Children re-abused state custody NY, CPS expose

Foster Care Crisis: Let The Numbers Speak
By Sharon Secor
(http://www.everybodysmag.com/)

Although white people continue to make up the majority of the population in New
York City, children of color fill the foster care system. In fact, just over
96% of all children in New York City foster homes last year were children of
color. According to a New York State Office of Children and Family Services
report from June of 2003, a mere 3.4% of the children in foster care were
white. This disparity is nothing less than shocking. It is offensive, an
affront to common sense. Are we really expected to believe that parents of
color are that much more likely to abuse or neglect their children?

I’d like to be able to tell you that the New York City branches of the NAACP
are outraged by this fact and what it says about the way child protective
services are administered in this city, but I can’t. Indeed, while the
Columbus, Ohio, chapter of the NAACP recently came out against increasing
funding for their local child protective services agency with a statement that
used phrases such as “Nazi Gestapo,� “genocidal death camps,� and
“time of slavery� in describing the effects of child protective services on
black families and the Compton branch is making remarkable strides against the
chemical control and restraint of black children, New York’s NAACP seems
rather complacent about the matter.

I wish I could tell you that the NYCLU was on the case, but I can’t.

“I don’t know that it is an issue for us,� said Sheila Stainback,
Director of Communications for the New York Civil Liberties Union, in a recent
telephone conversation. “It may not be the usual suspects on this.�

With 96 out of every 100 children in New York City foster care being of color,
it certainly seems as though someone’s civil liberties are being violated,
usual suspects or not.

“Children don’t always arrive in foster care through abuse or neglect,�
said Stainback. And, that is, indeed, true. More so, perhaps, than she is aware
of. While Stainback is referring to the small percentage of children who are in
care because they are orphaned, their parents hospitalized, jailed or otherwise
absent and children that are ‘voluntarily relinquished’ to the state, the
fact of the matter is that a frightening number of parents have had children
seized without ever being proved to have committed crimes against their
children.

While nobody would deny that there are children who are terribly abused, those
types of cases compose a minority of those in the child protective system. The
vast majority of children in foster care are not there because of sexual or
serious physical abuse. According to a National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse
and Neglect Information report detailing child maltreatment data from 2002,
published this year, less than 20% of substantiated reports to child protective
services involve serious physical abuse, with approximately 10% having to do
with sexual abuse.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services Administration for
Children and Families Child Welfare Outcomes Annual Report from 1999, published
in 2001, states that nationally, in addition to the children who had
substantiated reports of neglect or abuse, “an estimated additional 49,000
children who were not victims (i.e., children with unsubstantiated reports)
were placed in foster care.�

Consider that for a moment, using the government’s own numbers. Without
significant legislative change, at that rate, within a period of 10 years
almost half a million children in our nation will be traumatized by wrongful
and needless removal from their families due to what the government itself
refers to as unsubstantiated reports. And in New York City, almost all of these
children will be of color.

The concepts of substantiated and unsubstantiated reports of neglect or abuse
have little real meaning in the context of the processes by which these
determinations are made. Even the term substantiated has different meanings in
different states, ranging from “probable cause� to “reasonable� to
“credible� to “preponderance� to “clear and convincing.� Thus, what
is substantiated in one state may not be in another. Outside of the small
percentage of cases in which the degree of abuse or neglect makes the decision
to remove painfully obvious, CPS workers theoretically rely on risk assessment,
assumption and instinct.

As described by Emrich Thoma in Predicting the Future and the Codification of
Poverty, risk assessment is “the systematic collection of information to
determine the degree to which a child is likely to be abused or neglected at
some future point in time.� There is not a uniform standard of risk
assessment in place nationally and frequently there are significant differences
in standards even within a single state – often, almost as many standards as
there are caseworkers. For example, different states have different ages at
which it is deemed acceptable to leave a child at home alone. Some states have
no specific age at all. Thus, where one CPS worker may find 10 years to be an
acceptable age, another may find that leaving a 13-year-old at home alone is an
act of neglect worthy of removing the child.

The majority of children seized from parents are taken for neglect, often the
result of a highly subjective decision making process, all too often left in
the hands of a narrowly educated case worker, lacking experience or education
in other cultures and religions. Often, many researchers have found, poverty
and neglect are confused, or thought to be one and the same. Middle-class
standards of financial achievement and material possessions are the norm
against which all others are compared, despite the fact that the vast majority
of the world lives with much less.

In determining who is neglectful, class and race play a major role. A
disproportionate number, for example, of mothers that test positive for drugs
at the time of birth are poor and/or of color because these are the women who
are most likely to be tested, not because white women over the poverty level do
not use drugs or alcohol. Economic status and ethnicity affect the way
situations are assessed. A light skinned woman with a certain degree of
financial security who articulately explains childrearing practices based on
studies on attachment parenting and the family bed and a less financially
stable, darker skinned woman or one that struggles a bit with the English
language without obvious sleeping accommodations for her child are judged
differently. One is an enlightened and sensitive parent and the other is
neglectful, unable to provide even a crib for her child.

Yet, if a family is in financial crisis, the political and welfare systems
begrudge every dime of assistance that they receive. Often the state will pay
more to take a child from a poor mother than they would to help that family
stay together.

“We spit on the welfare mother as a parasite,� wrote Nev Moore in a
Massachusetts News article of May 27, 2000, describing a typical mother on
welfare with two children who receives $539 per month in assistance. “The
foster mother who gets her kids gets $820 plus,� Moore continued, “yet we
hold the foster and adoptive parents… up as saints.�

At first CPS contact, a parent enters a distorted mirror image of what our
legal system is supposed to be. Everything is backwards. There are no Miranda
warnings, yet everything she says will be used against her, and perhaps even
some that she hasn’t. Her accuser can choose to remain anonymous. Which makes
little difference, as she has no right to know who is accusing her. The
confidentiality of the reporter is guaranteed by law. The parent is presumed
guilty and must prove innocence.

