I don't think I could ever be a normal mom without having to think about the department.
I'm walking on eggshells.
I don't think that's how you're supposed to live as a parent.
What DCFS [Department of Children and Family Services] doesn't realize
is that when they take these children from their parents,
they're not just separating the child from the parent,
they're separating the parent from the child.
It's trauma on both ends.
It was scary because I didn't know how to react to it.
They're kidnapping my son.
That's the way I looked at it.
The primary reason for child welfare involvement is neglect.
Which is a very broad, very amorphously defined concept that
that basically conflates with poverty.
These conditions that are related to poverty such as homelessness,
such as lack of access to childcare,
such as food insecurity,
all these things are being criminalized
by a system that does not provide the solutions to those conditions
but rather takes families through an entire court process of prosecution,
that oftentimes leads to trauma,
disruption and actual destruction of family ties.
- I love you. - Thank you, I love you too
Are you gonna have a good day?
My life before DCFS involvement was great.
Every day was full of laughter and definitely loudness.
We'd do our turn-up hour we would dance, sing, and
have a bunch of little party turn up really quick before bed.
DCFS asked me to do a drug test and I tested positive for marijuana,
of course, because I use it medicinally.
At that time, the judge said, we're going to make children ward of the state,
but they'll stay in your care.
- Are you excited to see your kids?
- Yeah
- How do you feel every Thursday when you go and see them?
- I’m usually happy and sad at the same time.
Court-ordered supervision or sometimes called family maintenance,
is a very invasive and very intrusive government intervention
into the privacy of the family.
One likes Takis.
The social worker was making me upset because she would pop up at my kid's school.
She would pop up in my house and I'd be in the middle of cooking dinner
and she was like, "Can you turn the dinner off?"
I started to get frustrated like, you're coming here every two weeks,
you're stopping my day, now you want to do a walkthrough,
you want me to undress the kids,
you want to take my children in the rooms interrogate them and ask them very inappropriate questions.
That is very...
very inappropriate.
If you're looking for a reason to say there's some risk,
if you keep looking, you could probably find something in any family.
They can take note of many small things.
And there's just so much discretion for the case worker to come in and decide.
For me, it's defamation of character,
because in those reports when I read them,
it feels like I'm reading a story about someone else.
When they come to your house, they perceive you as a people,
not as an individual.
"You're Eleanor, you're Black. You must have problems and you need our help."
You best believe, if you've got money, DCFS won't knock on your door
because you just hand them a card to your lawyer.
You’ve got that whole day of November 1st, right?
I sent my kids to school in their Halloween costumes.
Three o'clock, when I went to pick up my kids from the bus, they didn't get off.
I will never forget that feeling...
because I knew then, that they took my kids without me knowing.
No one called me to tell me they took my children from me.
No one gave me any paperwork.
No one gave me a warrant.
No one gave me anything.
When the police and the ambulance got to my home,
their father was gone.
I met initially with a DCF investigator who questioned me,
asked me what happened.
From there on, a lot of it is a blur because it was so traumatizing.
Within the week, I had already lost custody of the kids.
I wasn't allowed to go back to the hospital to see my son.
So once the court took temporary custody the kids
were placed into the foster system.
The legal removal from her care happened while she was at the hospital
and without a full discussion of what it was.
Nobody explained to me anything of the order of temporary custody,
nobody explained to me the petition to terminate my parental rights.
Remember, she didn't have a lawyer yet at that point.
So, in those moments, the parent really has no leverage, no ability to negotiate,
and no one to tell them, other than the agency,
what's going on and what are the variables.
I love you and have a good day.
DCF was aware of us because, I had a prior case, which I didn't reunify with my children,
and Adrian tested positive for drugs from his parole officer.
- Supposably.
Automatically they [DCF] assumed that I was dirty,
and that led to the removal of Maximus.
That is all they needed.
They said it was the allegation of neglect.
So they just painted a picture of their own.
At the beginning, we only got to see him twice a week.
Our son is getting closer to this other family, we're not seeing him as often and as much.
- He was more quiet, like when we had visits.
- He was more closed off.
- He wasn't playful with us though.
He wasn't playful with us like he was the foster family.
My oldest is the one that gets hit the hardest.
His trauma is behavioral... emotionally, anxiety.
He suffers from PTSD.
They [DCFS] are not protecting our children.
They're giving our children to random people
and expecting them to care about our kids the same way we do.
September 29th, 2022 . Color for today is brown.
They assigned us requirements to do in order to get Max back.
Individual therapy sessions, parenting classes, substance abuse classes,
along with random color testing.
So, today is brown meaning anybody who was assigned the color brown
has to go and do their pee test for drugs.
Today is not our color though,
mine is pink and Adrian’s is red.
I completed all my steps before my six months.
So, what do you want me to do? Double up everything?
I finished it already.
I did what I was supposed to.
And they still held on to my kids for three years.
Often these service plans really have nothing to do with
either the issues that brought the family into the system
or with their needs or their desires or anything that will benefit them.
They never ask you what actually helps you.
The thing is, you're never quite free from them [DCF].
A poor parent exists in a web of
surveillance and expectation and lack.
The system spends about 10 times more
on investigation, separation, and terminating children's rights
and adoption,
than it does on so-called preventive services
that would be accessible for parents to avoid having to come into the child welfare system.
After your rights are terminated, then they give you one final visit,
and when you think about a final visit with your four-year-old and your three-year-old,
it's a really long time...
it's a really long time for them to be 18.
There's something completely wrong with their structure of how they go about,
determining on if a child is really being neglected or if a parent just needs
some type of guidance, needs some therapy, needs some help for the substance abuse class,
or needs somebody just to talk to because they're depressed.
We already know that poverty is the main driver.
Put that money into communities, we know the zip codes,
we know what the conditions of those communities are.
As far as what my children have endured in these past three years,
it's going to be a huge adjustment.
They're not the same kids.
Those are traumatized children.
Those are children that have been through something.
I feel like I'd be the best person to fix all those problems.
Would it be easy?
No.
It's going to be a hellified road.
Am I ready for it?
Yes.
Am I willing to take it on?
A hundred percent.
I gave birth to all those kids,
and I would give my life for all those kids.