"First they ignore you, then they mock you,
then they punish you, then you win."Ghandi
".it does not require a majority to prevail,
but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds" Samuel Adams
CPS related Articles-If you
would like to reprint these stories, highlight, copy and paste them into your
word document program for the best results.
The Pew Commission gave a survey to "Middle America" and asked
for responses to the Foster care of today. They didn't have our side as
first hand victims. Please read more about this survey.
Pew Commission on Foster Care
What kind of Judicial System mistakes led up to this? Why would
a mother (and a father and friends at her side) rally for their children for
years, if she weren't treated unfairly!
Dear Hero's
I witnessed my mother face overwhelming odds in gaining custody of my sister.
Most of the law and legal officials in my area refuse to help. You see my sister
is being abused by her father and his new wife. In this are everyone has played
hush-hush, and my sister continue for a while. The court problem arose, when mom
attempted to press charges against him. even with my sister told the CPS and
police what happened nothing happened. You see my sister came back to our house
with 2 bruises about the size of a quarter bruises on her arm, and she said that
her step mommy got mad and picked her up off her feet. I, used to think of this
step father as a real father was there. I heard my precious little angel yell
DADDY! He ran in there, I thought that the father did something to help his
daughter. Instead he decided to comfort his wife. As the abuse went on My sister
was told by her grandmother that "If you don't shut up I'll whip you". Her
father even threatened her life. >From this her father decided to file for
custody of my sister. After a one sided court battle, in
which the GAL wrote bias reports. On of the courts arguments to give
her father Custody was that i reported the abuse to CPS, and the police. You see
I saw this court attempt and succeed to sacrifice my sister because appearances
are deceiving. Just because you look good doesn't mean you are good. Currently
the only thing that can be held against me is my age. While I am currently job
hunting and do have a part time job, that won't enough. The Week that my mother
pressed charges that was glossed over. The court also might try to say no
because of my race. In the court papers there was a ban put on me seeing my
sister while she was forced into foster care. Apparently having the same mom
doesn't count. You See I am a 1/4 Korean, so that apparently made nothing but a
step brother not even having a legal right to see her. I am not one to press on
time, yet I trust child abusers no farther
than I can throw them. We plan to have a place of our own soon. Yet if my mom is
sent to jail, I will maintain it. Time is of the essence.
Thank you for your time
Sincerely aprons2001@yahoo.com
When the Adoption and Safe Families Act was passed in 1997, it was meant to
create loving homes for children who had been "languishing" in foster care over
a long period of time, some children had been in foster care for years, others
had been bouncing around from one foster home to another with no hope of the
security that an established home with a permanent family
could offer.
Another seemingly good idea at the time, was the creation of the adoption
bonuses for the state child protective system's case workers, this idea was
implemented for the sole purpose of creating a "get the job done" incentive for
the case workers, to do something for the children, other than shuffling paper
work and filing reports on these "shelved" children.
As these children were being adopted and began to leave the foster care system,
the bonuses began to filter into the child protective systems around the nation.
There were an overwhelming amount of couples, being enticed by the many
different monetary conveniences of not having to support the children out of
their own pocket, the foster care money would take care of that burden, on top
of which there were offers from the government for tax credits and bonuses, to
adopt these unwanted children. It wasn't long before the demand for adoptions
outweighed the supply of children in foster care.
The waiting list for an adoption could be years, the majority of waiting couples
were not favorably receptive to the thought of waiting for years to adopt a
child, so they took the required training to become foster parents, because as
sanctioned foster parents, they were guaranteed a child within weeks. They would
have a child placed with them, then subsequently adopt the child
within 15 -22 months, after which these "foster parents" would disappear from
the system after their need for a child had been met.
In some cases the child is adopted within a year, because the permanency hearing
is to be scheduled within one year of the foster care placement, leaving
precious little time for the natural parents to raise funds for the hiring of
attorneys, file motions, petitions and/or appeals. The majority of these
parents are from the poor or middle working class, and cannot afford the
attorney fees, which have become unreasonably high over the years. One very well
known child custody attorney asked for $12,000.00 down payment to take a case!
What would happen, I wonder, if ALL of these people were to go
on strike in protest of their children being confiscated? This country
would stand still.
Now the legislators are wondering why all the GOOD foster parents are leaving
the system? Because there are no such kind of people as "FOSTER" parents,
they are potential adopters, finding their incentive on the internet to
adopt a child via foster care.
Foster CARE was meant to be temporary.......NOT the foster parents. After
these foster parents are gone, the need for more foster parents increase. With
all their false allegations, DFS is slowly obliterating ANY people who would
make good potential foster parents.
