State Delays Child Placement, Courts Tell Parents to Wait
Parents face long waits for child custody decisions as courts prioritize procedural delays over family reunification.
5 min read
In a troubling trend across the United States, government agencies are increasingly delaying child custody decisions, leaving families in limbo and children in foster care for extended periods. The process, which often involves multiple hearings, appeals, and bureaucratic delays, has led to a situation where the state itself becomes the architect of the separation, creating a status quo that is not in the child’s best interest.
The Bureaucratic Game of Waiting
When a child is removed from a parent’s care, the process is often described as a series of waits. Parents are told to wait for a hearing, wait for discovery, wait for services, wait for a ruling, and wait for an appeal. These delays can stretch weeks into months, during which the child settles into a foster home, becomes familiar with a new school, and forms a routine. However, the same government that initiated the separation often argues in court that changing the child’s placement would be disruptive, claiming the child is doing well and that the status quo must be maintained.
This status quo is, in fact, a counterfeit created by the state itself. The recent case in Kentucky, C.K. v. Hon. Casey Cheesman, illustrates this point. A mother, separated from her child for approximately 70 days, requested emergency relief from an appellate court, asking for a ruling on pending motions and the case to move forward. The court denied her request, stating that she could appeal after a final dispositional order and that the alleged injury was not severe enough for extraordinary intervention.
The court’s message was clear: wait. Appeal later. This delay has real consequences for families. A parent who wins an appeal cannot recover the bedtime stories, birthdays, school mornings, or the physical closeness lost during the system’s slow process. More troubling is the fact that the delay itself changes the evidence. Every month apart weakens the relationship the court will later evaluate, while every month in placement strengthens the agency’s argument that the child is now ‘stable.’ Government delay becomes evidence against the person injured by the delay.
The Legislative Response and Its Limitations
In response to these systemic issues, Congress is considering the Samier Amer Foster Care Improvement Act of 2026. The bill aims to address some of the procedural voids in the foster care system by tying certain placement procedures to state Title IV-E plans, which receive federal funding. This is a significant mechanism because states often pay attention when federal money is involved.
The bill would require notice of a placement decision and its reasons to parents, interested relatives, attorneys, and others. It would also permit requests for supporting documentation and allow the child’s attorney to seek an on-the-record judicial review. However, the bill contains several limitations. The state could have up to 90 days after a placement decision to provide notice, which is not a prompt process. For a five-year-old, it is a season; for a baby, it is a substantial part of conscious life. For an agency seeking to establish a new status quo, it is plenty of time.
Moreover, the bill appears to reserve the right to petition for review to the child’s attorney, not the parent, the relative denied placement, or their attorneys. It requires a court to begin review within seven days but establishes no deadline for a decision. It contains no clear burden of proof, no guaranteed evidentiary hearing, no automatic disclosure requirement, and no meaningful remedy when officials ignore the rules.
A deadline without a consequence is a suggestion. A right without standing is decoration. Judicial review that arrives after the government’s preferred arrangement has hardened is not protection; it is paperwork. Federal law already shows why time is so dangerous. Under 42 U.S.C. § 675, states generally must pursue termination after a child has spent 15 of the most recent 22 months in foster care, subject to statutory exceptions. The same law calls for procedural safeguards when children are removed, moved, or when parental visitation is affected. But the federal clock keeps moving while hearings are continued, services begin late, reports remain undisclosed, and parents wait for rulings.
The government can therefore consume the reunification period through its own delay and later point to the time in care as justification for permanent separation. That is not merely a bureaucratic defect. It is a structural incentive. The Supreme Court recognized in Santosky v. Kramer that a parent’s fundamental liberty interest in the care, custody, and management of a child does not disappear because the parent is imperfect or has temporarily lost custody. When the state seeks to destroy a family bond, the Court said, it must provide fundamentally fair procedures.
Fundamentally fair cannot mean that the government takes first, delays second, and invokes the consequences of its own delay third. Real reform must treat time as part of due process. Parents should receive counsel and the complete removal record immediately. Placement decisions should be disclosed within 24 to 48 hours, not 90 days. Parents and relatives must have standing to demand review. Emergency removals should receive expedited, evidence-based hearings with written findings of imminent danger and why less restrictive alternatives cannot protect the child. Continuances should require specific findings, and delays attributable to the state should not count toward a termination timeline.
There must also be consequences. Missed deadlines should trigger expedited review, fee shifting, sanctions, and, where safety permits, a presumption favoring return. Knowing fabrication, concealment of exculpatory information, and deliberate obstruction by agency officials should carry an enforceable civil remedy. Judges who repeatedly disregard mandatory procedures should face transparent disciplinary review. Immunity cannot become a government-wide permission slip to violate rights without consequence.
Source: PJ Media
