Mother battles system, personal demons

Donna Buckwalter has asked the courts for one request: to grant her more than one hour a week with her two-year-old son, Daniel, who was removed from her care after she gave birth to him at Providence Hospital in August 2000.

More than an hour a week may be too much to ask for, or at least that is the message sent back to her so far.

At a Tuesday court hearing, Buckwalter will find out if her parental rights will be severed altogether. Social workers have stated that her continued visits to Daniel are not in his best interest.

According to DFYS, the division that oversees cases where parental rights are seized or limited, Buckwalter is not in compliance with her case plan.

Nancy Kirchoff, a DFYS

social worker overseeing Buckwalter's case, summarized her concerns in a letter. "The visitation history has been sporadic, to Daniel you are an unknown adult, participation in your case plan has been minimal in the past, and currently it is unknown if you are participating in treatment related to your case plan because of your refusal to sign releases."

This letter, court documents, assessments and Donna Buckwalter's case plan were supplied to the Frontiersman. DFYS workers cannot legally comment on individual cases.

"The GAL (guardian ad litem) is recommending that visits continue only if you are well along in your treatment and with the recommendation of your counselor," Kirchoff's letter continued.

Buckwalter contends the summary contains outright falsehoods, and she seeks to prove that by providing evidence. She says a letter from LifeQuest confirms she is complying with her treatment plan. Therapist Ellen Linsley recommended that Buckwalter be allowed to have visitation with her son, "since she is currently stabilized emotionally."

Buckwalter has a stack of forms that she contends prove she has been alcohol and drug free for two years. These are urinalysis reports, which she says show she is complying with her case plan. And she has kept every one-hour weekly visit possible, minus those canceled on her by the caretaker and the couple of times she couldn't make it, she said.

Her six-year-old daughter, also a ward of the state, has been placed in the care of Buckwalter's mother-in-law. She is trying to get both her son and her daughter back.

"They're saying I'm a complete stranger to my son, yet they won't let me see him more than an hour a week. My daughter asks me how come she can't come home now. This has been a devastating experience, but I'm not going to give up," Buckwalter said. "The more progress I make seems to make no difference to how they look me."

Overworked system

When children are removed from homes, a series of court hearings are held beginning with one held 24-hours later, and at 30, 60, 90 and 120-day intervals to assess steps parents may or may not be taking in order to win their children back.

Gladys Langdon, children's service manager for the Southcentral region of DFYS, said the Palmer office handled about 41 new investigations per month last year. Each social worker handles 32 cases each, which is more than double the recommended load.

"Some reports may be valid, others unconfirmed or invalidated," Langdon said. "In most cases, we don't remove children from the home. We receive reports of harm from anyone in the community, and investigate those. We assign a priority rating of P1, P2 or P3."

P1 is considered the most pressing type of case in which the child faces imminent harm. In such cases, emergency court hearings are called to bring the child out of harm's way.

Most of the cases involve a substance abuse problem in the home, she said. Parents who want to get their children back meet with a social worker to plan for how they are going to make improvements to create a safer environment for the children. In-patient or out-patient drug or alcohol treatment may be required. The case plan will include goals the parent is to work toward, such as completing a parenting class at the Family Resource Center or attending treatment at Mat-Su Recovery. It will list how often the parent can visit the child and will also explain why certain goals were set.

Upon successful completion of that case plan, the social worker might develop a second case plan to address another area that the parent needs to improve, Langdon said. "Parents might get too overwhelmed if they have to work on every issue at once. A lot of parents have multiple issues, and we have to choose the most important one to work on first."

If a parent successfully completes all the case plans, the children will be returned, Langdon said. In cases where the parent and social worker conflict on a case plan, there is a grievance procedure. The matter can also be put before the judge to decide whether some aspect of the case plan isn't working.

A long haul

Buckwalter, 37, feels she finally has her life on track. She and her husband recently celebrated their eighth wedding anniversary, both have jobs, and they own their own home. To keep his mind off their problems Dan Buckwalter has been building onto the house. "It's something positive he can do while we're waiting," she said.

The road there has been a long, bumpy one. Donna Buckwalter had her first child, Destiny, when she was 14 years old and lived in Palmer. "I named her Destiny because I figured that is what she was to me," she said.

