‘Not if you can possibly avoid it’

The answer shocked me. Not if she can possibly avoid it, this social worker said. They’ll put her through hell, and there’s no guarantee they’ll even give her any help.

Now, having encountered the case of N., I understand that response.

N., another single mother, has three adopted children, all with serious emotional and psychological problems. Over the past decade, she has undergone treatment for two different types of cancer. She eventually recovered (and also remarried), but during her treatment, she sought help from the welfare authorities.

Now, they are trying to take two of her children from her, claiming she’s an unfit mother.

I’m not qualified to judge that claim; I barely know N., and have never met her children. But whether she is or isn’t, the welfare authorities’ conduct in her case has been shocking.

After all, these same authorities approved N. to adopt three children. Adoptive parents are supposed to be rigorously evaluated; N. passed this evaluation three times. Moreover, the welfare bureaucracy presumably looked into how she was raising children one and two before approving adoptions two and three, and noticed no problems.

So either they were shockingly malfeasant then, in allowing “a harmful and neglectful mother devoid of any real ‘parenting ability'” (as they now call her) to adopt three children, or they are shockingly malfeasant now, in seeking to deprive a good mother of her children. There are no third options.

No less shocking, however, is what happened after they began “helping” N. Take the eldest boy, whom we’ll call A. Three years ago, he was put in an institution, with N.’s consent; given her illness and his problems, she considered this a suitable temporary solution.

Early reports from teachers and social workers, as detailed in court papers filed by the welfare authorities, describe A. as talking frequently about “his home, his brothers, and a great deal about his mother.” “It’s clear that the connection between A. and his mother is important to them both,” one social worker wrote.

Later reports, however, show him hurling abuse at N., and eventually declaring repeatedly that he wants nothing to do with her.

These reports also describe “daily” outbursts in which he “claims it’s bad for him at the school.” Left unanswered is why his complaints about his mother are deemed serious enough to justify depriving her of custody while his complaints about the school are dismissed: The welfare authorities advocate leaving him there for another five years, until age 14.

What does seem clear, however, is that the authorities actively undermined his relationship with his mother. According to their own reports, she was allowed to visit him “once every three weeks for an hour,” and only with a social worker and psychiatrist present. How could a child who sees his mother for only an hour every three weeks not feel abandoned, hurt and angry?

Indeed, the authorities often appear to have made N. a scapegoat. Take, for instance, one incident they cite to demonstrate her alleged parental unfitness: a “stormy meeting” between A. and N. which, their report states, ended in such a severe outburst that A. was sent for temporary psychiatric hospitalization. That same report, however, noted that this incident followed “a severe escalation in his behavior for more than a month, with A.’s anger attacks growing in intensity and frequency;” that another outburst occurred three days after he left the hospital, in which he demanded to leave the school and said he “would only obey his mother;” and that subsequently, “a change in his medications was recommended.”

In other words, a month-long deterioration that was ultimately diagnosed as stemming from poorly adjusted medications was blamed on N. and used to justify taking her child away. That’s outrageous. And it’s obviously worse if you believe N.’s claim that the staff provoked A.’s outburst by cutting her visit short to punish him for earlier misbehavior.

Indeed, one can’t help concluding that the welfare bureaucracy was always more interested in taking the children away than in helping N. raise them herself – in blatant violation of the Youth Law, which deems taking a child from his parents a last resort, to be used only “if the court sees there’s no other way to ensure [the child’s] care and supervision,” and usually only if efforts to help him remain at home have failed.

Consider, for instance, the resources made available to the foster family now caring for N.’s second child, whom we’ll call B.: psychological treatment, hydrotherapy, parental and family counseling, and more, according to the documents. Yet no such help was ever offered to N. If it had been, argues her lawyer with some justice, might that not have enabled her to keep him at home?

N.’s lawyer claims the welfare bureaucracy has a financial incentive to take children away, creating a clear conflict of interest: The institution where A. now lives, for instance, gets paid about NIS 100,000 a year per child – and many of the negative evaluations of N. came from people on its payroll. Similarly, associations that arrange foster homes compile parental evaluations while also receiving money for children in their care.

But regardless of the merits of this claim, the lawyer is clearly right in saying institutionalization should be a last resort: It’s inherently unhealthy for a child to be raised in an environment comprised solely of other children with serious problems, and it’s also very expensive – which, since the government’s total welfare budget is fixed, means that each institutionalized child slashes the funding available for other important programs. Yet in this case, no other option seems to have been considered.

Whether the welfare authorities are right or wrong about N.’s parental fitness is of concern only to her and her family. But the questions her case raises about their fitness to have such absolute control over the lives of parents and children alike ought to concern all of us.

The writer is a journalist and commentator.