Pioneering Parents: Tabitha McNulty, Child Welfare Advocacy Council
As a lawyer for children and parents, Tabitha McNulty has a ready answer for people who chafe at hearing her children in the background as she works: “I jokingly say ‘hey, this is the child welfare system. You can’t act like it’s going to bother you to have kids around.’”
Over a decade, the Little Rock mother of three has juggled a career of ensuring the welfare of the state’s children with the challenge of raising her own. She has also been appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson to his Child Welfare Oversight Committee and helped to start an orphan ministry at Christ the King Catholic Church.
It all started with a fateful field trip: “I knew from when I was in kindergarten that I wanted a career in law,” says McNulty. “Our kindergarten class visited a courtroom in Memphis, and I knew what I wanted to be.”
She met her husband, fellow lawyer Kelly McNulty, in law school in Little Rock and then went to work for the state, representing the Division of Children and Family Services in foster care cases. The intense job sent her as a newlywed to Crawford County, where she lived in a bed and breakfast for 6 months. “My husband thought it was the best way to be married. You’re at home by yourself during the week and then your wife comes home on weekends.”
The workload shifted when her son Max was born in 2008. “I really wanted to be a mom, and to be good at it,” she says. To gain flexibility, she moved from the courtroom to handling all appeals for DCFS.
“It turned out to be a great ‘mom job,’” she says. “I had Max on, in my BabyBjorn [carrier], wearing my baby.” Then came Maggie, born in 2010, and Henry—“our little surprise”—in 2014. Along the way, McNulty became conflicted, believing that parents in the system could be served better.
“We ask these parents to have a job, stable housing, go to counseling, parenting classes, and go to appointments with state employees who all work an 8-to-5 shift,” she says. “I had never thought of that. Then I had a child.”
In one case seared in her memory, a welfare worker concluded a parent lacked skills because she used too much Desitin ointment during diaper changes. “It bothered me,” McNulty says. “Safety should be the goal. Not perfection.”
So last June, she changed jobs, joining the Arkansas Public Defender Commission. McNulty says that she still loves DHS and appreciates its mission. But now instead of representing the state, she works to represent parents in need. In addition to the governor’s Child Welfare Oversight Committee, she was placed on the state’s Child Welfare Advocacy Council.
It’s the kind of rewarding work that often hits close to home: “Max’s very first friend was named Bernie, and they met at Mother’s Day Out at Christ the King,” McNulty says. “They were born the same day, at the same hospital, and they call themselves brothers. It turned out that Bernie was a foster child, and he had three other siblings in foster care.”
Bernie’s family adopted two of his siblings, with McNulty handling the private adoption for one of them. The third sibling was adopted by another Christ the King family.
“I feel blessed that these people came into my life; and I think I was blessed to be able to help them.”