There are even those instances when DFS will file false allegations of abuse
against the adoptive or foster parents themselves....when DFS can find no more
children to take, they just "repossess" children which have been previously
adopted or placed into foster care.
At this point in time, there are NO foster parents, there are only adoptive
parents in disguise...."When in Rome"...as the saying goes.
The case workers, in charge of these cases, became so intent on proving the
unfitness of the biological parents, and creating false allegations to assure
the termination of parental rights, that they lost all concern and common reason
to prove the FITNESS of the ADOPTIVE parents, resulting in the problem that we
now have.......children being abused and murdered in foster care and
adoption.
According to the federal mandates of the Social Security Act, which governs the
placement of a child into foster care, a child had to be "languishing" in foster
care PRIOR to adoption, to guarantee that the state would receive the adoption
bonus, when the child was finally adopted.
When the supply of children in foster care began to dwindle, there was a chance
that the DFS agency would not get their bonus. That was when many rogue case
workers and county DFS directors began to lodge false allegations of abuse
against innocent parents, thereby creating an unlimited supply of children into
foster care to meet the demand of adoptive couples who were disguised as "Foster
Parents" and waiting in line for the children that were being taken into custody
by DFS.
The children were, and still are, being taken into custody by DFS at an alarming
rate, and immediately placed into foster care, sometimes within an hour, and
with the sole intention to adopt. Adoption became the only option, in
order to receive the cash bonuses. Most of the adoption petitions in Lawrence
county, Missouri, are filed before the child is even available for
adoption, prior to evidence being heard at the permanency hearing.
The government funds for reunification and family preservation, has
been used for other services to speed up the termination of parental rights.
Therefore, the state stands guilty of adoption and foster care fraud, they
obtained the money by violating the federal mandates.
Most parents are unaware of the fact that they are protected by these mandates,
and can actually retrieve their children if an honest, intelligent attorney were
on the case. The key word here for their protection is "Languishing" in foster
care. The "languishing" pertains to the 15-22 month period following the day
that Social Services places the child into foster care, but a hearing is
available within 30 days........so forget the term "languishing."
The termination of parental rights, cannot be filed until 15 months and 60 days
from the date, that the child has been taken from the home. In some cases the
GAL's do not wait for the allotted time to pass, and will file prematurely for
TPR.
The governor of each state, is compelled to sign an oath when he/she takes
office, to uphold and protect those mandates, otherwise the governor can be held
accountable for failing the child and the federal government, whenever those
mandates are violated for the purpose of receiving the federal grants being paid
for foster care. Social Services MUST obey those Federal Mandates to the letter,
in order to receive the grants.
Before placing a child into foster care, the case worker handling the case, must
prove that every reasonable effort has been met to seek out and locate a fit and
willing relative placement. An adult relative takes precedence and first
consideration over an outside care giver, in the interest of family preservation
and reunification of the family, which is in the best interest of the child.
This mandate is being ignored by poorly trained social workers who take children
on "probable cause", and yet this agency will never file criminal charges
against the parents to prove guilt. Why?
Kinship care is never considered a reasonable option by Social Services. Kinship
care does not allow the state to collect federal monies for foster
care/adoptions, so when the case worker takes the child, the paper work will be
marked "NO RELATIVES" even though there are grandparents and other relatives
available to take the child. Missouri DFS never seeks out those relatives.
This would save the state an exorbitant amount of money, and as of now Missouri
is going bankrupt, due to the unnecessary overspending of DFS for foster care,
adoption bonuses, attorney's fees, Guardian ad Litems, contracted therapists,
and Medicaid.
In many cases the children are said to have been sexually molested, but the
parent or perp is rarely, if ever, formally charged and brought into a court of
law, because in most of these cases, DFS hasn't one shred of proof against the
accused parent other than their own allegations on paper. But innocent
parents are still losing their parental rights in the end, due to ineffective
judges who do little more than warm the bench, and do nothing to make the DSS
provide proof of the allegations and their reasonable efforts to place the child
with relatives.
It seems to be a "hate crime" and discrimination against parents who are poor.
They are easy marks for DSS and cannot fight a system with a money tree such as
the one backing DSS. Martha Stewart and Mario Lanza both came from
underprivileged households. They went very far in the world.
When it is said that a child has been sexually abused, it would become Medicaid
fraud if these sexual abuse assessments and treatments are charged to Medicaid,
which is quite often the case. This type of assessment and treatment, is to be
paid by the Children's Treatment Fund, but there is documentation that Medicaid
is picking up the tab.
