Local parents celebrate getting another chance to raise their children

Lydia Stanley was addicted to meth for 15 years. The last time she used was two days before her youngest son was born.

After they both tested positive for the drug, she wasn’t allowed to take him home from the hospital.

“That is the most painful thing in the world,” she said. “They say the most painful thing is having the child, but the most painful thing is having them taken away.”

The baby was in foster care for about a year while Stanley, now 35, got clean, got counseling and took parenting classes. They are one of about 80 cases in Thurston County of families reunited in the past year after being separated by the courts.

About 100 parents, children, social workers and others gathered in Tumwater on Thursday to honor those who have been reunited with their children or who are working toward reunification.

A state commission on foster children named this month Family Reunification Month. At a time when stories of children separated from their parents — albeit for different reasons — have saturated the news, this and other events happening across the state celebrate bringing families together.

“This is the first child that I’ve raised sober,” said Stanley, who has four older children and custody of two of them. “I’m just actually there for him and attentive. … I don’t remember how I was with (the older children). That’s horrible, I don’t remember the fun times, the bad times.”

Parents can lose custody of their children because of substance abuse, mental illness, domestic violence, neglect or other reasons. From there, it can be a long process to address their problems with the help of social workers, court staff, attorneys and parent mentors.

Last year, the median time it took for Thurston County children to be reunited with their parents was 16 months, according to a report from the Washington State Center for Court Research.

“We do our best to make sure the change the parents make is really authentic and they’re going to stand on their own once we’re gone, and they usually do,” said Mark Collins, a social worker with state's Office of Public Defense.

Statewide, children age 5 and younger make up about 60 percent of cases. They tend to stay in foster care longer and return home at lower rates than older children, according to the report.

Isaac Wittenberg, 39, went to prison on drug and weapons charges when his son was 2 months old. The boy was placed into foster care and lived with Wittenberg’s mother and his other grandma.

In prison and later at a halfway house, Wittenberg got clean and took parenting and anger management classes. Later he was allowed to visit his son — supervised visits at first, then unsupervised, then on weekends.

“Every month I filed a motion with the judge asking for more time,” he said.

Wittenberg now has custody of his 5-year-old son and volunteers with the Olympia-based Family Education and Support Services, helping other parents and fathers in particular who are trying to get their children back. Wittenberg said he realizes now he was not prepared to be a dad when his son was born.

“I thought I was. Now I look back and see that I wasn’t,” he said. “Active in my (drug) addiction, there was no way I was able to parent my child.”

This story was originally published June 28, 2018 at 5:29 PM.