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“Nobody Should Have To Make This Decision”

“Nobody should have to make this decision” said Kathi Chandler. Please read this heartbreaking Atlanta Journal Constitution story about the POAs deciding to give up their son to the state in order for him to get needed therpay and care.

Kathi Chandler and her husband, Jim, are college educated professionals. They live in a quiet, middle class suburb of Atlanta. Kathi is an information technology manager while Jim is an inventory accounting manager. The Chandlers have five kids aged 13 to 2.

Among those children are eight year old twin boys, Jeff and Tim. The twins were born premature and have cerebral palsy. Today, Tim is doing well, at grade level in school and able to walk a little bit on his own. His brother Jeff, however, began showing autistic behavior at around age three.

Jeff’s autism worsened. As the AJC reports:

At 3 he began showing signs of autism. "He'd put his hand in his mouth and bang repeatedly on his wrist," Kathi said. "He'd echo back whatever you'd say."

Gradually Jeff's behavior got worse. By the time he was 7, he could no longer tolerate crowds. At a baseball game, he repeatedly bit himself and ripped the skin on his arm. He moaned and screamed. At a Cub Scout picnic where Tim was to receive an award, Kathi had to sit in the car with Jeff after his moaning disrupted the ceremony.

The Chandlers eventually stopped going out as a family…

In the past year, her son Jeff's behavior had become uncontrollable because of his autism. The 8-year-old had started to bite and scratch himself until he bled. He was biting and knocking down his 2-year-old sister, hitting and biting his brothers or anyone else within reach. Then there was the bookcase incident when he fell in the middle of the night, cutting his head open…

The Chandlers needed help caring for Jeff as he poses a danger both to himself and to his two year old sister. They went looking for that help.

A large box of blue file folders documents the Chandlers' yearlong odyssey seeking help --- the letters Kathi wrote, the names and numbers of organizations she called, the rejections.

First they became excited about a state-of-the-art treatment program for autism. But they couldn't afford the cost --- $1,800 a week --- and insurance wouldn't cover it.

A few months later they heard about the Georgia Academy for the Blind in Macon, where Jeff could board during the week and autism and special needs experts could work with him day and night. "I said, 'How do we get our son here?' " Kathi said.

But school officials in Fulton County, where Jeff had been attending special education classes, refused to allow him to transfer to Macon, saying they were meeting his needs, at least his educational ones, school records show.
"I said, 'But there's more to it than that,' " Kathi said. " 'He comes home, and we don't know what we're doing.' "

They also had heard about another program, funded through the state, that might pay for nursing care so the Chandlers could keep Jeff at home. Kathi's hopes rose when staff at the Fulton mental health board contacted her and, after a two-hour interview, told her they would recommend the Chandlers for funding under the Mental Retardation Waiver Program.

"I was excited to think I'd finally found the key to unlock the door," she said.
After several weeks, she began leaving messages for people who never called back.

Eventually a woman from the mental health board told Kathi that her son had been placed on a waiting list.

What she didn't tell Kathi was that nearly 4,000 others were waiting, too.

One incident convinced the Chandlers that they had to do something:

The breaking point came last spring. While his family slept, Jeff climbed the bookcase in his room and fell backward. They found him the next morning in a pool of blood.

"We finally said, we're not doing what he needs," Kathi said. "We're not doing anything for the family. We've got to do something."

The Chandlers became aware of one other State program that would provide help for Jeff. There was a problem qualifying for the program:

The only way the state of Georgia could help her and her husband, Jim, was for them to participate in a legal charade. They would have to agree to be declared unfit parents, then watch their son be turned over to the child welfare system as if he were an abused child rather than a beloved one.

If declared to be unfit parents, the Chandlers would have no further legal rights with regard to their son. They would no longer be permitted to participate in decisions regarding Jeff. They could visit him only if, when, and under the conditions the state allowed. Once declared unfit as parents by a court, that label would follow them forever. If they were unfit parents for Jeff, what about their other four kids? If they moved to a different state, they could not take Jeff with them.

The Chandlers decided to give Jeff up in order to help him. The decision to accept a court designation that they were unfit parents and to give up the legal relationship of parent to their son was hard:

Inside the courtroom, the 38-year-old mother rose from the defense table and, standing alone, faced the judge. Her voice trembling, Kathi explained they had nowhere else to turn.

