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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 />needs to be the last thing we look at for children.” <br />Lankford has had custody of Marleigh for several years now, and she said that the hope of <br />reunifying with her was one of the things that kept her going, even as she learned to love and <br />forgive herself. <br />“If reunification had never been put on the table for Marleigh, I could honestly say that I’d be in <br />a casket, buried right now,” she said. “If you take away anything that I have the will to live for, <br />then why am I here?” <br />Jamie Hamlett, a DSS attorney from Alamance County, noted that parents have rights <br />enshrined in the Constitution, and that if a child is not being abused or neglected, the state has <br />to tread carefully as it intrudes on families. <br />“The parent doesn’t have to prove that they can parent as well as or better than a foster parent. <br />They have to prove that they can meet a minimal level of care,” Hamlett said. “If you say ‘Okay, <br />we’re going to allow this foster family or anyone to file a [termination of parental rights],’ you still <br />have to develop the case and prove the grounds by clear, cogent and convincing evidence to <br />terminate that parent’s rights.” <br />Carr pointed that the foster care system is not a simply pipeline to adoption, but rather a <br />system intended to be a safe and nurturing haven for kids with troubled families. <br />“I have said to many of them, ‘I could not do what you do,’ because when they take the role on <br />of a foster parent, they are trained that they’re taking care of that child and making it child <br />healthy. But there’s a strong chance that it’s going to be returned to a parent or family,” he said. <br />“That’s a hard thing for a foster parent. <br />“I don’t know that I could do it, and God bless them. And I understand why they feel this way. <br />But that’s the role that they have.” <br />Lankford said she’s doing her best now that she’s been reunited with Marleigh. She’s been <br />clean for four years. She’s a counselor at Horizons. She keeps in touch with the foster parents <br />who cared for daughter when she was unable. This week, Marleigh starts kindergarten. <br />She said she wanted to be a mother when she was high on drugs, but she didn’t know how,