"There's definitely an assumption of guilt. People who commit murder have more
rights than a family that has its children taken away," said Republican Senator
Parley Hellewell, according to a Sunday, January 18, 2003, Salt Lake Tribune
article by Kirsten Stewart and Rebecca Walsh.

The entire investigative process is built upon coercion and a deliberate
misleading of families as to their rights. CPS workers won’t mention that
parents do not have to let them in, nor do they have to submit themselves or
their children to interrogation without a warrant and in many systems case
workers are directed by superiors to deny that these rights even exist. This,
despite Supreme Court constitutional interpretations and rulings to the
contrary.

Yet, even if parents are aware of the few constitutionally protected rights
that they do have at that first knock on the door, it frequently becomes clear
that by asserting these rights, they run a risk of an immediate retaliatory
removal for at least 72 hours. The case worker has up to three days after the
removal to get what is often a rubber-stamped court order for an emergency
removal – yet another subjective concept -- from a busy and overburdened
system that doesn’t devote much time to a real consideration of individual
circumstances. In addition to the purely arbitrary nature of that initial
removal, the CPS worker pays no consequences for a wrongful removal. Not even
if a child is hurt or killed while in state care.

On a national level, even using the most conservative of government figures,
one simple fact stands out. Children in the custody of the state are more
likely to be neglected, abused, sexually assaulted or killed than they are in
the general population. The sheer number of children who go into the system,
many without real cause, and come out beaten, maimed, sexually assaulted,
emotionally disabled or damaged from the powerful drugs used to keep them
submissive is more than shocking. It is the abuse of human rights on a broad
scale.

City Agency’s Psych Drugs Imperil Foster Kids, an April 16. 2001 article by
Douglas Montero, described the “cocktail of psychiatric medications� that
many New York City foster children are forced to take. Sometimes these are made
up of four or more powerful drugs.

The Administration for Children’s Services, according to the article, isn’t
sure how many of the 31,000 children in their care have been prescribed
psychiatric drugs, but “a state audit of 401 randomly selected kids last year
found that more than half were being treated for mental problems – and that
most likely means medication.�

If Montero’s name seems familiar, it may be from his recent New York Post
article, in which he wrote of a shocking abuse of drugs, power and infants in
state foster care. And, we know from which ethnic and financial groups those
babies in all probability came from.

In a story published on February 29, 2004, Montero reported that the New York
State Health Department “has launched a probe into potentially dangerous drug
research conducted on HIV-infected infants and children� -- foster children
at Incarnation Children's Center in Manhattan.

With money from “federal grants and, in some cases, pharmaceutical
companies,� approximately 36 different experiments were performed, including
13 that used about 50 children – some just three months old -- to test the
effects of high does of AIDS medicines, according the information cited in
Montero’s report. Other experiments included studying the "safety,"
"tolerance" and "toxicity" of AIDS drugs, through methods that mixed up to six
different medications. Yet another sought to determine the effects of
double-dosing infants with measles vaccine.

"They are torturing these kids, and it is nothing short of murder," said
Michael Ellner, as quoted by Montero. Ellner is a minister and president of
Health Education AIDS Liaison, which is an advocacy group for HIV parents.

Dr. David Rasnick, a biochemist and expert in the field of AIDS medicine, was,
according to Montero, “outraged,� citing the “acute toxicity� and fatal
potential of the medications, as well as the variety of severe side effects
associated with the drugs.

Montero also wrote that “the foster-care agency described the experiments on
its own Web site, which was abruptly shut down after The Post began making
inquiries.�

As citizens, frequently we look to our government when we seek information
concerning the governmental policies that affect our lives. The current child
protective climate is built primarily upon two governmental acts, the Child
Abuse Prevention And Treatment Act (CAPTA), which has continued to evolve since
its initial legislative appearance in 1974, and the Adoption and Safe Families
Act of 1997 (ASFA).

And, indeed, our government does address the question of why such great numbers
of children are removed from homes in which, as so many experts agree, they
could remain, with the appropriate services. In fact, unnecessary removals are
specifically mentioned.

“While reimbursement for foster care and related case management services is
open-ended, title IV-E funds may not be used for other types of services that
could prevent a child from needing to be placed in care in the first place or
that could facilitate the child's returning home or moving to another permanent
placement,� said Wade F. Horn, Ph.D.,
Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Department of the United States
Department of Health and Human Services, in a statement given to the Committee
on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Human Resources, U.S. House of
Representatives,
on June 12, 2003.

“Furthermore,� continued Horn, “a State that is successful in preventing
unnecessary removals or in shortening lengths of foster care stays actually is
apt to receive less Federal funding than a State where children remain in
foster care for long periods of time.�

“The county,� wrote Troy Anderson, of the LA Daily News, in Foster Care
Cash Cow, one of a series of investigative articles concerning the foster care
system and published over the last few months, with the most recent appearing
on March 5, 2004, “receives nearly $30,000 a year from federal and state
governments for each child placed in the system -- money that goes to pay the
stipends of foster parents, but also wages, benefits and overhead costs for
child-welfare workers and executives. For some special-needs children, the
county receives up to $150,000 annually.�

Without a continuous influx of children, the system would collapse. Jobs and
pensions would be lost. Executives would suffer.

According to Anderson, a report by the state Department of Social Services
Child Welfare Stakeholders Group described the situation as being "called the
'perverse incentive factor,' states and counties earn more revenues by having
more children in the system -- whether it is opening a case to investigate a
report of child abuse and neglect or placing a child in foster care."

And, thus, it would seem, we arrive at the bottom line reason why it is the
families of the poor and families of color that are ravaged by the child
protective system. These are the families that often lack the resources and
power to fight back.

And when the organizations that are traditionally associated with protecting
the rights of those in need fail to act, what can a parent do? Parents must arm
themselves with knowledge, so that they are able to protect themselves and
their families, so that they can make informed decisions. There are national
organizations, such as the American Family Rights Association that are able to
provide a great deal of information.

