Judge set to terminate parental rights of Orthodox Jewish mother for neglect

The following was posted on The Jewish World:

Thank you @mominisrael for sending it in my direction. I wanted to offer some of my thoughts and insights regarding portions of this article. The System is complicated and there are some gaping holes in this story. My comments are in red italics.

Judge set to terminate parental rights of Orthodox Jewish mother for neglect

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Editor

(This is a follow-up to a Marc Gronich story on the front page of our Feb. 24, 2011 edition entitled, “Who can best raise these two foster children? Troy Jewish Community has opposing thoughts”-Ed.)

By MARC GRONICH
TROY–A Rensselaer County Family Court judge is set to strip an Orthodox Jewish woman of her parental rights for the second time, due to neglect. The woman signed a document agreeing to the termination of parental rights for her daughter, according to court papers.

While parents can go to trial and fight to maintain their rights, the termination of parental rights is decided by a judge regardless of whether a parent agrees to it or not. In today's foster care system, each state limits the amount of time a child can spend in foster care before the rights of the parents are considered for termination. A child becomes free for adoption when a parent's rights are terminated.

While this might not have the familiar ring of the typical Orthodox Jewish family situation, the mother, Tara Silver, of South Lake Ave., Troy, is a known heroin addict who lives in a home that has been condemned by the city Bureau of Code Enforcement since July of last year. A recent visit found the house is still being occupied.

Born Addicted
Silver, 39, has two children in Troy and three children who live elsewhere. Both of the Troy children were born addicted to heroin. James Smith, was born January 23, 2009 and the second child, Chana Silver, was born June 25, 2010.

Silver has declared in court papers that she wants the children to be brought up in an Orthodox Jewish home. Despite the mother’s wishes, the two Jewish children have been kept in the foster care of two non-Jewish families in Rensselaer County since they were born and are waiting to be adopted.

"Despite the mother's wishes" is problematic here. It insinuates that the System was in the wrong and should have been able to place the children in an OJ home. Both children were heroine addicted and as the article continues to explain, have special needs. When children are placed in foster care, they are placed within the same county as the parent as the initial plan for the System is always supposed to be reunification. The case manager, court, visitations etc. are all county based. It is unlikely that the Troy area has a plethora of licensed OJ foster parents with an ability to care for two children with special needs. It is possible, even likely, that the System would have made calls to OJ foster parents in the area if there are any.

Personally, I live within walking distance of four synagogues, three of them are OJ. I am on the "Jew" list in my state which means if a Jewish child needs a home, they know that I am a licensed Jewish foster parent. With all of the Jews in my town, I know of not one single OJ foster family. Not one. Troy has far fewer OJs than my town. If this were Brooklyn, the case would have been turned over to Ohel much earlier on and the mother's wishes would have been very likely granted. Only when the children became free for adoption was the System able to comply with the wishes of the mother and move them to a county where an OJ family was available.

“Foster children who are siblings or half siblings must not be unnecessarily separated,” according to state law. The situation has caused a tremendous amount of consternation for the mother. “This is in violation of two sections of state Domestic Relations Law,” says Silver’s attorney, F. Stanton Ackerman.

The System really does try to keep siblings together. Aside from it being in the best interest of the children and of course, what biological parents want, it is utilitarian for the System workers. I have gotten calls for twins, a set of four brothers, etc. Our first foster children were two sisters and a brother. While some homes can accommodate up to four children (the law allows no more than four per household), many foster homes are licensed for fewer or are simply unwilling to care for two special needs children at a time. Remember, taking care of children with special needs is quite demanding if you want to do it right. We foster parents can't quit our jobs to care for the children in our care. It is not like it comes with a salary. It comes with a stipend that is less than my part time housekeeper makes. Those families who are able to care for multiple children with special needs are hard to come by. They are very, very special and/or very, very fortunate that they can afford to foster as a full time job. Unfortunately, this leads to far less than ideal placements where siblings are often separated.

No one wants this, but until more families willing to foster multiple children with special needs at once step up and get their licenses, this is the way it is. When a System placement person needs to find a home for a sibling group, they consult a computerized database. Places with multiple open beds are called first. If they can't keep the children together, only then do they go on to the less than ideal plan. Often this has to be done within hours.

Ackerman, an Albany attorney, contends that repeated requests over the past year by Tara Silver to see her children were allegedly ignored by opposing counsel, Theresa Beaudoin, and the Rensselaer County Department of Social Services in an attempt to build a case for abandonment. Attorney Doug Broda, was brought into the case by county officials and is being paid with taxpayer dollars. Broda and Beaudoin did not return repeated calls requesting comment on this case.

If this is true, then it is completely inexcusable and unacceptable. However, I am not so quick to believe it just because the article says so. Ms. Silver has three older children in addition to the two discussed in this article, her history with heroine and having now five children she has been unable to care for (with the last two being criminally endangered) makes me want to hear from all sides before assuming the System is to blame here. The child's case manager and child's law guardian are the ones responsible for ensuring that the visits are arranged. Folks working on the case will also not comment to the media. That would be entirely inappropriate.

Signed Judicial Surrender
Much of Silver’s problems began in 2010 when she signed a judicial surrender in front Rensselaer County Family Court Judge Catherine Cholakis. Silver contends at that time she “was under duress, had inadequate counsel, was under the influence of drugs and was threatened with arrest.”

