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Posted on 05/23/2008 8:24:58 AM PDT by big black dog
An obese girl is yanked from her parents in Arizona. A New York couple loses custody of their son because they refuse to drug him with Ritalin. A Colorado boy is stripped and examined by school officials because he said he'd been spanked one morning. A Christian mother loses her daughter for teaching forgiveness.
Prudent precaution on the part of America's child protective services agencies or proof positive of a system run amok?
Cases like these are fueling what is becoming a growing backlash against state child protective services. It's a movement swelling as more and more examples surface of parents being snared in a system that critics say uses murky definitions of child abuse to dictate private family values, child-rearing methods, lifestyle choices, and even religious practices.
Overzealousness in efforts to protect children may seem an odd charge. But an expanding group of critics — from family-rights activists to doctors to social workers — claim a system designed to help children is spiraling out of control. A system once criticized for not doing enough may now be doing too much, they say.
Money Motives?
Activists lay part of the blame for what critics call a "frantic kidnapping frenzy" on the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, legislation that rewards states with cash "bonuses" of $4,000-$6,000 per kid and other windfalls for each child permanently adopted out of foster care.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Let me define it for you, pinhead. It's taking children out of a caring home and force placing them with uncaring strangers so your Department can pocket a few bucks.
We’re from the government and we’re here to indoctrinate, I mean HELP, your children.
time to upgrade to a digital camera ;)
We had just given him a little disposable; my wife and I use the digital for all of our nekkit...oops did I say that out loud? ;)
Scary to think my kids can be yanked from me. The most primal instinct is to be with them....
My friend lost their kids to foster care in a bad divorce that involved other family using DCFS to punish him. His two daughters were in track to be adopted (mother abandoned them and they didn’t want a man to get custody for some reason) and he was doing everything he could to get them back. Went to counseling, declared ok. Bought each of them their own beds, dressers, everything required in his new home and yet they still were fighting to get them adopted. A call to the Governor of Georgia (Zell) finally got those two children home to their father and stepmother who loved them like her own. Two years of their young life spent in turmoil just so the state can meet some quota.
I’ve been saying for a long time now that the single biggest blow for freedom that could be struck in this country would be to eliminate every State, local, and country “child welfare” office. Just get rid of them.
I've been saying this for years to anyone who'd listen, but almost nobody ever does.
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With the greatest respect to this important topic, it’s still worth pointing out that the article was actually published on February 06, 2002.
I'm very glad your friend got his kids back.
The scary thing is the ability of any vindictive bystander to have families investigated or torn up based on an anonymous phone call to the child protective service. I know of a very conscientious single parent who had a false child abuse complaint lodged against her after she had a policy disagreement with a neighbor at a community association meeting. Next thing you know, the neighbor had a tax assessor and a CPS agent come to the house. The social worker interviewed the small child alone in his room, opened all the cabinets and refrigerator of this very clean, orderly and well-stocked house, called the child's school and doctor and estranged parent, who was suing for custody. What a nightmare.
Fortunately, the child's own testimony, a good reputation as a parent with the school and doctor and other neighbors, and the orderly house were ample supporting evidence, but only because the middle-aged black male agent had good sense. Had it been a white woman with a master's degree, watch out. A family would have been destroyed.
Fortunately, the child’s own testimony, a good reputation as a parent with the school and doctor and other neighbors, and the orderly house were ample supporting evidence, but only because the middle-aged black male agent had good sense. Had it been a white woman with a master’s degree, watch out. A family would have been destroyed.
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As a white woman (without the masters), I would be inclined to agree. They seem to be on the warpath the most.
Nothing new. CPS has been out of control from the early 80s. Read Mary Pride’s “The Child Abuse Industry.”
Sadly, had he been homosexual, he would have been fast tracked to have them returned. Protective services didn’t want them returned to only a “man” (even though he is their dad) but I’m pretty sure they would have loved it had he been a practicing homosexual.
Nearly all my children are adults now, but I remember the absolute fear I had, when they were young, that my vindictive, self-righteous in-laws would turn me in to CPS, because I just wasn’t good enough for their son (my dh).
Meanwhile, dh’s brother was molesting his kids, starving them, having his abusive friends babysit them, and nothing happened to him.....
(To my in-laws credit, they did turn him in many many times. He would talk his way out of each meeting with CPS and go along his merry way........)
I do realize that, and I honestly meant to include the correct date but neglected to do so. I posted this as relative to current events.
Sometimes it seems good parents have their children taken away, while bad parents not only get away with REAL abuse and neglect again and again, but other children are placed in their homes.
There was a starvation case involving a foster family in my state (NJ). As it turned out, not only were the caseworkers aware that the foster parents were incapable of providing adequate care for some of the troubled children, but the state continued to place more and more children in their home. Had a neighbor not called the police, the world might've never heard the story until it was too late.
I know of another woman whose ex was on the board of CPS. And HE is abusive.
I don't trust CPS, but I myself called on a family once because their kids were out of control. I won't go into detail, but just let me say, I strongly favor parental rights. If I called CPS, you know the situation had to be BAD. Yet, CPS refused to investigate. And most of those kids weren't even theirs. They had taken them from their relatives to raise. They bought their house through a HUD-subsidized mortgage program, and they don't work much - on and off, part-time. So they're probably getting checks for those kids. What a crock the whole system is.
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