The Civil Death Penalty: Who Gets Support? Who Loses their Children?

I was matched with Leo last March through the Heart Gallery of Tampa.  I met him in April.  He moved into my home in August and his adoption was finalized in November. 

What a whirlwind of a year!  People told me that motherhood would change my life, but I had no idea the impact that it would have.  One of my girlfriends so eloquently stated that it doesn’t matter how you become a mother, you’ll never feel ready.

As much as I love my son, I often wonder, what if his mother had received the support that I now receive to raise him?

Choosing to be an adoptive mom has been the most fulfilling decision I have made so far, But I’m also deeply aware that the system pays me to raise him, while his biological mother would have been judged and dismissed for needing the same help.

The Heart Gallery of Tampa supports children in foster care who are waiting to be adopted.  The children served by the Heart Gallery have no identified families willing to adopt them.

A young man 14 years old called the Heart Gallery and said "I was just calling to check in to see if anyone wants me yet."  When I saw this on their social media, it absolutely broke my heart and makes me wonder, what exactly is the child welfare system actually protecting children from?

Being a teenager is difficult when living with your own family.  I couldn’t imagine being forced to navigate these challenges without a family and making a phone call to check in to see if a family has been identified.  I don’t know where this child is living, but wherever he is living today, he knows that this is not his forever home and his best case scenario is to be moved into another home that hopefully lasts forever.  Worse case scenario, he turns 18 as a legal orphan.  Turned loose into this world without a family. 

I don’t know the specific circumstances of this youth, but it’s safe to say that at some point this child had family who wanted him.  He had a mother who cried when they were separated and is likely still dealing with the trauma of being victimized by a system that tore her baby away instead of giving her what she needed so she could care for him.

The  children being served by The Heart Gallery aren't waiting because they aren’t loved. They’re waiting because our child welfare system doesn’t  support the families they came from.

How did we get here? Where children in our community are stripped of their families and left with no legal parent? Their mother is gone. Their father is gone. And in their place stands the State of Florida, as their legal guardian. A government agency now holds the bond that should have never been broken.

It’s due to a legal process referred to as “termination of parental rights”

This is the civil death penalty, a state-sanctioned decision to end a parent’s legal bond with their child forever. And it’s often imposed not because of violence or abuse, but because of poverty, or because the parent didn’t complete an exhaustive list of mandated tasks.

This is the civil death penalty, because for parents, it’s the legal equivalent of death.

If a parent lives in subsidized housing, they often lose that housing when the State removes their child. Then, they’re handed a case plan that demands they secure stable housing before reunification is even considered. This cycle of system-induced homelessness is just one example of how the system deepens a family’s crisis, then punishes the parent for not overcoming the very barriers it created.

Imagine being forced to attend court hearings, therapy, classes, and evaluations, on someone else’s schedule.  And whether you find the services beneficial or not, your chance to reunite with your child depends on your compliance. That’s not support. That’s coercion.

Most of us aren’t forced to do much in our lives. But these parents, usually poor, Black, and already struggling, are forced to prove they’re worthy of their own children under a microscope most of us couldn’t survive.

When we punish families for not complying with what we demand, regardless of whether it's helpful, we’re not supporting them. We’re surveilling, coercing, and ultimately destroying them. This is a modern form of slavery: forcing marginalized people to submit to a system we would never accept for ourselves.

The civil death penalty.  “you have the right to remain a parent – unless you’re poor”

We spend billions on separating families, but pennies on helping them stay together

Black mother on receiving cash assistance = system leech

White adoptive parent = system hero

If I had Leo as a birth mom, I’d be seen as a drain. But as an adoptive mom, I’m a hero, and the government pays me to raise him.

The federal government allocates nearly ten times more funding to foster care and adoption than to programs focused on preserving families and keeping them safely together. This imbalance reveals a system that invests in separation over support, channeling resources into removing children rather than preventing that trauma in the first place.

This funding disparity reveals a systemic bias toward placing children with new families instead of investing in the support birth families need to stay together.  Support that could address challenges often driven by poverty and structural racism.

Families facing economic hardships may not receive adequate support to prevent the removal of their children, while substantial resources are directed toward adoption and foster care systems. This allocation strategy can perpetuate a cycle where marginalized communities, particularly those affected by historical injustices, are more likely to have their children removed rather than receiving the support needed to keep families intact.​ I’m sure you will not be surprised to hear that Black and Indigenous families are most impacted nationally.  In Hillsborough County, it is our Black families. 

 So what happens when a family is poor? We don’t offer them support, we offer them surveillance. And when poverty is mistaken for neglect, children are removed, parents punished, and strangers get paid.

We used to sell black children.  Now we subsidize their removal

Black children are disproportionately represented in foster care, and a substantial number are adopted by white families.​ Between 2017 and 2019, about 28% of all adoptions were transracial. Notably, white parents adopting children of a different race or ethnicity accounted for 90% of these cases. ​

Adoptive parents receive subsidies, but birth parents get little to no aid

Billions are spent on foster care and adoption, but little on keeping families together.

Today, Black families are still disproportionately separated, and white adoptive families receive financial benefits for raising Black children.  This systemic dynamic echoes a history where one group benefits from the suffering of another.

If birth families were given the same financial and structural support as adoptive families, many of these children could have stayed with their parents.

Under chattel slavery, Black families were routinely separated for profit.  Today, child welfare continues that legacy. Black children are removed, placed with white families, and the state pays for it.

We won’t pay a struggling mom to care for her kids, but we’ll pay strangers thousands to do it after we’ve taken them away.

What would happen if we gave birth families the same support we give to adoptive families?

Why is basic universal income so controversial when I’m going to be receiving a check for Leo until he turns 18?  And I had to prove I was financially capable of adopting before my home study was approved? 

What does it say about our values when parents are shamed for needing support, yet strangers receive generous, stigma-free funding to raise those same children?

We know that not all adoptions succeed. Some placements fall apart before finalization. Once finalized, the case is closed and labeled a success, regardless of what happens next, because the system stops watching. There’s little long-term data on how adopted children actually fare, since permanent separation ends surveillance. Those who aren't adopted at all are sent into adulthood by the State of Florida as legal orphans.

Who gets help?  Who gets surveilled?  And who gets their child taken away? It’s not about love. It’s about resources, race, and how we define who is ‘deserving’.”

If children could design our system, what would they choose?

A system that invests in their parents?

Or one that removes them, cycles them through trauma, and  permanently place them with strangers? 

What would they tell us, if we truly listened?