DATE: Monday, November 10, 1997             TAG: 9711100030

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  196 lines

ONE CHILD TWO WORLDSNO EASY ANSWERS EXIST IN THE MOVEMENT TO MOVE FOSTER CHILDREN INTO NEW HOMES, AWAY FROM THEIR BIRTH PARENTS.

At the age of 10, Casey D'Amico has lived in two very different worlds.

First, the world of her parents, Joe and Donna D'Amico.

A world where she often didn't go to school, where she lived in trailers and apartments that were untidy and dirty, and where she often didn't have enough to eat.

Those shortcomings were not brought about because of a lack of love. Her mother, Donna D'Amico, is mentally retarded. Casey's father, Joe D'Amico, struggled with alcoholism and keeping a job.

``When me and Donna had our daughter, we did the best we could,'' said Joe D'Amico. ``We raised her to the best of our abilities. But different people had different ideas about parenting.''

Casey's second world is that of Mary and Jaime Lopez, her foster parents.

The Lopez home has a working father, who is in the Navy, a stay-at-home mother and three other children whom Casey considers siblings. It also affords her the opportunity - in the words of her foster mother - ``to be the kid instead of the parent.''

For the past two years, Casey has navigated between these two worlds. She has lived with her foster family but has had visits with her biological parents.

On Wednesday, that balancing act could end. Casey's parents will go to court to answer the question of why their parental rights should not be severed.

The D'Amicos are against the separation. ``It'd be part of our lives gone. We'd have to guess how she was doing,'' said Joe D'Amico. ``We should have a right to see our daughter and for her to see us.''

But the Lopezes, who want to adopt Casey, say the blond-haired girl needs a permanent home.

``She's at that age when she's around children who ask why her last name is different,'' Mary Lopez said. ``She has to know she has a permanent place to hang her hat, that no one will pull her out and put her someplace else.''

The case puts a human face on the sometimes-knotty, always-emotional movement to shift more children from foster care to more permanent placements, such as adopted homes. President Clinton made a pledge last year to reduce the long periods children are in foster care. He set as a national goal doubling the number of children moved each year from foster care to permanent homes - from 27,000 to 54,000 - by the year 2002.

State officials already are taking steps to ensure that children don't languish in foster care. ``Foster care should be short-term, it should be a crisis intervention,'' said Gail Heath, program coordinator for the Eastern Region of the state Department of Social Services. ``We're working toward shortening the time children are in foster care in order to give them opportunities for permanent placements.''

Steve Burman has a different idea: ``Why call it foster care? Why not call it an extended family?'' he asked. Burman, who has acted as an advocate for the D'Amico family for the past four years, said the community, and the government, have not done enough to save the D'Amico family. And that while the D'Amicos may have neglected the child, it was largely because of their disabilities, rather than any criminal negligence.

``There is a bond of love here; let's not break it,'' he said. ``I feel as though the courts are tired of us. They're thinking, `Let's cut this thing and move on.' I'm saying `Let's take it up.' ''

Casey's life became intertwined in the social services system when she was in first grade. According to her parents, the family was living in a trailer that they admit was unclean and lacked heat. There was often no food. Casey became ill and missed school frequently, for almost a month at a time. One day a Virginia Beach school official came to the door to ask why.

Joe D'Amico says he was too embarrassed at the state of their trailer to let in the school official. The family was reported to Child Protective Services, and Casey was removed from the home in December 1993 because of educational, emotional and physical neglect.

Casey was returned to the D'Amicos a month later, and a plan was set up for the D'Amicos to receive services through the city's Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services.

But over the next two years, the D'Amicos did not follow through on all the steps of the plan. The Virginia Beach Department of Social Services refused to comment on the case, because of confidentiality policies, but department records indicate that Donna D'Amico sometimes forgot to take her depression medicine and Joe D'Amico still had drinking problems and difficulty keeping a job. The family did make progress, however, on making sure Casey went to school, and buying enough food for her.

Casey was taken from the D'Amicos again, in the fall of 1995, for not complying with the plan. ``It was like having my heart ripped out,'' Donna D'Amico said. Casey has lived with the Lopezes since then.

The D'Amicos had three other children taken from them in 1987 while living in Jacksonville, Fla., for the same types of reasons: failure to adequately care for the children. The couple said they signed off on parental rights then because they were told that if they did, the children could be kept together. When they moved to Virginia, and had Casey, they hoped she would be the child they would keep. ``We put all the love we had for the other children into Casey,'' Donna D'Amico says.

Burman believes the D'Amicos had made significant progress in Casey's care. They just needed more help. But the adversarial environment they were working within made it difficult for them to succeed, he said. He began working with the family in March 1994, when he was a consultant for the city's Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services. When his position was phased out in July 1995, he continued to help the D'Amicos, along with a group of people called the ``Circle of Friends.''

