If a parent is guilty of a crime, charge them as such and let it play out in court.
In almost every CPS case I've read about they are on a witch hunt to declare people guilty until they people THEMSELVES prove themselves innocent. It is a mockery of our justice system. It's disgusting.
"Who should save the children? Now we are requesting the state to "save" them? How about family? Friends?
"If a parent is guilty of a crime, charge them as such and let it play out in court."
The problem is that, if that is the sole criterion you use, your evidence of a crime will frequently be one very dead child. Charging the parent does not bring the child back to life in such cases.
Here's a modest proposal: if that be your stance, then let's put some affirmative duty on all parties who you think SHOULD act to save the child. If a child dies because of parental abuse, then let's shoot the parent(s) immediately after the verdict is read by the jury. If another adult knows about said abuse and does nothing to stop it, shoot that adult as well. Forget about appeals, just pop everyone involved (or who refused to get involved) right there in the courtroom, and bill their families for the cost of the ammunition.
"In almost every CPS case I've _read_ about they are on a witch hunt to declare people guilty until they people THEMSELVES prove themselves innocent. It is a mockery of our justice system. It's disgusting."
I have been knowledgeable of several CPS cases over the years. The parents of the child always tell a tale of woe and of being picked on by those mean, nasty CPS thugs. In the vast majority of these cases, there is, to steal Paul Harvey's notorious line, "the rest of the story," and it's not a good one.
I'm not endorsing the abusive tactics that are often used by CPS agencies, and I agree that these cases should be handled as crminal cases. Police should be in charge of any removal of children from their homes, and social workers should just be along to help. BUT family and friends need someone to call when they think they see a need for intervention, because family and frineds are no more entitled to grab children from their parents than are misguided social workers.
Some abusive parents are violent, and may react to an attempted intervention by family or neighbors by either assaulting the person who tried to intervene, or by stepping up the abuse of the child (and sometime the mother as well). Which is another reason why police, and not just social workers, should be in charge of intervention actions. After a parent has been charged, and been through a court proceeding, THEN it can be appropriate to have some court-imposed requirement that the family or parent submit to some social worker-only involvement.
Removal of the child can't always wait for a court proceeding. Too often, the child is dead before criminal charges can be brought. If police learn that a parent is taking a child to a "therapist" who is "prescribing" dangerous pseudo-treatments, and can provide a judge with evidence of that much, then the state should be able to intervene. I do think, however, that when the state is removing a child from a home, there should be an option for the whole family to move into a supervised residential facility, until the parents are tried, and either cleared or convicted. It would be much less traumatizing to children and parents, while still enabling the state to protect the child from serious harm.