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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Bills seek to reunite families

OLYMPIA – For weeks at a time, the twin boys disappeared from Washington’s child welfare system.

Drug-addicted and hungry, they wandered the streets of Seattle, sleeping at drug houses, panhandling spare change and scavenging food.

“They were literally sleeping in alleys and eating out of Dumpsters when they were supposed to be in foster care,” said Elaine Wolcott-Erhardt, the mother of the now 15-year-old boys. “It’s been a cat-and-mouse game for years.”

There was one place the boys could not go: their biological parents’ home.

Four years ago, Wolcott-Erhardt had her parental rights terminated after a protracted legal battle with the state’s Child Protective Services, which intervened after she was arrested for driving under the influence.

When her sons fled foster care and returned home, a SWAT team knocked on her front door to take the boys into custody.

“They just simply want to go home and go to school and live a normal life,” Wolcott-Erhardt, a 48-year-old convenience store manager, said in testimony before a House committee on Friday.

This session, bills in both the House and Senate would allow foster children to petition to be reunited with their biological parents – even after a court has terminated their parental rights.

“I think there are circumstances where children have been placed in foster care and have not thrived,” said Rep. Ruth Kagi, D-Lake Forest Park, sponsor of the House bill.

“In some cases, parents have been able to get their lives together.”

Each year, more than 250 children “age out” of the state’s foster care system without having ever been adopted. The bills are tailored to a particular class of foster children: those at least 12 years old and unlikely to be adopted after three years in the child welfare system.

“This is the time when kids end up languishing in the system,” said Mary Meinig, the state’s ombudsman for children and families. “We really need to give the youth a voice for what they want.”

For decades, the termination of parental rights has been a signal event in the child welfare system, legally severing the relationship between parent and child. Those parents have no visitation rights or ability to petition the court as guardians of their children.

Currently, state law does not explicitly allow the biological parents to regain their parental rights, even if they have completed counseling and treatment recommended by the Department of Social and Health Services. Parents who have proven that they can provide a safe and secure home for their child may regain guardianship of their biological children, but it’s rarely done because there are no policy guidelines.

The bills would force Washington courts to decide whether “clear and convincing evidence” shows the child will not be adopted, and that reunification with the biological parents would be in the child’s best interest.

“Very young (parents) in their teens and early 20s grow up and mature,” said Dave Wood, a lobbyist for Washington Families United, which advocates on behalf of parents whose children have been removed by state social workers. “They ought to be able to have a way to get their kids back.”

In the foster care system, it’s not uncommon for teens to flee group or foster homes. Each year, several hundred Washington children run away from their foster care placements, according to a state report released last month. On average, they are gone for more than four months.

Wolcott-Erhardt said her twin sons have continually run from social workers.

“All they’ve wanted is to come home,” she said. “They’ve just had such a crazy life for the last five years.”