In Virginia’s Foster Care System, Parents are
‘Crawling Through Broken Glass’

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By Emma Malinak

Melos Ambaye, Chas Chappell, Luke Fountain, Ruby Gregg and Claire Hamlet contributed reporting

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Alexis Toran’s world shattered the day social workers removed her 1-year-old son from her home.

“Will they put me back in that repetitive cycle of brokenness? Am I ever going to be whole? Am I safe? Am I really, truly safe?” she said she remembers asking herself.

She suspected that no one would be on her side. Social workers claimed her mental health struggles and housing instability made her an unfit mother, she said. And she knew from her previous interactions with the foster care system that judges often side with social services departments long before parents get a chance to make their cases in a courtroom.  

Toran said she filed affidavits. She started a social media campaign. She picketed outside the Norfolk courthouse, carrying homemade signs that called for “Justice for Jahsiah.” 

She said she had a message for anyone who would listen: “I want you to know that I’m not sleeping until you give me my kid, and that I’m not going nowhere.”

Toran is not alone. During a three-month investigation, the Rockbridge Report found that the social services system in Virginia is weighted against parents:

  • The state’s Department of Social Services (DSS) isn’t meeting its legally mandated goal of reunifying families after children are removed from homes. In 2022, about 1,700 foster children in Virginia had a case plan goal to reunify with their biological parents, according to the latest available national data. But only 598 children got to go home.
  • In the courts, parents don’t receive adequate legal support. An analysis of 201 cases filed by parents in Virginia’s Court of Appeals revealed that all but two of them lost.
  • Social workers don’t have the time or resources to help parents make homes safe enough for children. Only .02% of the state’s $22 billion social services budget is allocated to help families stay together.
  • Officials at the state’s DSS headquarters in Richmond have virtually no power to hold Virginia’s 120 local social services offices accountable when they treat parents unfairly.


Parents who get tangled in the foster care system are in crisis, said Valerie L’Herrou, deputy director of the Center for Family Advocacy at the Virginia Poverty Law Center. Many of them are poor and struggle with mental health conditions. Others are addicted to opioids and other drugs. 

The complicated, bureaucratic nature of the foster care system puts them at more of a disadvantage, L’Herrou said. 

“These parents are already crawling through broken glass,” she said. “And so when you add all this extra broken glass, they can’t make it.”

Eric Reynolds, the director of the state’s Office of the Children’s Ombudsman, said there are no right answers when children’s lives and parents’ rights are at stake.

“The system, although it’s complex and although it’s complicated and hard to understand, it’s all built for a reason to balance all those interests out,” he said. “And if we don’t maintain that balance … that’s when we get bad outcomes for families and bad outcomes for kids.”

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‘Guilty Until Proven Innocent’

Reunifying biological families is written into the state law that governs how children interact with the foster care system. “Return Home shall be the primary goal for all children in foster care,” according to Virginia’s social services manual.

That goal works sometimes, Toran said. Jahsiah was returned home 42 days after his removal. She said a judge ruled that social workers had not provided clear evidence for why they had removed Jahsiah in the first place.

When they were reunited, Jahsiah wouldn’t let go of Toran’s embrace for two days straight, she said.

“I didn’t mind it, because I could breathe him in all day, because I had missed that little hug, those little hands, just curly hair against my face,” she said.

But Toran’s fight isn’t over. She is still working to regain custody of her three other kids, ages 12, 11 and 10, who were removed from her care in 2017, she said.

Toran said that throughout her interaction with the foster care system, she’s felt like she’s “guilty until proven innocent.”

Reynolds said part of the problem is that social workers can be biased against poor parents. He said that bias can blind social workers from seeing the value of keeping children with their biological parents who may lack the material possessions that foster parents may have. 

“Just because the foster parents can take the child to Disney World and the parents can’t, is that in the kid’s best interest?” he said. “I think we need to get out of our middle-class mindset of what ‘best interest’ means for these kids because a lot of these kids are coming from not-so-middle-class families.”

The Rockbridge Report reached out to the Virginia Department of Social Services’ division of public affairs for comment.

About the Project

This project was completed by six journalism seniors at Washington and Lee University in a capstone course called Investigative Reporting. During a three-month investigation, students talked with social workers, attorneys, parents and others involved in Virginia's foster care system. Students also built a database to analyze Virginia Court of Appeals cases of parents who contested the termination of their parental rights. This project was supervised by Professor Toni Locy in W&L's Department of Journalism and Mass Communications. She can be reached at locyt@wlu.edu.

“Race and class do not play a role in how the Virginia Department of Social Services and its 120 local agencies respond to Child Protective Services complaints,” said a state DSS spokesperson in an email to the Rockbridge Report.

