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A hard look at the inside the Department of Children, Youth and Families?
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Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The chance for a hard look at the inside 01:00 AM EDT on Friday, July 27, 2007 http://www.projo.com/news/bobkerr/ke...7.3149719.html The opening round of hearings into the Department of Children, Youth and Families was pretty dull considering the dramatic and disturbing charges of child abuse and neglect contained in a lawsuit brought against the department by child advocate Jametta O. Alston. A big part of the reason for the low-watt opener at the State House on Wednesday was Alston’s decision not to attend because she considered an appearance a possible conflict of interest due to the lawsuit. But an even bigger part of the reason was the absence of public testimony. Sen. Rhoda Perry, chairwoman of the Committee on Health and Human Services, said there would be public testimony at future hearings, but the first people to be heard from were DCYF Director Patricia Martinez and Jane Hayward, director of Health and Human Services. There was a lot of talk about numbers — the number of caseworkers, the number of foster parents, the length of time needed to make badly needed changes. …. There were people in the audience ready to testify. They didn’t learn there would be no public testimony until they got to the State House. So they sat and listened and held on to their collected evidence of abuses and missed opportunities and a system overwhelmed by the number of kids in need and in trouble in Rhode Island. The future hearings promise to offer the first real public look into some very disturbing stories about children caught up in the strange and unpredictable territory between the DCYF and Rhode Island Family Court. The hearings might actually force things into the open that have long been under wraps. We can only hope that the hearings are allowed to go where people’s hard memories take them. Nick Rossi is considering packing his bags and heading east to testify. He is a student at Brigham Young University in Utah. But a few years ago he was living in one of the harshest, cruelest excuses for public childcare ever conceived. Looking back on it, it is difficult to image how anyone could have allowed night to night placement of kids to be put into practice, let alone continued for far too long. The moving of kids from place to place, day after day, was a dark and self-defeating practice that took huge chunks of childhood away from those caught in the shuffle. I have talked to people besides Rossi who endured it, and they marvel at their own ability to still function. And Rossi thinks it should be part of the record. “It kept me from going to school, making friends, having any feeling of permanence,” he said. He remembers being put in a van with other kids, driven to one of several possible overnight facilities and told “here’s a couch, here’s a bed.” The next day would be a repeat, beginning with uncertainty and ending with it. Sometimes, there were fights and threats in those temporary places and it would be impossible to even think about sleeping. There was the occasional group home or foster home, but never the feeling of settling in anywhere. Rossi has done well. He has learned to be a player. He is in college. When he heard about Alston’s lawsuit, he wondered about what it could mean for kids already damaged. “They can’t go back and give you a better childhood,” he said. But they can, perhaps, look at all the mistakes and missed warning signs and flaws in a very flawed system and save other kids from the same kind of long lasting damage. CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NSA / CIA WIRETAPPING PROGRAM.... CPS Does not protect children... It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even killed at the hands of Child Protective Services. every parent should read this .pdf from connecticut dcf watch... http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US These numbers come from The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN) Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS *Perpetrators of Maltreatment* Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59 Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13 Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241 Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12 Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5 CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES, HAPPILY DESTROYING HUNDREDS OF INNOCENT FAMILIES YEARLY NATIONWIDE AND COMING TO YOU'RE HOME SOON... BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION... |
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