The goal for foster care is always family reunification. There are barriers preventing a child from living with their parent – drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, mental health, illness, child endangerment, death, prison, abandonment, etc… The child is placed with a foster family with the hope that their birth parent will get treatment, complete their sentence, parenting classes, counseling or whatever listed steps they are required to complete in order to regain custody of their child. When the State has exhausted proper channels for pursuing reunification (they usually give the parent a couple of years or more to get it together), then alternatives like adoption become the goal. This is how we became adoptive placement for our 5 kids.

“ALL RISE For the Good of the Children takes you inside the courtroom of an unconventional judge in East Texas who takes a trust-based, trauma-informed approach to healing broken families in the child welfare system. Two families share how their lives were transformed through the support and intervention offered by Judge Carole Clark and her team of lawyers, mental health experts and child advocates.”

Click HERE to watch the documentary (it’s free and really, really good!).