Photo by Kristine Larsen.
LeBlanc, Adrian Nicole. Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx. New York: Scribner, 2003. randomfamily.com
Poverty is as much a dynamic as a condition. It creates its own energies and intuition, propelling families more deeply into trouble, contorting already dimmed possibilities, both tightening and wearing down bonds. It is inaccurate, and dishonest, to freeze the frame of debate at our favorite national moments—"teenage pregnancy," "crime," "from welfare to work," "from prison, back home." "Love & Diane" shows this. Dworkin follows the push and pull of poverty's motivating and resulting complications—how drugs and personal history and housing and case workers and adolescence are like fibers of a weave. What we call crack or foster care are also situations and expectations, knots that need to be untied patiently.
The emotion of love itself is as much a dynamic as the injustice—unfolding in new places, getting wounded, waning, then, snapping back again. I watch this film and become enraged. How much more? How much more suffering do we need to see to trust what we already know? How much more will we waste these women's talents and strengths? What does it mean about the system when Diane's request for help itself becomes dangerous, when her ordinary hope for a family becomes the cause for shame?
You could freeze any frame of this film and encounter the force of truth because Jennifer Dworkin paid close attention, and because Love and Diane can't hide the power of who they are. Just look—at the reluctant pleasure in Diane's face when she talks about dressing up as an office girl; at the heavy awkwardness of Love's walk as she and Diane and Donyaeh head to the clinic; the untouched computer on the kitchen table; Love's boyfriend, Courtney, distractedly touching Donyaeh's leg while the child sits on Love's lap, ignored. Hear the solid intonation of pride in Love's voice when she shares with Diane the negative HIV test result. Watch Willie as he looks out the window of the apartment, surveying his new block—his slender neck, the flash of interest—there, then gone. If there's anyway to miss it, stop watching, and, for a moment, just listen to the sounds-the train, the buses, the women talking to each other and themselves. Hear the urgency of the sisters' voices as they try to help Love see herself, the hesitant honesty bouncing back and forth across those empty apartment walls.
Next:
Keely Magyar, Senior Program Director, Lawyers for Children America
Keely A. Magyar
New York, like most states, provides lawyers to children in abuse and neglect cases. I had hoped Love & Diane would show one of these attorneys at work. Unfortunately, according to filmmaker Jennifer Dworkin, Donyaeh's law guardian—not to be confused with Love's attorney, Lauren Shapiro— never met with Love, her boyfriend, Diane, or anyone else in Donyaeh's family during the eighteen months of filming. Diane, or anyone else in Donyaeh's family. Sadly, this is probably due more to systemic problems than to one attorney's shortcomings.
The quality of legal services for abused and neglected children is often abysmal. Restrictions on attorney compensation, such as per-case caps and bars against payment for time spent visiting children, lead to exorbitant caseloads and dissuade attorneys from giving cases ample attention. (Donyaeh's attorney was probably responsible for one to two hundred children.) Many courts have insufficient quality control mechanisms. Low pay and lack of respect in the legal community deter bright new attorneys from entering the field. There are few training opportunities for those who pursue careers in children's advocacy. This work exacts a great emotional toll because of the high stakes, unmanageable caseloads, and a toxic combination of policies promoting family reunification and a dearth of high quality community services to address the complex problems of low-income families. Consequently, burnout leads to attrition of many talented, experienced attorneys.
A zealous advocate for Donyaeh could have discouraged the court from placing Donyaeh in foster care and encouraged the court to order services to address Love's mental health needs and strengthen her parenting skills. Donyaeh could have stayed with his mother on the condition that she attend therapy and work intensively with a social worker to learn how to care for Donyaeh. If Donyaeh had been placed temporarily in Diane's custody, he could have seen his mother daily. Love and Donyaeh might have thrived in a residential program for young mothers and children. Any of these solutions would have spared Donyaeh the trauma of removal from his mother and, later, from his foster parent. If foster care were truly the best option for Donyaeh, an involved attorney could have ensured that he did not return home unless Love was receiving ample support and demonstrating marked improvement.
Paradoxically, the film calls into question both Donyaeh's placement in foster care and his return home. A zealous, competent advocate for Donyaeh could have helped the court answer these difficult questions. Legal services for children can make a difference, and Love & Diane demonstrates what happens when the legal profession fails to give its best to some of society's most needy.
Next:
Dr. Diane R. Brown, Author
Photo by Dan Katz.
