UPDATE: Mallerie Shirley’s “Neglect” charge has just been reversed! We are awaiting details, but this is fantastic news. We are hopeful that our “Reasonable Childhood Independence” law was instrumental, because this is what had happened:
A mom, a kid, a beautiful day
Atlanta mom Mallerie Shirley loves seeing her son get himself around their kid-friendly neighborhood. So on Election Day last year, with the schools closed, of course she let him ride his scooter to the playground.
But as he scooted along the bike trail just outside his house, a lady approached and started asking him questions, including where were his parents.
The boy, who’s 6, did not give the lady his name, age, or where he lived. Slightly freaked out, he rode away. But the woman followed him home and must have written down the address, because two days later, a caseworker from the Division of Family and Children Services showed up at Shirley’s door.
Shirley wasn’t home, but her husband was. The caseworker told him their son had been seen unsupervised. She was going to go interview him and would be back.
The interrogation
At his school, the caseworker asked the boy if his parents loved him and did they do drugs. All because he’d taken a scooter ride to the playground!
On her return visit, the caseworker said the boy was too young to be outside on his own. Shirley and her husband cited the Reasonable Childhood Independence law that had recently been passed in Georgia, with the help of Let Grow (the nonprofit I helm). It gives parents the right to give their kids some unsupervised time, so long as they aren’t putting the child in obvious and serious danger.
The caseworker replied that the boy could have broken his leg or been kidnapped. “Her coming up with these worst case scenarios made us realize: Oh. She’s not going to work with us,” says Shirley.
Catastrophizing becomes law
A few weeks later, a letter arrived saying Shirley had a “substantiated” finding of neglect against her, “based on the preponderance of evidence.”
Calls to the DFCS caseworker were not returned.
Shirley holds a Masters in Social Work. She herself was a caseworker for four years before becoming a software engineer. She knows that the preponderance of evidence is actually on her side in that she knows her neighborhood, and her son’s maturity level. He’s a good student, loves school, cleans his room. He also knows his neighbors by name. “We sometimes call him Doogie Howser,” says Shirley.
So her Election Day decision was deliberate and considered. What’s more, she was letting her son do something that 6-year-olds have done for eons: ride around the neighborhood.
On the case
David DeLugas, head of Parents USA, a nonprofit that provides pro bono legal help to parents in situations like this, has taken Shirley’s case. He has filed a request for an administrative review to contest Shirley’s substantiation of neglect. A donation page has been established to help ParentsUSA cover her legal expenses, as well as other parents facing similar difficulties.
In the meantime, Shirley and her husband are living with the DFCS “Safety Plan” they felt they had to sign that says, “Both parents will ensure that both children are supervised at all time.”
“It’s another instance of the government using language that is so loose that it is impossible to comply with,” says DeLugas. Are the kids allowed to be in the front yard, or on a playdate, if Shirley or her husband are not right there ensuring they are constantly supervised? The plan doesn’t even say when it will expire.
It’s not a safety plan if the child is already safe
The caseworker originally told the parents that she felt children should’t be going to the playground alone till age 13 (an age that kids in my generation were already babysitting).
Now, obviously, DFCS has an important job to do: Save children who are truly being neglected and abused. When she was a caseworker, says Shirley, she saw “unthinkable things.”
A kid riding his scooter on a day off school was not one of them.
