Tuesday, October 14, 2003

By Barbara White Stack, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

It was time for Tangela Smith to beg for deliverance. She'd squandered previous opportunities to overcome addiction and recover custody of her children. Now she prayed for the grace of one last chance.

Tangela Smith cuddles her youngest daughter, Mooky, at their home in Penn Hills the day after Judge Cheryl Allen closed the cases of Smith's children Mooky and Little Tay, freeing Smith from the supervision of caseworkers and court. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image.

"I got down on my knees in that house in Duquesne and I allowed God to start working in my life and I asked his forgiveness. I told him this was the end of the end," Smith recounted.

It was November 2000. She'd admitted using crack again. Caseworkers had placed all of her children in foster care, including Dean, a 1-year-old who had been with her since birth because she'd been clean for a year and a half when he was born.

The three others had all been removed before. They were Little Tay, 6, Mooky, nearly 3, and Big Tay, a 13-year-old who'd been in and out of foster care since she was 2.

Smith knew that her children, the caseworkers and the court had all been patient with her. She feared she'd reached the end of their tolerance and might never get her children back.

But Allegheny County is not quick to terminate parents. In fact, the pace set by the Office of Children, Youth and Families would vex auditors.

Regulations require agencies to seek termination when children have been in foster care for 15 months, and the federal standard for completion of that legal process is 24 months.

CYF typically takes 31 months to do it.

And yet, the local agency has been hailed as a national model of child welfare practice. Its director, Marc Cherna, has been selected in recent years to advise child welfare reformers in Congress. National foundations seek his counsel.

CYF's failure to meet the standard isn't a consequence of incompetence or indolence. Rather it's the result of a commitment to the philosophy that rehabilitating parents and reuniting them with children usually is the best solution in child welfare.

"We are about the healing process," said CYF trainer Julius Hill, who is familiar with Smith because he supervised her caseworker.

Healing frequently takes longer than 15 months when the disease is addiction. And addiction, like Smith's crack habit, is the most common affliction seen by CYF caseworkers and juvenile court judges.

CYF had given Smith help and time to heal in the past. And it hadn't worked. Still, her prayers that November day were answered. She got yet another chance.

A permanent change

Smith had no idea how fortunate she was.

Trapped in her addiction and the irrational thinking that goes with it, she only saw that she wasn't getting everything she wanted when Judge Cheryl Allen sent her away to short-term detoxification followed by long-term residential treatment.

	TAKING A TANGLED PATH HOME THE SERIES Day One: One woman, one family's journey through juvenile court, where three-quarters of child welfare cases involve addiction, making the court more about drug abuse than child abuse. Day Two: An addict's recovery can mean defeat for a family. Today: If redemption for drug addicts usually involves relapses, how long does a child welfare system keep children in limbo awaiting a parent's real recovery?

The judge's voice was icy as she warned Smith: "The court cannot ignore your drug and alcohol and mental health history. ... This is about you. This is about making a permanent change, Tangela."

Disheveled and angry, Smith sobbed outside Allen's courtroom because the judge had refused to send her immediately to a program where her children could live with her. "I can't be without my kids," she cried, "Can't you all feel my pain? How much do you think I can take?"

She went to treatment at a Gaudenzia Inc. facility , hundreds of miles from Pittsburgh, and it broke her heart. She was housed with 25 other women and their 50 children. And she was childless.

Allen refused to send Little Tay or Mooky to her because they were in school in Penn Hills, and the judge would not disrupt their education to appease their mother.

Watching all those other women with their kids crushed Smith. "I had a hard struggle up there," she recounted.

But it was a good program for her. It was long -- six months -- the kind studies have shown more likely to work. And it got Smith more than clean. It got her to admit her reasoning was all mixed up. "They opened my eyes to a lot of my thinking that was totally wrong," she conceded.

While she was gone, Allen sent Big Tay to a group home and baby Dean to his father. CYF placed Little Tay and Mooky with a foster mother who'd cared for them before.

Starting over

Everyday human emotions, reactions and attachments are the reason Cherna believes rigid formulas don't work well in child welfare.

