FIGHTING FOR OUR CHILDREN – AND NOW FOR YOURS

(Article published in HWW Jan-Feb 2007)

by Tracey Carter

After winning her own battle to regain her children, Tracey Carter is now on staff at the Child Welfare Organizing project helping other parents.

Having children in foster care and being in a shelter is not easy, well, at least for me it was not. Because of drugs, my two youngest children were taken in July of 2000. Immediately, me and my husband, we went into a drug program. It took a month before we actually saw them but we both knew what we had to do to get them back home.

We were staying with his sister in Manhattan but we needed our own space in order for the kids to be returned to us, so after a couple of months we decided to go into the shelter system. Being that it was just the two of us we had to go to the couples shelter. It was not bad, but our weekends with the children had to stop because no kids were allowed in the facility, at least not to spend the night. When we were at his sister’s, we had weekends. Now it went back to just Saturday’s unsupervised visit. We got our trial discharge in April 2002. We fought hard and we accomplished a lot. My husband had already graduated from his program and was working and, for myself, I had graduated in April 2002 but I had six month’s aftercare which was completed in October 2002.

They still held on to the kids. Now it was housing that was the issue. We kept telling them that we need the kids in order for us to get the apartment size for a family of four. So we continued to fight for the return of our children. I started getting frustrated all over again until my TANF worker got an attorney for us. We met in September and in October our children came home to us the day I completed the program.

I think it is sad how they come up with so many things for you not to get your children home, even though you’ve done everything there is to do and all they can come up with is inadequate housing. Finally the kids did come to us in the shelter. All they had to do was transfer us into a Tier II shelter where we lived together until we moved into our own apartment. We have a three bedroom. It is nice. It is home. But I will never forget the very long two years it took when it could have been done before that if they had helped us in the beginning. At the shelter they knew that the system’s goal was to return children to their parents. Why would they keep us apart so long? So many questions with too little answers!

After the children were returned to us, I stayed home with them for a year. I heard from my attorney about the Child Welfare Organizing Project. I did a 6 month training program and I was assigned to the Highbridge Community Life Center as a parent organizer. We’re there to guide parents involved in the child welfare system. We do trainings to teach parents their rights. We have support groups and we go to court with them. We help them control their frustration and focus on what’s the real problem – to understand what led to the child’s being taken and what they need to do to get them back.

I wish I had known about the Child Welfare Organizing Project when I was going through all that.

___________________

Parents living in the Highbridge area of the South Bronx who need help or want to learn more about the Child Welfare Organizing Project should call (718) 293-4352 x24 and ask for Rosa Rosado. Parents in any other part of the Bronx or any of the other boroughs of NYC should call (212) 348-3000 and ask for Teresa Bachiller.