Nov 29, 202313 min read

First Lady Rosalynn Carter and a Historic Win for Children in Foster Care: An Untold Story

Warm breezes wafted into the White House reception rooms as soft sounds of the military string quartet played in the background. This was A First Lady’s Tea and Reception — polished to perfection.

Surrounded by fresh pastel flowers, pink punch served in elegant crystal bowls, starched white linen tablecloths, and beautifully dressed guests, stood Mrs. Rosalynn Carter.

She was slim, very erect, simply dressed in a pastel shirtwaist dress cinched at her slender waist, her wavy brown hair brushing lightly against her straight, squared shoulders. In the receiving line, she greeted at least several hundred guests with a softly accented Southern voice and an unfailingly kind smile. She looked - well - indefatigable.

I remember thinking that she was someone you wanted on your side. And definitely not opposing your side.

We were at the White House to celebrate a historic victory for children and families, which Mrs. Carter had oh-so-quietly helped bring about. It was a victory for the too often forgotten children in the nation — children removed from their families and placed into foster care.

The Plight of Children in Foster Care

As I stood in line to greet the First Lady, I thought of all the photos I had seen of these children. I remembered all the data, tables, charts, and policy reports I had reviewed about them. Frequently born with special needs, including complex medical needs, foster care children had often been removed from families overwhelmed by the demands those needs placed on already highly stressed parents.

Too often, these children were moved frequently through a series of stressed foster homes over the years. Child welfare workers struggled to find loving homes, but too often, with foster parents vastly under-reimbursed for foster care services, these serial homes did not offer the devoted, affectionate attention that all children need.

Many foster parents could not deal with the complicated medical and psychosocial needs of the children —often leading to the removal of the children from a foster care parent into a new foster home. This could happen multiple times, interfering with the essential development of trust and security in children.

As I stood in the receiving line, I thought of the horrible photos of children I had seen who had been significantly abused or neglected. Sometimes they had to be taken away, for their own safety. But sometimes children were removed by child welfare authorities influenced by racial, ethnic, or other bias — and by hasty judgment.

I could not stop myself from seeing them, as if they were here, in this elegant White House reception. Scarred, scared children staring at the camera with desperate or dull eyes that asked “Where is my mother? Where is my father? Where are my grandparents? Who can I trust? Who cares about me?” 1

Their faces crowded into my brain, contrasting harshly with the elegant White House scene, the well-dressed guests, murmuring with excitement to be there, the sunny weather, the soft violin music. And the ramrod straight, slim, unfailingly courteous, highly intelligent, resolute Southern First Lady who had quietly championed their cause.

So, what was this historic legislation? Why did it matter and what on earth was I doing at The White House working on this and other children's issues?

I am the granddaughter of a working-class Irish immigrant who almost had his own children taken away from him by child welfare authorities after his wife had died giving birth to their fifth child. A concerned neighbor, I was told, had reported him to the authorities when he had to leave his school-age children alone after school, during the Great Depression, while he worked several shift jobs to keep the family together. (Without available, affordable child care, even the best of parents are at risk of having their children taken away from them into foster care, due to "neglect.")

And why did I stand there wondering if I would (should?) summon the courage to hold the receiving line at bay while I told Mrs. Carter of that pivotal day when - by some lucky chance - I had been able to make a very small contribution towards helping her achieve a huge step towards passage of this legislation? Did one hold up a receiving line for this?

Somehow, I thought, not. Awfully rude, especially for White House behavior.

The 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act

The legislation in question? The 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act. What did it do and why was it historic?

President Carter summed up the significance of this legislation well, in his statement on signing this new law:

This legislation is the product of more than 3 years of cooperative effort by the administration and Congress. It makes great improvements in Title XX, the basic Federal social services program. It reforms our current crisis-ridden foster care program, creates a Federal adoption assistance program for children with special needs, and reinforces the child welfare services program.

