On Thursday morning, parents will walk back into a Montgomery boardroom and say the things they said last time. The only question is whether the Alabama Department of Human Resources will answer them this time.
The DHR board meets October 22 at 10 a.m. in the Gordon Persons Building Board Room, 50 North Ripley Street. It is a public meeting. That matters, because the last one showed exactly what happens when the public is watching and the agency still will not answer.
In January, families testified before this same board. They described delays that stretched for months. Records they asked for and never received. A newborn taken without a court order. These were not vague complaints. They were specific, documented, and delivered in person.
DHR’s response, in essence, was that it was somebody else’s problem.
That is what is at stake on Thursday: whether a state agency can keep treating documented harm to families as an administrative inconvenience, or whether the people it answers to will finally make it answer.
Here is what families should be asking for, on the record.
First, timelines. When a family requests their records, how long is acceptable? When DHR opens an investigation, how long before a parent gets to see what the agency wrote about them? If there is no standard, say so. If there is one and it is not being met, say why.
Second, accountability for removals without court orders. A newborn taken from a hospital without a judge’s signature is not a paperwork issue. It is the state separating a family on its own authority. Parents deserve to know what policy allows that, who approved it, and what has changed since.
Third, the deflection itself. When families bring specific complaints to the board and the response is to point elsewhere, that is a choice. The board oversees this agency. If it cannot address what families put in front of it, families deserve to know what the board is actually for.
None of this is abstract. Behind every one of these questions is a real Alabama family that did everything the system asked and got silence in return. Some of those families will be in the room Thursday. They are not going for closure. They are going because showing up is the only way to make the record reflect what happened to them.
If you are anywhere near Montgomery on Thursday morning, be in that room. Numbers change the temperature of a public meeting. An empty room lets an agency perform accountability. A full one makes it practice it.
The haunted houses open next week. This is the real one, and it stays open all year. Thursday is a chance to walk in and say so, on the record, where it counts.