Their kids were taken away, so they help others keep theirs
Program guides parents through court system
When Jovani Trevino and his wife walked into the Durango Juvenile Court in January, they had no idea what to expect.
Their kids had been removed by the state Department of Child Safety, they were told they had already missed important court dates, and they didn’t know what would happen next.
It was learn-as-you-go. The couple met their court-appointed attorney for the first time in court. They listened hard to the legal lingo typical of court proceedings. They chafed at what they said were unfounded allegations of abuse and neglect against them.
“We didn’t know how it worked,” Trevino said of the juvenile-court process. “Something more than nothing would have been helpful.”
There isn’t much available to guide parents as they enter court to start the process to get their kids back — a journey that can last two years or more.
“Everybody seems to have someone advocating for them in a case except the parent,” said Karin Kline, director of child-welfare initiatives for the Family Involvement Center, a nonprofit that focuses on parents.
The center tries to fill that gap by dispatching “been there done that” moms and dads to aid parents newly arriving in juvenile court.
But the Parent Ally program runs out of money at the end of the month.
Kline said the center will keep the program going while it searches for new financial backing, but that support has not yet been secured.
At the Mesa Juvenile Court, Lindsey Shine is a fixture in the tiled hallways that lead to a warren of courtrooms.
She’s a hybrid of court regulars.
“Everybody seems to have someone advocating for them in a case except the parent.” Karin Kline,
Director of child-welfare initiatives for the Family Involvement Center
With her bulging file folder, badge and large bag, she fits in with the attorneys and DCS case managers who scurry between courtrooms.
But with her casual dress, she could be confused with some of the parents who walk in, uncertainty written all over their faces.
Shine knows that look.
“As a parent having no contact with it (the system) before, you don’t know how big it is, how small it is,” said Shine. She grasps what parents are facing, and her own tortured experience with the system offers an opening with the people she approaches.
Her job, and that of the two other allies currently on staff, is to help parents navigate the system and develop the self-sufficiency to ask questions and seek help.
“For a very long time, I was very adversarial,” Shine said of her own threeyear journey to regain custody of her children. “I figured out the hard way how to do things the right way.”
She was drug-addicted, homeless, walking barefoot down Mesa’s Main Street when she lost her two kids, and risked the loss of her unborn child.
By sharing her story of how she got her kids back — it wasn’t fast, but it happened — she finds common ground with parents.
“I’ve had people start crying when they find out I had a case and I’m here to help them,” she said.
Support in court
That help comes in many forms: Parent allies connect people with services from counseling to housing, invite them to classes with other parents working through the juvenile-dependency process and sit in on a parent’s court hearing.
Just having a supporter in the courtroom can have a positive influence on a juvenile judge, said attorney Steve Kupiszewski. Usually there is no one standing with a parent other than their attorney, he said.
Kline said that lack of support is what prompted creation of the program four years ago. It was started by Maricopa County Juvenile Court officials; management of the program shifted to the Family Involvement Center last year.
Unlike the attorneys, child advocates and foster-care review boards that are staples of the child-welfare system,
About this report
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Kline said, parents are unfamiliar with how the system works.
“They don’t work there; they just get thrown in there,” she said. And while all parents have the right to an attorney, the lawyer’s job is to deal with the legal proceedings, not all of the other requirements that come with the attempt to reunify families.
‘Don’t give up’
Brandon Corbitt usually works at the Durango Court in southwest Phoenix.
Like Shine, his experience with DCS helps him connect with parents. He was in jail when his wife’s drug use caused her to lose custody of their daughter to what was then Child Protective Services. When he got out, he called the agency and asked what he needed to do to get his girl back.
It wasn’t easy: He was living in a halfway house, traveling by bike and bus, trying to hold down a job while doing daily drug tests at two different agencies.
But he got sober, jumped through the “hoops” the system required of him and regained custody of his daughter five years ago. His message to the parents he meets is they can do it, too.
On a late spring afternoon, he shared his story with a man who had come to the court complex looking for housing help. The man, who did not want to be identified, said he needed housing so he could regain custody of his 2-year-old son.
But Brandon told the man his first duty should be to get sober.
“You can get a house, you can get a job, but you’re not going to get your kid back,” he said. He urged the man to do an in-patient program to deal with his drug addiction, even if it meant he wouldn’t have a chance of seeing his son for weeks.
“You can sacrifice 30 days without seeing your kid, or you can sacrifice the rest of your life of not seeing your kid,” Corbitt said, citing his own experience.
The man liked the suggestion. But he, like another couple Corbitt met at court that day, was never heard from again.
“It’s a percentage thing,” Corbitt said. “Just don’t give up.”
Moving beyond anger
The allies emphasize the importance of doing what the court and DCS ask parents to do. That message doesn’t always sell well with parents who are furious over the loss of their kids.
There’s always a point where parents rail against the injustice, as they see it, of the system, Kline said. But the point of the program, and the classes it offers, is to get parents to focus on their case.
She’s heard allies tell parents how they also initially refused to play along,
only to realize it got them nowhere. One ally quieted a complaining parent by noting it wasn’t DCS who put a crack pipe in the parent’s mouth. The parent gave in, went to the classes she was told to and actually found value in them, Kline said.
Allies will go to meetings with parents, to appointments, and even sit with them in classes, if needed.
“Having someone walk in that door with you can be very useful,” Kline said.
Kids come home
There aren’t statistics yet to measure whether the program has been effective. But a similar program in Washington state has shown promising results, according to a study done for the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.
For example, the 2016 study found parents in the program did better at complying with court-ordered plans, had better attendance at court hearings and increased their chances at being reunified with their children. Outcomes were particularly promising for mothers in the program.
In Maricopa County, Lisa Flowers credited the peersupport program for success in her DCS case.
She raced to the stage during a recent event celebrating reunified families, bounding onto the platform with one of her children trailing her.
Flowers said DCS didn’t provide her any meaningful services after she lost custody of her three kids. But her parent ally, Lindsey Shine, pointed her in the right direction and connected her with programs that made a difference.
“I got a new case manager and now I’m just flying,” said Flowers, who regained custody of her three children.