If one cannot afford an attorney, one will be assigned to you. Of course some attorneys are better than others, but the article can only assert her opinion about her attorney, there was apparently no judge that overturned anything as a result of the "inadequacy" of her counsel. Again, while in hindsight she may regret her decision to sign the paperwork, those rights were on their road to termination by a judge. These are children numbers 4 and 5. The precedence is a good predictor of any trial outcome.

It was under these conditions, Silver says in court documents that Cholakis accepted Silver’s surrender of her son, James Smith, who was then put in the custody of a Troy couple. Silver says after the fact she wanted the surrender set aside but the process for the termination of parental rights was too far along. At the time the baby was taken away, he was in the temporary custody of his grandmother, Carolyn Reed, while the elder James Smith was in prison. The elder Smith has been in and out of prison several times.

Grandmother Wants Custody Of Boy
Meanwhile, an appeal is currently underway, by Smith senior, and his mother, Reed, to retain custody of the younger Smith. “I’m upset about it,” Reed told The Jewish World exclusively. “I’m upset because I was treated terribly. I was lied to. I was told by the social worker that no Orthodox Jew would want a biracial baby. She said it a couple of times. I want the baby to be brought up in the Jewish faith.”

If that was the case, it was completely inexcusable. I have no doubt that there are many OJ families who could care less if a child is biracial and the ones who foster are generally more open to challenges of "different" than your average folks even within the same community.

Court documents reveal that on May 18, 2009, a DSS caseworker paid a visit to Reed’s First Street apartment. According to the report, “The apartment reeked of marijuana smoke, although the baby was not present. There was no crib in the apartment, no diapers, baby food, clothing, toys or anything else to indicate that the child had ever resided there. Reed told the caseworker the baby was visiting relatives down the street.”

Tara Silver’s parental rights to James Smith were terminated effective Friday, April 15, 2011. Smith had a bris, which was provided by Rabbi Eliyahu Shain, a mohel in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who traveled to Troy for the ceremonial cutting at Beth Tephilah synagogue in Troy at the urging of Leible Morrison, the spiritual leader of the synagogue.

Daughter Goes To Brooklyn Couple
Documents signed May 1, 2011, show that Tara Silver will voluntarily surrender guardianship of her daughter to a Brooklyn couple in June.

A New York City-based child care advocacy agency, OHEL Children’s Home and Family Services, trained and certified the Brooklyn couple to be considered for adopting Chana Silver. The couple, Ayela Nir, 26, and Meir Krispine, 33, operate a gift, novelty, and souvenir store in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. They have been married for six years and are observant Jews through the Chabad-Lubavitch sect.

While not directly commenting about this case, David Mandel, the chief executive officer of OHEL said, “the training is a multi-session comprehensive training of many hours. It provides information on formal protocols involved in being a foster care provider in NYS with all the regulatory requirements. It provides you with information about how to deal with routine and emergency situations involving unusual circumstances with a child’s behavior. It provides you with protocols about how to deal with visitations by the biological parents, including the court-ordered visitations or any type of visitations. Some of the children come into care with special needs and physical or emotional but the general rule of thumb is that you respect the child for whoever he or she is, including their culture or heritage or religion.”

It is wonderful that this family will be able to adopt this little girl and the biological mother's wishes for her daughter to be raised as an OJ could be granted.

Relationship With Mother
It appears the couple knows what is ahead for them if the adoption is approved by Cholakis. The couple reveals in court papers that they are “eager and willing to adopt children of all needs, including children born with drug dependency and children with a multi-racial background.” The couple is also “willing to engage in whatever therapy is necessary for the healthy development of any child placed in their home.” They live three blocks from two medical facilities and four blocks from Kings County Hospital, which offers a pediatric outpatient health care clinic.

The Brooklyn couple maintains they will keep an ongoing relationship between Chana, her mother and brother as well as pay for all costs associated with maintaining the contact.

On March 16, 2010, Nir and Krispine completed the necessary training course for adoption and on December 8, 2010, Judge Harold Lynch of the Kings County Family Court in Brooklyn certified the pair as qualified adoptive parents. This certification clears the way for the couple to receive physical custody of any child.

In court documents submitted by Ackerman, Nir is a former preschool teacher and has experience with children with special needs. Her “experience includes caring for children with severe learning disabilities, developmental issues, autism, attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, severe reflux issues and potty training delays,” according to the documents before the judge.

Nir and Krispine are also committing themselves to maintain regular sibling visits between Chana and James as well as maintain the travel necessary to ensure the children develop and maintain a relationship.

But Ackerman, Silver’s attorney, contends “it is unlikely that a long term, consistent and close relationship will be developed between the children.”

That is true, but completely up to the adoptive parents. CD has 3 or 4 half siblings. The System is set up to the do the best it can in very tragic situations. There is nothing wonderful about CD's mother's inability to care for her two children or her father's disinterest in stepping up to even try with his three or four. Everything that has happened is plan B.

I hope for Ms. Silver's five children's sakes, that they are all in safe and loving homes. I am sorry to know that they have been separated and that not all of them were able to be placed in OJ homes as their biological mother had wished. However, I also hope that Ms. Silver takes responsibility for her part in this as this started with her, not System workers or inadequate counsel. I hope that she gets help and does not have any more children until a time in her life when she can care for them.