Sibling Loss: The Hidden
Tragedy of the
Child Welfare System
Child Welfare System
Originally published in the December 1997 issue of Adoptive Families magazine. Reprinted with permission of the author and Adoptive Families magazine.
From the opposite ends of town, two cars, each with two squirming children in the back seat, drew closer. The Lyles children, brothers and sisters, hadn't seen each other for four months and could barely contain their excitement. In both cares, the children kept asking their caseworkers: " Do you mean I'm really going to live in the same house with my brothers and sisters? Nobody is going to take me away from them?"
The four siblings had been in foster care for 18 months and had been split up into three different homes throughout the Chicago area. Before they entered state custody, the children lived together with their mothers, who struggles with mental illness and substance abuse. Although they always had a roof over their heads, they moved frequently and had never lived in their own home. The siblings were close and depended on each other to survive under difficult circumstances. When they were separated in foster care, the children mourned the loss of their siblings. Each time they visited, they grew distraught when the time came to say good-bye. They went home and cried themselves to sleep because they didn't know when they would see each other again. Wendy and James grew very introverted. Robert moved through several homes without making a real connection. Anika, the oldest child, became confrontational and rebellious. She was on the verge of being discharged from her foster home when the children were referred to an agency that could place them all together in one home.
The car ride took place two years ago when the siblings were reunited in one foster home. Now they are better adjusted and are straight A students. They are in the care of a two-parent foster home where the foster parents say they can stay as long as is necessary.
An Overlooked Tragedy
The Lyles family demonstrates the crucial role that brothers and sisters play in helping each other survive serious disruptions in family life. Yet every day brothers and sisters are torn from each other when they are placed in foster homes.
Sibling loss is one of the lesser known tragedies of the child welfare system. Theoretically, siblings in foster care are supposed to be placed together unless an abusive situation exists. The idea makes so much sense that it is often assumed that theory makes it into practice. The issue is so far below the radar screen that many agencies don't track whether siblings are placed together. But experts estimate that sibling loss impacts more than half of the 500,000 children who are in state custody nationwide.
"Splitting up siblings is the most serious problem in our child welfare system today, say Gordon Johnson, president and CEO of Jane Addams Hull House Association, a social service agency in Chicago whose innovative foster care program, Neighbor to Neighbor, was designed to address the issue of sibling separation. As head of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) during the 1980s, Johnson was responsible for the well-being of thousands of children. "People underestimate the extent of the problem until they see it with their own eyes. I saw and heard stories every day.
Drenda Lakin, director of the National Resource Center for Special Needs Adoption at Spaulding for Children, in Detroit, agrees. "This is a very big problem. Most kids have brothers and sisters, and many agencies haven't been able to place kids together."
Awareness of this problem is just now starting to catch up to its significance. Along with a growing body of research about siblings in general, more connections are being made between sibling loss and some of the more commonly known problems that children experience in the child welfare system. At the same time, courts and state legislatures are mandating that child welfare agencies find new ways to keep siblings together.
How Siblings Get Separated
The most common reasons that siblings get separated are logistical. Foster homes that are licensed to care for multiple children tend to fill up piecemeal with children from several birth homes and when a sibling group comes along, there isn't room for them all. A foster parent who has four openings may first be sent two children from one family, then an only child from another family. When a family unit of four siblings comes along, one child gets placed in the last opening, while the other three are sent elsewhere. "We were so caught up in finding placements we didn't have time to step back and do an analysis of what was happening." Johnson says of his experience at Illinois DCFS.
Another common reason that siblings are separated is because older children tend to take on a caretaker role for younger siblings. Traditionally social service workers have begun to see this situation differently. Taking on roles in a family is a normal and healthy process, and an older sibling's instinct to care for and protect younger brothers and sisters are natural. If the siblings are placed together in a safe, nurturing environment, the children can develop more appropriate roles, and the responsibility that the older child feels can be redirected constructively.
Kids separated in foster care often are permanently separated through adoption. "In recent years there has been much more emphasis in adoption on placing siblings together," Lakin says. "But often it is too late. One set of foster parents wants to adopt the children who are already in their home. It's a dilemma because the children have already formed attachments with their respective foster families."
Separating siblings in foster care also jeopardize the stability of "permanency plans," which are the state's long-term plans for a child's final placement, that do involve reuniting children. Siblings who didn't have the opportunity to grow and change together go through a readjustment when they are reunited, where in the birth home or an adoptive home. This adds to the challenges that birthparents and adoptive parents already face when children first come home. "Sometimes it presents a challenge for adoptive families if the children are reintegrating with each other at the same time that they are trying to build a connection with their new family," Lakin explains. In some cases, this leads to some siblings re-entering the child welfare system while others remain with the family.
