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Foster care bill could allow for faster termination of parental rights - North Carolina Health News https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2019/08/27/foster-care-bill-allows-faster-parental-rights-termination/[8/28/2019 9:53:12 AM] and more research emphasizes the critical ages of 0 to 3, where bonding with caring, attentive adults helps to promote neurological development. Research is also showing how trauma during those years sets up children for a lifetime of psychological and physical challenges. Currently, the law favors family members over non-relative foster families, and once a child is in the state system, a hunt can ensue for a relative who’ll care for him or her. Chris Carr, an attorney with the Cumberland County Department of Social Services said that finding kin can be challenging. “We’d love to think that every time a case gets filed, that mom and dad will call all family members and say please come in. We’d love to tell you that the DSS is always able to find family members to bring them to the table at the first nonsecure hearing within the 7 days that statute requires,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. “But in the real world, sometimes even the relatives are somewhat reticent because they want to see the mother, the father or both do well and reunify.” Carr also detailed how it can be challenging to find relatives who live in other states and detailed the byzantine paperwork trail that can take months, at best, to permit an out-of-state to take custody of a child. Paula Reinhart, a clinical social worker from Wake County who supports the bill, told the judiciary committee this can be an injustice to the children, and to foster parents who care for the child in the interim, who may want to adopt. “To see a child who is three or four years year old… who has lived with a family who has loved that child, included that child, wanted to adopt that child, those are his parents, ripped out of the arms of those people, and sent screaming and crying to somebody he hardly knows, that everybody knows in the picture really cannot care for him, but there’s a blood connection and that’s all.” Lankford recalls her daughter months-old Marleigh screaming and crying too. Lankford was still abusing drugs and alcohol and struggling to parent when her father called child protective services after she stole her grandmother’s credit card.