Rylan’s Law to require more oversight in child custody cases

Rylan Ott died in April 2016, two weeks before his second birthday. He wandered away from his home in Carthage and drowned in a pond.

That didn’t have to happen, state Sen. Tamara Barringer said.

“We missed an opportunity,” said Barringer, a Republican from Cary. “We could have possibly helped the birth mother but we could definitely have saved the child.”

The Moore County Department of Social Services removed Rylan and his older sister from their mother, Samantha Bryant, in October 2015 after a reported altercation between Bryant and her boyfriend. Rylan and his sister were assigned to foster parents in a home on Fort Bragg who weren’t related to them. But a judge returned Rylan to his mother in December 2015 even though she faced a misdemeanor charge of child abuse. Authorities agreed to drop the charge on the condition that Bryant keep a clean record.

A new law requires social services employees to take additional steps to make sure children in foster care are not returned to their home prematurely. Employees must observe the children and parents together on at least two visits before advising a judge on who should have custody of the children. It’s called Rylan’s Law.

Lawmakers, advocacy groups, and current and former foster parents and foster children gathered Wednesday in Raleigh to celebrate the changes, which Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law last week as part of House Bill 630. The bill also addresses a series of other issues in the child welfare system.

The new requirements for social-service departments are considered “best practice” but not all counties follow the rule, said Karen McLeod, president and CEO of Benchmarks, a nonprofit organization addressing human service needs in North Carolina. McLeod said the Moore County agency didn’t do observations and argued that no law required it to do so.

“If you have to make ‘best practice’ a law, if we have to do everything with DSS, there is a problem. You shouldn’t have to do that,” McLeod said.

Barringer took the lead on the bill in the Senate. Her previous work on child welfare issues includes pushing to raise the age at which children must leave the foster care system from 18 to 21, a change that took effect at the start of 2017.

Before joining the General Assembly, Barringer said she and her husband were foster parents for 10 years. She fostered one child who had 17 fractured bones and a baby who had been sexually abused, she said.

The new law also:

▪ creates regional partnerships in which county social services agencies will help each other.

▪ requires the state to hire a contractor to review the statewide social services system.

▪ shortens the time frame given to parents to appeal a custody decision.

▪ establishes a pilot program for youth in foster care to obtain a driver’s license.

“Within about two years, we should have a system that is accountable, transparent and delivers high quality standard care to everyone in this state,” Barringer said in an interview Tuesday.

At the event Wednesday, Senate leader Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore said they were glad to see legislators come together to pass an important law.

“While we may disagree on things periodically, one thing we will never disagree on is protecting the children of this state,” Moore said.

This story was originally published June 28, 2017 at 5:03 PM with the headline "Rylan’s Law to require more oversight in child custody cases."