The sad statistics underlying the need for this legislation are all too compelling-more than 500,000 children across the country are in foster care. Although foster care placements are supposed to be temporary, almost half of these children have been away from their families for longer than 2 years, and about 100,000 have spent more than 6 years of their young lives in foster care. Almost one-fourth of these children are awaiting adoption, yet no adoptive homes have been found for them, and the services and assistance these young people need have not been available. 2,3

This new law made several important policy advances:

An emphasis on preventive services to families, so that family breakups could be forestalled;
Reforms designed to assure that children would not get lost in foster care and spend lengthy periods of their childhood there, but would be prioritized for permanence by being safely returned, with supportive services, to their own parents, if possible or adopted into loving families;
The creation of the first federal adoption assistance program in the history of the U.S.

Winning these policy advances was arduous work in the Congress of the late 1970s, especially the U.S. Senate, where powerful, very conservative Senators wielded great influence. They were generally not interested in the fates of low-income children.

The Political Skills of Rosalynn Carter

Three very skilled and well-connected friends of Rosalynn Carters, aided by the First Lady, quietly marshaled support to win over powerful conservative Senators.

One need only read Mrs. Carter's autobiography, First Lady from Plains, to see how politically astute Rosalynn Carter was. 4 Former Carter Administration domestic policy chief, Stu Eizenstat, who knew both President and Mrs. Carter well, wrote recently that:

The president recognized her capabilities from the start, giving her a challenging diplomatic assignment unlike any first lady before or since: a grueling two-week trip to seven Latin American countries, not to meet with her fellow first ladies as a goodwill gesture, but to bring a message to the region’s military dictators that the Carter administration was putting a new emphasis on human rights and democracy. 5, 6

On November 21, 2023, Paul Costello, Press Secretary to First Lady Rosalynn Carter (1977-1981), wrote:

From the successes of her husband’s campaign and her substantial efforts to reform the nation’s fractured mental health delivery system to the momentous breakthrough in Israeli-Egyptian relations at the Camp David summit, Rosalynn Carter was there and made her mark. She was no mere footnote as a presidential mate.7

Mrs. Carter works in her office in the White House, East Wing

Mrs. Carter's record on mental health, caregiving and women's issues is well-known. Her engagement in support of children in foster care is not. To my knowledge, this story has never been told.

The Three Friends

“Peggy, I need you to get over here right away. As fast as possible. Three of Mrs. Carter’s friends have been sent from her office to my office. They are on their way. They want to understand the issues behind the child welfare legislation, as they have secured an appointment with Senator Russell Long to discuss it, later this morning.”

“Senator Long?” I queried, stunned. "Are you sure?" Nobody had been able to get in to see Senator Russell Long about this legislation. His support, as the powerful chair of the Senate Finance Committee, was crucial to the successful enactment of this historic new law—and had not been forthcoming.

Some ascribed his resistance to the fiscal and social conservatism of his Louisiana constituents. Russell Long was legendary as a highly conservative Democratic senator and scion of the powerful Huey Long. And he was feuding with the Carter Administration over health care reform, energy policy, and a host of other issues.

“Senator Long?” I repeated, “Are you sure? ”

“You heard me right,” said Laura Miller, Special Assistant to Secretary Joseph Califano, the Cabinet Secretary heading up the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). “And today I cannot answer their questions. This is turning out to be a terrible day for Joe and I have to be with him. You have to do it. Mrs. Carter wants this done.“

Laura Miller, a very smart Harvard Kennedy School graduate dedicated to advancing the well-being of children and families was the real deal, I knew. As the (much junior) Special Assistant to the highly respected Commissioner of the Administration for Children, Youth and Families, Blandina (Bambi) Cardenas, I had already worked with Laura on Head Start and child care issues. Today, Bambi was out of the office. I was it. 8

On that hot July morning in 1979, as I raced the two blocks between my office building and the large Hubert Humphrey Office Building, I wondered who these three (apparently close) female friends of the First Lady were. I questioned whether my appearance, in a two-piece matching skirt and blouse, with a light jacket tossed over one arm, would be considered professional enough.

