Dean Richards
A HISTORY OF
AND SOLUTION TO D.C.'S ADOPTION AND FOSTER CARE PROBLEM VIEWED FROM THE BOTTOM
UP
This article is about a solution to the adoption and
foster care problem in D.C. that takes into account the history and perspective
of those on the bottom. It argues, contrary to the solution promoted by the
fiscal conservatives and adoption bureaucracy, for the elimination of adoption
by significantly increasing indoor relief. Indoor relief can be increased by
several measures, including, first, the return of the D.C. Occoquan facility to
its original purpose, which was that of a workhouse. Second, indoor relief can
be increased by the establishment of a prison nursery, and thirdly, by
prolonged family visitation at prison facilities. The article will first
outline the bottom's view about adoption and foster care reform, then summarize
the history and relation of indoor relief to adoption. Thirdly, it will discuss
the decline of obstacles to indoor relief and suggest a plan to overcome the
obstacles and implement the bottom's reform ideas.
The Bottom's
Perspective. Those on D.C.'s bottom are the homeless, the retarded, those
in unsafe housing and those with substance, criminal, mental and physical
problems. The three percent (3200 children) of D.C.'s total child involved in
the adoption and foster care system come from their families.[1]
From their perspective adoption reform should be aimed at preserving their
families and eliminating adoption. Indoor relief best serves their family
preservation goals. Indoor relief means transitional family housing and
residential substance and employment programs, which in earlier times were
called workhouses, poor houses, poor farms and almshouses. D.C.'s indoor relief
facilities serve about 300 families at any particular time.[2]
One of the largest providers is the Community Partnership which starting in
1995 contracted to take over the homeless program (called D.C. Initiative) that
had been run by the D.C. government. It has 121 housing units and yearly
shelters some 2200 families for varying short periods of time at a cost of
$11.5 million.[3]
The essence of indoor relief is to give families in need
of services a place to live and work. The opposite of indoor relief is outdoor
relief, which consists of mothers' pensions (in the early part of the century),
Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Temporary Assistance to Needy
Families (TANF), public assistance (PA), foodstamps and Medicaid. Outdoor
relief enables social service consumers to live in their own housing. Service
consumers prefer the outdoor system. But for the three percent of children in
families that are not able to keep a roof over their head by their own powers
even with outdoor relief, the only way to stay together is by indoor relief.
The bottom's view of reform is not in agreement with the
fiscal conservatives in Congress, whose idea of reform, as reflected in the
Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, is to make adoption as speedy as
possible.[4]
The new law gives the D.C. government a $4,000 bonus per child from the federal
government for each adoption that exceeds the previous year's level and $6,000
for the adoption of older children and children with special needs, such as
emotional and physical disabilities. The new law also allows the D.C.
government to look for adoptive families while still working to reunite birth
families, it prohibits adoptions from being blocked because of geographic
barriers across state lines, and, for children in foster care, it cuts from 18
to 12 months the period in which the biological parents are given to convince
the government to give their children back before being put up for adoption.
Indoor relief in DC serves only about ten percent of the
families that need it in order to stay together. D.C.'s main focus is on
outdoor relief, which is enormous in comparison with indoor relief.[5]
In the past D.C.'s outdoor and indoor relief systems were not so much out of
proportion to each other and families were not broken up by adoption. A look at
its history will show how indoor relief got reduced and what has to be faced to
restore it.
History and
Relation of Indoor Relief to Adoption. According to most accounts, 19th and
early 20th century families were adept at using indoor and outdoor relief to
keep their families together.[6]
The common law did not recognize adoption.[7]
Even after adoption was permitted in D.C. and elsewhere by statute, children
who had living parents were not generally subjected to being adopted. Widows
and single mothers who had no families or who were rejected by their families
were able to avoid abandoning their children by raising them in the workhouse
or poorhouse. Sick or lame fathers or those with substance problems were able
to do likewise. Where there were two parents, the regulations at least in some
cities required that both reside in the workhouse.[8]
The men stayed in one section, the women in another and children above the age
of two in another. Families were able to be together at all reasonable times.
Parents with substance abuse problems were confined to the workhouse by the
court and forced to observe curfews and work routines.[9]
D.C.'s first poorhouse existed even before the city of
Washington was incorporated in 1801. It was in Georgetown.[10]
Starting in the 1500s in Europe and in the 1600s in North America, each county
and city had its workhouse or poorhouse. Aside from Georgetown, D.C.'s first
such institution was built in 1809 at 6th and M St. NW, which was then the
city's northern rim.[11]
It was called the Washington County Almshouse. In 1815 it was enlarged, renamed
the Washington Asylum and functioned as both an almshouse and a workhouse.[12]
An almshouse or poorhouse tended to be for those who could not work, such as
young children, the elderly and the sick. A workhouse tended to be for those
who could work and often was penal in nature. D.C.'s vagrants, prostitutes and
drunks were confined to the Washington Asylum by the D.C. Circuit Court, which
after 1862 was called the D.C. Supreme Court.[13]
Workhouse residents were employed to do piece work, such as make shoes, to
build public works such as roads and sewers, and to do building upkeep and
farming. There was also contracting out of workhouse residents to private
employers.
Among the Washington Asylum's residents in the first half
of the nineteenth century were military veterans of the American Revolution and
War of 1812, some of whom came from out-of-town seeking pensions from Congress.[14]
In 1843 a new Washington Asylum was built in the eastern part of the city at
the far end of East Capitol St. This is where D.C. General Hospital, the D.C.