On the local level, Harlem hosts two excellent organizations. One, People
United For Children, began a class action lawsuit against the City of New York
in 1998 concerning the removal of children from their parents without
investigation. The organizations director, Sharonne Salaam is an accomplished
and committed activist. The other, the Child Welfare Organizing Project, offers
what was described by the New York Women’s Foundation as “peer-led training
on parent’s rights and responsibilities that will build a network of parent
advocates to improve the child welfare system.�

The most important thing we must do as a community, to protect our children as
a whole, is to actively support legislation and organizations that seek to
address these issues. Part of that is becoming informed and informing others.
The numbers speak for themselves. We need to understand exactly what these
numbers say about us and what they mean to our families and our communities.
Are we that much more likely to abuse or neglect our children?


descriptors: NY, NEW YORK HARLEM, CPS, ACS, ADMINISTRATION CHILDRENS SERVICES,
DSS, KINSHIP CARE, AFRICAN AMERICANS, CHILD PROTECTIVE, KIN CARE, SOCIAL WORK,
FAMILY LAW, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, URBAN
LEAGUE

On 15 Sep 2004 14:15:21 GMT, (Fern5827) wrote:

....no! Fern didn't write anything...just cut and pasted yet another
poorly thought out propaganda piece. Let me help to quell the
confusion.

There could be other reasons than the City of NY simply targetting
black families. THAT is what is not addressed in this opinion piece.

What I notice in such bits and piece of the flotsam and jetsom Fern
dumps into this ng or others, facts and knowledge aren't necessary
components of rabble-rousing rhetoric -- and that it's more important
to speak "passionately" than to speak intelligently or truthfully

When looking at an issue one can be easily misled of they do not look
at more than one factor:

http://usliberals.about.com/b/a/2004_03_01.htm
"Half of Black Men in NYC Unemployed, Report Says"
It may be that black families are extremely resource poor, some even
seeking help from the state.

In fact the same article about points to the report finding that the
employment rate for black women in the same time period was 57.1.

And people that are unemployed often spend a great deal of time at
home with their children, thus increasing the chance of abuse.
Frustrated people have been known on occasion to lose it.

And, sadly, the opening claim by the author of this propaganda pile is
incorrect....whites do NOT compromise over half the population of NYC.

In fact they were, in the 2000 census, as this excerpt from the source
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/census/pop2000.html shows, at 35%.

"Among those of a single race, white nonhispanics remained the largest
group, accounting for 35 percent (2.80 million) of the city’s
population., while for the first time in a census, Hispanics were the
largest minority group, with a 27 percent share (2.16 million). Among
others of a single race, Black nonhispanics comprised 24.5 percent
(1.96 million), and nearly 1-in-10 New Yorkers (783,000) was Asian and
Pacific Islander nonhispanic. Those with a multiracial nonhispanic
background accounted for 2.8 percent (225,000) of the population."

It might be possible to make some of the arguments the author makes
based on the actual census figures, but credibility flies out the
window when the first claim is shown to be bogus.

But whites very nearly are not the largest minority, as they are only
8 percentage points from a tie with Hispanics, let alone the
"majority" as the author claims.

No More Lies. Or misinformation, please. This was too easy to look up
to just be a mistake. Or this publication has no, or very poor fact
checkers.

Foster Care Crisis: Let The Numbers Speak
By Sharon Secor
(http://www.everybodysmag.com/)

I am amazed that someone writing for THE CARIBBEAN-AMERICAN MAGAZINE
"Everybody," would make such a strange mistake as to claim that whites
are in the majority in NYC. That was shown not to be so in the 2000 US
Census.

Although white people continue to make up the majority of the
population in New
York City, children of color fill the foster care system. In fact,
just over
96% of all children in New York City foster homes last year were
children of
color. According to a New York State Office of Children and Family
Services
report from June of 2003, a mere 3.4% of the children in foster care
were
white.

That is a product, most likely, of the racist institutional reality of
NYC, rather than any deliberate desire to take children of color over
white children. Whites routinely have more resources, and hence could
obviously be getting more in-home services.

For instance, whites tend to live in more upscale dwelling, people of
color in less so....could it be that chidren are not being returned
for in home services because of racist situations such as this, and is
this CPS responsibility or some other agency?

http://www.nmic.org/nyccelp/Documents/browner.htm

On the other hand, I wonder how many of those children of color are in
fact in kinship care...with relatives but under foster system
supervision:

Well now..shucks...seems that of the 9,583, nearly 20 percent are in
kinship care with relatives. Kinds of changes the complexion of
things....if we don't know if those children are white or children of
color.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/pub/soc006.pdf

Foster Care
The number of children in foster care is continuing to decline. In FY
2001, on
average there were 30,858 children in foster care. Admissions to
foster care
were 8,729, an 8.9% decrease from FY 2000, when 9,583 children were
admitted into foster care. While the total number of admissions into
foster care
decreased overall, new admissions placed in kinship foster homes
increased by
2% from 1,868 to 1,906. A total of 2,201 children were admitted into
kinship
care in FY 1999, compared with 2,054 children in FY 1998.

And in addition I will admit to having my research abilities taxed
beyond capacity. I am able to find lots of information from the city
of NY administration and government, but am unable to find any mention
of this 96% of all children in foster care being children of color.

If any of you know of a source for this besides an unfounded claim,
I'd be grateful for the information...and access to the source.

This disparity is nothing less than shocking. It is offensive, an
affront to common sense. Are we really expected to believe that
parents of
color are that much more likely to abuse or neglect their children?

No, but there are circumstances being ignored or undiscovered, that
may well be a major part of the issue of children of color exceeding,
disproportionately, the number of white children in out of home
care..foster placement...and it may have nothing to do with their
color...as being something for CPS to use, but rather a condition of
institutional racism that creates conditions that are high risk for
those children that do not exist for white children.

NYC provides Section 8 vouchers to allow families to recover their
children from foster care if housing (the number of homeless families
is amazing..look it up) is the only reason the family is waiting for
the child to return.

I’d like to be able to tell you that the New York City branches of
the NAACP
are outraged by this fact and what it says about the way child
protective
services are administered in this city, but I can’t.

