This commentary is by Justin Mark Hideaki Salisbury of Burlington, legislative director of the National Federation of the Blind of Vermont, and doctoral student in the College of Education and Social Services at the University of Vermont. He has worked as a teacher, a therapist, and a legislative aide.
As Vermont struggles to reckon with the realities of eugenics, the conversation is often framed as something that happened only in the distant past. In fact, disabled Vermonters are still subjected to eugenics, and some of us find it inappropriate for the state of Vermont to apologize for eugenics while it continues to practice eugenics on us.
Following through on the eugenics apology means discontinuing all forms of eugenics. This commentary will discuss one lingering eugenics mechanism using identity-first language, not person-first language.
Vermont’s disabled parents still live in fear that every unanticipated knock on their door could be the state coming to take their children away from them. In child welfare, family court, adoption and foster care proceedings, the disability of a parent can be used to justify taking away their children.
Vermont law does not address this problem specifically, which allows it to continue. Dozens of other states have already enacted laws to protect families that have disabled parents.
When someone takes children away from disabled parents, they are often using misperceptions about disability to conclude that the parent would be unable to safely raise the child. In the case of a blind parent, they might say something like, “If I couldn’t see, I wouldn’t be able to raise a child. I wouldn’t even know where the child was.”
Thankfully, disabled people learn how to live with our disabilities, and we develop alternative techniques and problem-solving skills. We don’t wake up every day clueless how to function with our disability. Blind parents, for example, will often put bells on their toddlers’ shoes so that they can hear their movements. In general, parents learn the patterns in their children’s behavior, and disabled parents do it, too.
With every line item of life, society often assumes that disabled people are incompetent until proven competent; however, society assumes that nondisabled people are competent until proven incompetent.
Based on the collective experience of other states, the National Federation of the Blind of Vermont would like the following additions to state law to cover child welfare, family court, adoption, and foster care proceedings:
- The disability of a parent cannot be the sole factor used to determine parental fitness for custody or visitation in child welfare, family court, adoption, and foster care proceedings.
- If the disability of a parent is used as one of multiple factors, the party attempting to demonstrate that the disability is a factor must prove a clear nexus between the parent’s disability and the alleged parental deficiency.
- Before the disability of a parent can be used to reduce or terminate custody or visitation, the party challenging these parental rights must prove by clear and convincing evidence that supportive parenting services are not sufficient for the child to be safe with the parent.
- The burden of proof explicitly falls on the party making the claim against the disabled parent.
To all the good child welfare workers out there, this is not an attack on you. This is a call for action to reform the system so that the bad apples next to you will no longer stain the image of your profession and mistreat the people you honorably serve.
Organizational culture prevents you from speaking out against the bad apples, which makes it very difficult to address the problem on a case-by-case basis. Systemic reform involving law, administrative policy, and cultural change can prevent the child welfare system from inappropriately using a parent’s disability to take their child.
Child welfare workers often feel that they are always vilified with no ability to explain themselves because child welfare cases are confidential. Disabled people are often unable to tell our stories, too, because the broader society frequently dismisses us, assuming the discrimination that we experience is an unfortunate consequence of our medical conditions rather than societal misunderstanding and structural ableism.
The powerlessness of the ignored rural Appalachian poverty in our state often rears its head in the form of domestic violence. Disabled people are far more likely than nondisabled people to be the victims of domestic violence. When a disabled parent is being abused by a nondisabled parent, it is often difficult for them to take the children and leave — not because they are incapable of living on their own, but because the courts would not allow the disabled parent to maintain custody of their children.
Disabled parents and their children remain trapped with the nondisabled abuser because the state of Vermont will not let them leave.
For now, we cannot hear the eugenics apology over the wailing of disabled parents whose children have been taken before, during and after the apology. The ship will not turn itself.
If we all come together and make a decision about what kind of Vermont we want to be, I believe we will decide that disabled Vermonters should have the right to raise their own children. Let’s put up a bill and call the vote.