Jail and the D.C. armory are currently located.[15]
By the 1860s it housed some 1500, including 100 children whose average age was
13 years.[16]
During nineteenth-century economic depressions, D.C.'s indoor and outdoor
relief system helped keep large numbers of families together. In 1870, for
example, half the D.C. population was unemployed and some 50,000 adults and
children got indoor and outdoor public assistance.[17]
As the city grew in the 19th century and its social
services became more specialized, families on the bottom also had, in addition
to the Washington Asylum, a number of orphanages. The specialization in
services, at least in other cities, if not in D.C., was encouraged by laws
seeking to prevent children from living in workhouses. It was felt that the
adult workhouse residents were not a good influence on the children.[18]
D.C. orphanages served several purposes. They were a place for children (ages 0
to 10), who were too young to be apprenticed and who had lost their parents and
who had no relatives or friends to fall back upon. They were also a place where
parents who were on hard times because of sickness, accidents or economic
problems could temporarily board their children until they were able to take up
their responsibilities or until the children were old enough to carry their own
weight. D.C.'s first orphanage was the Washington Female Orphan Asylum, which
opened in 1822.[19]
Several years later it was renamed the Washington Orphan Asylum and served both
boys and girls.[20]
St. Ann's Home for Foundlings was established in 1860 and still later St.
Joseph's Orphanage for Boys.[21]
In Anacostia the German Orphan Asylum was established in 1876 for orphans and
destitute children, aged 3-11. On the same grounds was a home for the elderly
or poorhouse.[22]
In the early 20th century D.C.'s workhouse and other
social services expanded in pace with the population. The main workhouse was
relocated in 1916 to Occoquan, Va., which is 20 miles south of the city. Until
the 1970s the D.C. courts confined some 20,000 men and women there per year.[23]
Occoquan borders the D.C. correctional facility at Lorton, Va. The workhouse
included a brick and tile plant employing 190 people, a construction division
employing 210 people, a foundry and furniture, sheet metal and textile
factories that sold their products to the federal government.[24]
Besides its industries Occoquan also employed its residents to run the facility
itself. They worked at the kitchen, laundry, electrical shop, carpenter shop,
machine shop, hospital, garden, power plant and boiler house. The workhouse
offered formal training and on the job training in skills such as
automechanics, plumbing, steamfitting, electrical wiring and wood working.[25]
Part of the workhouse system was a farm that employed 140 people in its dairy,
poultry unit, orchard, hog raising and wheat raising.[26]
Occoquan operated joint projects with the federal government, such as Works
Projects Administration (WPA) programs in 1935-1936.[27]
During the 1930s more than half the Occoquan residents had been a year or more
without employment before coming to the facility. For many on indeterminate
sentences, especially seniors, Occoquan was a home: a place where they could
stay sober, work and have a roof over their head. There were no guards, walls
or cells.[28]
The Occoquan workhouse was shut down in the 1970s because
the correctional system needed the space and buildings to expand.[29]
But the workhouse industries, such as furniture and textile, continue as part
of the Lorton system. And those who were confined to the workhouse are still
forced to do gainful employment but through work-release and other systems. For
example, the paternity court now makes delinquent fathers who used to support
their children at the workhouse, support them by working days in the community
and sleeping at night in jail or one of D.C.'s 13 community-based half-way
houses.[30]
Likewise imprisoned parents convicted of the petty types of offenses that would
have earlier landed them in the workhouse are now forced to work at a day
release program run by Lorton's Minimum Security facility. They do remunerated
maintenance, landscaping and housing restoration throughout the city.[31]
The Decline in
Indoor Relief and the Increase in Adoption. Indoor relief was significant
in helping keep D.C.'s families together until the 1930s. However, during the
Great Depression outdoor relief was greatly expanded. This was a victory for
all bottom families except those that could not keep a roof over their head,
even with outdoor relief. Indoor relief continued but its quantity and quality
was at a decreased level. The main reason for this is that outdoor relief has
been adequate for most families and indoor relief is more expensive. A 1970s
study showed that outdoor relief (AFDC) ran less than $5 per day per child,
while it cost $10 for foster care, $15 for an agency-operated boarding house,
$20 for a group residence or large-scale institutional residence and $25 for a
residential treatment facility.[32]
Once a child is adopted, it generally costs the government nothing.
Another reason indoor relief has not kept pace with the
need is the adoption and foster care bureaucracy, which has grown in the 20th
century in proportion to the decline in indoor relief. In addition to being
cheaper, it is easier for social workers, lawyers and judges to deal with
relatively affluent and docile foster care and adoptive parents than with
families on the bottom, especially those that cannot make it on outdoor relief.[33]
Many social workers, lawyers and judges, despite the problems, do make the
effort and do help to preserve families. Many do not. Adoption agencies make
money by marketing the children of poor families. Adoption unit social workers
and adoption lawyers make comfortable livings doing their job.[34]
The justification for breaking up families on the bottom
which adoption advocates have given during most of the 20th century is
"the best interests of the child." What this actually means, from the
view of poor families, is the best interests of the social workers, adoption
agencies, lawyers and judges.[35]
The class bias of the "best interests" formula was pointed out by
Justice James D. Heiple of the Illinois Supreme Court in the Baby Richard case:
If best interests of
the child were a sufficient qualification to determine child custody, anyone
with superior income, intelligence, education, etc., might challenge and
deprive the parents of their right to their own children.[36]
The
"best interests" pressure against parents on the bottom starts prior
to birth. Pregnant unwed teenagers in school, detention facilities, mental
hospitals or receiving government prenatal services such as Supplemental Food
Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) are propagandized about the
supposed bleak future prospects of themselves and their child if they do not
relinquish it at birth. Perhaps one in a hundred does relinquish. Most consider
such discussion an insult to everything that is valuable. Like any normal
parent, they see the child and the family as a unity with there being only one
"interest," best or otherwise, the family. Linda Gordon traces the
history of "best interests" to early 20th century adoption agencies.
