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Julie Sweeney often wonders if her two cute grandsons traded one horrible situation for another when they were uprooted from their mother's home and placed in foster care. Today she has brought Timothy, 11, and Tommy, 9, to court to review their foster-care status. Their mother, Cassandra, Sweeney's 31-year-old daughter, is homeless; she chose cocaine over her two sons. There's a warrant out for her arrest on charges of prostitution, so she won't appear in court today. "Cocaine became her lover," Sweeney explains. "She told me the high was so good that she wanted it, even if it meant losing everything she had. She does love her children, but she loves Mr. C. more."
Sweeney, in her early 60s, is not well enough to take care of her grandsons. She waited for more than two years for the social-services department to rescue them from their mother's destructive grasp. "I was sending food to them by taxi at their mother's house," she tells Legal Aid Bureau lawyer Lisa Watts as they sit in the stuffy waiting room. "They were abused and hungry. They turned into children of the streets." Despite the grandmother's frequent requests, the children were not removed from the home. "((My daughter)) was selling furniture out of the house and threatened to kill the younger boy. I called protective services again. They went in and said the house looked O.K. It's the laxest organization I've ever seen."
Finally Sweeney decided to become the children's forceful advocate. "Push, push, push," she says. "Nothing ever works according to the system. Someone in the family has to do it." Two years ago, when Cassandra's drug habit became uncontrollable, Sweeney says the social services informed her it had no home available in which to place her grandchildren. So the next day Sweeney went to collect the boys. Her daughter, high on drugs, slumped on the couch, while men walked in to buy drugs from someone upstairs. Cassandra was using cocaine, PCP and Ritalin. A social-services caseworker told Sweeney she could ; not take her grandchildren, but she did anyway. After she got them home, they all broke into tears.
Then Sweeney called the social-services department and explained that she was not well enough to care for her grandsons herself, but she wanted the brothers kept together. Instead the boys were placed in separate foster homes. Tommy, the younger, slept on a urine-stained mattress without a sheet. "He cried pitifully," Sweeney recalls. "He wouldn't eat or play. He sat with a shopping bag under his arm." The youngster was returned to his grandmother's house, but soon his mother, who temporarily cleaned herself up with the help of a detox program, regained custody of the boys.
Things only got worse. One night Timothy walked downstairs to find his mother injecting drugs into her arm. Within months, the children were back with social services.
This time, after reviewing the case, lawyer Watts has designed an agreement that allows the boys to remain under official jurisdiction and continue a program of therapy. Sweeney will retain visitation rights. The boys want to live with their aunt; the department will try to help the woman afford better housing so that she can take them in. Finally Tommy will be assigned a Court- Appointed Special Advocate volunteer, who will look out for his best interests.