DCF elects to die on that hill

I've passed on news of the Cuban custody drama in Miami in several posts below. Here's the latest.

I'll start with the DCF response and then back up.

Attorneys for the Department of Children & Families maintain that taking her from the Cubas household constitutes ``endangerment.''

The Cubas household is where a child alleged to be dependent lives with her sibling who has been adopted by the Cubas. Are you following so far? To remove a child from that one particular home would endanger her, according to DCF. Now here's the ruling that DCF was responding to:

A Cuban father fighting to remove his daughter from her Coral Gables foster family is a fit parent, a judge ruled Thursday -- but that doesn't mean the little girl at the center of the international custody dispute will return to the island with him.

Before a courtroom packed with reporters, attorneys, child-welfare advocates and therapists, Circuit Court Judge Jeri B. Cohen said the state failed to make its case that Rafael Izquierdo had neglected or abandoned his daughter.

The state failed to make its case. The father has not abandoned his child. His parental rights are fully intact. But DCF, which is in fact an enormous and powerful agency of the government of the State of Florida is taking the position (as it does very, very regularly) that it would endanger a child to leave the home of people who just happen to want the child.

By the way, that last comment is not meant to impugn the motives of the Cubas family. I don't know anything about their motives, and don't mean to taint them with the distate I've gained of many other foster parents from past cases.

My point is rather that DCF's response is positively chilling for any parent in Florida who may ever be accused of being a lesser parent than a different parent that the state government has declared to be better.

UPDATE: A different Herald article contains some excellent reporting and insights into what dependency defenders face every day:

Bruce A. Boyer, a law professor who heads Loyola University's children's law clinic in Chicago, called ''really, really scary'' the notion that a fit parent can be deprived of his child. ``Before a state can interfere with the relationship between a parent and child, it has to first establish that something has gone wrong.''
The Florida Department of Children & Families, together with the girl's court-appointed guardian ad litem, are asking Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen to forever strip Izquierdo of custody over his daughter by granting Joe and Maria Cubas permanent guardianship. They say the girl has so completely bonded with her half-brother and foster parents that separating from them now would endanger her emotionally.

That last sentence makes my blood boil. Claiming that DCF believes that it is wrong to remove children from people -- whether they are parental figures or just plain parents -- because the children are bonded with those people flies in the face of removal after removal after removal every day in this State. The harm that removal and placement of children in foster homes does to children is, I have to say, not a heavily weighted consideration in shelter hearings, and is not a consideration at all in typical internal DCF decisions whether or not to remove children.

'In this case, what it appears the state is seeking to do is create a new jurisprudence that focuses on potential harm to the child,'' Perlmutter said. ``It is very novel, and very untested.''
Advocates for carving out a robust framework of children's rights ''are trying to drive a wedge in the long-standing case law that derives from decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court that makes a parent's interest -- a fit parent's interest -- ultimate in the determination of custody,'' UM's Perlmutter said.
The legal intricacies almost certainly will make the new hearing a battle of experts. Those supporting the Cubas family will try to show that the girl is far too attached to both her 13-year-old half-brother and her foster parents to risk uprooting her. Those for Izquierdo will say that small children are resilient, and that the girl already is forging a new bond with her birth dad.

And how, exactly, will the court be able to deal with the abandoment that the child will feel when she becomes an adult and wonders why her father wasn't able to win at court? And why is it fair to make the assumption that the foster parents will never abandon the child or do anything to endanger her when DCF has failed to show that the real father has never done any such thing either? Be afraid of the implications of this case if the Cubas win. Be very afraid. Especially if you are a poor parent.

And finally from the story, here is a comment on something that I can assure you already does happen:

...the case raises the specter of ``giving judges unfettered power to decide that a child is better off being raised by some other family. A judge could simply decide a child would be happier in a nice house in the suburbs, with a swing set and a puppy -- and maybe better schools.''