They used it against women who headed families and who worked outside their
home. Gordon comments:
The Children's
Bureau adapted to increased women's employment by separating the interests of
women and children. Its policies were increasingly justified by a conception of
child welfare that removed women's own problems from consideration. The labor
as well as welfare reform community adopted this strategic shift, and its
results were visible in the courts and the legislatures.[37]
In the early part of the century families which had
migrated from rural areas and non-English speaking immigrants were especially
vulnerable to "best interest" predation.[38]
Malcolm X described the break up of his family:
Soon the state
people were making plans to take over all of my mother's children. . . A Judge
McClellan in Lansing had authority over me and all of my brothers and sisters.
We were "state children," court wards; he had the full say-so over
us. A white man in charge of a black man's children! Nothing but legal, modern
slavery--however kindly intentioned. . . I truly believe that if ever a state
social agency destroyed a family, it destroyed ours. We wanted and tried to
stay together. Our home didn't have to be destroyed. But the welfare, the
courts and their doctor, gave us the one-two-three punch.[39]
Beginning in the 1920s the National Committee for
Adoption, which was an organization of adoption agencies, started to lobby for
legislation in D.C. and elsewhere that gave legal force to the "best
interests" doctrine. This legislation protected adoptive parents from and
kept adoptive children from their biological families.[40]
Included in the legislation were court procedures to terminate the rights of
parents in a speedy manner in order to assure early-age placement and
permanence. There were confidentiality provisions to protect the
"secret" of adoption. There were provisions for the issuance of a new
birth certificate which read as if the child were born to the adoptive parents.
The original birth certificate that listed the birth parents went into a sealed
file. Members of the adoptive family and the birth family were denied access to
these records. Adoption agencies customarily advised adoptive parents not to
tell anyone, even the children, about the adoption.[41]
A recent variant of the "best interest"
doctrine is promoted by organizations such as the National Association of Black
Social Workers. They want to restrict interracial adoption.[42]
But this does not solve the problem. It only means that African-American
families on the bottom can be plundered exclusively by affluent
African-Americans.
A Plan to Restore
Indoor Relief. The fiscal conservatives in Congress have their version of
adoption reform. Viewed from the bottom, this means breaking up their families
as quickly as possible. Those on the bottom have their own reform ideas:
preserving families and fighting the adoption bureaucracy. This means expanding
indoor relief to keep pace with the need. In the next six months D.C.'s
Occoquan correctional facility will become vacant due to the transfer of its
residents to a privatized facility in Youngstown, Ohio. What is needed is the
return of Occoquan to its original workhouse purpose. Families in danger of
being broken up need a structured place where for shorter or longer periods,
they can live, work and raise their families. From the perspective of those who
need the structure of a workhouse, the real prison is the one in their head
that leads to homelessness and adoption. Workhouses that put limitations on
substance abuse and other problems, that give remunerative employment, shelter,
respect, balanced meals, safety from crime and that preserve the family are
liberating.
In addition to restoring Occoquan to its original
workhouse status, there are several other measures that would promote the
bottom's reform ideas. These are the expansion of indoor relief by opening a
prison nursery and by allowing prolonged family visitation for prisoners. In
D.C. babies born to prisoners are immediately removed. Those not claimed by
relatives end up in foster care and adoption, if they are lucky. Those that are
HIV, have birth defects or are otherwise a problem, end up as "border
babies," in public hospitals and nursing homes where they are at risk of
death or permanent injury from lack of nurture.[43]
On the other hand, for 90 years New York, Wyoming, Massachusetts, Virginia and
some 10 other jurisdictions have or have had long-term nurseries as part of
their prison systems.[44]
New York's present prison nursery system was signed into law by then Governor
Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1930. By allowing them to keep their babies during
their child's first year of birth, mothers and babies are able to bond. The
mothers make constructive use of their time. The programs such as in New York
include prenatal care and parenting classes on topics such as infant nutrition,
immunization, sexually transmitted diseases, birth control and infant
development. Baby-sitting is provided for mothers to attend academic,
self-help, drug education and off-unit work activities. Mothers are frequently
paroled with their babies after a year.
Prolonged family visitation is another type of indoor
relief that is an aid to the imprisoned in keeping their families together.
California keeps furnished cottages where spouses, children, parents and other
immediate family members can stay for two-day visits every three months.[45]
The California program was signed into law in 1968 by then Governor Ronald
Reagan. The emphasis is to help retain family ties. Allowing the prisoner a
sexual outlet is secondary. Some countries (Mexico, Philippines, India,
Pakistan) have penal or labor colonies where prisoners can live with their
families throughout their sentence.[46]
Conclusion.
This article has looked at D.C.'s adoption and foster care problem from the
bottom. From this perspective the solution is in increased indoor relief, the
opening of a prison nursery and prolonged family visitation for prisoners.
While this is the bottom's solution, it benefits almost everyone. It returns
D.C. to its historic role as a model city, creates a cost-effective living
memorial to earlier D.C. generations, preserves the area's most beautiful
architecture and it upholds the rule of law. This article will conclude with a
summary of these benefits.
First, throughout most of its history, D.C. has been a
model city, not only in politics but for its social and cultural services.
People from around the world have come to study and work at D.C.'s Library of
Congress, Galludet, Catholic and Howard Universities, the Smithsonian
Institution, St. Elizabeth's Hospital, the late National Training School (for
juveniles), the D.C. Reformatory (in the nineteenth century) and not least, the
Occoquan workhouse. Restored to its original purpose, it along with a prison
nursery and prolonged family visitation at prison, could once again be a model
in helping families stay together. This would compare well with those nations
that have enacted housing codes which prohibit the eviction of people with
small children or families with invalids.[47]
It would also compare favorably with the nations which have established a
system of neighborhood-based boarding schools where children in need can stay
during the week and return home on the weekend.[48]
There is a second benefit to society in the bottom's
solution to the adoption problem. It would be a cost-effective living memorial
to D.C.'s rank and file majority who for two centuries have been keeping their
families together during hard times. D.C. has plenty of monuments to military,
political and other leaders. But nothing to those upon whom the system is
built--the working people and their values.