Brown, Diane, and Verna Keith, eds. In and Out of Our Right Minds: The Mental Health of African American Women. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
Love & Diane is a real survivor story about the struggles of an African American mother and her family to climb out of the depths of urban poverty while coping with the mental health consequences of being poor, Black and female. Issues of mental health provide a backdrop for many of the circumstances that this family encounters. Depression makes the stressful task of being a single parent even more difficult. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, Diane has spent much of her youth and early adulthood using drugs and alcohol to mask her pain and her sense of aloneness. Loss, poverty and substance abuse form a vicious cycle that is passed from one generation to the next. The same cycle is repeated when her daughter Love gives birth to Donyaeh, and finds herself struggling to deal with the responsibilities of motherhood. Love also has to contend with anger and depression resulting from a childhood characterized by the absence of her mother, Diane due to substance abuse.
The film highlights how little control people have after they are caught up in a welfare system that fails to address their needs. It also provides an example of what works and what doesn't work in the delivery of mental health services, particularly for the poor and for persons of color.
Unfortunately, the initial response to a mental health crisis in low income and African American neighborhoods, is often to call the police. When Love's anger turned violent, and Diane called social services, she was looking for help rather than law enforcement. This is just one example of the gap in understanding that separates those who suffer mental instability, and the system that deals with them.
Once tangled in the bureaucracy, Love, Diane and Donyaeh have very little say in the decisions that are made about them. The overall lack of individual agency provokes instability and anxiety that not only threatens mental health, but inspires a distrust in the system. This in turn makes those who are at risk reluctant to call for help.
Too often the case loads for social workers and therapists working in impoverished communities are overwhelming. This reduces the likelihood that they can take the time that is needed to assess an individual's circumstances effectively, and work out the best solutions for either the short or the long term. It appeared that the decisions that were made about Love's case by her therapist adhered to a rigid set of guidelines, rather than the specific needs of the situation.
Overall, Love & Diane is documentary that legislators, policy makers, social service workers and mental health professionals need to see. It would clearly help middle class professionals to better understand the struggles that the poor face in reclaiming their dignity and maintaining their mental health.
Next:
Dr. H. Westley Clark, Director, Center for Substance Abuse, SAMHSA, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services
Dr. H Westley Clark
The cycle of substance-abuse related family discord illustrated in Love and Diane must be broken. One starting point is the provision of services to pregnant and postpartum women. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has funded an array of services for women with substance abuse problems. Some of these services provide residential treatment that allows infants and minor children to reside with their mother in the treatment facility. Family centered residential substance abuse treatment for women with children avoids pitting the needs of women seeking substance abuse treatment against the needs of children. In-home assistance can also help with parenting.
More than 60% of women reported remaining completely clean and sober 6 months after discharge from a residential treatment program, and employment rose from 7% pre-treatment to 37% after treatment. Only 12% of the women continued to live with an alcohol involved or drug involved partner after treatment, down from 45% prior to treatment.
Unfortunately, residential treatment programs for mothers with histories of substance abuse were not prevalent during the explosion of crack addiction that ensnared Diane during the late 80s and early 90s. Until the SAMHSA funded programs were first established between 1993 and 1995, there were few treatment facilities with the knowledge, resources, and training sufficient to address the range of issues and severity of substance abuse affecting women. While significant gains have been made over the past 12 years in expanding treatment capacity for women, SAMHSA has recognized the need to continue to expand treatment capacity in order to adequately address the needs of this population.
Participation in a residential treatment program for women or women and their children is not always a requirement for the mothers to retain custody of the children. However, if the mothers enter the program through the court system or child welfare system, participation in a residential program could be a requirement for them to retain custody of their children.
One of the main barriers to residential treatment is cost and the availability of state funding, however there are other obstacles. Some residential treatment programs for women do not accommodate children and the mothers may not even be allowed visitation or contact with their children during the early phase of their treatment. Even if a woman could bring one or two children into treatment with her, often they have to leave one or more of their children, making it more difficult to be away from home. This can set up a conflict if the woman is also expected to visit the child, or receive visits, as part of her reunification plan with the court. A very difficult situation for the woman.
The ambivalence of partners, who usually use drugs, may also stand in the way of the woman's efforts to stop using. Transportation and housing in the post-residential treatment period are also major barriers.
Introduction
More than being just a financial matter, poverty impacts on every aspect of a person's physical, mental and emotional well being. In this feature we've asked experts to expand upon some of the far-reaching issues that are tackled in the documentary.
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Author
"The emotion of love itself is as much a dynamic as the injustice--unfolding in new places, getting wounded, waning, then, snapping back again. I watch this film and become enraged. How much more?" | Read more »
Keely A. Magyar, Senior Program Director, Lawyers for Children America
"Legal services for children can make a difference, and Love & Diane demonstrates what happens when the legal profession fails to give its best to some of society's most needy." | Read more »
Dr. Diane R. Brown, Author
"The film highlights how little control people have after they are caught up in a welfare system that fails to address their needs. It also provides an example of what works and what doesn't work in the delivery of mental health services, particularly for the poor and for persons of color." | Read more »
Dr. H. Westley Clark, Director, Center for Substance Abuse, SAMHSA, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services
"The cycle of substance-abuse related family discord illustrated in Love & Diane must be broken. One starting point is the provision of services to pregnant and postpartum women." | Read more »
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
Photo by Kristine Larsen.