I had no concerns about briefing them. I had been poring over reports from the Children’s Defense Fund, the Child Welfare League, Congress, and the experts at HEW. I was appalled by the suffering far too many foster care children endured. This had to stop. I was sure I had my facts at the ready and I could sense how intensely fired up and motivated I felt at the prospect of being able to help in a meaningful way.

As I prepared to enter the Secretary’s suite of offices, I paused to calm myself. I wanted to look unhurried, in possession of myself, confident.

Within a few minutes, I knew I liked these women. They dressed, drawled, and lightly chatted in an affluent Southern manner. And they were absolutely, utterly dead set on helping children in foster care. They and their husbands were immensely well-connected - and they were completely determined to use those connections to help the children.

Mrs. Carter had chosen well, I thought. “Well, now, ” said one of them, “I spoke to Russell on the phone early this morning and he said he doesn’t like your program because it is going to cost the government more money. Now what am I going to say to him about that?”

She calls him Russell, I thought, my heart starting to soar! He talks to her on the telephone!!

I sat as upright in my straight-backed chair as I could. I explained the facts: by helping children get adopted out of foster care, often by their own relatives, including their own grandparents, this bill would actually save the government money, I asserted. “You know,” said another of these three women, "I like you. With your soft voice and your brown hair, you remind me of our dear Rosalynn.”

Stunned, I straightened even more and smiled, utterly unsure what to do with this. Except to say, of course, that I was honored by such an undeserved compliment. I offered some more facts. Checking her watch, the leader of the three, stood, patted me on the shoulder, and said “We gotta go. It won’t do to keep Russell waiting.”

She took my phone number and said one of them would call me later and tell me how the meeting went.

Slightly dazed, I walked back to my office. I telephoned a child welfare expert colleague for whom I had the greatest respect—Mary Lee Allen of the Children’s Defense Fund. The entire community of proponents for this legislation had felt it moribund, permanently stalled by the strong resistance of Senator Long. We marveled together at the turn of events and agreed that it was going to be a hard hour or two before we heard what had happened. 9

Shortly after noon, the phone rang. “Russell is going to vote for your bill. When he tried to tell us that it was going to cost the government more money, I told him what you said. He just leaned back and said he must have been misinformed. He wants us to visit Herman (Senator Talmadge, the conservative Georgia Senator who played a key role in the U.S. Senate) this afternoon and tell him also, so he will have his vote.”

And so this trio of Mrs. Carter's friends “visited” with Senator Talmadge (whom no one else had been able to get in to see either) that very afternoon and turned him around.

The bill, which had already passed the House of Representatives, was brought up in the Senate Finance Committee, where it was approved under Senator Russell Long's leadership and then brought out for a successful vote on the floor of the Senate. It then went to a conference between the House and Senate and on to the White House, where its signature by President Carter was celebrated by the First Lady’s reception described above.

Mrs. Carter never sought publicity for the role she played in all this. So some of that role may ultimately be shrouded in the unwritten history of that era. But it was no accident that these three determined and well-connected advocates for children in foster care - personal friends of Mrs Carter - simply showed up in Washington.

Which, my friends, is often precisely how policy gets made. Especially when a smart dedicated woman (or other First Partner) is looking out for profoundly vulnerable children from one of the most powerful places on this planet - The White House. And especially when that First Partner was Rosalynn Carter.

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FOOTNOTES AND CITATIONS

1 Prior to the enactment of this historic legislation, many grandparents were caring informally for their grandchildren. However, many needed adoption assistance and medical assistance in order to legally adopt their grandchildren and more fully protect them. The 1980 Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act made them eligible for federal assistance.