Most who now live comfortably in the suburbs descend from
these people and are only a generation or two removed from ancestors or
relatives who sometimes used indoor relief to help preserve their family.
Indoor relief was cost effective in earlier times and it can still be cost
effective. It is expensive for the D.C. government to maintain boarder babies
at local hospitals for years on end. It would be cheaper for the government to
let mothers keep and care for the babies born to them in prison. Similarly, it
is expensive for the D.C. government to pay foster parents along with an army
of social workers, lawyers and mental health professionals to keep children for
years at a time. If Occoquan were restored to being a workhouse, children could
stay with their families. In doing remunerative work in the workhouse, the
parents would carry their own weight and that of their children. The U.S.
Congress can enact predatory laws to speed the breaking up of families on the
bottom, but as a practical matter, those families are stronger than Congress in
keeping together. If Congress succeeds in its goal of doubling the rate of D.C.
adoptions to 326 per year, this would still be only one percent of the 3200
children in foster care. Such is not cost effective. D.C. had some 73,000 D.C.
residents (15%) living in families on the bottom in 1996. There were only 163
adoptions and many of these adoptions involved relatives (grandparents or aunts
and uncles adopting grandchildren or nieces and nephews).[49]
Bears have a reputation for not letting anything get between themselves and
their cubs. Those on the bottom are similar. This did not start yesterday and
the bottom's solution would be a cost effective living memorial.
There is a third public benefit from the bottom's solution.
This would be the preservation of D.C.'s most beautiful proletarian structure.
Occoquan is like a medieval city. Generation after generation of workhouse
masons, carpenters, roofers and architects have constantly added new structures
and modified old ones. They use the red brick manufactured at the workhouse
itself, which gives the facility a simplicity and unity of style. The buildings
cover a large hill and are connected to each other by brick passageways and
steps worn down in the middle from decades of use. The D.C. area is not so
desperate for more shopping malls and tract housing that it has to knock down
such an architectural wonder.
There is a fourth and final public benefit to be gained
from the bottom's solution to the adoption problem. D.C. law is on the side of
family preservation. The majority that believes in the rule of law would have
the opportunity to live according to their beliefs. The following section from
the D.C. Code is illustrative of the city's honest dedication to family preservation
and reunification:
If there is a
supported report (of a neglected child), the agency responsible for the social
investigation shall as soon as possible prepare a plan for each child and
family for which services are required on more than an emergency basis and
shall forthwith take steps to ensure the protection of the child and the
preservation, rehabilitation and, when appropriate, reunification of the family
as may be necessary to achieve the purposes of this act. Such steps may include
but need not be limited to: (1) arranging for necessary protection,
rehabilitation and financial services to be provided to the child and the
child's family in a manner which maintains the child in his or her home; (2)
referring the child and the child's family for placement in a family shelter or
other appropriate facility; (3) securing services aimed at reuniting with his
or her family a child taken into custody.[50]
Table
1: Wash. D.C. and U.S. 1996 Budget Expenditures and Income
Expenditures[51] |
D.C.($ mil) |
U.S. ($ bil) |
Human Services |
1,860 (36%) |
(750) (45%)[52] |
(AFDC) |
(125; 8%) |
(13; 1%)[53] |
(TANF) |
|
(16) |
(Food Stamps) |
(88)[54] |
(26) |
(Substance Abuse) |
(32)[55] |
|
Public Ed. |
800 (15%) |
27 (2%) |
Safety & Justice |
960 |
311 (23%)[56] |
(Corrections/prisons) |
(233) |
(25 U.S. &
States) |
(police) |
(248) |
|
Public Housing |
73 |
|
(Homeless)[57] |
(13) |
|
Other (pub. wks., eco. dev.) |
1,507 |
|
Social Security |
|
333 |
Medicare |
|
178 |
Total |
5,200 |
1,350[58] |
Expenditures (another approach)[59]
Payroll |
2,035 (39%) |
|
Pension & Benefits |
739 (14%) |
|
Debt Service, Bonds/Notes |
696 |
|
Medicaid |
581 (11%) |
89 |
Public Assistance |
130 (3%) |
|
Miscellaneous |
1,019 |
|
Total |
5,200 |
|
Income[60]
Income Tax |
684 (13%) |
|
Real Property Tax |
602 (12%) |
|
Misc. Taxes & Receipts |
1,851 |
|
Sales & Use Tax |
469 (9%) |
|
Water & Service Payment |
184 |
|
Fed. Grants |
750 |
|
Fed. Payment |
660 (12%) |
|
Total |
5,200 |
|
Table 2:
Washington D.C., U.S. and World Population that Consume Social Services (1996)
|
D.C. |
U.S. World |
Below Poverty
Level |
|
|
Medicaid |
150,000[63]
(27%) |
|
AFDC |
73,000[64](15%) |
5 mil |
Prisoners |
10,000[65]
(2%) |
1 mil[66] |
(private prisons) |
(1500) |
(45,000) |
Social
Security Pension |
|
44 mil[67] |
Those
without health insurance |
220,000
(40%)[68] |
|
