After the state moved Nicolas back into the care of his birth mother, Breanne French tried to accept he wasn’t hers to keep. After nine months of taking care of the baby boy as a foster care placement, his birth mother was in recovery from drug addiction and passing drug tests. Although the Iowa Department of Human Services had returned Nicolas to her, social workers still were involved with the birth mother and her baby, but they were making progress together. French was invited to Nicolas’ first birthday party in October 2015. But over time, his birth mother had stopped calling. French knew being a foster parent often meant saying goodbye to children as they reunited with their parents or other relatives. As weeks turned into months, she tried to let go. Reuniting children with their birthparents is a primary goal of the department, but if that isn’t possible, placing a child with family members is often the next best choice, said Janee Harvey, the bureau chief of the Iowa Department of Human Services Child Welfare and Community Services Bureau. “If a kid has to be removed, we always try to keep them with family,” Harvey said. “That is the No. 1 thing we try and do, just like we would want that for our own kids.”

But some relatives of children in the foster care system who spoke to The Gazette said they instead felt ignored or belittled by the state when they tried to gain custody of their grandchildren, nieces or nephews who were placed in the system. When Grace Cervantes’ daughter lost custody of her three children, the 57-year-old from Davenport said she tried to take her grandchildren into her own care. “I don’t want them to be punished by losing their second language, their religion, their contact with their family,” Cervantes said. “They didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m a safe home.” But after her daughter’s parental rights were terminated, Cervantes said she felt the department was trying to keep her granddaughters and grandson away from her. They were placed in foster care in 2011 and, despite Cervantes’ protests, were adopted by a non-relative foster family in 2013. Cervantes said she no longer has contact with her three grandchildren. “Children are being traumatized, families are being traumatized, obviously I have been,” Cervantes said during a phone interview as she started to cry. “They need to get things fixed because it’s long overdue. … It was their responsibility to have these things fixed in the first place, and we don’t have time to wait.” Recent tragedies, including the deaths of two teenage girls who were adopted by unrelated foster families, have heightened Cervantes’ concern for the children. She worries they are isolated in another Iowa town, far from their old community. Another grandmother, Elaine Willey, 70, said she, too, is scared for her two granddaughters who were adopted by a non-relative foster family in 2013. “I’m so worried about them,” said Willey, of Dubuque. “I feel like they don’t have a chance at all. I’m trying to do everything to save these girls.” Willey feels she has little means to protect the girls. She was denied custody of the two girls because their older sister, who lives with Willey, was accused of sexual abuse as a child. That’s a common reason siblings are separated, said Adoption Specialist Brianne Arends, although social workers typically emphasize maintaining sibling relationships.

“I am hurting so much, but it’s nothing compared to how those little girls must be hurting. DHS took them away from everything.” - Elaine Willey Grandmother

Both grandmothers are part of a group that has met regularly with elected officials for three years to talk about the state’s foster care system. But Willey believes they’ve “made no progress.” The women said they would still, after years apart, rather their grandchildren come home than stay with their adoptive parents — who now have the same rights over the children as a biological parent would. “I am hurting so much, but it’s nothing compared to how those little girls must be hurting,” Willey said. “DHS took them away from everything.” Even when the department is able to reunify children with their birthparents — rather than unrelated foster families or biological relatives — its decisions about the placement of children still can feel risky or even dangerous, some relatives said. Since department social workers recommended moving her three nephews back into the care of their father, Shannon Chapman said she feels as if she has been left “waiting for something bad to happen.” Chapman, of Cedar Rapids, said she starting caring for her sister’s four children, a girl and three boys, after her sister died in early 2016. The three boys were moved into their birth father’s care, while his daughter remained with Chapman, in July. According to Iowa court records, he pleaded guilty to domestic abuse and child endangerment charges in 2006. Since July, Chapman said the boys have told her and a court-appointed advocate that at times they are scared of their father. “I kept getting walls everywhere I turned because I’m not a foster parent and I’m not a parent, I’m just an aunt,” Chapman, 43, said. “ … Until you’ve lived it, you just don’t see how broken it is. They want to give chance after chance after chance.” Because she disagrees with the department’s goal of reunification between the children and their father, Chapman said she feels dismissed and vilified by the state. In court proceedings, she said she often thinks, “‘Am I the only insane one, or the only sane one here?’ because they push so hard for reunification. The power lies with the people that have the wrong focus. In a perfect world, (reunification) would be the focus …, but how many chances do you give someone to change? When it’s the children that suffer for it?”

