Sunday, January 04, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EDITORIAL: Sensible adoption decision

Court rules child in foster care must be allowed to see her siblings

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled last week that a teenage girl in foster care has a right to learn the whereabouts of her three younger sisters.

The state Division of Child and Family Services had flouted an earlier court order that a visitation plan be established before final adoption and that the girls be given unlimited unsupervised visitation with one another, the court found.

The case involves four girls who became wards of the state in April 1998. The oldest is identified in the Supreme Court opinion as "A.M.S." and now is about 14.

"Because their mother's drug addiction prevented her from fulfilling her maternal obligations, A.M.S., then 9, had assumed the role of mother to the three younger girls, then 5 years, 4 years and an infant," according to the ruling. "As a result, A.M.S. felt, and continues to feel, a strong bond with her siblings."

The mother's parental rights were terminated in July 2000. One of the girls was reunited with her biological father in Sept. 2000. Two of the girls, including the youngest, were adopted by separate families in Nov. 2001.

According to the ruling, a Family Court judge ordered in September 2000 that a visitation plan be established before final adoption and that the girls be given unlimited unsupervised visitation. But, "The girls' adult caregivers, including DCFS, failed to comply with this order," the high court found.

Deputy state Attorney General Linda Anderson argues the ruling could discourage those who want to adopt children.

Well, yes. An adoptive parent, knowing the child in question has siblings, may expect that the brothers or sisters may want to keep in touch. When did the state of Nevada decide the bonds of family loyalty and affection should be presumed a destructive influence on any child's development?

In a unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice Deborah Agosti, the court said Child and Family Services, as the teenager's custodian, "has a continuing obligation to act in her best interests. ... The tragedy of DCFS's conduct is that it places all of these girls in the position of knowing that they have sisters but not being able to locate them until the girls reach the age of majority."

The high court ordered Child and Family Services to turn over to the teenager's attorney the addresses of the younger sisters' adoptive parents for the limited purpose of serving the parents with a petition for sibling visitation.

Good. The mandate of the state's social workers is to keep families together, whenever possible. In what way is it inconsistent with that mandate to allow and encourage some mutual bonds between siblings, even in those cases where the last resort of adoption or foster care is finally employed?

Yet today's default setting seems, all too often, to lean toward high-handedness and secrecy -- even to the extent of requiring new legislation just to make it possible for a child to lay hands of parental medical records which could contain important information for the child's own health care.

This state Supreme Court ruling marks a partial step back toward a sensible level of openness.