(Child Care, self-funded) |
($4000/yr) |
|
Foster
Care |
3209[69] |
500,000[70] |
(adopted) |
163[71] |
20,000 |
Food
Stamps |
140,000[72] |
|
Substance
Abuse |
7500[73] |
|
(Illegal drugs) |
290 metric
tons (costing $37
bil)[74] |
|
Trade
Unionists |
(15%) |
|
Capitalists
& Management |
|
|
Table 3: D.C. Population[77]
Year
Total |
African-Am (slave/free)[78] |
Foreign
Born |
1790 |
|
|
1800 14,000 |
3200/800 (29%) |
|
1810 24,000 |
5500/2500
(33%) |
|
1820 33,000 |
6200/4000 (30%) |
|
1830 40,000 |
6100/6100
(31%) |
|
1840 43,000 |
4600/8400
(30%) |
|
1850 51,000 |
3600/10,000
(26%) |
|
1860 75,000 |
3100/11,100
(19%) |
|
1870 132,000 |
43,000 (32%) |
16,000 (12%) |
1880 178,000 |
60,000 (34%) |
17,000 (9%)[81] |
1890 230,000 |
75,000 (33%) |
19,000 (8%) |
1900 279,000 |
87,000 (31%) |
20,000 (7%)[82] |
1910 331,000 |
94,000 (29%) |
24,000 (8%) |
1920 437,000 |
110,000 (25%) |
29,000 (7%) |
1930 487,000 |
132,000 (27%) |
30,000 (6%)[83] |
1940 663,000 |
187,000 (28%) |
34,000 (5%) |
1950 802,000 |
281,000 (35%) |
39,000 (6%)[84] |
1960 764,000 |
419,000 (55%) |
|
1970 |
(%) |
|
1980 638,000[86] |
(%) |
|
1990 667,000[87] |
400,000 (66%) |
|
1997 550,000 |
(%) |
|
Table 4:
Budget Expenditures as Percentage of D.C. and National Gross Product (1996)
|
D.C.($ mil) |
U.S.($
bil) World |
Gross Product |
||
Total Gov. Expenditures |
5,200 |
1,350 (23%
GNP)[91] |
(Human Services) |
1,860 (36%) |
608 (10% GNP) |
Profit (shareholder) |
|
|
Wages & Self-Employment Income |
|
|
[1]In 1996 there were 3209 children in the
D.C. foster care system out of a total D.C. population of 100,000 children. Of
these, 163 were adopted. The average stay in D.C. foster care was 5.3 years.
See District of Columbia, Indices: A
Statistical Index to District of Columbia Services, 1994-1996 (Washington,
D.C.: D.C. Office of Policy and Evaluation, 1996), vol. 11, pp. 190, 244, 246;
D.C. Action for Children (D.C. Act), What's
in it for Kids? A Report on the Fiscal Year 1996 Budget (Wash.
D.C.: D.C. Act, April 1995), pp. 17, 19.
[2]D.C.'s indoor relief facilities include:
a) Anacostia
Family Apartments (Coalition for the Homeless), 1320 Anacostia Rd. SE,
gives transitional rehabilitation housing and employment to eight families for
four to six months.
b) Demeter
House gives housing and employment training to women recovering from
substance abuse and their children.
c) Conserve,
1012 14th St. NW gives case management, transitional housing and employment for
34 families.
d) Family
Shelter Program, 25 M St. SW.
e)
Hannah House (THEIRS), 610 M St. NW, gives transitional housing (average
stay of one year), employment and substance program for five homeless families
with children ages 0-10.
f) Mary
House, 4303 13th St. NE, gives up to 18 months of transitional housing to
families with children younger than three.
g) Lazarus
House/Tabitha House (Samaritan Inn affiliate), 2523 14th St. NW, gives
transitional housing for up to five years in its 76 room complex to families
that have six months of proven sobriety at the time of entrance and whose
children are five and younger.
h) My Sister's Place gives housing to female-headed households and
their children.
i) Partner
Arms (Community Family Life affiliate), 935 Kennedy St. NW, gives two year
transition housing and job placement to 14 homeless families that have been
drug free for at least 6 months.
j) Spring Road Family Apartments (Coalition
for the Homeless), 1433-35 Spring Rd. NW, gives housing to 23 families.
k) St.
Martins Transitional Housing, 16 T St. NE, has a 12 month housing and
employment program for women recovering from substance abuse and their
children.
l) Thea
Bowman House (So Others Might Eat), 4065 Minnesota Ave NE, gives permanent,
affordable housing to 12 formerly homeless families.
m) Trinity
Arms Housing 504 3rd St NW, (Community Family Life affiliate), 5620
Colorado Ave NW, gives two year transitional housing for 20 families.
[3]D.C. Action for Children, What's in it for Kids?,
pp. 35-36.
[4]Adoption and Safe
Families Act of 1997,
Congressional Record, p.
H 10776 (H.R. 867, Nov. 13, 1997), which amended the Adoption
Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (PL 96-272); Judith
Haveman, "Congress Acts to Speed Adoptions," Washington
Post (Nov. 14, 1997), p. A-17.
[5]For example, 73,000 or 15% of D.C.'s
550,000 population receive AFDC, which is now called TANF. Twice that number
(150,000 or 27% of the population) receive Medicaid and food stamps. See
District of Columbia, Indices (1996),
p. 190.
[6]Eric H. Monkkonen,
"Nineteenth-Century Institutions," in Michael Katz (ed.), The "Underclass" Debate: Views
from History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 354;
Judith Ann Dulberger, "Refuge or Repressor: The Role of the Orphan Asylum
in the Lives of Poor Children and their Families in Late Nineteenth-Century
America," PhD dissertation, Carnegie Mellon University, 1988, p. ii.
[7]Elizabeth Bartholet, Family Bonds: Adoption and the
Politics of Parenting (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), p. 170.
[8]Joseph Robins, The Lost Children: A Study of Children in Ireland, 1700-1900
(Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1980), pp. 176, 183.