What would the NAACP have to do with "the way child protective
services are administered in this city?" They are not a child
protection agency.

Indeed, while the
Columbus, Ohio, chapter of the NAACP recently came out against
increasing
funding for their local child protective services agency with a
statement that
used phrases such as “Nazi Gestapo,� “genocidal death camps,� and
“time of slavery� in describing the effects of child protective
services on
black families and the Compton branch is making remarkable strides
against the
chemical control and restraint of black children, New York’s NAACP
seems
rather complacent about the matter.

A very strange statement. Columbus is likely a very different place
than NYC.

In fact the paragraph itself is questionable as to everything but the
clear message this is a propaganda piece....notice the quoting of that
old ploy, that brings in the Nazi's? Hell, I've used it myself, but
much more appropriately to actual behaviors.

And the writer didn't give us enough of the context to know if it was
appropriate and applied to NYC as well.

I wish I could tell you that the NYCLU was on the case, but I can’t.

Notice how that statement attempts to misconstrue the following as not
being a "case" for the NYCLU...who clearly stated they don't know if
it is an issue for them...suggesting possibly, or rather strongly,
that they looked at it and couldn't find the blatant misinformation
warranted more attention.

Or that it isn't an issue they can address because of their mandate.
Or that they know something the author isn't telling us...more likely.

And they are not a "New York City" focused agency...they are a state
wide focused agency.

The ALCU and it's chapters do not take class actions as I recall...the
thrust of this plea...but they take a lot of individual cases. Check
out the NYCLU website. They list them. And they are searchable. It's
not like they haven't been involved in child issues before.

“I don’t know that it is an issue for us,� said Sheila Stainback,
Director of Communications for the New York Civil Liberties Union, in
a recent
telephone conversation. “It may not be the usual suspects on this.�

And with the opening of this entire piece being a lie, or at best,
misinformation, how credible should the report of a "telephone
conversation" be? I'd want to see in writing if the NYCLU was in fact
not concerned about the number of children of color (remember, that
doesn't mean just Black children) in CPS cases.

With 96 out of every 100 children in New York City foster care being
of color,
it certainly seems as though someone’s civil liberties are being
violated,
usual suspects or not.

It would seem the truth is being violated if the census figures are
correct. Already only 35% of the city is white, and NYC is a target
destination for white SINGLE folks last I heard. In may be the actual
numbers of white children do not adhere to the even the 35% ratio
overall.

“Children don’t always arrive in foster care through abuse or
neglect,�
said Stainback. And, that is, indeed, true. More so, perhaps, than
she is aware
of. While Stainback is referring to the small percentage of children
who are in
care because they are orphaned, their parents hospitalized, jailed or
otherwise
absent and children that are ‘voluntarily relinquished’ to the state,

Nonsense. That's not a small number at all..only one of those is
likely to be small....orphaned...and we might squeeze "voluntary
relinquishment" if it meant what the writer thinks it means, coming to
the door and dropping your kids off...but it has to do with much later
TPR. There a lot of children in CPS systems everywhere because of
incapacity of the parent...jail being a rather common one.

NYC is not immune from the Meth epidemic.

the
fact of the matter is that a frightening number of parents have had
children
seized without ever being proved to have committed crimes against
their
children.

As long as you stick to the propaganda notion that civil violations
aren't crimes. The author ignored, or is ignorant, that only a
minority of child abuse offenses go to criminal court...but I doubt
the ignorance. I think this is a willful distortion of facts. No More
Lies, Please.

While nobody would deny that there are children who are terribly
abused,

An, the old, "I wouldn't defend abusers," while in fact such schemes
as coming in this piece and in the population of anti CPS folks on
this ng and in the organized outfits are doing exactly that. They just
want abuses and negect bar lowered to their standards...which are
painful and injurious to the child.

those
types of cases compose a minority of those in the child protective
system.

Nonsense. No line establishing "no serious abuse" has even been
established. There is no standard for it, and neglect gets lumped in
as less serious. This whole thing of trying to say that some abuse is
serious and deserves attention and the less serious should be left
alone is just misleading nonsense. None of the proponents can actually
name what is "less serious" and should be allowed because they KNOW
the citizens would NOT stand for where THEY want to draw the line.

And because neglect is across the nation higher in death rates than
abuse, and neglect is found in more than half the cases by far, either
by itself or along with abuse and considered "less serious" it would
be covered as that...and deadly to children. And to families that let
it get to the point of "serious."

The
vast majority of children in foster care are not there because of
sexual or
serious physical abuse.

Yes, that is true. Many are there for the more often fatal
circumstances of neglect. Neglect doesn't make the news as abuse does.

According to a National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse
and Neglect Information report detailing child maltreatment data from
2002,
published this year, less than 20% of substantiated reports to child
protective
services involve serious physical abuse, with approximately 10%
having to do
with sexual abuse.

That is correct...and it is not appropriate to negate or diminish the
importance of the 80% that are at risk, or are suffering from neglect.

Again, just as we see in this ng, information is tendered that is
incomplete, prefaced and bolstered throughout by a careful trimming of
enough information from the rest of the context for the reader to make
an objective less biased conclusion.

The United States Department of Health and Human Services
Administration for
Children and Families Child Welfare Outcomes Annual Report from 1999,
published
in 2001, states that nationally, in addition to the children who had
substantiated reports of neglect or abuse, “an estimated additional
49,000
children who were not victims (i.e., children with unsubstantiated
reports)
were placed in foster care.�

Notice how careful the author is to NOT give you the total figure of
substantiated reports, nor to explain what "substantiated" actually
means.......which would allow the reader to understant,
"unsubstantiated" does not mean the abuse didn't happen. The child may
be in the hospital..but if the injuries can't be tied at least in
civil court to the accused the case is "unsubstantiated." And many a
case closes, as authorities have admitted, with a stamp of
"unsubstantiated" simply because time ran out and unless they have
solid enough evidence WITH THE PERP IDENTIFIED, they cannot mark it
substantiated...even if the term used in this ng is, "substantiated
for abuse, or neglect."

