On December 5, 2017, CPCS Attorney Andrew Cohen, Director of the CAFL Division Appellate Panel, testified on behalf of CPCS before the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities in support of two bills, H.783 – An Act to Improve Permanency and Placement Stability and S.75 – An Act to Keep Siblings Together.
Atty. Cohen, as a member of a panel, which included State Representative Farley-Bouvier (D-3rd Berkshire), told the committee that H.783 serves the best interests of children in many ways: it gives them a voice in decisions by DCF about services and placement; it gives judges clearer authority to oversee the services DCF provides to children and families; it requires DCF to perform a team-review of the mental and emotional harm children suffer when they experience multiple foster placements; and it gives children who are “legal orphans” – that is, teenagers freed for adoption but with no potential guardian or adoptive parent – the possibility of returning home to a fit, loving parent. He explained that is pleased to support the legislation and urged the Committee to act favorably on it.
In his individual testimony on S.75 he expressed strongly that no child should lose his or her siblings just because his or her parents were abusive or neglectful. He explained that the bill “will help keep many brothers and sisters together in foster care; for siblings that must be separated, the bill will help them maintain a relationship.”
He painted a picture for the Committee of why keeping siblings together is so important stating, “When children enter foster care, many lose their siblings for months, even years, at a time…..The clinical literature on this subject is extremely troubling. Separating siblings in foster care traumatizes children, heightening the trauma they experience after removal from the home. Separation also magnifies foster children’s sense of grief, abandonment, and loss. “
Attorney Cohen concluded by urging the Committee to report S.75 favorably because it will help avoid the victimization of vulnerable foster children by placing the joint placement of siblings front and center for DCF and the courts.