For Brittany Whitworth, bias was woven into the language that social workers and police officers used to talk about her. Her two children were removed from her care in 2021 after an anonymous caller reported concerns about her drug use and domestic violence in the home. A Hampton City police officer called her a “dope fiend” as her children were being taken away, according to police body camera footage that Whitworth shared with the Rockbridge Report.

"It's hard to grieve somebody that's still alive."
Brittany Whitworth

Whitworth took a drug test less than a week after the removal and tested negative for meth, cocaine and opioids, according to a drug test result she shared with the Rockbridge Report. 

She is gathering evidence like the body cam footage to make her case to try to regain custody of her children, she said.

But “nobody will listen,” she said. “It’s hard to grieve somebody that’s still alive.”

The Rockbridge Report reached out to the Hampton Police Division for comment.

“The Hampton Police Division expects all officers to treat individuals with respect regardless of their circumstances,” according to a police statement emailed to the Rockbridge Report. 

In 2022, about 5,000 children were in foster care in Virginia, according to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System operated by the Children’s Bureau, a branch of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. Only about 600 were returned home by the end of the year. That same year, about 1,200 children in Virginia were awaiting adoption because their parents’ rights were terminated.

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Nationally, states are leaning away from the goal of reunification. From 2000 to 2016, the chances that a child would lose the legal relationship with their parents roughly doubled, according to a 2019 study by researchers at Cornell and Rutgers universities. Today, about 1 in 100 U.S. children experience parental rights terminations, the study found.

John S. Koehler, an attorney in Roanoke who represents parents, said judges are afraid that children will get hurt or die if they are sent home.

“I do not believe that, in the final analysis, you can give equal weight to the desire of the parent and the need of the child,” he said. “Ultimately, the court must do what is best for the child.”

 

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In 2024, 54 children in Virginia died after they had been called to social workers’ attention, according to the Office of the Children’s Ombudsman annual report. 

L’Herrou said social workers and judges often have good intentions to protect children, but they act with “an abundance of caution because of their bias” that paints parents as irredeemable. 

“I think some of the time, what they’re doing is trying to make it harder for the parent” to earn reunification, L’Herrou said. “It goes back to that bias of they don’t really believe that the child should return home.”

When odds are stacked against parents, Allison Gilbreath, senior director of policy and programs at Voices for Virginia’s Children, questions whether reunification is the state’s goal. 

“The data says otherwise. The data says that [children] are often going from foster home to foster home, group home to group home, and eventually aging out,” she said.

Little Hope for Second Chances

Parents’ first interaction with the child welfare system is with Child Protective Services, a branch of local social services departments that investigates reports of possible child abuse or neglect. If social workers determine that a child’s safety cannot be assured at home, they can conduct what’s called an emergency removal and bring children into temporary custody. 

From there, children may enter kinship care, a program that allows children to avoid the foster care system by living with their relatives who receive financial support and resources from DSS. Last year, the General Assembly passed legislation to promote and streamline kinship care placements.

The legislation went into effect in July, Gilbreath said, and has already increased the number of children living with relatives from 10% to 20%.

The children who don’t make it into kinship care are placed in foster homes or group homes under the temporary custody of DSS. 

Then, what happens to families is up to judges in the state’s Juvenile and Domestic Relations Courts. They are the only people who have the power to take away parents’ rights. 

Parental rights can be terminated when three circumstances align, according to Virginia law:

  • The court finds that the child was abused or neglected by clear and convincing evidence.
  • The neglect or abuse presents a serious threat to the child’s life or health.
  • It is “not reasonably likely that the conditions which resulted in such neglect or abuse can be substantially corrected.”

Parents who lose their parental rights can appeal to Virginia’s Circuit Courts, according to the appeal code of Virginia. If they lose there, they can file a case with the state Court of Appeals. 

Appeals Court judges are still consumed with fear of what could happen to a child who is returned home, according to the Rockbridge Report’s analysis of 201 court decisions. The analysis revealed that judges predominantly rely on:

  • A state precedent that requires judges to consider what is in the “best interest of the child”;
  • The belief that children will suffer if they’re forced to wait for when or if their parents can earn the restoration of their rights;
  • Appellate rules that weigh evidence in favor of the winner at the lower court level, which is usually the local DSS office;
  • Case law that allows them to hold parents’ troubled pasts against them.

Termination of Parental Rights Cases in Virginia's Court of Appeals

Learn more about the database here

Toran said social workers used her past against her by citing mental health screenings from when she was 17 and in foster care herself as evidence to justify the removal of her three children.

“You have a document that says that I’m mental. But this is a document that you guys created when I was a child, and I don’t feel that it applies to me as an adult,” she said. “It was a battle of them attempting to try to paint me out to be unstable based upon my past … and the judge went with it.”

In the end, parents feel like the courts set them up to fail, Whitworth said.

“It leaves me asking the ultimate question: ‘Why has nobody done anything to try to help get my family back together?’” she said.