The child can still be abused and neglect. Just no perp.

Consider that for a moment, using the government’s own numbers.

With spin, with a failure to consider the meaning of the numbers in
context, with using terminology that is unclear in meaning, and with a
lot of coatings of fertilizer one can claim just about anything.

Without
significant legislative change, at that rate, within a period of 10
years
almost half a million children in our nation will be traumatized by
wrongful
and needless removal from their families due to what the government
itself
refers to as unsubstantiated reports. And in New York City, almost
all of these
children will be of color.

The nonsense claim, built on misinformation and lies. Sad, isn't it.

No mention of the the children abused by their parents, both
substantiated, and interestingly "unsubstantiated" but still abused or
at risk.

The concepts of substantiated and unsubstantiated reports of neglect
or abuse
have little real meaning in the context of the processes by which
these
determinations are made.

Why yes, that is correct. I wonder if the author stopped to consider
she just built an argument indicting NYC by using national information
of "substantiated," and "unsubstantiated."

This piece of, as it was from the opening sentence, falling apart.

Much abuse happens that cannot be substantiated...but the child has
the marks, nonetheless.

Even the term substantiated has different meanings in
different states, ranging from “probable cause� to “reasonable� to
“credible� to “preponderance� to “clear and convincing.� Thus, what
is substantiated in one state may not be in another. Outside of the
small
percentage of cases in which the degree of abuse or neglect makes the
decision
to remove painfully obvious, CPS workers theoretically rely on risk
assessment,
assumption and instinct.

And they should rely on what in their place?

Leaving the child and waiting, while hoping for the best, is to be
preferred?

The risk assement tools are based on decades of empiracal data and
hundreds of thousands of case outcomes, good and bad, to create
indicators that have high probability of harm if no intervention is
made. And some that indicate it is unlikley to come to harm...that is
why people that call in sometimes don't see a worker show up at their
neighbors, or their daughter-in-laws.

I'll give you an example. If the neighbors are regularly feeding the
children, then that is AN INDICATOR THERE IS NO NEGLECT...even if the
mother NEVER feeds the child. This gets many a neighbor into the
"special certs" placement fostering volunteerism when later the mother
DOES do something dangerous and the children are removed...guess whose
call will be remembered....why, yes, the caring neighbor. smile

As described by Emrich Thoma in Predicting the Future and the
Codification of
Poverty, risk assessment is “the systematic collection of information
to
determine the degree to which a child is likely to be abused or
neglected at
some future point in time.�

Do look up Thoma and his hobby. And it's Emerich.

He's a long time critic of CPS. Some of that criticism is useful and
true.

And indicator lists are well conceived and executed systems of risk
assessment.

Yep...and it's good enough I'd love to have the same odds in Vegas.

There is not a uniform standard of risk
assessment in place nationally and frequently there are significant
differences
in standards even within a single state – often, almost as many
standards as
there are caseworkers. For example, different states have different
ages at
which it is deemed acceptable to leave a child at home alone. Some
states have
no specific age at all. Thus, where one CPS worker may find 10 years
to be an
acceptable age, another may find that leaving a 13-year-old at home
alone is an
act of neglect worthy of removing the child.

I'm always amused at arguments such as this. Stop and think, if you
haven't already caught on and are chuckling.........the point of STATE
law over FEDERAL law is to address the concerns of individual states
as to their differences from their neighbors.

A kid in rural Alabama wandering about their front, side, and back
yard or the lower fourty unattended for hours at a time is a bit
different than a kid in NYC, in some of its parts, under the same
conditions.

What passes for moral and ethical in one place does not in another,
and the states have always fought for the right to decide their own
fate, in all things...including child rearing practices. Should
liberal CA have exact same standards, and hence laws, that
conservative, and very religious, OK has?

And in fact I have heard, by propagandists, and also by those that
think and are honest, the very opposite argument against NATIONWIDE
conformity in child welfare issues. It imposes restraints or standards
that are not, as a judge would say, community standards.

The majority of children seized from parents are taken for neglect,
often the
result of a highly subjective decision making process,

Nothing to rebut that with but that it's simply utter BS and a lie.
Anyone even minimally familiar with the issue knows that neglect is
harder to spot, but much more deadly than abuse...easy to see usually.
And the assessments for neglect are highly OBJECTIVE because they
nearly always require a professional...usually a medical professional
to even make that determination.

And there is somewhat more objectivity than "subjective" decision
making going on in those neglect cases by virtue of medical
assessment.

The claims are rot, but then rot is good fertilizer.

all too often left in
the hands of a narrowly educated case worker, lacking experience or
education
in other cultures and religions.

Once would be "all too often."

The language of the propagandist, as usual. Appeals to emotion subtly
encased in what appears to be fact but is not.

Cultural sensitivity is the watchword at CPS and has been for years.
Certain "jacklegs" that have been blamed for sucking up the tax
payer's money have been doing trainings on the subject for 2 decades.
Now it's done by colleges and universities for state agencies and has
been for years in many states.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i... lege&spell=1

Which only came up with the following results title: "Results 1 - 10
of about 6,110 for "cultural sensitivity" state employees college"

And, what this writer fails to tell you is this: Hiring practices for
the past ten years have given priority to minority recruiting...and I
know of at least one state that pays their workers who speak another
language a small extra pay boost....because they are often pulled away
from their regular work to rush out to reception and help a walkin, or
a client whose reglar worker, who share the same language, is absent.

Hispanic recruiting for foster parents is specially funded project in
some areas. Now we are seeing the same thing for Eastern Europeans, of
the old soviet block, getting the same thing.

Often, many researchers have found, poverty
and neglect are confused, or thought to be one and the same.

Well, by those dim enough to believe propaganda pieces such as this.
So tell me reader, are YOU confused about the difference between
poverty and neglect, other than figuring out for yourself that the
incidence might be a tad higher in the poor than the rich?