"People want easy solutions -- like terminate everybody in 15 months," Cherna said. "But this is a very complex business, which is why people have so much trouble with it. There is no one answer. Every situation is different, and we have to deal with it differently. We cannot lump people into categories. Every family has different dynamics."

Smith graduated from Gaudenzia in August 2001 and returned to Pittsburgh, living with friends and relatives while searching for a place of her own and attending a day treatment program. Allen permitted her to visit Little Tay and Mooky.

Smith rented a subsidized apartment in Penn Hills in February 2002. It was 15 months since the children had been put in foster care -- time for CYF to seek termination of parental rights.

Instead, CYF arranged for Little Tay and Mooky to visit their mother at the apartment. This was with the support of the KidsVoice attorney who represented the children.

KidsVoice espouses the same reunification philosophy as CYF and the court, even though the majority of the children its lawyers represent are in foster care because their parents are addicts, with relapse an anticipated part of their recovery.

	Common Pleas Judge Cheryl Allen stands with Tangela Smith and three of Smith's children, Little Tay (left), Dean and Mooky, in Allen's courtroom on Jan. 15, 2003, the day Allen closed the cases of Little Tay and Mooky. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image.

"For those that work, isn't it worth it to get them back together and give the parent and the child what they always wanted?" KidsVoice Director Scott Hollander asked.

If reunification doesn't work, the child may return to foster care. And, often, it's with the same foster parents the child had before -- as happened with Little Tay and Mooky.

Also, Hollander maintains, there's value for the child even in reunifications that fail. While children are in foster care, they create fantasies about what their reunion will be like. They dream about how perfect it all will be when they go home.

If the parent relapses, the fantasy vanishes. And then, Hollander said, the child can commit himself emotionally to his foster parents, a psychological step necessary for an adoption to work.

'No turning back'

No one was thinking about termination and adoption in Smith's case, despite passage of the 15-month deadline. CYF and the court employed provisions in the regulations permitting extra time to decide what was best for the child.

Allen is willing to terminate at one month under the right circumstances and unwilling to terminate at 20 months if the situation isn't right.

"If I terminated at 15 months in every case, that would require me to function mechanically instead of using some humanity as a judge," she said. "You want some sensitivity and concern in a judge. The federal government does not have to sit in the courtroom and snatch babies out of mother's arms and look at the pain and the devastation and hear the screaming children."

	Tangela Smith stands beside her mother's casket during her funeral in April 2002. Smith was able to avoid a relapse of her crack addiction when she mourned her mother's death. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette)

A few months past the deadline, Allen ordered that Little Tay and Mooky be returned to Smith.

On June 19, 2002, they went back home. By then, Smith had been clean a year and a half. And she'd avoided relapse when her mother died April 2, just days before Smith's 34th birthday.

Smith also had managed to hold onto the place in Penn Hills and keep it clean. Dean's father was allowing the baby to visit her for extended periods, and within a year, they'd share custody. The court had permitted Big Tay to visit Smith at the apartment, and caseworkers reported that it too was going well.

Smith left the courtroom triumphant, one little hand in each of hers. "This is the happiest day of my life," she told her daughters.

For Allen, it wasn't over yet. She ordered CYF to continue to monitor Smith and demanded that Smith submit to random drug testing.

Still, she was glad to see a woman rehabilitated and children returned home. "When all is said and done, society benefits when families are reunified and strengthened," she said.

There's a monetary benefit to reunification as well: It's cheaper than the alternatives. Drug addicts frequently end up in jail -- at a cost to taxpayers of about $25,000 a year per inmate. And the annual fee for an Allegheny County child in foster care is $20,000, a cost that does not end with adoption because many foster children are entitled to adoption subsidies.

Six months after Smith's reunification, she was back in court. She had been clean for two years and was doing well. Allen gave her an order saying Little Tay and Mooky were hers. Case closed.

Smith squealed with joy. "I thank everyone for helping me," she said. "It has been a long road. I am overwhelmingly happy.

"I am going home, and we are having cookies and milk to celebrate.

"There is no turning back."

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