Parents of foster children losing what keeps them connected: In-person visits

It was not your typical dinner table conversation as Angela Leyva chatted with her 1-year-old while he ate. She was miles away, watching him at his foster home through a Zoom conference call. Her 2-year-old daughter, at the same foster home, was attending via a tablet.

Like many others involved in Arizona’s child welfare system, safety concerns sparked by the new coronavirus have upended the way the family connects.

In more normal times, children who have been taken from their homes and placed in foster care get regular visits with the parents who are trying to regain custody. But now those visits have moved from in-person to online.

The kids were excited to see her, said Leyva, who lost custody of her children in February.

But what should have been a twohour visit ended after 20 minutes.

“They’re so young, it’s hard to hold their interest,” she said. “It’s hard to keep a bond over the phone with a 1and 2-year-old.”

To avoid the social contact that spreads the virus, child welfare agencies including the Arizona Department of Child Safety in mid-March moved families to virtual visits rather than inperson meetings.

At the same time, the in-person contact that experts agree is vital to keeping a connection between parent and child is lost.

Lack of such personal contact could

have long-term consequences on whether a family separated due to allegations of neglect or abuse is reunified.

But there are also safety consequences for the chain of people involved in ensuring in-person visits: the person who drives a child to a session with mom and dad, the aide who supervises the visit, or the foster parents who take the child back into their home.

In March, foster parents rebelled when DCS said in-person visits would continue. With cases of the new coronavirus climbing, they feared a child coming back from a visit could carry the virus into their homes, potentially infecting the entire household.

DCS modified its directive in midMarch, promoting virtual visits but allowing in-person visits to continue if deemed safe. That policy remains in place through the end of May, when DCS Director Mike Faust has told parents inperson visits will resume.

DCS did not have statistics on how many parent-child meetings continue in person. But Faust, as well as the social-service agencies that help monitor the visits, suggest the vast majority are now done over cellphone, tablet or laptop.

Face-to-face meetings must be approved by upper-level administrators, rather than case managers or their immediate supervisors.

The result has been online visits that both sides say are more onerous.

Parents in the system, like Leyva, have a harder time maintaining a connection to their children. Foster families who previously handed the children off for a few hours must sit and monitor the duration of a video chat.

Like others in child welfare work, Faust said nothing replaces the contact that in-person family time visits provide.

But virtual visits are a viable alternative that can keep families connected while protecting foster families concerned about the spread of the virus, he said.

“I’ve heard both extremes very loudly,” Faust said of the competing interests he weighed in deciding to lean toward virtual visits. “Everybody’s anxious for this to open up,” he added, referring to the social distancing and stay-at-home orders that have kept people apart.

No blanket decisions

Across the nation, practices have varied widely.

In New York, the epicenter of new coronavirus infections in the U.S., inperson visits have continued. In Los Angeles County, child welfare officials suspended in-person visits, then backed off a blanket ban in favor of case-bycase decisions.

Vermont lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow the courts that oversee child welfare cases to bar parent-child visits, whether in-person or virtual, until the pandemic is under control.

Such a move would be “dreadful,” said Mimi Laver, director of legal representation for the American Bar Association’s Center on Children and the Law. “It makes keeping a connection between parent and child so much harder.”

Parents shouldn’t be punished for not having the ability to see their children while new coronavirus fears keep people apart, Laver said. Given how important in-person contact is for strengthening family bonds, she argues courts and child welfare agencies should be flexible in the legal timelines that outline when a case should conclude.

“I would say a world pandemic could be a very compelling reason,” Laver said. “We know that being with your family of origin leads to the best outcomes.”

Don’t abandon in-person visits

Child advocates argue that a blanket ban on visits is an unnecessary move. And they say judges and state officials should think hard about discouraging in-person visits.

“It is astounding to me that dry cleaning one’s clothes is an essential service but parent-child visits aren’t,” said Allison Green, referring to the orders various governors have issued in the COVID-19 era. Green is legal director of the National Association of Counsel for Children.

Cutting off visits, she said, could undermine the goal of child welfare cases, which is to find a permanent placement for the child, whether it be with their parents, relatives or an adoptive home.

Besides, Green noted, she’s not aware of any family court barring children from going back and forth between mom and dad in child-custody situations.

Earlier this month, Green testified before a Vermont legislative panel, arguing for a more-nuanced approach that other states, including Arizona, have taken.

There are creative ways to keep up contact, she said, if the risk of contamination is too great to allow in-person family time.

Mixed reviews

In Arizona, the rollout not only of virtual visits, but also of some virtual services, has received a mixed reception.

Leyva said a visit via a tablet is no match for the visits she previously had at a DCS center or in a park.

“Extended lack of physical contact is not good for the children,” she said. Besides, she questions how serious the safety concern is, since her children’s foster parents send the kids to day care.

Foster parents are finding that while virtual visits reduce the risk of the child being exposed to the new coronavirus, they require more effort.

“They have to sit through a two-hour visit and they’ve got things to do,” Leslie Reprogle said of the feedback from some of the foster parents her Agape Adoption Agency licenses.