[9]William Novak, The
People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1996), p. 168; Portland v. Bangor, 42
Me. 403 (1856), 404, 410 (case of Betsy Brown and her two-year old daughter);
Daniel Davis, A Practical Treatise upon the
Authority and Duty of Justices of the Peace in Criminal Prosecutions
(Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, 1787), 255-261; William Blackstone, Commentaries on the laws of England
(Philadelphia: Robert Bell, 1771-1772), 4:256; Acts
and Laws passed by the General Court of Massachusetts, 1787
(Boston: Adams and Nourse, 1787), c. 54.
[10]Constance Green, Washington: Village and Capital, 1800-1878 (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 219, 386. In having a poorhouse before it
was incorporated, D.C. was not unlike colonial Massachusetts, which built its
first workhouse at Salem in 1629 before the main body of the settlement had
even arrived. In 1656 the Massachusetts General Court instructed each county in
the colony to construct its own workhouse. See Adam Hirsch, The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons
and Punishments in Early America (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1992), pp. 25, 27.
[11]Green, Washington: Village and Capital, p. 42.
[12]Ibid., pp. 75, 90.
[13]Ibid., p. 253. The Washington Asylum burned
down in 1857 but was immediately rebuilt. See Wilhelm Bryan, A History of the National Capital: From its
Foundation through the Period of the Adoption of the Origins Act: 1815-1878
(New York: Macmillan, 1916), p. 342.
[14]Green, Washington: Village and Capital, p. 90.
[15]Ibid., p. 218.
[16]Ibid., pp. 253, 364.
[17]Ibid., pp. 48, 326.
[18]Monkkonen, "Nineteenth-Century
Institutions," in Katz The
"Underclass" Debate, p. 354; Betty Mandell, Where are the Children? A Class
Analysis of Foster Care and Adoption (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington
Books, 1973), p. 35.
[19]Green, Washington: Village and Capital, p. 101.
[20]Ibid., pp. 132, 219.
[21]Ibid., p. 219.
[22]Louise Hutchinson, The
Anacostia Story, 1608-1930 (Wash. D.C.: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1977), pp. 129-130.
[23]U.S. Prison Industries, The Prison Problem in the District of
Columbia: A Survey by the Prison Industries Reorganization Office
(Wash. D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1938), p. 7. In the 1930s the daily
capacity at the workhouse was 1000.
[24]Ibid., pp. v, 7, 10, 22, 37, 63-67.
[25]Ibid., p. 27.
[26]Ibid., p. 22.
[27]Ibid., p. 55.
[28]Ibid., pp. 18, 20, 45.
[29]After the Correctional Dept. takeover,
the Occoquan population increased its daily capacity to 1760. See Katya Lezin,
"Life at Lorton: An Examination of Prisoners' Rights at the D.C.
Correctional Facilities," Boston U. Public
Interest Law J, 5 (1996), 167.
[30]The D.C. Dept. of Corrections runs four
halfway houses. The Bureau of Rehabilitation, which is an independent
contractor, runs four other halfway houses. In addition there are five other
contractual facilities: Extended House (810 14th St. NE), EFEC, Hope Village,
Trudie Wallace House and Discovery Manor.
[31]Lezin, "Life at Lorton," p.
168. Minimum's daily residential capacity is 950 men and 160 women. They do not
wear uniforms and are not confined to cells.
[32]Mandell, Where
are the Children?, p. 74. In LaShawn
A. v. Kelly, 762 F. Supp. 959, (D.D.C. 1991) the D.C. federal
district court stated that it cost the D.C. government (in 1987) an average of
$5,000 to $6,000 per family per year for Department of Human Services
preventive services (outdoor relief). It cost an average of $17,000 for foster
care and group homes. Specialized foster care cost an average of $50,000.
[33]Betty Mandell, a veteran social service
worker, comments in Where are the
Children?, p. 44, "Child welfare professionals share at
least one characteristic in common with family service professionals: they
prefer to work with middle-class clients." See also, Richard Cloward and
Irwin Epstein, "The Case of Family Adjustment Agencies," in Social Welfare Institutions: A
Sociological Reader, ed. Mayer Zald (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1965), pp. 623-643.
[34]Typical is Sister Josephine Murphy,
director of St. Anne's Infant and Maternity Home in Hyattesville, Md. When
Congress's adoption reform bill was pending, she was frequently quoted in its
favor. She does comfortably by the adoption system. St. Anne's gets $29,000 per
year from the D.C. government for each child in its care. See LaShawn A. v. Kelly, 762
F. Supp. 959, (D.D.C. 1991). Betty Mandell in Where
are the Children?, p. 65, comments on the problem of being bought
off:
Social agencies, which
are sponsored and partly funded by white affluent people, give a high priority
to meeting the needs of white affluent couples for "perfect" white
babies to adopt. The children whom the white middle class does not want to
"own"--older children, children with handicaps, children of minority
groups--stand a good chance of being left in foster care as the "unwanted
surplus." The state pays as little as possible to maintain them, yet the
state is reluctant to return them to their parents. The ideology of the
professionals who see themselves as "better parents" prevents the
children's return home. "Child welfare" is often a euphemism for
control of the poor by the middle and upper class. Juvenile court judges and
welfare agencies act as the arm of the state to achieve this control. The child
welfare system has become a dumping ground for the children of the
dispossessed. In child welfare as elsewhere, "the trend is toward the
bourgeois-smug."
[35]Susan Tiffin, In
Whose Best Interest? Child Welfare Reforms in the Progressive Era
(Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1982).
[36]Justice James D. Heiple, quoted in Washington Post
(9/9/94). See also, Mahrukh Hussaini, "Incorporating Thwarted Putative
Fathers into the Adoption Scheme: Illinois Proposes a Solution after the Baby Richard Case,"
1996 Univ. Ill. Law Rev. 189
(1996); Gerald W. Huston, "Born to Lose: The Illinois Baby Richard Case,"
16 Northern Ill. U. Law Rev.
543 (Spr. 1996); Paige Kaplan, "Putting the Child First in Custody Battles
Between Biological Fathers and Adoptive Parents," 35 Santa Clara Law Rev. 907
(1995). The U.S. Supreme Court similarly in Santosky
v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745 (1982) pointed out the problem of class
bias in the adoption process:
Because parents
subjected to termination of parental rights proceedings are often poor,
uneducated, or members of minority groups. . . such proceedings are often vulnerable
to judgments based on cultural or class bias.