While most children in the foster care system eventually are reunited with their birthparents, many others never see their way back. More than 900 children in Iowa have had their parents’ rights terminated, according to November data from Four Oaks in Cedar Rapids, which contracts with the department to provide some aspects of foster care. Those children — nearly half of them younger than 6 — are waiting to be adopted. About 70 children were adopted this month, many of them on November 17, National Adoption Day. That Friday, several families had hearings scheduled at the Juvenile Justice Center in Cedar Rapids. For those newly legal families, it’s a joyful day. But it often arrives after months or years full of hard times. “I’m extremely happy, but there’s a part of me that’s also sad because they’re not going to remember their birthparents,” said Leah Glade, of Marion, who quickly began to cry while telling her story. She and her husband, Jake, were about to adopt 22-month-old twins. The children were born with fetal alcohol syndrome, and although Glade said their birthparents were nearly reunited with the children, the birthparents chose to stop their visits. “Hopefully, if they’re doing well, we could connect down the line,” Glade said. In a courtroom later that day, she and her husband finalized the adoptions of the twins, closing their lifetimes of being in foster care. Earlier that morning, Jennifer Paisley had adopted two half-siblings she had fostered for more than two years. She sat in front of Judge Susan Flaherty while four-year-old Georgia Rose walked carefully nearby — teetering as her tiny feet slipped in Paisley’s high-heeled shoes. Two-year-old Joseph Eric laughed and played with Paisley’s mother as the preceding went on and ended with Flaherty approving the adoptions. “You’re going to have your hands full,” Flaherty said in court. “We very much appreciate the care and love you’ve provided …. Let’s let these children move on with their lives without the interference of the juvenile justice system or the state of Iowa.”

On National Adoption Day in 2016, Nicolas was one of those children being adopted. Back in March 2016, Breanne French’s mother, Karen, had started to worry about Nicolas. Karen’s husband, Ron, sometimes would come home to find her teary-eyed. She couldn’t shake a feeling that Nicolas wasn’t all right. The family started looking for traces of Nicolas on social media. Instead, they learned that three months after being reunified with Nicolas, his birth mother had relapsed, overdosed and died. “I tried contacting DHS,” Breanne said. “They said I was no longer a party to the case and they couldn’t tell me anything.” A long legal battle started. A family lawyer kept hitting dead ends. The Frenches eventually learned that Nicolas had been placed with another foster family, and that the state was moving toward parental rights termination for his birth father. Still, as a foster parent who no longer had Nicolas in her care, Breanne had virtually no rights over the child who had spent half of his young life with her. Had no one advocated for her rights, she maintains she never would have seen him again. But she received a call from his guardian ad litem, who works outside of the department’s system and is meant only to represent Nicolas’ interests. “And the best words I’ve ever heard in my life were, ‘Do you want him back?’” Breanne said last month, sitting at her parents’ kitchen table as Nicolas, now 3, slurped spaghetti next to her. “I’m still getting goose bumps every time I tell this story.” To have him returned, Breanne still had to go through the state’s placement process. An automated system was used to call foster parents to match them with foster children, and Brenne was told it would ring her the next afternoon.

“And the best words I’ve ever heard in my life were, ‘Do you want him back? I’m still getting goose bumps every time I tell this story.” - Breanne French Nicolas' mother

“If I had missed the phone call, they would have gone on to the next person,” Breanne said. “So I sat by my phone and waited for the phone call.” Even after the call, Breanne and Nicolas waited months before their reunion was made permanent. They had to wait until parental rights for his father were terminated, and that was delayed until June. Then they had to wait for a court date, and it wasn’t until November, nearly two years after they first met, that Breanne adopted Nicolas. The Frenches — as well as Cervantes, Willey, Chapman and the Cooks, who adopted Zane and Zion — described foster care in Iowa as a broken system. “In our case, we were so furious because here’s a family that really wants … to have a child, and be the best that we can be, and love him forever, and we were raked through the system,” Ron French said. “They’re doing the best they can, but it’s not even 50 percent of the way of what they need to do.” Reporter Michaela Ramm contributed to this story. l Comments: (319) 398-8330; molly.duffy@thegazette.com