Importance of Sibling Bonds
Brothers and sisters share a unique relationship that some mental health researchers say could be even more influential than the parent-child relationship in contributing to healthy growth and development. Siblings are the people whose lives most closely mirror our own. They share their formative years in the same time period and same setting. They are also the longest-lasting relationship that most people have. As a result, sibling ties represent a special support system.
This bond exists between children raised in well-adjusted families, but it is even stronger for siblings in adverse circumstances. In these settings, siblings become the support network to cope with problems. When children are placed into foster care, these bonds become even more important as children grasp for some source of continuity and stability. Children experience separation from their siblings as a traumatic loss. This heightens the emotion of grief and abandonment that they are already feeling and interferes with healthy development. Research shows that siblings who are placed together in foster care tend to have fewer emotional and behavioral problems than those who are placed apart. Studies also show that sibling groups are less likely to experience placement disruptions. "These kids watch out for each other and take care of each other," Johnson says. "When we split them up from their brothers and sisters, we are taking away the only connection they have left to people they love. This pain severely hurts children."
This sense of loss continues into adulthood, even if children grow to love new brothers and sisters in foster and adoptive homes. Some agencies get more calls from adults who are looking for their siblings that who are looking for their parents, Lakin says. "Some don't want to find their parents, because of abuse for example, but they are interested in finding their brothers and sisters."
A Solution to the Problem
Johnson was so struck by his experience at Illinois DCFS that when he joined Hull House Association in 1990, he designed Neighbor to Neighbor, the only program in the nation to recruit foster homes specifically for large sibling groups, and to then professionalize the role of the primary caregiver in each home. "Our concept was to keep children together with one family, with a professional caregiver and work with the biological parent to help them change how they care for their children," he says.
Hull House launched its foster care program in 1994 and is funded through the DCFS to care for approximately 100 children at a time. Through Neighbor to Neighbor, Hull House places children only in homes that can accept all the siblings and puts only one birth family in each home. The homes are in the community where the children are from and foster parents play a mentoring role with birthparents, who are connected to supportive services. The team approach is critical to keeping the siblings together, according to Johnson. "It is a major financial and emotional commitment to take a group of children, each of whom has their own unique needs, into a home," he says.
A comparison between children in the Hull House program and a random survey of children in foster care in Cook County, which encompasses Chicago, shows that Hull House is significantly more successful than other programs at keeping large sibling groups together. For example, throughout the county only 11 percent of children who are part of a four-person sibling group, which is the average in Cook County, are placed with their brothers and sisters. In Hull House's program, 70 percent of these children are living with all of their brothers and sisters. (The numbers for keeping siblings together will never be 100 percent because all members of a sibling group are not always in state custody.)
In addition to keeping siblings together, the program allows for more effective permanency planning. To determine whether a permanency goal of reunification, adoption or long-term foster care is in the children's best interest, an assessment must be made of the birthparents' parenting abilities and interaction with the children. When siblings are separated in multiple foster homes, this process can be complicated. Caseworkers must bring siblings and birthparents together in an office setting and observe family dynamics. In the Neighbor to Neighbor program, visits with birthparents take place in the foster home, and foster parents receive ongoing training and support to work with caseworkers to observe and assess the children's development and interaction with the birthparents, allowing permanency plans to be made more quickly and more accurately.
"Recognizing the role foster parents play and giving them the support they need is important for another reason, too," says Johnson. "Traditionally, turnover for foster parents is high." According to the National Commission on Family Foster Care, as many as 60 percent of foster parents withdraw from the program within the first year. In surveys, foster parents often say that the agencies they are working with are unresponsive. This makes it difficult for foster parents to give the children the care that they need.
Johnson is hoping the Neighbor to Neighbor to Neighbor approach will be used as a model nationwide. "If we could stabilize a group of children right when they come in the front door, it would be less traumatic for them and more beneficial for everyone," he says.
Cheryl Lawrence is Vice President of Programs and Vanessa Lankford is Acting Director of Child and Family Services at Jane Addams Hull House Association. Both have been closely involved with the development and implementation of the Neighbor to Neighbor program. Ms. Lawrence can be reached at 800-448-0083, ext 324. To obtain copies of Adoptive Families, subscribe online at www.adoptivefamilies.com or call 800-372-3300.
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New York State Citizen's Coalition for Children, Inc.
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10/29/02