As Bartholet, Family Bonds, p. 173, points out, the bottom sees adoption as one
of the worst forms of exploitation of the poor by the rich, the blacks by the
whites and the third world by the capitalist west.
[37]Linda Gordon, Pitied
by not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935
(New York: Free Press, 1994), p. 99.
[38]Mandell, Where
are the Children?, pp. 34-35.
[39]Malcolm X, The
Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, 1965), pp.
20-21.
[40]Bartholet, Family
Bonds, p. 54; Arthur Sorosky, et al., The
Adoption Triangle: Sealed or Open Records: How they Affect Adoptees,
Birthparents and Adoptive Parents (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor,
1984); Madelyn DeWoody, Adoption and
Disclosure: A Review of the Law (Wash. D.C.: Child Welfare League
of America, 1993); Marsha Riben, Shedding Light on
the Dark Side of Adoption (Detroit: Harlo, 1988).
[41]Bartholet, Family
Bonds, p. 54, 171.
[42]Valerie Hermann, "Transracial
Adoption: Child-Saving or Child-Snatching," National
Black Law J., (Spring 1993) 13(1), p. 147; Samella Abdullah,
"Transracial Adoption is not the Solution to America's Problems of Child
Welfare," 22 J. of Black
Psychology 254 (May 1966); Joyce Ladner, Mixed
Families: Adoption Across Racial Boundaries (Garden City, N.Y.:
Anchor Books, 1977), p. 57. An earlier generation of clerical-dominated
Catholic, Jewish, Lutheran and other adoption agencies had similar ideas. They
wanted to put cosmetics on adoption by distributing the children to affluent
Catholics, Jews and others.
[43]Vijaya Melnick, Boarder
Babies and Drug Affected Children in the District of Columbia: A Case for
Public/Private Partnership (Wash. D.C.: Comprehensive Planning
and Control Series, 1993).
[44]Katherine Gabel, "Long Term Care Nurseries
in Prisons: A Descriptive Study," in Katherine Gabel and Denise Johnston
(eds.), Children of Incarcerated Parents
(New York: Lexington Books, 1995), pp. 237-254; J. E. Grossman, Survey of Nursery Programs in Ten
States (Albany, NY: Dept. of Corrections, 1982).
[45]Jules Burstein, Conjugal
Visits in Prison: Psychological and Social Consequences
(Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1977), p. 53-54.
[46]R. Cavan, "Marital Relationships in
Prison in Twenty-Eight Countries," J.
of Criminology, Law and Police Science, 133-139 (July-August, 1958).
[47]George Morris, USSR-USA Trade Unions Compared (Moscow: Profizdat, 1979), p. 106,
describes the former Soviet housing system:
Evictions are virtually
impossible. In the first place a person's inability to pay the rent plus
charges is inconceivable, because there are no unemployed and this expense is
about the lowest in a person's monthly budget. There are cases of tenants who
make themselves obnoxious by disorderly behavior, drunkenness, noise and such.
But such persons would present similar problems wherever they lived. It is
better to handle such cases in court actions on charges of disorderly conduct.
People with small children or families with invalids cannot be evicted under
any circumstances. Such are the ethics surrounding the housing question where
the "landlord" is a socialist government.
In
addition to restricting evictions, the Soviets in their Family Code of 1918
formally outlawed adoption. This was a reaction against employers who had used
adoption to obtain youth who could be forced to work for them without
compensation. See Laurie Bernstein, "The Evolution of Soviet Adoption
Law," J. of Family History (Apr.
1997), vol. 22, pp. 206-221.
[48]For parents who are young, have substance
problems or are otherwise struggling to keep their heads above water,
neighborhood boarding schools for their children are a way for the parents to
complete their own education, and concentrate on making a living and
establishing a household. At the same time their children had a healthy
exposure to the educational process. See Max Figueroa Esteva, The Basic Secondary Schools in the Country:
An Educational Innovation in Cuba (Paris: Unesco Press, 1974); Karen Wald, Children of Che: Childcare and Education in
Cuba (Palo Alto, Cal.: Ramparts Press, 1978); Sheryl Lutjen, The State, Bureaucracy and the Cuban
Schools: Power and Participation (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1996), pp.
76, 98 (of Cuba's 2.6 million students, 600,000 are in boarding schools). In
D.C. generally only the most wealthy can send their children to boarding
schools, although the government does fund boarding schools for the severely
handicapped. See Michael Hardman, et al, Human
Exceptionality: Society, School and Family (Needham Heights,
Mass.: Allyn and Brace, 1996), 5th ed. p. 29.
[49]District of Columbia, Indices (1996), p. 190; D.C. Action for
Children (D.C. Act), What's in it for
Kids? A Report on the D.C. Fiscal Year 1996 Budget (Washington,
D.C.: April 1995), p. 17.
[50]D.C. Code, section 6-2107(b). Similar to
the code, the rules for the D.C. Superior
Court Neglect Proceedings (Rule No. 2), state that the court rules
"shall be constructed to preserve family life to the maximum extent
possible consistent with the child's right to safety, adequate parental care,
permanence and continuity of relationship." In actuality the
"service" often given by the government to those on the bottom is to
break up their families. T. Berry Brazelton, M.D. in the Forward to Jan
Blancher (ed), When There's No Place Like Home:
Options for Children Living Apart from their Natural Families
(Baltimore: Paul Brookes, 1994), p. x, describes the lack of family
preservation services for those on the bottom:
Our resources are often
too minimal to back up families with what they need--income support, food,
nutrition, jobs, safe neighborhoods, schools, child care. The effort is still
in the realm of lip services and band-aid-like pressures to remain together.