Koehler said the process is not supposed to be that adversarial. 

“I don’t think the system is set up for parents to fail,” he said. “I think it may be true that the rigid application of rules to individual situations can make that seem true.”

“It leaves me asking the ultimate question: ‘Why has nobody done anything to try to help get my family back together?’”
Brittany Whitworth

Even though children are removed from their homes for a variety of health and safety concerns — ranging from a lack of groceries in the refrigerator to domestic violence — the same blanket definitions of abuse and neglect are applied to every case, said L’Herrou of the Virginia Poverty Law Center. 

“Our system doesn’t distinguish between the parent who could be a good enough parent with the right supports and the parent who is, you know, some kind of horrible abuser who’s never going to be a good parent,” she said. “It treats them all the same and says, ‘Here’s all the hurdles you have to jump through.’” 

About 2,400 children entered Virginia's foster care system in 2022. The most common reasons for children's removals from their homes were neglect, parents' drug abuse, children's behavior problems, physical abuse, and unsafe or unstable housing. Children can be counted in multiple categories. Source: Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System.

Racing Against the Clock

From the day that children are removed from their home, a countdown starts: parents have about one year to meet social workers’ expectations and prove they are ready for reunification.

Five days after removal
Preliminary Removal Hearing

A Preliminary Removal Hearing is held in Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court within five days after social workers remove children from their home. To justify the removal, a judge must find:

  • 1) There is a risk of imminent harm to the child.
  • 2) There are no less drastic alternatives to foster care.
  • 3) Reasonable efforts were made to prevent removal.
 
Children are placed in temporary custody of DSS.
One month after removal
Adjudicatory Hearing

An Adjudicatory Hearing is held within 30 days of the Preliminary Removal Hearing. The court determines whether the child is "abused or neglected" as defined by state law.

Two months after removal
Dispositional Hearing

A Dispositional Hearing is held within 60 days of the Preliminary Removal Hearing. The primary purpose of the Dispositional Hearing is for social workers to present their foster care service plan and establish the goals that parents must meet to be reunified with their children.

Six months after removal
Foster Care Review Hearing

A Foster Care Review Hearing is held within four months of the Dispositional Hearing. This is an opportunity for the court to hear about what progress has been made toward achieving the goals established at the Dispositional Hearing and make changes to the foster care service plan if necessary.

One year after removal
Permanency Planning Hearing

A Permanency Planning Hearing is held within six months of the Foster Care Review Hearing. The court will determine what kind of permanent home a child needs. Permanent homes include reunifying children with their biological parents, placing them with a relative, putting them up for adoption or keeping them in permanent foster care. Reunification can only occur if parents have met the goals set by DSS. If parents need more time to achieve their goals, the court may set a second permanency planning hearing within six months. Parental rights are terminated if the court approves a permanency plan that does not involve reunification.

Courts and social workers assess parents’ growth based on what social service departments call a “permanency goal” in a child’s foster care plan. The permanency goal and its matching service plan outline the steps parents need to take to achieve reunification. The plan also includes a family’s strengths and weaknesses as identified by Child Protective Services workers, according to Virginia’s social services manual.  

But Reynolds said plans are rarely tailored to families’ specific needs and contain a rote prescription of parenting classes, counseling, rehab and other programs.  

“There should be that give and take, that teamwork, that collaboration with the parents,” he said. “Unfortunately, what we see are the boilerplate foster care service plans [which are] meaningless in the long run.” 

Even when such plans have the potential to help parents, services are often inaccessible, Reynolds said. The biggest problem is a lack of substance abuse resources and spots in rehab, he said. In 2022, about 700 children entered Virginia’s foster care system because their parents were struggling with drug abuse, according to the Children’s Bureau reporting system.

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Dinah Hupman, the director of Rockbridge County’s social services office, said the problem is worse in rural areas like hers. She said she sends many parents outside the county to get services that aren’t available locally. Even then, she can’t guarantee that parents will get the care they need as quickly as they need it.

“A waitlist for three or four months really eats into the year time frame,” Hupman said, referring to the deadline parents face to accomplish the goals set by social workers to get a chance to reunify with their children. 

“They claim that this system was initially built for, you know, keeping families together. But I see more families being torn apart. It's just not adding up.” 
Alexis Toran

L’Herrou said the permanency goals are essentially a “catch 22”: Parents are expected to simultaneously work full-time jobs and have enough time off to travel to multiple counseling appointments and parenting workshops per week. 

The state budget allocates more money for foster care than for keeping families together. In 2024, about $5 million — or .02% of Virginia’s $22 billion social services budget — was set aside to help families “alleviate crises that might lead to out-of-home placements of children,” said the state DSS spokesperson in the email to the Rockbridge Report. But $31 million was funneled into the foster care system and $143 million was allocated to adoption assistance. 

