Feature Writer Romeo Edmead – Parents Deal With a Broken System
When a couple from Independence Missouri made their way to a hospital on May 21, 2010, they knew their lives would drastically change forever. The momentous occasion brought baby Mikaela Sinnett into the world, to the proud parents of Blake Sinnett and Erika Johnson. Their jubilation would be curtailed almost immediately though, as a result
of an unfortunate sequence of events.
It all started when Ms. Johnson attempted to nurse baby Mikaela for the first time and observed that something was not quite right. After requesting assistance from a nurse, it turned out that the newborn was turning blue and had to be repositioned. Once Mikaela began accepting her meal the nurse assured Ms. Johnson that everything was fine and
that it was common for new mothers to need some guidance.
According to children’s services however, everything was far from okay. The couple, who both happen to be blind, were visited by a social worker just several hours later and had to answer a myriad of questions regarding how they could provide proper care for a child with out round the clock sighted assistance. Eventually, the worker concluded that the couple could not take their daughter home and Mikaela would be sent to foster care. They were granted visitation a few times a week, for a grand total of an hour each time.
This debilitating ordeal would last approximately 2 months, but only an eminent law suit convinced social services to relent and let Mikaela go home. The National Federation of the Blind hired a Missouri attorney after it was determined that blindness was the only reason Mikaela’s parents were not permitted to take her home. Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the NFB, said, “Despite the fact that blind parents are successfully raising children across the nation, blind Americans continue to find that misconceptions and stereotypes about the capabilities of blind people too often result in hasty and unwarranted decisions to remove children from the custody of blind parents. The worst nightmare of parents everywhere-having a child taken away-is sadly part of the lives of too many blind parents. The National Federation of the Blind stands ready and willing to help state officials across the country understand how blind people use alternative techniques to care for their children. But the blind of America will not tolerate our children being taken from us.”
Gary Wunder, President of the NFB of Missouri, also chimed in with his opinion on the matter. He said, “We have gotten Mikaela back home, but we must fundamentally change a system that presumes the incompetence of blind parents and operates on a principle of guilty until proven innocent rather than the reverse. We cannot help but think that new parents who are blind in Missouri will avoid seeking medical and social services that they may need for fear that they will experience a similar ordeal. We can never give back the two months this family has lost, nor can we restore to Erika the joy of nursing her child that this separation has made impossible. What we can do is use their adversity to change
the system that allowed this atrocity and educate the people who have mistakenly equated blindness with a lack of perception, intellect, and judgment.” Finally, if they choose to do so, the NFB can still pursue legal action by filing a civil lawsuit.
Editor’s note: Source information for this article was received via NFB press release.