He believes the couple needed more community support like his, more help in informal ways rather than from professional agencies.

Burman acknowledges that the D'Amicos probably still are unable to have Casey move back with them, but he believes the bond between parent and child should not be cut. ``We have to get beyond this either-or mentality,'' he said.

A pivotal point in the case came last October, when the Lopezes moved from Virginia Beach to Kingsville, Texas, because Jaime Lopez was transferred. The case went before Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court Judge Deborah Rawls, who decided that Casey should move with the Lopezes. Burman and a case manager from the mental retardation program advised against the move, saying the girl should be moved to a different foster family in Hampton Roads, so the bond with the biological parents could be maintained.

Mary Lopez felt differently. ``She had totally bonded to us,'' Mary Lopez said. ``She didn't want to move to a different foster family.''

The move created a bigger gulf between Casey and her parents, even though the Department of Social Services agreed to fly Casey to Virginia three times a year to visit the D'Amicos. ``It was like we drifted apart,'' Donna D'Amico said.

By spring, the move to terminate the D'Amico's parental rights was under way.

While officials from the city's Mental Health, Mental Retardation agency cannot comment on specific cases, they can shed light on what kind of services they offer to people like Donna D'Amico.

The department has a program called SkillQuest, which Donna D'Amico attended, to help mothers with developmental disabilities raise their children.

Michelle Rogers, coordinator of a SkillQuest support group, said the movement to shift the mentally disabled community from institutions to communities has forced society to address the issue of more disabled parents having children.

``When they were in institutions, the right to have children was taken from them,'' she said.

The SkillQuest program offers a weekly support group for mothers, plus weekly visits to the mothers' homes to help with things like scheduling, giving positive praise to children, shopping, cooking and cleaning.

How well the mothers do depends on a variety of circumstances, said Rogers, such as whether there are family members to help support the child and family and whether the mothers had good parents themselves, which would give them better models for good parenting skills.

The majority of the eight parents SkillQuest has worked with are still raising their children.

Carol Smith, supervisor of SkillQuest, said cases where parents have normal-intelligence children can be particularly difficult, as parents need to be taught how to work with the school system, and how to make sure they're guiding their child intellectually.

Both Rogers and Smith agree that while that office can offer help, more is needed on the part of the community. They have asked churches, civic groups and individuals to help out the people they work with, in a more informal manner.

But, they say, with more parents working, fewer extended families, and a society with people who are less likely to know their neighbors, few people are willing to get involved.

``I have made appeals for volunteers who are not paid professionals to offer support, give them rides, let them come into their families to let them see positive parenting skills,'' Rogers said. ``People are too busy. We are a product of our society.''

And that product, Burman said, is wrong. He believes all the different agencies involved with the D'Amicos - and the community as a whole - failed to meet the family's needs.

Not the least of the issues at hand is what Casey herself thinks.

Her foster mother did not want her to be interviewed, believing it would put her in an awkward position of choosing between one set of parents and the other.

Lopez said she believes the D'Amicos have had plenty of time to prove themselves, ample opportunities to make their life more stable. Casey, she says, deserves time to be a child, instead of looking out for her parents.

``I think she has mixed feelings,'' Lopez said. ``Sometimes she feels a little angry that things did not work out so she could stay with them. But she's smart enough to know it's not her fault, it's not something she could control. But she's not blind. When we go back, and she sees the condition of where they live, she sees the difference between them and anyone else.''

Lopez said that if she and her husband adopt Casey, they will not break the bond between the D'Amicos and Casey. ``As long as they supply me with an address of where they are, I will let them know how Casey is.''

Donna D'Amico questions, however, how strong that bond can be when Casey lives in Texas.

An August 1996 clinical psychologist's report said Casey told the psychologist she would like to be adopted by the Lopez family. Joe D'Amico said he can understand why Casey might not want to come home. He feels bitter at the system that showed his daughter this other side of life, one that he himself has never known.

``Once you've had steak, why go back to hot dogs?'' he said. He said he is glad his daughter has had new experiences, and material things he and his wife could not afford to give her. Still, he is remorseful and depressed that things did not work out for Casey to come home.

``What I tell Donna is thank God she's alive,'' Joe D'Amico said. ``When she turns 18, if she wants to see her parents, she's welcome to come back.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot

Joe and Donna D'Amico of Virginia Beach will ask a court to keep

their daughter within visiting range. ``We should have a right to

see our daughter and for her to see us,'' Joe D'Amico says. KEYWORDS: FOSTER CARE CUSTODY ADOPTION

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