Social workers told the Rockbridge Report that they wish they could do more to help, but they’re overworked and understaffed.

Jessup Lambert, a social worker in Carroll County, said he had a light week when the Rockbridge Report contacted him in March: He had only 12 open foster care cases. When he started his job in 2020, there were 90 cases split between him and the one other social worker in his office who also was assigned to foster care. There usually are multiple children per case, he said.

Understaffed agencies “exist in a constant state of emergency,” according to a 2020 Virginia Commission on Youth report. In the chaos, new staff members are “often overloaded with casework before they are properly trained to do so,” the commission reported. About 20% of all social work positions in Virginia were vacant at the time the report was conducted. And 25% of social workers left the field during their first two years of employment, often due to burnout.

Despite the challenges, “reunification is what we’re trying to achieve from day one,” Lambert said.

But that’s a promise that’s frequently broken, Toran said. 

“They claim that this system was initially built for, you know, keeping families together,” she said. “But I see more families being torn apart. It’s just not adding up.” 

When reunification goals fail, kids stay in the foster care system. Today, Virginia is ranked No. 49 in the country for the number of children who age out of the foster care system before they find a permanent home, Gilbreath, of Voices for Virginia’s Children, said. Children can age out of the system when they turn 18 or choose to continue receiving services from DSS until they are 21, according to the state’s social services manual.

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'Parents Feel Powerless'

Reynolds has fielded 1,101 complaints about the foster care system since the ombudsman’s office was created by Virginia’s General Assembly in June 2021, according to the office’s 2024 report. He said one theme unites them: “These parents feel powerless if they don’t have an advocate.”

The ombudsman has the power to investigate parents’ concerns about their interactions with local social services departments and uncover wrongdoing across the child welfare system. But his office lacks the power to force DSS offices to change decisions about parents. All he can do is make recommendations.

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Reynolds investigated a complaint filed by Whitworth, the Hampton mother who lost custody of her two children. He found that Hampton’s DSS office “did not provide services and support for this family to prevent removal” of the children, which is required by DSS policy, according to the ombudsman’s investigation report.

After the children were removed from Whitworth’s home, she “was given no clear plan for the children to return home and was offered no services to assist her in addressing the safety issues that led to the children’s removal,” Reynolds wrote in the report.

Staff at the Hampton DSS office ignored Reynolds’ findings and did not correct the situation with Whitworth, she said. 

“We have 120 local departments that all do their own darn thing.”
Valerie L'Herrou

Virginia’s social services system is locally administered, which means each of the state’s 120 social services departments at the county and city levels set their own protocols and answer to their own bosses, Reynolds said. DSS officials in Richmond can fire social workers and provide advice on foster care cases. But they have no authority to enforce best practices, he said.

“We have 120 local departments that all do their own darn thing,” said L’Herrou, of the Virginia Poverty Law Center.

Inconsistencies across the state lead to mistakes: 92 departments were the subject of complaints that Reynolds received in 2024, according to his office’s annual report.

In the end, lawyers are all that parents have when seeking reunification. But even attorneys are overworked and underpaid, leaving parents with an advocate who is “not capable of giving the case the maximal amount of attention that they can,” Koehler said. 

Attorneys often don’t meet parents until five minutes before their hearings, said Heather Ferguson, a Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court judge. 

“They’re not … with the parent to advocate for them at every step of the process,” she said. “It’s really hard to represent someone and zealously advocate for them if you haven’t had the opportunity to kind of build the relationship with them from start to finish and really be invested in all of those pieces.”

The General Assembly increased the maximum compensation for those attorneys last year. For 25 years, it was $120 per case. It increased in January to $330 per child dependency case and $680 for each termination of parental rights case, according to Reynolds’ annual report. But “it really hasn’t had an effect,” Koehler said. 

“The compensation was so low for so long that even with the increases, it’s still not really competitive with what can be earned in a different area of practice,” he said. “The reality is that there is simply not enough of an incentive to attract the numbers that we need and the quality that we need.”

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Some churches and nonprofit organizations in Virginia try to fill the gaps in the system. Many of them utilize a system called the CarePortal, which connects families in need with volunteers who try to help before children ever have to be removed by Child Protective Services. If parents need a new crib for their growing baby, churches can donate one using the CarePortal to ensure the family doesn’t fall into the category of “unsafe home.”

But in most situations, parents say they feel they are on their own. They must advocate for themselves if they want a chance to bring their children home. 

For Toran, that meant going back to college and earning a paralegal certification.

“From that point, I beat them at their own game using their own policies, procedures, documents, laws against them,” she said. 

She will be back in court in May to fight to regain custody of her three older children. She wants them to grow up at home with their baby brother, Jahsiah. 

“I did not stop,” she said. “And I want parents to know: You cannot stop.”

 

Published on April 14, 2025