All I do is copy stuff from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gentlemaitresse these days...
Jul. 31st, 2003 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lisamoeShe posted this in her journal today, but some of the thoughts I was getting into while responding made me want to transfer it to my own journal...
A lot of my friends are very anti-government and specificaly, very anti-child welfare. Working there, I get pretty anti-government too and I get disgusted with the system. I think there are bad police, bad child welfare workers, bad teachers, etc. I also think there are some really crappy excuses for parents out there and you can't assume that just because someone says that they've done nothing wrong and are being harrassed by the man doesn't mean it's true. It's not rationally possible to believe that there are no children in this country today who aren't in need of some sort of protection from the people who allegedly love them. And since neighbors, communities, and other family member frequently don't step up to the plate for one reason or another, it's left to the government.
In the particular case in question in Maitresse's journal, I don't see anything that justifies DSS removing her children either. But I see things that justify checking to see if things are ok. What we don't know is what they found when they went to check. Perhaps they found an odd lady who was doing ok and they wrongly decided to be punitive anyway. Perhaps they found a woman having a psychotic break whose other children asked for help for themselves and the baby. I'm just saying that there's no way to tell from the story which of those, or anything in the middle, might be the case. I think that's a lot of the problem when you read this kind of thing in the newspapers. There simply isn't enough to go on, so you interpret it through your own filters. Because of your own political bent, you give the woman the benefit of the doubt reading about it, which is fine, but upon closer scrutiny, it might be that it isn't warranted when you get deeper into the facts. The thing is, there's no way to tell without more information.
Some of my friends may be surprised that I agree with Maitresse that too many children are picked up from parents who don't really deserve it. I believe the system breaks down frequently, for both children and parents. I believe that a lot of marginal families could use support and resources and in-home services, and in my own work that's been my focus. But I also wonder what you do about the parents who really are bad people if there's no system at all? There are people who burn babies with cigarettes, or kick a 6 year old in the stomach hard enough to cause organ damage, or who keep their children in meth labs, exposing them to toxic chemicals. (All cases on my caseload right now.) Do we abandon those children entirely for fear of accidentally harassing someone who doesn't deserve it? Or do we do our best to make the system work better? I think that's what I do. I think you could ask ANY parent on my caseload whether I've been fair and supportive and willing to listen to reason and I wouldn't have any fear of what they'd say.
In the three and a half years I investigated child welfare referrals (before I was doing what I'm doing now), I took into custody children from five families. One was an abandonment of five children with no relatives who could take them. One was a drug addicted baby born to a drug addicted street prostitute who had already given up two children. One was four small girls who were repeatedly raped by their father (who received several consecutive life sentences in criminal court for the abuse.) One was a two year old whose mother was a chronic alcoholic and would consistently leave him in her car all night outside bars while she drank herself unconscious and for whom we had tried to provide services several times before. And one was a toddler boy of drug addicts dropped off at the shelter with a note pinned to him. All my other confirmed cases ended up with referrals and services to keep the children in the home.
So which ones of those children should I have given back with no intervention?
I am an optimistic person and I hope people, including my clients, will do what they should. And I don't have a crystal ball to know how things will go in the future. But if you have enough history to go on and enough experience with similar cases, you can make an educated guess about what might happen and sometimes you just have to assume the worst because the consequences if you don't aren't something you're willing to live with.
I understand people's distrust of government agencies. I have a healthy dose of it myself. But I don't believe in anarchy either and I do believe that there are a lot of people out there in child protection jobs who are trying to do the best they can and are making difference in individual lives. Might I suggest, for anyone wanting some oversight over DHS/CPS, volunteering as a guardian ad litem or CASA for a child in the system might be better than trying to get the whole system shut down.
k' End of rant.