The CTF investigates each case quite thoroughly to determine if sexual abuse has
actually occurred, and DFS does NOT want these investigations to bring the truth
to the surface. So they send the bills to Medicaid for payment, (I have one of
those billings, and the assessment signed by a Missouri state contracted
therapist.)
After the placement of the child into the foster care system, Missouri DFS then
applies for the foster care grants, while at the same time forcing the parents
to also pay for the foster care, under the term "Current Child Support." This is
also illegal on the part of DSS, who never uses the parent locater system to
find a missing or absent parent. If they actually find the absent or
missing parent, there is a chance the child will be placed into the custody of
that parent and not be available for adoption at a later date, therefore they
allow a child support bill to accrue into the thousands of dollars, until it
becomes FELONY NON-SUPPORT, damaging any chance of custody being won by that
missing or absent parent.
The parents are also to provide medical insurance for the children. BUT....the
premiums on this health insurance is unreasonably high. The father of a child in
foster care, called one of the country's leading insurance companies, and asked
the representative WHY the premium was so expensive....the representative's
answer was, "A child in foster care is considered to be very high risk!"
These children are NOT "languishing" in foster care.....they are placed into
foster care, usually on the same day that they are taken into custody, and
placed into foster care sometimes within an hour, for the express purpose
of adoption, so that DFS can collect the adoption bonuses that each state will
receive for getting the children adopted and out of the foster care system.
When a child resists bonding with the foster or adoptive parents, they are
immediately admitted into therapy for psychological problems. And at times if
the child becomes violent or combative, or prone to tantrums due to their anger
of being the focal point of all the family destruction, they are placed into a
mental health facility and subsequently started on medication known as
"psychotropic" medication, or mind altering drugs to make them more docile, and
easier to manage and control.
This is quite common in nursing homes for the elderly, if the patient is labeled
as "combatant" or "combative." I have seen the results of those type of "psycotropic"
drugs, and it is horrible. They rob the patient of any and all humane feelings .
Any child who has been deprived of what belongs to them by birth and nature,
will invariably become combative at some stage during the transition of losing
their own past lives, no matter how good or bad it may have been.
One child bit the finger off a school nurse as she was administering medication
to him.
My own granddaughter, who was in foster care for 35 days, said it best, "They
can't bond with a stranger because they want their OWN parents, their OWN
grandparents, their OWN room and their OWN stuff." That is the key
word...... OWN! As in: that is MINE. I OWN that. It belongs to ME. It is
MINE
The obliteration of those personal things can destroy the child's sense of
belonging. How can one expect the child to accept anything new, if the feeling
of belonging is deprived by the destruction of what had belonged to him/her to
begin with? That destruction of familiarity, will eventually bring about
compulsive disorders, such as the need to clean or rearrange things, in an
attempt to exercise control in their lives.
We are becoming a nation which will lose the sanctity of home and family if we
do not take a stand at the voting polls. Watch the reports of how your
congressman and senators vote on bills. Then decide what you consider to
be vitally important in a child's life.
So think very hard and use common sense the next time you hear the term "Leave
No Child Behind" this phrase has become quite unpopular with the common person,
and has a more sinister meaning behind it, than one can imagine.
Stephen King has nothing on the creator of the "Adoption and Safe Families Act"
of 1997. It has been used to create a perpetual living nightmare for
innocent parents, falsely accused by a system, in which greed has outgrown
common decency, freedom and democracy.
It has been used to create a living hell for the helpless children condemned to
live within it's dark boundaries, with no way out and no hope of rescue, and NO
ONE asking them what their version of the truth is.
These children are the true victims.....and yet they are never asked about their
own opinions and desires, by their GAL, nor their state contracted therapists,
who are all being paid by the federal foster care grants, the foster parents are
not going to relay what the child truly wants, the foster parents' true goal
is to adopt a tax dividend, at $10,000.00 a head!
The children in foster care are NOT being PROTECTED by foster care......they are
being SILENCED!
Just try to get one of these children aside to speak with them, and you will
have a dozen guns pointed at your head, that is the whole purpose behind
"supervised visitation."
But on the other side of the coin, there were 7 children who testified against a
Lawrence County commissioner charged with sexual abuse. The charges were later
reduced. Eventually in court, those charges were dropped, because one child
recanted. In every other case where a child recants due to a false allegation
being extracted from the child, there is no exoneration for the parent.
