Foster care asks caregivers to perform an almost impossible task: Love the child as your own, but relinquish the youth without delay or protest when social workers say the time has come.
The anguish sometimes associated with such removals came into sharp focus last week when social workers removed a 6-year-old Santa Clarita girl who is part Choctaw, from her longtime foster parents.
Across the nation, newspapers and television broadcasts displayed images of her distressed caregivers saying goodbye on the family's driveway as they were surrounded by hundreds of supporters who protested the government's decision to place the girl with relatives.
Some caregivers avoid the heartbreak by never bonding in the first place. For those who do, relinquishing custody is becoming harder as average stays in foster homes grow longer due to crushing court delays and the often belated discovery that family members exist to take the child in.
"L.A. County has big problems in its foster care system and a real lack of accountability," she said. "There is no question that there has not been a great deal of attentiveness to the consequences for children, and I think it's a violation of the law and constitutional principles."
Los Angeles County relies on about 80 retired social workers to perform family searches for the county's 16,000 foster youth, and the work is tedious and time consuming because the legal system gives preference to anyone who is related to the child through blood, marriage or affinity â including close family friends and neighbors.
Philip Browning, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, said he agreed with Heimov that the heartache for everyone could have been avoided if his department had the resources to search for family from the onset.
"We need to have more staff or a better way to find potential family caregivers from the very start," Browning said.
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