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Jarrod Hummer remembers being angry.
He and his wife were three years clean and sober and had done the hard work to regain custody of their two young sons, but the Indiana Department of Child Services kept contacting them. Hummer claimed the agency was being used by a relative who was making false allegations to cause trouble.
The Muncie man started lodging complaints with DCS about how the situation was being handled. Finally, he was connected with Gilbert Smith, assistant deputy director of field operations, who listened to Hummer’s concerns, then listened some more while Hummer talked about the support he and his wife offer to struggling families at their church.
Eventually, Smith proposed that Hummer reconnect with DCS. The very agency he associated with some of the worst times in his life was asking Hummer to join an initiative focused on improving the process and the system so that troubled families could receive help more attuned to their needs.
In September 2021, Hummer and his wife became members of the Indiana Birth Parent Advisory Board.
“We have a perspective now on DCS that maybe a lot of other people don’t have,” Hummer said. “There’re reasons that some of the things happen. There’re reasons why some of the things get taken care of the way they do and that reason isn’t because these people don’t like you and don’t want you to succeed.”
The advisory board was assembled in 2019 at the prompting of DCS Director Terry Stigdon. Having spent much of her career in health care, Stigdon was familiar with the process and benefits of hearing the comments and suggestions from customers and clients. But DCS did not have a way to get feedback from the families its serves.
Stigdon said the critiques and opinions of parents are important. DCS interacts with families “at very difficult times in their lives,” so the feedback enables the agency to ensure it is providing the support the parents and children need to gain stability.
Along with feedback, Stigdon said she wanted parents on the advisory board to provide guidance and input on DCS policies and practices. But most of all, she said she did not want to hear only compliments and accolades.
“The important thing about it is to make sure they knew it was a safe space,” Stigdon said of the parents on the advisory board, “and that we wanted to hear the good, bad and ugly. If we don’t know what’s going on, we can’t improve it.”
Since Hummer and his wife joined the advisory board, they have done more than attend the monthly meetings. They have made presentations to community organizations and participated in panel discussions.
Moreover, they are spearheading the development of a mentorship program to help parents currently involved with DCS by pairing them with parents who have successfully navigated the system. Also, the couple is working to compile information packets, which will be given to parents to explain the process and their rights.
Stigdon looked for other parent advisory initiatives when DCS was crafting its board but only found one similar program, which was in California and was a parent-led effort. As she has talked about the Indiana advisory board at national conferences, child welfare professionals from other states have expressed interest in starting their own boards.
“I think we’re on the forefront of an agency saying, ‘We absolutely need this. Let’s seek out families to help us with our improvement efforts,’” Stigdon said.
‘Lived experience’
The advisory board is comprised of 15 parents who have had a case with DCS. Their outcomes have varied, with some board members reunifying with their children while others have not.
Rachael Hudgins, a long-time program director at DCS who serves as birth parent advocate for the board, said the parents have provided valuable insight and offered ideas the agency might not have considered otherwise.
“The whole purpose of our birth parent advisory board is really to insert that lived experience into shaping practices and policy,” Hudgins said. “It’s really important to get that parent voice in there.”
One example of the birth parents’ influence is the development of co-care. Biological parents are able to link with their children’s foster family so they can maintain a role in their children’s lives which, Hudgins said, “leads to a more positive outcome for everyone.”
That concept came from parents sharing their common experience of not knowing where their children were placed once DCS put the youngsters in foster care. A woman underscored the despair she felt by explaining that she wanted to use drugs even more after losing custody and having no idea who had her children.
Hudgins said hearing the parents’ perspectives on having their children removed and then not getting any information or receiving any support to help them reunify, “and learning how that impacts their motivation, their ability to do the stuff they need to do to get through a case … that’s been very valuable.”
Hummer and his wife know how lives can spiral out of control. Addicted to crack and living in a motel, they lost custody of their two boys and then were in a serious car accident that miraculously left them both uninjured but landed Hummer in jail. Lying in his cell, Hummer said he prayed for help.
After being released, he and his wife started attending a drug and alcohol recovery program run by a church. He had participated in such programs before, even doing 90 meetings in 90 days. But this time, he said, he had more people supporting him, and the DCS case manager was encouraging as well as directing his family to resources.
The couple are now living in a house with their sons, ages 5 and 6. Their schedule is filled with their jobs, the advisory board and joining their children in T-ball, piano lessons and fishing. In addition, they are helping other adults in their church’s recovery program.
“As I grew and matured, it didn’t take long for my anger to go away from DCS, because regardless of what DCS was doing or how there were times they could have helped better, I put myself in that situation,” Hummer said. “… That’s what I tried to tell people is don’t focus on DCS. … You’re in this position because of the bad choices you made and the only way to get out of this is to make good choices.”
Improving the system
Yet, Hummer said he knows troubled families cannot recuperate on their own. Through the advisory board, he is able to explain to DCS that along with being told what to do, parents also need more direction and assistance when they are trying to get their kids back.
“Ultimately, it’s a community problem,” Hummer said. “When these families are in this system, it harms our community. So the community needs to come together and help these parents and help DCS to reconcile and strengthen families.”
Both Stigdon and Hudgins acknowledged some on the DCS team were leery of the advisory board, suspecting they would just be subjected to a lot of criticism. But Hudgins has worked to “honor our parents’ experiences and be very respectful of them” while the agency’s employees have seen the benefit of parental input.
“At DCS, we get involved because something terrible has happened, but the whole experience doesn’t have to be terrible,” Hudgins said. “So this is just tailored to making everything we do more family friendly and better. And who better to lead us than someone who’s been through it and can say, ‘Hey, this is what it was like for me. And this is what would have made my experience better.’”•
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