The private world of juvenile court: mothers, mental illness and the relentless machinery of the state

[...] instead of sleeping, like her daughter, Coco placed her heavy head in her small hands and wept.1 I. INTRODUCTION Motherhood is an increasingly central life experience for mentally ill women.2 Many are fine parents, and their children adjust well.3 Others have difficulties related to their health, with negative outcomes for their children.4 Most mentally ill women who raise their children themselves do so in the context of marital discord, single-parent status, social isolation and sometimes extreme poverty.5 Mentally ill mothers are not more likely to abuse or neglect their children;6 whatever one's parenting deficiencies, less than optimal parenting does not by definition fall below society's minimum standards.7 Nevertheless, mothers with mental illness lose custody of their children disproportionately more often than do healthy mothers, often via the child welfare system, and they also experience greater difficulty regaining custody.8 Multiple court systems may award custody to multiple caregivers, leaving mothers "bewildered" by all the complex arrangements.9 Some experts worry that too often diagnosis alone drives custody and termination of parental rights decisions.10 Only when mental illness creates a direct and serious risk to the child should the state interfere with a mother's parental rights.11 Nevertheless, individual and systemic bias against the mentally ill lowers the legal standard that the state must meet in fact to justify opening and pursuing child welfare cases.12 Juvenile courts in "dependency cases"13 supervise many child welfare agency activities and enter orders removing children from mentally ill mothers' care, sometimes leading to termination of parental rights.14 Juvenile law balances the parent's and child's fundamental interest in their relationship against a child's statutory right to a safe, permanent home.15 Juvenile courts perform this function in dependency cases: they decide whether a child has been abused or neglected; if state agencies have made "reasonable efforts" to preserve or reunify a family; and whether a parent has made sufficient efforts and progress to provide a safe and permanent home.16 The "particularly difficult" Kentucky case,17 T.G. v. Commonwealth,18 illustrates many of the pitfalls a mentally ill mother can encounter in the juvenile court system.