2 _ The American Presidency Project,” Google Docs, accessed October 17, 2023, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nnquC314WfA4iHIrAOxFB9jwx41p-1WKZsH1SFjEay0/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=103034276260743874079&usp=embed_facebook.President Jimmy Carter, “Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 Statement on Signing H.R. 3434 Into Law

3. The first draft of this Signing Statement may well have been prepared for the President by Florence Prioleau, Esq, a highly skilled member of the Domestic Policy Staff (DPS) who became a friend as well as a colleague. Florence had been appointed to DPS to cover all income maintenance and human service issues related to the Social Security Act, which included child welfare. She brought to the White House several years of expert work in the House of Representatives, specifically as a legislative aide on the Committee on Ways and Means, covering these issues. She also brought the knowledge and skills of an attorney and the important awareness and perspectives of an African-American woman.

Florence also had a network of colleagues in the House, who greatly respected her. When I came onto the DPS, she graciously welcomed me into collaboration with her on what was then HR 3434, later known as the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Reform Act of 1980. I was the mother of two young children. Stuart Eizenstat, the head of the Domestic Policy Staff and Senior Advisor to the President had agreed to let me work part-time. Florence generously agreed to cover my child and family policy issues when I was home with my children. I in turn easily agreed to work after they were asleep. Such was the family-friendly ambiance of the Carter White House — not only in the public policy sphere but also in their personnel policies and in personal relationships.

4. Rosalynn Carter, First Lady from Plains (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2016), http://site.ebrary.com/id/11171821.

5. Stu Eizenstat was my boss on the Domestic Policy Staff, where, (with Florence Prioleau, Esq), I covered children's human services issues, including child welfare, Head Start and child care. He is now a colleague and friend.

6. “Opinion: The Astonishing Life of Rosalynn Carter | CNN,” accessed November 29, 2023, Opinion: The astonishing life of Rosalynn Carter | CNN . See also Stu Eizenstt's account of the Carter Administration: Stuart E. Eizenstat, President Carter: The White House Years (St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2018).

7. Paul Costello, “Rosalynn Carter: From Mental Health to Camp David to the Campaign Trail, She Made Her Mark,” USA TODAY, accessed November 29, 2023, https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2023/11/19/rosalynn-carter-death-first-lady-impact/71625366007/. Paul is also a colleague and friend, who, like Stu Eizenstat, has always upheld the values of the Carter years.

8. I had been persuaded to meet with Bambi as a possible candidate for the role of her special assistant by Harley Frankel, who had headed the Head Start and Child Care programs in the Nixon Administration's HEW, where he had saved Head Start several times. Harley then left to work at the newly founded Children's Defense Fund, leading the advocacy work there on Head Start and child care. There was a committed group of dedicated leaders in Washington in those days, who collaborated well, often behind the scenes, without seeking the limelight, with the wellbeing of children and families as the central goal.

Bambi, who became a friend as well as a colleague, was the first Latina Commissioner of the Administration for Children, Youth and Families and Chief of the U.S. Children's Bureau, brought an immense dedication to civil rights, including those of children and families, to her responsibilities for administering all of the nation's Head Start funding as well as the federal share of national child care, child welfare and youth funding, A highly skilled advocate and leader, she also brought the awareness of a Latina woman to the stresses endured by parents of color. The Carter Administration wisely advanced human rights in part by appointing more people of color and more women to important positions in the government than any other presidential administration.

9. For 40 years, the late Mary Lee Allen was one of the most respected national advocates for child welfare policy reforms. She worked at the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), under the leadership of Marian Wright Edelman. CDF continues to promote child welfare policy advances, which are especially important now, given the large numbers of children who have experienced the death of their primary or secondary caregivers during the COVID pandemic. National Institutes of Health (NIH). “More than 140,000 U.S. Children Lost a Primary or Secondary Caregiver Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic,” October 7, 2021. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/more-140000-us-children-lost-primary-or-secondary-caregiver-due-covid-19-pandemic .