A lot of my friends are very anti-government and specificaly, very anti-child welfare. Working there, I get pretty anti-government too and I get disgusted with the system. I think there are bad police, bad child welfare workers, bad teachers, etc. I also think there are some really crappy excuses for parents out there and you can't assume that just because someone says that they've done nothing wrong and are being harrassed by the man doesn't mean it's true. It's not rationally possible to believe that there are no children in this country today who aren't in need of some sort of protection from the people who allegedly love them. And since neighbors, communities, and other family member frequently don't step up to the plate for one reason or another, it's left to the government.
In the particular case in question in Maitresse's journal, I don't see anything that justifies DSS removing her children either. But I see things that justify checking to see if things are ok. What we don't know is what they found when they went to check. Perhaps they found an odd lady who was doing ok and they wrongly decided to be punitive anyway. Perhaps they found a woman having a psychotic break whose other children asked for help for themselves and the baby. I'm just saying that there's no way to tell from the story which of those, or anything in the middle, might be the case. I think that's a lot of the problem when you read this kind of thing in the newspapers. There simply isn't enough to go on, so you interpret it through your own filters. Because of your own political bent, you give the woman the benefit of the doubt reading about it, which is fine, but upon closer scrutiny, it might be that it isn't warranted when you get deeper into the facts. The thing is, there's no way to tell without more information.
Some of my friends may be surprised that I agree with Maitresse that too many children are picked up from parents who don't really deserve it. I believe the system breaks down frequently, for both children and parents. I believe that a lot of marginal families could use support and resources and in-home services, and in my own work that's been my focus. But I also wonder what you do about the parents who really are bad people if there's no system at all? There are people who burn babies with cigarettes, or kick a 6 year old in the stomach hard enough to cause organ damage, or who keep their children in meth labs, exposing them to toxic chemicals. (All cases on my caseload right now.) Do we abandon those children entirely for fear of accidentally harassing someone who doesn't deserve it? Or do we do our best to make the system work better? I think that's what I do. I think you could ask ANY parent on my caseload whether I've been fair and supportive and willing to listen to reason and I wouldn't have any fear of what they'd say.
In the three and a half years I investigated child welfare referrals (before I was doing what I'm doing now), I took into custody children from five families. One was an abandonment of five children with no relatives who could take them. One was a drug addicted baby born to a drug addicted street prostitute who had already given up two children. One was four small girls who were repeatedly raped by their father (who received several consecutive life sentences in criminal court for the abuse.) One was a two year old whose mother was a chronic alcoholic and would consistently leave him in her car all night outside bars while she drank herself unconscious and for whom we had tried to provide services several times before. And one was a toddler boy of drug addicts dropped off at the shelter with a note pinned to him. All my other confirmed cases ended up with referrals and services to keep the children in the home.
So which ones of those children should I have given back with no intervention?
I am an optimistic person and I hope people, including my clients, will do what they should. And I don't have a crystal ball to know how things will go in the future. But if you have enough history to go on and enough experience with similar cases, you can make an educated guess about what might happen and sometimes you just have to assume the worst because the consequences if you don't aren't something you're willing to live with.
I understand people's distrust of government agencies. I have a healthy dose of it myself. But I don't believe in anarchy either and I do believe that there are a lot of people out there in child protection jobs who are trying to do the best they can and are making difference in individual lives. Might I suggest, for anyone wanting some oversight over DHS/CPS, volunteering as a guardian ad litem or CASA for a child in the system might be better than trying to get the whole system shut down.
k' End of rant.
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-31 02:09 pm (UTC)I hope you don't mind if I just comment on one or two small things.
"Do we abandon those children entirely for fear of accidentally harassing someone who doesn't deserve it?"
If it were only as simple as that, I'd be on your side. But removing children from loving homes causes terrible emotional damage for everyone involved. It creates a huge problem for that family where there previously was none, or where there might have been a problem, but they were handling it pretty well. It is never innocuous to remove a child from his parents. I'm sure you have seen that. If the child had no issues prior to being removed, he most certainly will exhibit symptoms of emotional damage afterward.