Middle-class
standards of financial achievement and material possessions are the
norm
against which all others are compared, despite the fact that the vast
majority
of the world lives with much less.

Oh ****....that went out in the 70's, as a product of the
consciousness raising of the 60 and 70s. What a crock. It's reflected
in the routine dressing down that workers do who have high contact
levels with the public....they just can't show up in court that way.

And it's basic training for all workers that such standards are not
allowed to apply.

There is no doubt that some workers might fall into this bias but it
isn't a practice and can be claimed as "possible" for anyone NOT from
the social strata of "poverty."

Is anyone fooled so far?

In determining who is neglectful, class and race play a major role. A
disproportionate number, for example, of mothers that test positive
for drugs
at the time of birth are poor and/or of color because these are the
women who
are most likely to be tested, not because white women over the
poverty level do
not use drugs or alcohol.

And white women, and their babies, aren't tested? Mandatory testing is
for those that have a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Color and
income has nothing to do with it. One can turn down the test, but face
the possibility of a warrant if they have any history, such as a DUI,
or drug related arrest. Or even the behaviors of the patient.


"The possible dual use of toxicology results for both medical and
legal purposes also raises important questions about informed consent.
Community standards vary for obtaining consent in cases involving
prenatal substance abuse. Some medical facilities conduct toxicology
testing under a general "conditions of admission" form that authorizes
various medically indicated procedures. Other facilities require a
special consent specifically authorizing toxicology testing. Other
hospitals require that a patient be specifically informed of potential
legal consequences before testing is conducted.

Many hospitals conduct toxicology screening of newborns, either under
the general admissions "conditions of admission" form or in accordance
with State child abuse and neglect laws that allow for certain testing
and evaluation procedures without parental consent for the purpose of
diagnosing prenatal drug exposure. Other institutions, however,
require specific parental consent for toxicology screening. If parents
refuse permission for testing, a court order can then be obtained in
some States.

Because practices vary, it is important that professionals are aware
of alcohol and drug abuse confidentiality regulations (e.g., 42 CFR,
Part 2), the standards used within their local communities for
obtaining consent for toxicology testing and for disclosing test
results to child protection agencies. Hospital protocols also provide
guidance for staff as well as help ensure consistency in hospital
practice.
"

Economic status and ethnicity affect the way
situations are assessed. A light skinned woman with a certain degree
of
financial security who articulately explains childrearing practices
based on
studies on attachment parenting and the family bed and a less
financially
stable, darker skinned woman or one that struggles a bit with the
English
language without obvious sleeping accommodations for her child are
judged
differently. One is an enlightened and sensitive parent and the other
is
neglectful, unable to provide even a crib for her child.

And reverse the colors and what do you get? The same assessment would
free up the darker skinned woman and result possibly in a report on
the white women.

This is just nonsense.

Yet, if a family is in financial crisis, the political and welfare
systems
begrudge every dime of assistance that they receive.

Whaaat! What the hell is this babbling accomplishing? It's an appeal
to emotions because the author can count on EVERYONE reacting
negatively because ALL POLITICAL AND WELFARE SYSTEMS begrudge every
dime of assistance received.

That's what the feeilng is when one has to answer reams of questions
on reams of forms.

Often the state will pay
more to take a child from a poor mother than they would to help that
family
stay together.

"Often?" Well when they also have a file filled with information on
the poor past parenting, substance abuse, or other higly limiting
factors.

“We spit on the welfare mother as a parasite,� wrote Nev Moore in a
Massachusetts News article of May 27, 2000, describing a typical
mother on
welfare with two children who receives $539 per month in assistance.
“The
foster mother who gets her kids gets $820 plus,� Moore continued,
“yet we
hold the foster and adoptive parents… up as saints.�

If you haven't recognized a propaganda piece by now, does the name Nev
Moore ring a bell for you?

At first CPS contact, a parent enters a distorted mirror image of
what our
legal system is supposed to be.

Nonsense.

Everything is backwards.

More nonsense.

There are no Miranda
warnings, yet everything she says will be used against her, and
perhaps even
some that she hasn’t.

Then just make all civil proceedings have the same requirement in
investigation and proceedures that criminal ones do. Simple, eh?
Except the public won't buy.

Her accuser can choose to remain anonymous.

She isn't "convicted" on the word of the accuser, but on found or not
on the evidence.

Which makes
little difference, as she has no right to know who is accusing her.
The
confidentiality of the reporter is guaranteed by law.

Because it's not a criminal proceeding, as the author would like you
to believe, without naming civil law as the issue.

The parent is presumed
guilty and must prove innocence.

Again and appeal to emotions based on the fear we all feel, even when
pulled over by a police officer...for what may well turn out to be a
taillight out.

"There's definitely an assumption of guilt. People who commit murder
have more
rights than a family that has its children taken away," said
Republican Senator
Parley Hellewell, according to a Sunday, January 18, 2003, Salt Lake
Tribune
article by Kirsten Stewart and Rebecca Walsh.

The issue is just a tad more critical for the accused in murder than
child abuse. Now if these folks would prefer the proceedures common to
a murder charge, there are likely large segments of the public that,
fed up with "services," and their cost, would be more than happy to
bump all child abuse up to criminal status, close to or the same as a
murder charge.

The entire investigative process is built upon coercion and a
deliberate
misleading of families as to their rights.

"The entire?" Please. Hyperbole. Much of it is based on actual
evidence that leads to more evidence...exactly as if I saw someone
climbing into a window of a store at night and reported it to the
police, and they questioned the person they found climbing out....who
turned out to the be store owner, innocent of any crime.....or THE
STORE OWNER COMMITTING ARSON for insurance.

There are many ways an investigation proceeds, but you can be sure if
the police know "coercion" or deliberate misleading as to one's
rights, they damn well will use it if you are stupid enough to fall
for it. And IT'S PERFECTLY LEGAL.

As in this definition of Coercion under that for issues pertaining to
law:

"\Co*er"cion\, n. [L. coercio, fr. coercere. See Coerce.] 1. The act
or process of coercing.

