How Michigan Policy to Preserve Families...

When the state took away Jackie Shaffer’s kids, it didn’t look like she would ever get them back.

Police had been called to her home repeatedly by angry neighbors. She lived with a series of abusive men, and her latest boyfriend beat her in front of her 3-year-old daughter and infant son.

Earlier efforts by the Department of Social Services to teach her parenting skills through its innovative Families First program had failed when she left the state.

But now she was back and, this time, the children were placed in foster care. When Shaffer failed to seek counseling, find a job or look for new housing, her social worker recommended her parental rights be terminated.

“It made me realize real life, and that my kids were more important to me than some guy,” Shaffer said recently, almost one year after her children, now 6 and 4, were returned. She also has daughters ages 1 and 2.

Shaffer’s family is together due to Michigan’s family preservation program, including the dogged efforts of Families First, which took over her case when the judge refused to terminate her rights.

The program gives parents one-on-one, in-home attention for up to six weeks. Caseworkers concentrate on only two families at time, and are available day and night. They have quick access to funds to put down a deposit on an apartment or buy a refrigerator.

Michigan’s efforts are acclaimed as a national model for saving families and reducing reliance on overburdened foster care systems.

Officials say 83% of the 13,000 families served by the program were able to stay together, accounting for a drop in foster care cases from 11,500 in 1991 to 10,800 today.

But critics say the program is flawed, taking its measure of success from keeping the family together, rather than the children’s well-being.

“Nobody cares about the kids. Nobody,” said Edith Carey, a teacher who was a foster parent for Shaffer’s oldest children. She and her husband passionately objected to their return.

Probate Judge John Unger of Antrim County was among several people telling state lawmakers at a hearing in April that Families First has endangered children’s lives.

Unger, a probate judge for 18 years, said the Department of Social Services has made protecting children a secondary goal to keeping families together and reducing foster-care expenses.

Susan Kelly, who has been director of the program since it began in 1988, calls the criticisms unfair.

“Our goal is to have the children live in safe homes,” she said. “We’re not about propagating abuse. We’re not about keeping families together at all costs.”

Cass County assistant prosecutor Scott Teter notes that Shaffer’s children are doing well in her home now and that no further allegations of abuse have been lodged. The judge who returned the children found no basis for claims that Shaffer beat, choked or burned them.

The Careys believe, however, that the children are still in danger. They remember the hot day in July, 1991, when the children came to live on their farm, where they stayed for more than two years.

Joey, 11 months old, weighed 17 pounds and cried whenever anyone opened the refrigerator. Brittney, almost 3, weighed 28 pounds and seldom talked, except to ask for “beer-pop” in her “ba-ba.”

“It was the saddest thing I ever went through,” said Tom Carey, a professor at Western Michigan University.

Shaffer, meanwhile, credits Families First with teaching her how to relate better to her kids and avoid abusive relationships.

“These people care,” she said. “They went out of their way to help me.”