If CPS takes children who otherwise would have been fine and creates more problems than it solves, does the ones that it solves make it worth it?
I don't believe the government ought to be involved in providing "services" to families. It's not a proper function of our government. I do, however, believe that a person should be arrested and charged if he or she has actually committed abuse (against a child or adult), regardless of the relationship between the individuals.
GALs in my state either toe the line for the CPS workers, or they aren't given any cases. There's a lot of politics that goes on in our "justice system". Becoming a GAL here would be useless, and would possibly even eventually get me investigated, just as many foster parents here get investigated if they don't do things exactly as the CPS workers would like them to.
I don't believe in anarchy. I simply believe that the government cannot be a nanny. It doesn't make a good parent. It fails miserably at foster care, taking children that shouldn't be taken, and leaving those that shouldn't be left. There simply is no way to predict which children are going to be harmed, and which ones simply have parents who are going through a temporary crisis, but will pull through without any problems.
Prosecute those who have abused. Don't try to predict which ones will. Don't provide "services" at taxpayer expense. I guess that's what I'd like to see. Get Big Brother out of our bedrooms, our families, and our lives unless or until we actually commit some kind of crime.
One last word about "services". I've known parents who had these services forced on them. Do you really think that a parent who is being forced to go to parenting classes, with the alternative being to lose their children, is actually going to have a good attitude and learn anything? I seriously doubt it. Same thing goes for psychological counseling and other required "services". It's government coersion at its most evil, when you tell someone to "accept our helpful services or never see your children again". That's evil.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-31 03:57 pm (UTC)You & 'L' both make good cases, and I'm gratified to find that neither of you fall into either extreme: anarchy or totalitarianism (which I find most distasteful in the minty socialist flavor).
I think the major division here is on which side to err: 'L' advocates erring on the side of caution, with intervention and or prevention, and you'd prefer to deal with problems as they occur, in the (perhaps idealist) expectation that people left to their own will be responsible adults, by censuring those who fail to live up to their responsibilities. Failing to help children until the damage is done has consequences too, only you see it as the fault of the parent, where others would see it as a failure of the state to intervene.
Sadly, for the state, it's a no-win situation. Either policy will incur blame from somebody.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-31 04:17 pm (UTC)It's not perfect to wait until a crime has occured. Yes, people will get hurt, including the poor innocent children. I hate that. But that is the way our government was intended to work because it's not fair to go around trying to predict who *might* commit a crime at some point in the future.
Most children are removed because someone believes a child *might* be harmed sometime in the future.
I'm not an idealist. I'm a realist. One of the things I have had to learn to accept is that life is short, brutish, and nasty. Children can be born with all kinds of physical or mental problems, and one of the bad things they can be born with is bad parents. I'm not suggesting we never rescue an abused child, and I'm not naively expecting everyone to act like a responsible adult.
My suggestion would be that anyone who abuses a child be punished. I think the definition of abuse needs to be more narrowly defined than it currently is, though. Right now families can be invaded because of suspicion of "educational neglect" or "emotional neglect". We get into way too many gray areas there.
I guess I'll stop now, but I'll probably post a copy of the guidelines for what constitutes "child abuse or neglect" in my own journal because I want people to see that almost anyone could be accused of abuse or neglect based on those guidelines. I *could* also show you stories of families that have been unjustly torn apart, but I won't because unless you know them personally it's too easy to think "they must have done something to deserve it".
I wrote a longer post but cut it back quite a bit... :-)
Date: 2003-07-31 08:59 pm (UTC)In any case, I'm not sure that turning the CPS system over to the criminal justice system, which seems to be what you propose, is actually any less government interference than what we have right now. Simply a different agency. And much less likely to reunite families than giving them a treatment plan and services. (I don't think the services and resources we provide are quite what you imagine, but that's a whole 'nother post.)
