Every Adolescent Deserves a Parent

• Author: Dale Margolin
• Position: Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Director, Family Law Clinic, University of Richmond School of Law
• Pages: 417-435

EVERY ADOLESCENT DESERVES A PARENT

DALE MARGOLIN*

I. INTRODUCTION

My twenty-year old client, Leo,1 needed a parent—not a mentor, a big

brother, a best friend, or a tutor, although he would have welcomed those

as well. Leo was approaching the age when he would be released from

foster care and on his own, so we brainstormed about resources to help

with the transition. He mentioned that he was extremely close to a friend’s

father. “I know he cares about me a lot,” Leo told me. “Actually, he has

said he loves me. But he is still just someone else’s dad. If I mess up, he

feels bad, but it doesn’t really matter to him. His life is not tied to mine.”

In one stream of consciousness, Leo summarized why so many

“permanency plans” for adolescents are not permanent at all and why

adoptions of older children can be unstable. There is a difference between

a resource and a parent.2 Although a parent does not have to be biological

or adoptive,3 a parent must have a stake in the child.4

This article argues that all adolescents, indeed all human beings,

deserve at least one parent—one person who takes the good with the bad

because that person’s life is intertwined with the child’s. The child matters

to the parent in a way that a friend, nephew, or foster child may not. Child

welfare professionals must never lose sight of this principle when they

recruit, train, and maintain parents for adolescents. The parent can be

Copyright © 2012, Dale Margolin.

* Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Director, Family Law Clini c, University of

Richmond School of Law. The author would like to thank Elizabeth Harding for her

invaluable research assistance.

1 References to particular clients are derived from personal contact with the author.

2 See GARY R. ANDERSON, MICH. STATE UNIV., AGING OUT OF THE FOSTER CARE

SYSTEM: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE STATE OF MICHIG AN 32 (2003),

available at http://www.ippsr.msu.edu/publications/ARFosterCare.pdf (noting that various

outside supports and services cannot repl ace the benefit one receives from being part o f a

“nurturing family and community”).

3 See id. at 7 (“[T]he presence of caring adult s, be they formal or informal mentors,

former foster parents or biological relatives, provides . . . youth[s] with information,

encouragement, and the impetus to become self-sufficien t.”).

4 Adopting a Foster Child, PARENTS, http://www.parents.com/parenting/adoption/facts/

adopting-a-foster-child/ (last visited Oct. 15, 2011).

418 CAPITAL UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [40:417

someone who is already in the young person’s life or someone who has

been unable to parent in the past, but is now ready to secure that bond.

True parents are attainable for te enagers in foster ca re as long as child

welfare professionals remember what they are looking for and are steadfast

and creative in their efforts to find and nurture these relationships.

Section Two of this article details the issues that adolescents face when

they age out5 of the foster care system. Next, Section Three discusses the

obstacles adolescents face in attaining familial permanency. Section Four

examines the aspects of successful adoptions, including the recruitment

and decision making processes, in an effort to apply those principals to

developing and maintaining adolescent permanency. Finally, Section Five

concludes with the keys to successful adolescent permanency.

II. THE PLIGHT OF ADOLESCENTS WHO AGE OUT OF FOSTER CARE

In the last decade, federal and state governments have paid increasing

attention to older youth in foster care, in particular those who are

discharged to themselves.6 Under both federal and state legislation,

agencies are expected to favor reunifying teenagers with their biological

families or securing adoptions for them prior to release from foster care.7

In reality, the permanency goal for most young adults is “another

permanent planned living arrangement” (APPLA), previously known as

“independent living,” which essentially means that youth are released from

the system to live on their own.8

5 A young person “ages out” of foster care when the state ceases to retain legal custody

because of the youth’s age. The youth is disch arged from the system, and the state ends

financial support. The youth is released to his or herself, not to another custodian. In most

states, aging out occurs at age ei ghteen. See Aging Out, ST. N.M. CHILD. YOUTH & FAM .

DEP’T, http://www.cyfd.org/content/aging-out (last visited Mar. 23, 2012).

6 See, e.g., ANDERSON, supra note 2, at 23 (discu ssing the John H. Chafee Foster Care

Independence Program, a federal law providing states with funding to establish programs

that assist former foster care recipients between ag es nineteen and twenty-one in making the

transition from adolescence to adulthood and in achieving self-sufficiency).

7 See 42 U.S.C. § 671(a)(15)(B) (2006); 42 U.S.C. § 675(1)(E) (2006); LaShanda

Taylor, Resurrecting Parents of Legal Orphans: Un-Terminating Parental Rights, 17 VA. J.

SOC. POL’Y & L. 318, 322–24 (2010).

8 See Sarah Gerstenzang, Mama S & Papa M: Making APPLAs Work for Youth,

FOSTERING FAMILIES TODAY, May/June 2010, at 56, available at http://nysccc.org/wp-

content/uploads/APPLA.pdf; PAT O’BRIEN, YOUTH HOMELESSNESS AND THE LACK O F

ADOPTIVE AND OTHER PERMANENT PARENTAL PLANNING FOR TEENS IN FOSTER CARE:

PREVENTING HOMELESSNESS THROUG H PARENTING 2, available at http://www.judiciary.

(continued)