Buckwalter married the baby's 24-year-old father and finished high school correspondence courses until she was old enough to take her General Education Diploma (GED) test. Destiny is now 22. She lives and works in Wasilla and was raised by Buckwalter.

By 16, Donna was divorced. At 17 she married again. Her second marriage, during which a second daughter was born, was reportedly abusive, and she left her husband at the age of 19. Along the line, as a teen-ager, Buckwalter completed a vocational certificate in bookkeeping. Through the years, she was able to get work as a bookkeeper for various companies, including Aero Volkswagon in Anchorage.

From the second divorce until the age of 25, Buckwalter said she was a single mother of two children and she did "what I thought I was supposed to do.

"I came from a really dysfunctional family, and I had a hard time coping with my emotions, but outwardly, I seemed to be doing okay," Buckwalter said. In her mid 20s, though, she discovered cocaine could dull her thoughts and feelings, and she became hooked.

Problems became worse after she rolled her truck in a 1988 drunken driving incident in Anchorage, which left her with lasting head injuries and a DWI conviction. After that, over the course of three years, she gained control over her addiction and stayed away from drugs and alcohol.

But with new health problems stemming from the accident, including an undiagnosed bi-polar disorder, back pain and headaches, Buckwalter reached a day where she no longer recognized the people around her.

While she was placed in the Alaska Psychiatric Institute her mother took care of her children. Buckwalter said she was stabilized at API with both therapy and medications to treat her disorder and pain.

A few years later, however, she was back to cocaine and heroin. She lost a third daughter to the girl's father in a custody battle.

Buckwalter and her new husband, Dan Buckwalter, racked up criminal charges, this time involving theft to steal money to buy drugs, and for drug possession. In 1997, she was sentenced to a year in jail, which she served at Hiland Mountain Correctional in the then-newly developed mental health section. Her husband was locked up five years at the Kenai Wildwood Facility where he underwent 425 days of intense substance abuse rehabilitation. Their daughter, who was two at the time and the only one remaining at home, was taken in a DFYS action and placed in Buckwalter's mother-in-law's care. She remains there.

"At Hiland, I was given the tools to understand addiction, and I really benefited from that program. I worked it honestly, thinking every minute about my daughter," Buckwalter said, showing a stack of certificates for successfully completing programs at Hiland.

"I did well when I got out, and then had one relapse, which got me put back in jail, this time at the Cordova Center," she said.

The one relapse occurred early in her pregnancy with Daniel before she knew she was pregnant, and it went on her medical records after she told her physician. A DFYS social worker in charge of Buckwalter's case through her daughter's placement was able to obtain those medical records. Buckwalter was asked to sign records over when Daniel was born. Daniel was found to be a healthy baby, though he was born early, hospital records showed.

"I was checked during my pregnancy for any signs of substance abuse, and so I can prove that it was just one relapse and not like they made it sound -- as if I were doing cocaine all during my pregnancy," Buckwalter said.

"The same day I signed over my medical records, they came to the hospital and took away my parental rights. We were both in the hospital, but I couldn't see him," she said.

Shortly after leaving the hospital, Buckwalter was sent to Cordova House, where she served eight months for the relapse that was revealed on her medical records.

Tough choices

At this point, both Donna and Dan Buckwalter are on separate case plans with DFYS. According to her case plan, Donna was asked to enter a residential treatment program and try to go off some or all of the prescribed drugs she currently takes for her bi-polar disorder and head and back pains. Mat-Su Recovery reportedly recommended she enter a Juneau program. Instead, Buckwalter is asking to attend out-patient treatment through Starting Point. She said her physician doesn't recommend that she goes off the medication that currently keeps her stable.

Not attending a residential treatment program means Buckwalter is not complying with her case plan, which is grounds for limiting or severing her visits with her children.

"I don't want to be that far away from my children, and miss all those visits. It puts me further back with my son," Buckwalter said. "Starting Point has an intensive program. I will pay for it with my own money."

It's up to Judge Eric Smith to decide whether that's good enough or not at Tuesday's hearing.

This is the first in a series of articles in which the Frontiersman will take a look at individual Division of Family and Youth Service cases making their way through the Palmer court. By law, these cases are confidential, and the public cannot attend court proceedings to hear the arguments pro and con. A group of concerned parents who began picketing in public this summer say they want to talk about their cases because, they claim, the secrecy grants greater power to those making the decisions.