I agree with you wholeheartedly that the government makes a lousy parent. But that conjures up images of children piled up in government orphanages. I don't know about in Florida, but the majority of the childen on my caseload (and in my state, I believe)are placed with relatives, church members, neighbors or other people that they had a relationship with before coming into custody. I have put a lot of thought into attachment issues, and I know that removing a child from parents is traumatic (although we do have children that beg to be taken from time to time) but for me, leaving them in a situation where they're really not safe (not on conjecture, but because they've been proven unsafe there) is something I'm not willing to do. I promise you that a childhood full of beatings/neglect/sexual abuse can be fully as traumatic as being removed from your parents and having to go live with your aunt.
Anyhow, I do admire your passion for defending families. I have many libertarian leanings myself in a variety of areas, but I also feel that society has to protect children and others who can't defend themselves. If there were a way to have communities and families do it themselves without government intervention, I'd be right on board with that, but so far I haven't seen a lot of realistic alternatives. I hope there may be some someday, but a policy of total non-intervention for fear of making a mistake is not something that I, and many others I think, am willing to accept.
Re: I wrote a longer post but cut it back quite a bit... :-)
Date: 2003-08-01 06:41 am (UTC)Also, caseworkers (often erroneously referred to as social workers) lie to parents, saying they have a right to enter a home without a warrant. To give them the benefit of the doubt, a study did reveal that most of them do not have any idea what the law says or even what their own agency guidelines are. They are too busy all the time (as I'm sure you can realize) to learn them.
The police often back them up and demand entry to a home without a warrant. Now, I can't forgive the police quite so easily. They should certainly know that the law requires a warrant.
The social workers often threaten to take the children if the parents don't allow entry to the home immediately. Now, you and I know that this supposedly requires a court order, but most parents don't know that. AND in my state, caseworkers have been known to take children and get a court order afterwards.
Children in Florida are at least five times more likely to be abused in state care, including foster care, than in their own homes. In addition, the state often loses track of the children and don't know where they are or who is caring for them. My neighbor owned a day care center and the foster children would often not get a visit from the caseworker for over two years. They are required by law to make monthly visits.
I believe that most caseworkers think they are doing the best thing for the child. They have been trained to believe that they are "erring on the side of the child" when they remove a child from their parents. Many of them have their own strong views on parenting, and anything else looks like "abuse" to them. If you don't believe in spanking, for example, spanking becomes "hitting" and is "abusive". I'm only saying that caseworkers are human and their own biases are going to come through.
The new federal guidelines that require children to be adopted by a certain time do not help parents who are honestly trying to get their children back. It does help children whose parents really don't care. It also helps states who need to keep their adoption numbers high so they can qualify for the federal money.
All Child Protective Services cases go through juvenile and family courts. The judge routinely places a gag order on everyone involved "to protect the children". I don't think that's right. These proceedings should not take place in private, any more than if the child's father is being tried for murder or anything else. Within a few months the child's picture is on the web, being advertised for adoption even before parental rights have been terminated. Along with the photo is a description of the child's problems, such as bedwetting, etc. So much for privacy to protect the child, huh?
I know of specific cases where the parents rights have been terminated and NO charges have been brought against the parents. The parents simply didn't have the proper "attitude" or didn't obtain all of the required services (psych evals, counseling, parenting classes that tell you how to parent the way the State wants you to, etc.) prior to the cutoff date for terminating parental rights so that the child can be adopted out. If the parents have actually abused the child, bring criminal charges against them.
Okay, I'm going to end this by reiterating that I think it is *mostly* the system that is messed up, and not the individual caseworkers, except that the system facilitates a way for people with certain biases to push those onto others, usually without even thinking that is what they are doing. People get into that line of work for the same reason that people become foster parents: they really want to help all those abused and neglected children out there. And when you are *looking* for abuse and neglect, and you are a very caring individual by nature, lots of things could end up looking like abuse or neglect that are really nothing more than poverty (the number one reason for DSS/CPS involvement) or different parenting techniques.