Poverty is as much a dynamic as a condition. It creates its own energies and intuition, propelling families more deeply into trouble, contorting already dimmed possibilities, both tightening and wearing down bonds. It is inaccurate, and dishonest, to freeze the frame of debate at our favorite national moments--"teenage pregnancy," "crime," "from welfare to work," "from prison, back home." "Love & Diane" shows this. Dworkin follows the push and pull of poverty's motivating and resulting complications--how drugs and personal history and housing and case workers and adolescence are like fibers of a weave. What we call crack or foster care are also situations and expectations, knots that need to be untied patiently.
The emotion of love itself is as much a dynamic as the injustice--unfolding in new places, getting wounded, waning, then, snapping back again. I watch this film and become enraged. How much more? How much more suffering do we need to see to trust what we already know? How much more will we waste these women's talents and strengths? What does it mean about the system when Diane's request for help itself becomes dangerous, when her ordinary hope for a family becomes the cause for shame?
You could freeze any frame of this film and encounter the force of truth because Jennifer Dworkin paid close attention, and because Love and Diane can't hide the power of who they are. Just look--at the reluctant pleasure in Diane's face when she talks about dressing up as an office girl; at the heavy awkwardness of Love's walk as she and Diane and Donyaeh head to the clinic; the untouched computer on the kitchen table; Love's boyfriend, Courtney, distractedly touching Donyaeh's leg while the child sits on Love's lap, ignored. Hear the solid intonation of pride in Love's voice when she shares with Diane the negative HIV test result. Watch Willie as he looks out the window of the apartment, surveying his new block--his slender neck, the flash of interest--there, then gone. If there's anyway to miss it, stop watching, and, for a moment, just listen to the sounds-the train, the buses, the women talking to each other and themselves. Hear the urgency of the sisters' voices as they try to help Love see herself, the hesitant honesty bouncing back and forth across those empty apartment walls.
Next:
Keely Magyar, Senior Program Director, Lawyers for Children America
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine and other publications. She has also been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Bunting fellowship from Radcliffe, a MacDowell Colony residency, and a Soros Media Fellowship. She lives in Manhattan. Random Family, which was short-listed for the international Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage, is her first book.
Keely A. Magyar
New York, like most states, provides lawyers to children in abuse and neglect cases. I had hoped Love & Diane would show one of these attorneys at work. Unfortunately, according to filmmaker Jennifer Dworkin, Donyaeh's law guardian--not to be confused with Love's attorney, Lauren Shapiro-- never met with Love, her boyfriend, Diane, or anyone else in Donyaeh's family during the eighteen months of filming. Diane, or anyone else in Donyaeh's family. Sadly, this is probably due more to systemic problems than to one attorney's shortcomings.
The quality of legal services for abused and neglected children is often abysmal. Restrictions on attorney compensation, such as per-case caps and bars against payment for time spent visiting children, lead to exorbitant caseloads and dissuade attorneys from giving cases ample attention. (Donyaeh's attorney was probably responsible for one to two hundred children.) Many courts have insufficient quality control mechanisms. Low pay and lack of respect in the legal community deter bright new attorneys from entering the field. There are few training opportunities for those who pursue careers in children's advocacy. This work exacts a great emotional toll because of the high stakes, unmanageable caseloads, and a toxic combination of policies promoting family reunification and a dearth of high quality community services to address the complex problems of low-income families. Consequently, burnout leads to attrition of many talented, experienced attorneys.
A zealous advocate for Donyaeh could have discouraged the court from placing Donyaeh in foster care and encouraged the court to order services to address Love's mental health needs and strengthen her parenting skills. Donyaeh could have stayed with his mother on the condition that she attend therapy and work intensively with a social worker to learn how to care for Donyaeh. If Donyaeh had been placed temporarily in Diane's custody, he could have seen his mother daily. Love and Donyaeh might have thrived in a residential program for young mothers and children. Any of these solutions would have spared Donyaeh the trauma of removal from his mother and, later, from his foster parent. If foster care were truly the best option for Donyaeh, an involved attorney could have ensured that he did not return home unless Love was receiving ample support and demonstrating marked improvement.
Paradoxically, the film calls into question both Donyaeh's placement in foster care and his return home. A zealous, competent advocate for Donyaeh could have helped the court answer these difficult questions. Legal services for children can make a difference, and Love & Diane demonstrates what happens when the legal profession fails to give its best to some of society's most needy.