There are too many children in the world today that truly are suffering from
abuse and neglect, but are being left to die. Why? Because the truly
abused child is not a marketable commodity, they are damaged goods. But if left
to die at the hands of an abuser, these children are worth their weight in gold,
and worth more dead than alive..........so they are left behind, with their
abusers, to do their part in the scheme of things. They are not considered
children, they are pawns, to be used for the benefit of DFS.
When a child dies of abuse, what is the first thing that one hears in the news
media from Child Protective Services?
1. "We need more money to hire more workers, we are understaffed and under
funded."
2. "We need more power to take the children without warrants and
having to PROVE abuse."
3. "We need absolute immunity for anything that we do illegally."
Far too many parents have been "railroaded" by the child protection system, but
that train is slowly being derailed.
Think about It!! You, the people, gave them that power by believing their
manipulator lies.
A foster child goes missing. Judge Cindy Lederman's words were angry enough to
scald the unlucky DCF officials slouched before her. She pointed her fingers.
She pounded her desk. She spoke for a community utterly sick of these scandals.
The Florida Department of Children & Families had somehow allowed a negligent
young mother to make off with her 5-year-old kid during an unsupervised
''supervised'' visit. Snatched right from the DCF's Miami offices.
Lederman voiced the mutual frustration of all of us in Florida, where the
state's child welfare system has become a monument to institutional failure. And
when this system fails, the results are dead or missing or abused or horribly
neglected children.
Lederman's words, of course, were no more than white noise amid the cacophony of
angry, frustrated, harsh, urgent criticisms of the child welfare system, from
judges, grand juries, blue-ribbon panels, task forces, inspector generals,
commissions, newspaper exposés. In Broward County, a 2002 grand jury report
describing ''ongoing chaos'' in the district foster-care program was not so
different from a 1998 grand jury report that warned, ''There is overwhelming
evidence that the children who are in the custody and care of the department are
in danger.'' The report said their ''peril'' stemmed from problems ''extensive''
and ''systemic.'' Which echoed Broward grand jury findings in 1981 and 1986.
DADE GRAND JURY
A Miami-Dade grand jury, in 1996, described ''a system that victimizes these
children once again,'' and sounded very much like a Dade grand jury report from
1989. The findings were not dissimilar from a 1993 grand jury report out of
Duval County.
It's as if this negligence was a Florida epidemic. Unhappily, it's a national
epidemic. A state-by-state federal review of child welfare programs released
last month found widespread evidence of the sort of official negligence that has
become sickeningly familiar in Florida. The review of data from 2002 counted
896,000 children who were victims of abuse and neglect. And 1,400 deaths. The
federal report described state after state in which children commonly suffered
abuse or neglect more than once in a six-month period, in which caseworkers
failed to visit children enough to ensure their safety, in which medical and
mental health services were woefully inadequate.
Some states apparently were even more slipshod than Florida. Sixteen were found
to meet none of the federal standards to protect children drawn into the welfare
and foster-care systems. Seven states, including Florida, face millions of
dollars in federal penalties unless their child protection systems are fixed.
In Indiana, abused children, many of them foster kids, have been dying at a rate
of one a week for more than a decade.
NEWSPAPER EDITORIAL
After Georgia flunked the federal review, an editorial in the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution noted, ``The federal report just echoes the findings of
many state panels on the status of child welfare.''
Gut-wrenching foster-care scandals have struck Maine and New Jersey. Last month,
Texas Comptroller Carole Strayhorn issued a scathing report on her state's
foster-care system: ``The truth is that some of these children are no better off
in the care of the state than they were in the hands of abusive and negligent
parents.''
Last week, the Fresno (Calif.) Bee, investigating the killing of a 2-year-old
foster kid, found another systemic failure. ``Perhaps most frustrating to those
familiar with foster care in Fresno County is that the current concerns aren't
new. Numerous reports designed to improve the county's child protection system
have been written over the decade, all with no discernible effect.''
California, Texas, New Jersey, Georgia, Indiana, Florida. Foster kids go
missing. Foster kids die. A judge, a commission or a grand jury issues a
scathing report. ``All with no discernible effect.''
Denise Moore is the Indiana caseworker who recommended taking 4-year-old
Anthony Bars away from a loving foster mother and placed him, instead, with a
couple who starved and beat him to death over a 10-month period.
Had Moore bothered with the required background check, she would have known
that the new "home" had a long record of abuse within the child protective
services and that the new "father" had a felony battery conviction for savagely
beating his own daughter with an extension cord.