Re: I wrote a longer post but cut it back quite a bit... :-)
Date: 2003-08-01 07:56 am (UTC)In the state of Florida, one out of every twenty-five families will have their children removed for suspected abuse or neglect. Most of those will be unsubstantiated.
When my husband and I learned of that number we couldn't help but think that it means two families from his office will likely have their children removed, and at least one of them will be an "ooopsie!" :-/
Re: I wrote a longer post but cut it back quite a bit... :-)
Date: 2003-08-01 09:56 am (UTC)Re: I wrote a longer post but cut it back quite a bit... :-)
Date: 2003-08-01 10:02 am (UTC)touchy subjects, I love 'em.
Date: 2003-08-01 10:08 am (UTC)This ought to be a doozie. I'll probably have to split it into multiple responses, we'll see...
I'm certainly anti-big government and feel that there is just way too damn much government in general. However, I am *not* anti DSS/CPS at all! I think it would be great if friends and families (read: people) would police themselves to some extent, and then there would be less need for CPS stepping into the picture. I know that people don't do this, though. My own mother didn't want to rock the boat or cause a fuss in the family when I told her my Great Uncle tried to molest me. Apparently that happened with his own children and many other relatives (and other girls, too, I'm sure). Only other girls weren't as stubborn as I was. Only now (some 20+ years after my own incident) has anything been taken to the police about it. Still, no one wants to talk about it, even the girls involved. My case is too damned old to help, I volunteered to talk to police or CPS or anyone else that needed information. It was just too late. ... OK, I didn't mean to go off on my own personal experiences...
I think in the particular case![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gentlemaitresse referenced, CPS probably found more cause for concern when they checked on the children. I could see why she'd be "out of it" in labor on a train and whatnot, but it's the refusing of medical assistance that really caught my eye. Yeah, people should be allowed to birth in their own homes if they choose to do so, but she obviously didn't choose to. She was seeking medical attention in the first place. Why would she refuse it. Yeah, as Maitresse pointed out, Joyce Judge has her sister to help her when things get... weird. The state (at least here on OK) would likely place her children with her sister - if they choose to place them instead of give them back.
I'm not surprised at all, Lisa, that you agree that too many kids are taken away from their homes. I think there are problems in the system and what's sad is that I think the biggest problem is abuse of the system by people. People that get pissed off at a neighbor or an in-law and report them to CPS for abuse that doesn't *even* exist. As for asking any person on your caseload, Lisa, I know of at least one person (not on your caseload) who's child was removed for a full year - she still had nothing ill to say regarding CPS. She didn't like what she went through, but she still thinks CPS is necessary. I have another friend who's family fell victim of separation due to a nasty in-law not only reporting them, but feeding lies to their case worker. Luckily, that case worker managed to see the facts through the lies.
From what I've seen, it isn't a matter of guessing what might happen. There's often no hard evidence of abuse, but *lots* of circumstantial evidence. Or it's a case of minor abuse and removing the child before anything worse can happen. Thats how I read the guesswork part.
I'm paranoid of CPS. I don't want to be investigated. I don't do anything that warrants an investigation, but I'd still hate to go through it. As a homeschooling family, I think we're extra cautious. It seems that most homeschooling families are - because homeschooling raises warning flags with some people. I make it my business to know that a warrant is neccessary before someone enters my home, but I also know that you're more likely to be seen as cooperative - if you cooperate.
In Oklahoma, I'm *certain* that the numbers are better than the ones that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gentlemaitresse cites. Just bringing criminal charges against someone may not be the easiest thing to do (or even possible in some instances).
As I've said before, Lisa, I don't envy you your job, but I'm terribly thankful that there are people like you that can do the job and handle the stresses involved.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-01 10:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-01 02:45 pm (UTC)Maybe
Date: 2003-08-02 06:04 pm (UTC)Re: I wrote a longer post but cut it back quite a bit... :-)
Date: 2003-08-04 01:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-04 01:39 pm (UTC)