New Article: Joseph Shapiro, In some states, an unpaid foster care bill could mean parents lose their kids forever, NPR (Jan 2023). Excerpt below:
When Sylvia and Brandon Cunningham got out of jail in North Carolina several years ago, after serving months on drug charges, a judge laid out the steps they needed to take to get their children back from foster care.
After a balky start, they followed through. They got sober and stayed sober. They attended parenting classes and therapy. They got jobs. They showed up for weekly visits with their kids.
Eventually, a judge determined that the Cunninghams had shown they could be good parents and that their house — a tidy trailer at the end of a dirt road — was safe for their children.
But only three of their four children came home.
In 2021, the Supreme Court of North Carolina ruled that one of their sons — who was then 5 — was properly placed for adoption on the grounds that the Cunninghams had failed to reimburse the government for some of the cost of their child’s foster care.
Poverty Law 