A couple of years ago, Sarah Woodard was working on a writing project — a memoir — and she wanted to learn a little bit more about the four years she spent in the foster care system in the '80s.
Woodard's mother suffered from mental illness, and after she attempted to take her own life, Woodard ended up in foster care during high school.
So she called the Department for Children and Families to request her records from the period she was in state custody.
“At the time I was thinking, you know, that they might have been thrown away, like would they still have them, because this was back in the '80s,” she said, during an interview near her home in Burlington. “But what they actually said was that I couldn’t have them, and I was completely shocked. It just had never crossed my mind that they wouldn’t allow a person who has aged out to have their own records.”
At the time, law enforcement was allowed to see the records, as were attorneys, state employees and Woodard’s birth and foster parents.
But the files were off limits to any former foster care children.
Woodard says she didn't think her records would tell her everything she wanted to know, but it was something she felt she had the right to see.
There's so much I don't remember, or that's really hazy, and I thought it would just help me piece together what happened. And again, I'm sure it will probably bring some stuff up for me. Which is fine, I mean, I think that's all part of the healing process.Sarah Woodard, former foster care child
“There's so much I don't remember, or that's really hazy, and I thought it would just help me piece together what happened,” she said. “And again, I do think it'll probably bring some stuff up for me. Which is fine, I mean, I think that's all part of the healing process.”
Most states don't allow former foster care children to see their records, and Vermont lawmakers took up the issue after the survivors of the St. Joseph's Orphanage, in Burlington, couldn't get their records from the Catholic Diocese that ran the orphanage.
The state found residents of the now-closed facility faced physical and sexual abuse at the hands of staff, and former residents have worked with lawmakers to pass reforms.
That includes this new law, which allows children who come under the state's care to access their records.
“The whole beginning of the records bill came about because Vermont Catholic Diocese and Vermont Catholic Charities, under the authorization of the Dioceses, would not release our records,” said Brenda Hannon, who spent almost ten years at St. Joseph’s in the 1960s. “This is our legacy, basically. It is our legacy, and it will help the children of today and tomorrow. It really will.”
While there isn't a national database providing details on how foster care records laws compare among states, the Vermont Office of the Child, Youth, and Family Advocate director Matthew Bernstein says Vermont's new law offers former foster care children the widest access to their state records.
"We have not heard of another state that provides the breadth of access to records that this law provides to Vermont's former foster youth," Bernstein said. "I don't know if any other state is as clear as ours was as to the law's intent, which is centered on the rights of impacted Vermonters to understand their own stories."
Gov. Phil Scot signed the records bill at the end of the last session, and the law went into effect on July 1.
And since then, the state’s been scrambling a bit to figure out a procedure for releasing the records.
For some foster care children, who were in the system for a decade or more, the records can be more than 2,000 pages.
Each page has to be reviewed to make sure federal disclosure laws are followed. The state even hired a part-time employee to go through the records and get them digitized for distribution.
Nathaniel Farnham, who is 25 and lives in Jeffersonville, is one of the former foster care children who is requesting his records to find out some details about his past.
“It started as it always does. It started with an initial contact by an investigator, which lead to home visits, you know, supervised home visits for a couple of weeks,” Farnham said. “And then just one Saturday morning while I was watching cartoons with my mom, knock on the door, and there’s a DCF worker with two state troopers. And I’m getting put in the back of a car and off I go, start the 13 years of hell.”
As far as he knows, and from what he’s been told, his mom, who was raising him alone, was prescribed OxyContin for a back injury which led to a substance use disorder.
Farnham was 7 when he was put under the care of the state of Vermont, and he remained in the foster care system until a few months after graduating high school.
“I was in DCF up until I aged out in 2018,” he said. “35 different foster homes. Anywhere between eight and 10 residential facilities, that’s kind of unconfirmed at this point. And three stays at the Brattleboro Retreat psych ward; a lot of experience, both traumatic and good.”
Trauma that I suffered has been blockaded by my brain to not remember. So I’m looking to read my record with a more mature and third person kind of mindset. And just kind of reexperience, in a sense, what I went through, to kind of just understand everything and see exactly why I am the way that I am, and who I am today.Nathaniel Farnham, former foster care child
So being able to see his records, Farnham says, is one way to piece together his past — to try to learn more about what his mom was going through when the state removed her child from her care, and continue his own healing and growth.
“I mean, there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s in the past. I went through it. It is what it is” said Farnham. “But, trauma response is real. Trauma that I suffered has been blockaded by my brain to not remember. So I’m looking to read my record with a more mature and third person kind of mindset. And just kind of reexperience, in a sense, what I went through, to kind of just understand everything and see exactly why I am the way that I am, and who I am today.”
During testimony for the records bill, lawmakers heard many different reasons for why former foster children may want to see their records.
Some wanted to see medical records, while others were hoping to find family members.
Many spoke of addressing past trauma and using the records to better understand and move beyond a difficult past.
Sarah Woodard says Vermont's law, which is now one of the most permissive in the country, puts those decisions in the hands of the people who lived those lives.
“People that are coming out of foster care are coming out of a system where people have made a lot of decisions for them without out a lot of say and control. And not having access to records feels like a piece of that, it’s like, ‘Oh we know what’s best for you,’” she said. “And so I think having records really acknowledges that, that people have a right to them and that it’s their history to do with what they want to and need to.”
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