Focus on the Family

When the baby started to cry, she rocked him while David stroked his head. "You just don't feel good, do you?" she said. "He's got withdrawals; you can tell by his chin." She whispered to him how handsome he was, that everything would be okay.

A few days later, Tiffany was back in the waiting room at DDHS, sitting beside the foster mom who had been raising her baby. Tiffany attempted small talk while she tried to figure out how to tell the son she hadn't seen in a month that he had a baby brother. When the door opened, a cute kid with blond hair and a bright-orange T-shirt yelled, "Mommy!" and ran to her. She picked him up and started showing him the case of Hot Wheels and other toys she'd brought for him to play with. Then she crouched down beside him, next to the baby in his chair. "Meet your little brother; it's your little brother," she said a few times, trying to get him excited. Martin seemed uninterested. Looking around, he reached for his mom's ear and cupped his hands around it to whisper something.

"Oh, I love you," she said, hugging him.

Three weeks later, at the August 31 hearing, Judge Dana Wakefield tells the parents that reunification is a possibility, that they have ten weeks to prove themselves. McGirt recommends Tiffany for parenting classes and intensive outpatient drug treatment that entails ten hours of group therapy a week. The couple volunteers for marriage counseling, and David continues what he's been doing for weeks -- juggling a packed schedule of drug treatment, working full-time and going to school part-time.

By October, they had been sticking to the plan, and David enjoyed unsupervised visits with Martin. Tiffany was allowed supervised visits at home. She saw each child for two hours twice a week, once together at DDHS and separately at home. At his first time home in more than a year, Martin told his mom that he hated her for making him miss her so long. He threw a fit when it was time to leave, saying he didn't want to come back if he would have to leave again. But the following week's visits were better. At DDHS, Martin started calling his brother "my baby" and carefully looking after him, even asking another family if they could please quiet down so his baby could sleep. His parents invented a silly-walk contest to get him out of the building with a smile on his face.

On a recent Saturday-afternoon visit, mother and son made brownies, read books and played with toy cars on a miniature city, creating make-believe scenarios for each other. When it was time to go, Tiffany and David made funny faces so Martin would laugh instead of cry. Mom and Dad buckled their son into a car seat together. They were still waving as the car faded from view.

The parents were hopeful about their upcoming hearing. A new race-car bed was already waiting in Martin's room.

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The lawyer for DDHS begins the November 7 hearing by telling Judge Wakefield, who is blind, how nice Tiffany looks and that David is also well-dressed. The parents take the compliments with an awkward chuckle, wondering if the implication is that they've previously shown up to court looking like a drug addict and a felon.

McGirt tells the judge the good news: Tiffany graduated from outpatient treatment the day before, and both parents are in full compliance with their treatment plans. The caseworker wants to transition the children home, starting with longer, unsupervised visits. However, before the children can go home permanently, the department wants the parents to move from their current home, since it was a neighbor who triggered Tiffany's relapse.

David asks the judge not to burden them with the stress and expense of a move. "Since I've been out [of jail], those people don't come anywhere near the house," he says. "They're scared of me. They know I hate it. They know I hate what they do, hate that they put her in that position. The whole point of making us move is relapse potential. No matter where we go, that option is there. Life is a relapse potential."

The judge decides not to require a move. "The issue is a drug-free environment. If the family can't provide that where they live, they know the consequences. Reunification does loom as a realistic goal, but if treatment plans fail, adoption will hover as a concurrent alternative." He sets a review hearing for three months hence.

David walks out of the courtroom wearing a bewildered expression. That was it? How could the judge extend his son's case another three months, six months past the year deadline? His attorney and caseworker explain that DDHS prefers to move children home gradually so as not to disrupt their lives too dramatically. They say that it's likely that one or both children could come home before the next hearing. When DDHS feels the parents are ready, it will ask for the judge's approval to move the kids home. For now, the parents will get Martin for a full day on Saturdays and David Jr. for half a day. If that goes well, they'll move on to overnight stays.

Tiffany and David stand outside the courthouse, exhaling long drags from their cigarettes. Even though they have to wait, it looks as if they are going to get their happy ending. The scary thing, David says, is that he feels like it happened by chance. His parents had made sure Martin didn't go to a foster home; the caseworker they didn't like left the department; the plan to place their son with his brother fell through at the last minute, forcing the court to take a serious look at reunification. What if his parents had been unable to care for Martin? What if their original caseworker hadn't left? What if his brother's record had been flawless? "We got lucky," David says. "But luck should have never come into it."

He concedes, however, that the situation forced Tiffany to clean up and forced him to do it faster than he might have otherwise. He's no longer scared of having his kids turn out like him. "My morals, my values are really good. I'm not a dumb person. I see a lot more than most people, and if I can help them grow to a lot of the positives I have while avoiding the negative things, I think that would be great. Because I've made so many mistakes, it's going to be a whole lot easier for me to see them start to make mistakes and be able to intervene."