[51]Council of the D. of C., Budget Report (July 28, 1995), pp.
80-82.
[52]U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract, p. 330, no. 512,
says $970 bil. in human services. House Committee on Ways and Means, Overview of Entitlement Programs, 1994 Green
Book (Wash. D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1994), pp. 398-399, 1255,
puts the Social Security pension budget at $270 bil. (20%). The U.S. Bureau of
the Census, Statistical Abstract, p.
374, table no. 582, says $42 bil. (or an average of $697/month) is paid in
Social Security, that is, Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI). Ibid., p. 332, table no. 515, puts
Social Security at $350 bil., that is, $228 bil. on income security; $178 bil.
on Medicare; $121 bil. on health care; $54 bil. on education; and $37 bil. on
veterans.
[53]House Committee on Ways and Means, Overview of Entitlement Programs, 1994
Green Book, pp. 398-399, 1255.
[54]District of Columbia, Indices (1996), p. 203 (an average of
$181/month per family).
[55]District of Columbia, Indices (1994), p. 239.
[56]Discretionary defense spending. See House
Committee on Ways and Means, Overview of Entitlement
Programs, 1994 Green Book, pp. 398-399, 1255; U.S. Bureau of the
Census, Statistical Abstract, p.
330, table no. 512 says the defense budget is $265 bil (21%).
[57]The Community Partnership for the
Prevention of Homelessness keeps 140 families in shelters and 10 times that
number on waiting lists.
[58]Executive Office of the President of the
U.S., Office of Management and Budget, Budget
of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 1997 (Wash.D.C.: GPO, 1996); U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Statistical Abstract, p. 330, table no. 512, says $1522 bil.
Means-tested entitlements equal $191 billion (13% of the 1994 federal budget).
Non-means-tested equals $644 billion (42% of the 1994 federal budget). See
Gist, "Entitlement and the Federal Budget," p. 331.
[59]Mayor Marion Berry, D.C. Financial Status Report (2nd Quarter, Fiscal Year 1995).
[60]Mayor Marion Berry, D.C. Financial Status Report
(Wash. D.C.: 2nd quarter, Fiscal year 1995).
[61]U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract, p.
472, table no. 730 (cash income less
than $7700 for one person, $14,000 for a family of four).
[62]International Labor Organization (1994).
[63]District of Columbia, Indices (1996), p. 190.
[64]Ibid.
[65]Ibid., p. 311.
[66]There are 116,000 women in prison, 80%
are mothers.
[67]The U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract, p.
374, table no. 582; ibid.,
p. 332, table no. 515.
[68]There are 10 million children in the U.S.
without health insurance.
[69]District of Columbia, Indices (1996), p. 190. The D.C. foster
care system costs $50 million per year. Children stay in it for an average of
5.3 years. See D.C. Action for Children (D.C. Act), What's
in it for Kids? A Report on the D.C. Fiscal Year 1996 Budget
(Wash. D.C.: April 1995), pp. 17, 19.
[70]Judith Haveman, "Congress Acts to
Speed Adoption," Wash. Post,
p. A-17 (Nov. 14, 1997). Nation-wide, some 13,000 children yearly leave foster
care by aging out. Brendan Kearse, "Abused Again: Competing Constitutional
Standards for the State's Duty to Protect Foster Children," Columbia J. of L. & Soc. Problems,
vol. 29 (1995-1996), pp. 385-386 (offers lower estimates).
[71]D.C. Action for Children, What's in it for Kids?,
p. 17.
[72]District of Columbia, Indices (1996), p. 190.
[73]District of Columbia, Indices (1994), p. 239.
[74]Barry R. McCaffrey, White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (1995), quoted
in the Washington Post
(11/10/97) puts the figure at $57 bil., down from $91 bil. in 1988.
[75]U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract, p.
436, table no. 682.
[76]There are 100 million members of the
Prague-based World Federation of Trade Unions.
[77]The data for the period 1800 to 1860 is
from Constance Green, Washington Village
and Capital, 1800-1878 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962),
p. 30. The data from 1870 to 1950 is from Constance M. Green, Washington: Capital City, 1879-1950
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 89.
[78]The percentage is of the African-American
in the total DC population.
[79]The foreign born included: 2300 Irish,
1500 German, and 100 Jews. See Francise Cary (ed.), Urban Odyssey: A Multicultural History of Washington, D.C.
(Wash.D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), pp. 53, 136.
[80]The foreign born included 7200 Irish. See
ibid., 56.
[81]The foreign born included 300 Italians.
See ibid., p. 156.
[82]The foreign born included 1600 Germans.
See ibid.
[83]There were 15,000 foreign and native-born
Italians. See ibid., p. 166.
[84]There were 40,000 foreign and native-born
Jews. See ibid., p. 113.
[85]There were 3000 foreign and native-born
Asians. See ibid., p. 199.
[86]District of Columbia, Indices: A Statistical Index to District of
Columbia Services, 1990 (Washington, D.C.: D.C. Office of Policy and
Evaluation, 1990), p. 77.
[87]U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990 Census of Population: General
Population Characteristics, District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1992), p. 3.
[88]Ibid. There were 11,000 foreign and
native-born Asians.
[89]U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract, 1996,
p. 443, table no. 685.
[90]United Nations, Human
Development Report (1996) ($18 trillion is produced in industrial
countries).
[91]Executive Office of the President of the
U.S., Office of Management and Budget, Budget
of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 1997 (Wash.D.C.: GPO, 1996);
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract,
p. 443, table no. 685.