Callahan book studies flawed foster care system

MEMOIRS OF A BABY STEALER, by Mary Callahan, Pinewoods Press, Lisbon, Maine, 2003, $9.95, 225 pages.

The title of Mary Callahan’s new book neatly sums up her quarrel with Maine’s foster care system.

In “Memoirs of a Baby Stealer,” Callahan argues that too often foster parents are unwitting accomplices to the state’s benign routine of “stealing” children from their natural parents in order to protect them from harm. Too often, as well, she says, these same children become the victims of a willy-nilly system run by individuals more interested in their own personal power than in the welfare of those they are sworn to protect. It is a serious charge.

The problem is complicated, Callahan says, by the Maine Department of Human Services’ own internal inconsistencies: The state is too quick to remove children from their birth parents and too quick to reunify them as well. At the same time, the very foster parents the state needs to care for children at risk are either underscrutinized or undervalued, nurturing a system in which those who follow the rules and keep their mouths shut flourish, while those who seek a strong say in their foster child’s treatment meet with so many mixed messages, they give up in despair.

Logan Marr comes to mind.

Indeed, in a prologue to “Memoirs,” Callahan says that it was 5-year-old Logan’s death at the hands of her foster mother in January 2001 that made her realize she must write a book about her own experiences.

“I immediately thought of Marie, my first foster child, who was abused badly in the foster home before mine, and of the excuses the social workers made for it,” she writes. Later, referring to Logan’s birth mother, she adds: “What had that mother done? I asked myself. By then I knew how little it took to lose a child to the system. Could Logan’s mother have done anything worse than was done to her in foster care? Worse than murder?”

Callahan, who lives in Lisbon and is still a foster parent, should be applauded for having the courage to ask these questions. Rather than accept the status quo, she has chosen a public format for her concerns, risking retribution from the bureaucrats who pay her salary. Certainly, “Memoirs” reveals a system so flawed that would-be foster parents might think twice before becoming entangled in the morass of rules, regulations, conflicting theories and interpretations of theories that now float in the world of social services.

At the same time, however, Callahan is candid about her own difficulties as both a parent and a foster parent. She writes of struggles with her daughter, Renee, over “drugs, alcohol and boyfriends with criminal pasts.” She notes that when Renee went off to school in New Orleans, she “was relieved to see her go.” Such candor serves her well, alerting the reader that she doesn’t hold herself up as a perfect example or one who has all the answers. Thus, rather than detracting from her criticism of the foster care system, it gives “Memoirs” greater credibility.

Callahan’s style is easy to read and filled with concrete examples of the difficulties she encounters as a foster parent. She begins at the beginning of her trek through the system, building tension with each new frustration or misstep as child after child comes and goes from her home.

Callahan walks the reader through Agencies A, B and C, all operating under the auspices of the Department of Human Services. She illustrates through her own experience the different interpretations agencies have on rules set down by DHS, as well as the different approaches agencies adopt toward foster parents, birth parents and the children caught between.

But perhaps the best part of “Memoirs” is reading of Callahan’s daily struggles as she tried to care for another person’s child.

Mary Callahan will speak about her book at the Bangor Public Library on Saturday, Sept. 13, at 1 p.m.