Tina Ponce thought she was doing the right thing.  She was suffering from bipolar disorder and couldn’t take care of her children.  She also was too poor to get the help that a middle class family can count on.  So she did the only thing she could think of: She asked the State of California to keep her children in foster care until she got better. Rather than provide Ponce with mental health services, the state “put the children first.”  They made a “child-focused decision.”  They “erred on the side of the child,” and gladly threw the children into foster care. “I had five kids, I was alone, I didn’t have any money, Ponce said.  “I thought it would be a temporary thing.  I didn’t think they would be in the system that long or it would be that hard to get them back.”

But when Ponce was better, she found it was much harder to get her children back than to get the state to take them. One day, while Ponce still was jumping through hoop after hoop in order to get her children back, she saw a television news story about a little girl who died after being left in her foster mother’s car in 100 degree heat.

It was her three-year-old daughter, Maryah.

“Even in my confusion, I never jeopardized my children’s safety or health,” Ponce said.  “If I had them, this wouldn’t have happened.  I thought I was doing the right thing by putting them in foster care.”