The judge sympathized. But Georgia law does not allow Juvenile Court judges to order specific care for a child in need. They can only find a child "deprived" or "delinquent" and order him into the child welfare or juvenile justice system.
So the judge declared the Chandlers --- successful professionals and the loving parents of five --- unfit parents. Like a modern-day King Solomon, she severed the parents' ties to their child. They were no longer his parents. The state was...

Kathi broke down in court that day, but the judge could see the resolve in the mother's face. "It was devastating," said the judge..

Kathi drove herself home that day, crying most of the way.

Agreeing to be labeled as “unfit parents” and agreeing to the termination of their parental rights with regard to Jeff was an act of courage, love and desperation. It was a decision that no fit parent should ever have to face. It may also have been a terrible mistake.

Today she wonders how they could have been so naive. "My husband always felt that because we initiated it, we could go in and change it," she said.

But once they got that train moving, there was no stopping it. What was initially a legal fiction would become their reality. Within days, the child protection agency took steps to remove Jeff from his home, sending Kathi a form letter used to open child abuse investigations. "I am writing to inform you that our agency has received a complaint regarding you and your family," the letter said…
She still has a hard time grasping what they did.

"Our choice was to keep him home and give him our love, or give him what he needs," she recently said. "We basically chose his needs over our love."

People have quit asking her where Jeff is, but she sometimes wonders what they think.

"I don't know how people could understand," she said. "Because they haven't lived it, they don't know what we went through on a day-to-day basis, the roller coaster of trying to get help and thinking we would and our hopes being dashed."

Lately she has begun to worry they may never be able to undo what they've done. Her employer of 17 years has talked about moving her back to Ohio.
She asked the child welfare agency what would happen if they had to move. Could they get Jeff back? "They said, 'We don't know. You've been found unfit,' "Kathi said.

Not everyone down the line had been clued into the charade. The first caseworker assigned by the agency had been sympathetic. But the second was used to dealing with child abusers. When she heard the family had visited their son at the foster home, she told them that would have to stop. Child welfare policy prohibits it.

Rather, she said, they'd be restricted to a one-hour supervised visit each month at the agency's office, just like everyone else on her caseload.

"I don't consider myself a child abuser," Kathi said. "I guess I was pretty stupid to think that because we'd chosen this route, that we wouldn't be held to the same rules."

The state pays $170 per day for Jeff to be in therapeutic foster care. That money would have gone a long way towards providing the type of in-home assitance that Jeff and his family needed and which would have kept a family together. The decision the Chandlers faced was imposed by a set of laws that were not designed for the situation. There was no need to force that choice. The state should have had the option to allow the Chandler family to remain together while still providing the same monetary support. The choice the Chandlers were forced to made is far too common:

No one tracks how many parents in Georgia have given up their children. But nationwide, parents handed over an estimated 3,680 children to child welfare agencies in 2001 for the sole purpose of getting them mental health treatment, according to the General Accounting Office, the research arm of Congress.

Rigid rules designed to protect deprived or abused children simply are not appropriate for families desperately trying to cope with a child’s autism. What is needed is for law makers to enact legislation that permits flexibility for families with autistic children. No family should ever be forced into a choice between providing a child with a loving family or appropriate care and therapy.

Georgia law does not allow Juvenile Court judges to order specific care for a child in need. They can only find a child "deprived" or "delinquent" and order him into the child welfare or juvenile justice system…

The real commentary in this state is the terrible condition of mental health services for children," said Fulton Juvenile Court Judge Sanford Jones…

Fulton Juvenile Court Judge Nina Hickson said she would prefer not to have had to make that ruling (that the Chandler’s were unfit parents and that Jeff was a deprived child). "It is like this concept of legal fiction," Hickson said. "In this instance, you have parents who, because of their great love and concern for this child, are having to give up their legal rights to this child because it's the only way for him to get the care he needs."

The legal fiction was necessary only because the the Georgia General Assembly failed to enact laws to address the Chandler's plight. The truth is that Jeff needs both love and therapy. Forcing parents to choose between the two is an outrage. A law forcing such a choice benefits no one. It is not in Jeff’s interests to be separated from his family. It is cruel to force Kathi and Jim Chandler to be labeled as “unfit parents” in order to secure the help their son needs. If the state is going to pay the $170 per day for therapeutic foster care anyway, it is no greater burden for that money to be spent to keep the family together rather than forcing it apart.

Requiring a rigid application of laws designed to protect children from neglect and abuse to force the breakup of a loving family is senseless. That story just breaks my heart.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at March 15, 2004 12:26 PM | TrackBack