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Foster care bill could allow for faster termination of parental rights - North Carolina Health News <br />https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2019/08/27/foster-care-bill-allows-faster-parental-rights-termination/[8/28/2019 9:53:12 AM] <br />Rachel Lankford’s daughter Marleigh spent several <br />years in foster care while Lankford pulled her life <br />together. Photo courtesy: Rachel Lankford <br />parent or parents often end up in the custody of county child protective services, especially if <br />they are deemed to be in danger of abuse of neglect. Those children go to foster care, <br />sometimes with family members, if they can be found. Often, foster care is with people who are <br />not kin, while the child welfare and family court systems grind their wheels. <br />Currently, there are about 11,000 children in North Carolina’s child welfare system, a number <br />that’s exploded in recent years as opioids have taken their toll throughout all tiers of society. <br />Sometimes the outcome is a “termination of parental rights,” a process that currently takes <br />several years. <br />House Bill 918 would create a provision to expedite that process to nine months, allowing foster <br />parents to have standing almost equal to family members, treating them as “nonrelative kin,” so <br />that they could petition for termination and expedite permanent placement of the child. <br />“Federal statute requires permanency within 18 <br />months and we have children who have been in the <br />system for five or six years,” said Karen McLeod, a <br />lobbyist and advocate for children’s and family <br />services. “These are young children who would be <br />deemed very adoptable, that have been in the system <br />for years and have families, foster families, and <br />adoptive families that are willing to adopt them.” <br />McLeod said that without termination of parental <br />rights, the children have been “languishing in the <br />system,” and she called the bill drafters’ concerns <br />valid. But she also worried about the process HB 918 <br />would establish, especially the speed of the <br />termination process and the short timelines to find a <br />willing relative to care for the child. <br />Growing brains <br />Both the bill’s supporters and opponents cite an <br />exploding body of research that points to the critical importance of early childhood years. More