Last week, D. Sue Roberson, director of the Indiana Personnel Department,
announced that no disciplinary action would be taken against Moore. Why? Citing
confidentiality laws, Roberson added, "I am not at liberty to discuss the
findings."
Days later, Cheryl Sullivan, secretary of the Indiana Family and Social
Services Administration, stated that disciplinary action is still possible. But
she affirmed confidentiality and painted her agency as the true victim.
Sullivan's statements came in the wake of a four-month investigation by
TV-station WTHR. It came after a court case that convicted Anthony's killers,
after criticism from Rep. Phil Hinkle and Gov. Joe Kernan, and heart-breaking
questions from Florence Hurst, the foster mom who spent 15 months caring for
Anthony. She wanted to adopt Anthony and his sister before Moore recommended
their removal.
Why? Again that word.
Race may have been a factor. Hurst was white. Anthony was black.
The circumstances surrounding Anthony's death become more wrenching with
examination. But dwelling on them misses the larger point: the children abused
by CPS are not merely the fault of "bad" caseworkers. They are not restricted to
Indiana. The bodies of dead children demand we ask: is CPS harming - not helping children?
I say "bodies" because Anthony is not an isolated incident. Almost one year
to the day after Anthony's death, 7-year-old Mark Adrian Norris II's was found
starved and covered with bedsores in an Indiana house, which was set on fire to
disguise his death-through-neglect.
Mark's caseworker, Michael Warrum neglected his required monthly visits to
the home and did not follow up on complaints that Mark was being starved. For
his complicity in Mark's death, Warrum lost his civil service job. And,
presumably, his pension.
The problem is not exclusive to Indiana. The carelessness with which the
Florida CPS "loses" children became a national scandal last year. In California,
even the state's Department of Social Services admits families are being
aggressively torn apart and children unnecessarily placed in foster care. The
problem is federal and systemic.
A column that questions the fundamental value of the current CPS will elicit
outraged feedback from social workers who protest that they sincerely care for
children. I believe them without question. For one thing, I have a sister-in-law
working within that system.
The problem is not the intentions of individuals but the structure and rules
of the CPS, such as confidentiality. As long as those rules remain, the
institution will harm children.
Consider an analogy: a factory with machinery and procedures designed to
build airplanes. A worker on the factory floor loudly protests that he is there
to build motor boats. But, as long as he uses the factory's machines and follows
its rules, he will produce airplanes whatever his intentions. The structure of
the institution defines the product, not the worker's intentions.
What is necessary to protect other Anthonys within the system?
First and foremost: transparency. Both Roberson and Sullivan drew a shroud of
silence across Anthony's body. Confidentiality was never meant to hinder the
investigation into dead children. A threatened bureaucracy is using silence to
immunize itself. As Rep. Hinkle has said, "You cannot hide behind
confidentiality when there's been an obvious wrongdoing."
But the actions of the Indiana CPS amount to more than this. They are
attempting to shift the blame for dead children away from their own policies
onto the shoulders of society.
Sullivan, before the Indiana Commission on Abused and Neglected Children and
Their Families, asked, "Does it make more sense for the child protective service
workers to be sitting outside a juvenile justice courtroom or located with the
police?" She suggested that caseworkers should be protected from "illegal drug
labs" and other threats by being further removed from public access by being
housed in police stations or courthouses. Who protects Anthony from them?
The CPS does not need more confidentiality, more difficult access and less
accountability. There is no overriding reason for silence: the deaths of Mark
and Anthony do not threaten national security or compromise the witness
protection program. They raise questions that threaten the structure of an
institution that may be complicit in killing the very children it was
constructed to protect.
Short of deconstructing CPS, the solution is more not less
accessibility and the imposition of criminal liability for the gross misconduct
of caseworkers and superiors.
Wendy McElroy is a weekly columnist for FoxNews.com, writing under the title
"The ifeminist" a column that is widely reposted on the Internet. She is the
editor of the feminist website ifeminists.com which grows by approximately 10%
each month. McElroy is also a research fellow at the Independent Institute, and
contributing editor to Ideas on Liberty (formerly The Freeman), The New
Libertarian, Free Inquiry, and Liberty magazines. Her writing has appeared in
such diverse periodicals as National Review, Marie Claire, and Penthouse.
Judge Napolitano makes the
solid case that there is a pernicious and
ever-expanding pattern of government abuse in America’s
criminal justice
system, leading him to establish his general creed: The government is
not
your friend.”
No information contained on this site shall be
construed as legal advice, and can only be used for your information.
All opinions on this site are those of the author, and not to be considered as
advice.
