THE PARENT TRAP: THE UNCONSTITUTIONAL PRACTICE OF SEVERING PARENTAL RIGHTS WITHOUT DUE PROCESS OF LAW.

In 1997, Congress passed the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) to stem what it perceived as an overreliance by states on foster care to provide a safe place for children whose parents had been accused of abuse or neglect. Prior to ASFA, many children were placed in foster care for extended periods of time while their parents were evaluated for fitness and rehabilitative efforts were made to reunify families. Congress considered the time children spent in foster care as damaging to them because it left them uncertain about where they would live in the future. Congress, in an attempt to reduce the amount of time children spend in foster care, included provisions in ASFA that require states to expedite termination of parental rights to such a speed that states have been engaging in, for many years, systematic deprivation of parents' procedural and substantive due process rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]