Next:
Dr. Diane R. Brown, Author
Keely Magyar, Senior Program Director at Lawyers for Children America, trains and supports volunteer attorneys who represent the interests of abused and neglected children and adolescents. Ms. Magyar, a court-appointed attorney herself, also provides direct legal services to young people in abuse and neglect cases. An active member of several Family Court committees and the D.C. Bar Family Law Section Steering Committee, she promotes systemic reforms that enable the legal system to serve young people better.
Dr. Diane R. Brown
Photo by Dan Katz.
Love & Diane is a real survivor story about the struggles of an African American mother and her family to climb out of the depths of urban poverty while coping with the mental health consequences of being poor, Black and female. Issues of mental health provide a backdrop for many of the circumstances that this family encounters. Depression makes the stressful task of being a single parent even more difficult. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, Diane has spent much of her youth and early adulthood using drugs and alcohol to mask her pain and her sense of aloneness. Loss, poverty and substance abuse form a vicious cycle that is passed from one generation to the next. The same cycle is repeated when her daughter Love gives birth to Donyaeh, and finds herself struggling to deal with the responsibilities of motherhood. Love also has to contend with anger and depression resulting from a childhood characterized by the absence of her mother, Diane due to substance abuse.
The film highlights how little control people have after they are caught up in a welfare system that fails to address their needs. It also provides an example of what works and what doesn't work in the delivery of mental health services, particularly for the poor and for persons of color.
Unfortunately, the initial response to a mental health crisis in low income and African American neighborhoods, is often to call the police. When Love's anger turned violent, and Diane called social services, she was looking for help rather than law enforcement. This is just one example of the gap in understanding that separates those who suffer mental instability, and the system that deals with them.
Once tangled in the bureaucracy, Love, Diane and Donyaeh have very little say in the decisions that are made about them. The overall lack of individual agency provokes instability and anxiety that not only threatens mental health, but inspires a distrust in the system. This in turn makes those who are at risk reluctant to call for help.
Too often the case loads for social workers and therapists working in impoverished communities are overwhelming. This reduces the likelihood that they can take the time that is needed to assess an individual's circumstances effectively, and work out the best solutions for either the short or the long term. It appeared that the decisions that were made about Love's case by her therapist adhered to a rigid set of guidelines, rather than the specific needs of the situation.
Overall, Love & Diane is documentary that legislators, policy makers, social service workers and mental health professionals need to see. It would clearly help middle class professionals to better understand the struggles that the poor face in reclaiming their dignity and maintaining their mental health.
Diane R. Brown, PhD. is the Executive Director of the Institute for the Elimination of Health Disparities at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. She is the co-editor of In and Out of Our Right Minds: The Mental Health of African American Women (Columbia University Press, 2003).
Dr. H. Westley Clark
The cycle of substance-abuse related family discord illustrated in Love and Diane must be broken. One starting point is the provision of services to pregnant and postpartum women. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has funded an array of services for women with substance abuse problems. Some of these services provide residential treatment that allows infants and minor children to reside with their mother in the treatment facility. Family centered residential substance abuse treatment for women with children avoids pitting the needs of women seeking substance abuse treatment against the needs of children. In-home assistance can also help with parenting.
More than 60% of women reported remaining completely clean and sober 6 months after discharge from a residential treatment program, and employment rose from 7% pre-treatment to 37% after treatment. Only 12% of the women continued to live with an alcohol involved or drug involved partner after treatment, down from 45% prior to treatment.
Unfortunately, residential treatment programs for mothers with histories of substance abuse were not prevalent during the explosion of crack addiction that ensnared Diane during the late 80s and early 90s. Until the SAMHSA funded programs were first established between 1993 and 1995, there were few treatment facilities with the knowledge, resources, and training sufficient to address the range of issues and severity of substance abuse affecting women. While significant gains have been made over the past 12 years in expanding treatment capacity for women, SAMHSA has recognized the need to continue to expand treatment capacity in order to adequately address the needs of this population.
Participation in a residential treatment program for women or women and their children is not always a requirement for the mothers to retain custody of the children. However, if the mothers enter the program through the court system or child welfare system, participation in a residential program could be a requirement for them to retain custody of their children.
One of the main barriers to residential treatment is cost and the availability of state funding, however there are other obstacles. Some residential treatment programs for women do not accommodate children and the mothers may not even be allowed visitation or contact with their children during the early phase of their treatment. Even if a woman could bring one or two children into treatment with her, often they have to leave one or more of their children, making it more difficult to be away from home. This can set up a conflict if the woman is also expected to visit the child, or receive visits, as part of her reunification plan with the court. A very difficult situation for the woman.
The ambivalence of partners, who usually use drugs, may also stand in the way of the woman's efforts to stop using. Transportation and housing in the post-residential treatment period are also major barriers.
H. Westley Clark, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., is Director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In this position he leads SAMHSA's efforts to provide effective and accessible treatment to all Americans suffering from alcohol or drug addictions.