2. (Law) The application to another of either physical or moral force.
When the force is physical, and cannot be resisted, then the act
produced by it is a nullity, so far as concerns the party coerced.
When the force is moral, then the act, though voidable, is imputable
to the party doing it, unless he be so paralyzed by terror as to act
convulsively. At the same time coercion is not negatived by the fact
of submission under force. ``Coactus volui'' (I consented under
compulsion) is the condition of mind which, when there is volition
forced by coercion, annuls the result of such coercion. --Wharton."

Notice the "moral force" bit....that IS what CPS is about. It is an
agency of society to enforce moral controls over the citizens the
citizens have agreed to.

When the law changes that, then it's gone. Until then, it is the law
of this land.

CPS workers won’t mention that
parents do not have to let them in,

Nor do police or other investigators, not even the health department
inspectors, unless you wish to press it. Then they'll call in a
requrest for a warrant while they sit there and block your exit with
the possible evidence.

nor do they have to submit themselves or
their children to interrogation without a warrant and in many systems
case
workers are directed by superiors to deny that these rights even
exist.

Lie.

This,
despite Supreme Court constitutional interpretations and rulings to
the
contrary.

It has been a regular practice for years to inform those being
questioned initially that they do not have to answer without a lawyer
or others present.

Yet, even if parents are aware of the few constitutionally protected
rights
that they do have at that first knock on the door, it frequently
becomes clear
that by asserting these rights, they run a risk of an immediate
retaliatory
removal for at least 72 hours.

Or an immediately removal for safety. That's an interesting way to use
the requirement for the state to produce evidence within the 72 hours
as to the reason for removal...but it's the law, not something dreampt
up by corrupt CPS workers or their supervisors.

The case worker has up to three days after the
removal to get what is often a rubber-stamped court order for an
emergency
removal – yet another subjective concept -- from a busy and
overburdened
system that doesn’t devote much time to a real consideration of
individual
circumstances. In addition to the purely arbitrary nature of that
initial
removal, the CPS worker pays no consequences for a wrongful removal.
Not even
if a child is hurt or killed while in state care.

Speculative nonsense, and proven untrue by actual events. If someone
else murders a child though, where YOU left that child...your own
say...do you think it fair if you are charged with a crime in criminal
court? Or that the child's attorney, a petitioner such as a g'parent
can start that up easily, should sue you for the child's estate?

On a national level, even using the most conservative of government
figures,
one simple fact stands out. Children in the custody of the state are
more
likely to be neglected, abused, sexually assaulted or killed than
they are in
the general population.

No, they are more likely to be caught and counted. And the wordage is
misleading. And inaccurate. ...that would be children in the physical
custody of the state...as in removed from the home....where the test
cannot ethically be made to determine that claim as true or false.

If all children, or even a reasonable sample size for research, at
random, were left with parents they would have otherwise be removed
from would THAT sample show a lower incidence of abuse and child
fatality than a random sample of the same size from similar bio
families placed in foster care, or other state physical custody, such
as treatment centers.

(The data doesn't really count foster PARENTS, but "foster care"
meaing the child died in a location, but not by a specific identified
person.) The date was recently posted and pointed to with clickable
URL by myself, and I believe Ron.

The sheer number of children who go into the system,
many without real cause, and come out beaten, maimed, sexually
assaulted,
emotionally disabled or damaged from the powerful drugs used to keep
them
submissive is more than shocking. It is the abuse of human rights on
a broad
scale.

That is yet another blatant lie. We do not KNOW that those conditions
prevailed before they were placed in out of home care, or if the total
number of "the children who go into the system" where in state
physical custody, or in their own bio homes with in home services and
state custody...something different from physical custody.

City Agency’s Psych Drugs Imperil Foster Kids, an April 16. 2001
article by
Douglas Montero, described the “cocktail of psychiatric medications�
that
many New York City foster children are forced to take. Sometimes
these are made
up of four or more powerful drugs.

The Administration for Children’s Services, according to the article,
isn’t
sure how many of the 31,000 children in their care have been
prescribed
psychiatric drugs, but “a state audit of 401 randomly selected kids
last year
found that more than half were being treated for mental problems –
and that
most likely means medication.�

That is a blantant lie. The author cannot know that for a fact. A
great many children are receiving mental health treatment without
drugs.

If Montero’s name seems familiar, it may be from his recent New York
Post
article, in which he wrote of a shocking abuse of drugs, power and
infants in
state foster care. And, we know from which ethnic and financial
groups those
babies in all probability came from.

In a story published on February 29, 2004, Montero reported that the
New York
State Health Department “has launched a probe into potentially
dangerous drug
research conducted on HIV-infected infants and children� -- foster
children
at Incarnation Children's Center in Manhattan.

With money from “federal grants and, in some cases, pharmaceutical
companies,� approximately 36 different experiments were performed,
including
13 that used about 50 children – some just three months old -- to
test the
effects of high does of AIDS medicines, according the information
cited in
Montero’s report. Other experiments included studying the "safety,"
"tolerance" and "toxicity" of AIDS drugs, through methods that mixed
up to six
different medications. Yet another sought to determine the effects of
double-dosing infants with measles vaccine.


"They are torturing these kids, and it is nothing short of murder,"
said
Michael Ellner, as quoted by Montero. Ellner is a minister and
president of
Health Education AIDS Liaison, which is an advocacy group for HIV
parents.

Dr. David Rasnick, a biochemist and expert in the field of AIDS
medicine,

Methinks one should, whenever offerred "authority" on subject, as in
the logical fallacy of "an appeal to authority," look up that person.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i... Google+Search

Dr. Rasnick is an outspoken opponent of certain widely held
assumptions about AIDS and its cause and treatment...and not in the
majority in his position. It would be nice if he were
right...but......

was,
according to Montero, “outraged,� citing the “acute toxicity� and
fatal
potential of the medications, as well as the variety of severe side
effects
associated with the drugs.