With in-person visits, a DCS worker takes the child to a visitation center, Reprogle explained. Now, with the visit happening in the foster home, the foster parent has to make sure the child stays engaged. That can be a challenge, especially with little ones, she said.

Tara Miller uses Google Duo for her foster child’s visit. She sets the baby in front of her computer screen, so he can watch it while mom and dad read and talk to him.

“I think it’s hard on the parents: They want to hold him,” Miller said. “You can’t bond on a screen.”

Nor can you hold attention for very long. Miller said visits that are supposed to last two to four hours usually end after 20 to 30 minutes.

“My bio kids are three years old, and there’s no way I could keep them engaged for four hours,” she said.

It’s different for older children; they’ve been raised with technology, so connecting with their parents via a screen is an obvious thing to do when in-person visits aren’t safe, said Bahney Dedolph, deputy director of the Arizona Council of Human Service Providers.

Jennifer Jones found that switching her foster child’s speech-therapy sessions to online from an office visit was “seamless.”

And medical advice is easier to come by with wider use of telehealth. Jones said her child’s doctor has sent out instructions on how to properly take temperatures and how to watch for signs of illness.

Valuable lessons

Child welfare officials say there are lessons to learn here — some that should last.

Virtual visits have allowed biological and foster parents to test the concept of “shared parenting,” a practice that DCS promotes in its contracts with foster-licensing agencies.

Amanda Lankford, a foster parent, said the virtual visits hold the possibility of better cooperation between a child’s parents and foster parents.

“I really believe that this is such a great opportunity for the child to see both bio family and foster family together,” said Lankford, who is fostering children from two different families. “That doesn’t happen often.”

Because both sets of parents are needed to make the visits happen (usually with a state-appointed case aide to monitor), there’s a chance to learn from each other.

There is a downside in cases in which there is tension between the foster home and the biological parents.

One foster mother who didn’t want her full name published said biological parents may begin to resent foster families as video calls reveal their children’s day-to-day interactions with someone else. She’s also careful to not have her son be seen on-screen during any of her foster child’s visits.

The move to on-screen visits has prompted a raft of ideas of how to make best use of the time. DCS and other agencies suggest reading a book to the child, or with the child, during a visit. Talk with the child while he’s eating. Make up for shorter visits by having more frequent ones.

During a conference call hosted by the American Bar Association’s Center on Children and the Law, a juvenilecourt judge suggested that when in-person visits again become the norm, there’s no reason to abandon virtual visits.

Use the technology to strengthen the parent-child connection with shorter, more frequent chats, said Judge Ernestine Gray, of Orleans Parish in Louisiana.

Technology poses its own barriers. “Some people have no internet,” said Sally Jones, CEO of HRT, which licenses foster families and provides other child welfare services in Arizona. “Some people have no technology.”

It’s especially severe in rural areas, she said.

Even people who have cell phones may not have Wi-Fi capability or enough data service to make a virtual visit feasible.

“You always have your unintended consequences,” Jones said. “We are all, as the saying goes, ‘Tying knots and trying to hang on.’”

Foster care work can’t stop

In March, top officials at the Children’s Bureau, which manages federal child welfare policies, sent an open letter to juvenile courts and child welfare agencies. Their message: Don’t let the new coronavirus stop your work.

“Our letter was a call to refrain from making sweeping, blanket orders that postponed hearings or postponed visiting between children and parents,” Jerry Milner, associate commissioner of the Children’s Bureau, explained during the ABA webinar.

In Maricopa County, presiding juvenile court Judge Joseph Kreamer said it’s important for judges to consider the effect coronavirus precautions may have on a family’s case.

“We have to understand that parents have been limited in their ability to see their children and to get services,” he said. Each case must be weighed on its own facts, even as judges are guided by time frames in federal and state law.

In Maricopa County, the juvenile courts moved to telephonic hearings March 23 for most cases. (By law, juvenile-delinquency cases have to be open.) Pima County is doing most of its hearings telephonically.

The juvenile courts scrambled to get the technology in place to allow parents, attorneys, case managers and the public to phone in.

“When we started, we basically just had phone lines,” Kreamer said.

Now, there are enhanced phone connections, and, he estimated, about half the judges use laptops to conduct their hearings through the Go To Meeting application.

Court attendance improves

To his surprise, Kreamer said the move to remote hearings has some benefits.

“Our attendance at these hearings by parents is better than before,” he said. They don’t have to fight traffic, or juggle work schedules to make it to court for what often is a 15-minute hearing.

Attendees are showing up (or dialing in) on time, mediation hearings are more productive and biological and foster parents are talking more with each other, Kreamer said.

The court is also planning for a “new normal” when courtrooms open for people to physically attend. A task force is looking at ways to do that while observing proper social distancing — something that is easier in some locations than others.

Courts could open to in-person hearings as soon as June 1, according to an order issued last week by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel. All attendees will be required to wear masks to minimize health risks.

About this report

An ongoing grant from the Arizona Community Foundation supports reporting on child welfare topics in Arizona.

Are you a biological or foster parent who has had to adapt to changes made in response to the new coronavirus? We want to hear how it has affected you and the children you care for. Reach the reporter at maryjo.pitzl@arizonarepublic.com. You also can follow her on Twitter @maryjpitzl.

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