never had contact with him. I assured her we have, and he has a lot of family here, especially men, to raise a boy, like my dad.”

But those connections didn’t seem to matter. DCF said because the toddler has asthma and they own a dog and have carpeted floors, their home was not suitable.

“We would have made changes,” she said.

Schatz said Friday he is unable to speak to individual cases because of confidentiality.

“With Alexis, they were coming up against all the barriers,” said McFadden. “What is happening now is the legal vending of black and brown bodies into the system.”

Still, the Thornhills have not given up.

Annette Thornhill keeps calling the foster home to talk to the boy; they still plan for a future when he will be with them.

“If I had a lawyer, I could get visitation rights,” Annette Thornhill said. “At least a month and a half in the summer and Christmas. That’s when we all come together with dinner and cake. I will do the training; I will fix the house. I will keep visiting, so he can know me.”