Three weeks ago, Gabriela Naccarato got a new job. The caseworker, who helps find homes for children in Hillsborough County, became a full-time "family-finder." Instead of placing foster kids with strangers, she was asked to search for relatives who might be willing to raise them. Her work is part of a federal effort to put kids with family members who care for them instead of with strangers.

What a concept.  It's been seven years since an Urban Institute study criticized child welfare agencies for ignoring fathers.  It found that, when children were taken from single mothers due to abuse or neglect, about half the time no effort was made to locate the father.  Children were channeled directly into the foster care system.  Of course, that's far more expensive than placing children with their actual parents when that's possible.  And, unless a parent is truly abusive or dangerously neglectful, children tend to have better outcomes when raised by their parents than by strangers, even well-meaning ones.

This article reports on the new federal effort to connect children with parents or other relatives instead of plowing them into foster care (St. Petersburg Times, 11/16/09).  It also reports on the results of that program in one family, the Navarretes.

Twenty or more years ago, Mario Navarrete moved to Texas from Mexico.  He worked construction doing roofing work, which took him to whatever part of the country had work.  He married and fathered four sons, but his wife divorced him.  She also had him arrested on apparently trumped-up charges of burglary for removing his own possessions from their house.  By the time he got out of jail, his wife and four sons had vanished.

For over a decade, never saw them or heard from them or his ex-wife.  But late one night a couple of weeks ago, his telephone rang.  It was Gabriella Naccarato who said,

"Hello, this is Gabby from Tampa. I'm a caseworker for foster care. I think I might have two of your sons."

He was the 51st Mario Navarrete she had called in Texas and Kentucky.

He told the caseworker, "I always prayed to God, every night: I want to see them again. I had only their pictures. I looked at them all the time."

So after work Friday — after coming home to hug his 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son — Mario climbed into his Ford pickup and headed for Florida.

He drove all night, through the next morning. More than 800 miles later, on Saturday afternoon, he met the caseworker. And saw photos of his boys. They were so big, so handsome. When could he see them?

Mario reunited with his two sons who were still young enough to be in foster care.  The other two had "aged out" of the foster care system, meaning that they were 18 or older.  But Emilio and Xavier, though teenagers, were still in the system.  Mario reunited with them, but he also located Gabriel who had aged out.  He drove to the east coast of Florida and picked him up.

Just how the three younger boys ended up in foster care isn't clear.  It seems like the unnamed mother didn't have much to do with them, not providing food or even coming to pick up Gabriel when he was released from juvenile detention.  Maybe she was at the end of her rope trying to deal with teenage boys without a father.  Whatever the case, it looks like Emilio and Xavier saw foster care as their best alternative and did what they needed to do to get out of their mother's care and into the system.

What happens next isn't clear.  Mario is the boys' dad, but he's got to pass background checks to be allowed to take them back with him to Kentucky.

But however the next chapter reads, it's almost certain to be more sensible than the ones preceding it.  Surely that's the point of the "family finder" program of which Gabriela Naccarato is a part.  If a father wants to - and is capable of - caring for his children, it makes sense to allow him to do that rather than dumping still more children on a foster care system that time and again fails the most vulnerable members of our society.
 

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 29th, 2009 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Child Protective Services/Child Welfare System, Foster Care. You can trackback from your own site.