Montero also wrote that “the foster-care agency described the
experiments on
its own Web site, which was abruptly shut down after The Post began
making
inquiries.�

This is a different issue than everything up to this point. An aside
and the usual overkill employed by propagandists.

This may well be an issue, and highly deserving of citizen action, but
it changes nothing on the issue of whether or not children of color
are being targetted by NYC at the rates claimed by the author.

As citizens, frequently we look to our government when we seek
information
concerning the governmental policies that affect our lives. The
current child
protective climate is built primarily upon two governmental acts, the
Child
Abuse Prevention And Treatment Act (CAPTA), which has continued to
evolve since
its initial legislative appearance in 1974, and the Adoption and Safe
Families
Act of 1997 (ASFA).

I see this isn't about the 'outrage' of children of color being
targetted by NYC at all, now is it?

And, indeed, our government does address the question of why such
great numbers
of children are removed from homes in which, as so many experts
agree, they
could remain, with the appropriate services. In fact, unnecessary
removals are
specifically mentioned.

Notice how, even as dependent on vague generalities to convince the
reader of the malfeasance of CPS this piece was, it has decended into
even more vague generalites?

"as so many experts agree, they could remain with the appropriate
services," Honey, I could remain almost anywhere if I had the
resources to. There is such a thing as a limit.

Well, if they are mentioned let's see that mention and the supporting
argument.

“While reimbursement for foster care and related case management
services is
open-ended, title IV-E funds may not be used for other types of
services that
could prevent a child from needing to be placed in care in the first
place or
that could facilitate the child's returning home or moving to another
permanent
placement,� said Wade F. Horn, Ph.D.,

Well now let me see....as I recall there are OTHER programs to address
that...one is called ADC. That IS one of the preventive programs,
along with others. CPS is not mandated to FIRST do prevention. It is
primarily an enforcement agency, but is NOT allowed to contact
families that are NOT reported to them to offer services...since that
would encroach on OTHER programs that have services and outreach to
address prevention.

http://nccanch.acf.hhs.gov/topics/pr...rs/federal.cfm

http://www.friendsnrc.org/contacts/nrccontacts.asp

Why do we not hear more about these when we are looking at child
protection? Because they are so universally underused by the families
that come to be investigated for abuse and neglect.

Essentially...they do not care enough about their children to seek aid
for their malparenting, nor their drinking, drugging, and partying.

As usual, the propagandists move far from the real problems and focus
on issues they do not even represent correctly, and demand solutions
from sources that are not involved in that part of the problem.

CPS is not a prevention agency except in it's risk assessment portion,
and casemanagement to put client and resources together, often just
such resources provided that some would refer to as being staffed by
"jacklegs." Freeloaders and opportunists...unfortunately those
"jacklegs" are in such short supply that the "experts" themselves are
the one's pointing out the lack of adequate service access as a major
problem in child protection and welfare.

Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Department of the
United States
Department of Health and Human Services, in a statement given to the
Committee
on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Human Resources, U.S. House of
Representatives,
on June 12, 2003.

“Furthermore,� continued Horn, “a State that is successful in
preventing
unnecessary removals or in shortening lengths of foster care stays
actually is
apt to receive less Federal funding than a State where children
remain in
foster care for long periods of time.�

Then those states need to wake up the one classification of society
mandated to do something about the problem...the senators and
representatives that vote for programs...and have them vote to have
more money given to prevention.

This is not brain surgery,,, and diatribes such as this author offers
is leading the reader directly away from reform through representation
lobbying...and to what? Screaming in the streets? Whining at the
keyboard? Nothing but hand wringing?

Or more suits...and more money for those that are on the anti CPS
bandwagon?

“The county,� wrote Troy Anderson, of the LA Daily News, in Foster
Care
Cash Cow, one of a series of investigative articles concerning the
foster care
system and published over the last few months, with the most recent
appearing
on March 5, 2004, “receives nearly $30,000 a year from federal and
state
governments for each child placed in the system -- money that goes to
pay the
stipends of foster parents, but also wages, benefits and overhead
costs for
child-welfare workers and executives. For some special-needs
children, the
county receives up to $150,000 annually.�

Yep. $30,000 a year for a child in out of home care doesn't sound like
all that much, when you think about it. And especially when you think
of all the services provided....legal costs (no, they don't come
free), counseling, therapy, rehab, transportation, medical support.

Without a continuous influx of children, the system would collapse.
Jobs and
pensions would be lost. Executives would suffer.

Nonsense. The usual. Same old nonsense. The problem, as defined by the
author, would disappear with just one thing: the ending of parents
abusing and neglecting their children. CPS doesn't create that.
Citizens do, and other citizens feel responsible for society, and the
child, and the family, and have mandated their government act.

According to Anderson, a report by the state Department of Social
Services
Child Welfare Stakeholders Group described the situation as being
"called the
'perverse incentive factor,' states and counties earn more revenues
by having
more children in the system -- whether it is opening a case to
investigate a
report of child abuse and neglect or placing a child in foster care."

And how would this need be paid for sans the "incentive" to do
investigations and placement?

And, thus, it would seem, we arrive at the bottom line reason why it
is the
families of the poor and families of color that are ravaged by the
child
protective system. These are the families that often lack the
resources and
power to fight back.

This sad attempt founders on an interesting fact...the state can bill,
and does, the family for services. Now consider, who would best be
able to pay for those services...the poor, or the rich...so why isn't
CPS going after the rich? If it's "Show Me the Money" they sure got
the wrong target.

And when the organizations that are traditionally associated with
protecting
the rights of those in need fail to act, what can a parent do?

A completely mindless question. CPS hasn't failed to act. The
complaint in this piece is that they HAVE acted.

It's just an emotion laden entrancing spin to capture your feelings
rather than your reason, as the reader.

Parents must arm
themselves with knowledge, so that they are able to protect
themselves and
their families, so that they can make informed decisions.

And neither CPS or the government is against that.

There are national
organizations, such as the American Family Rights Association that
are able to
provide a great deal of information.

R R R R R R ............and I suggest every single thing they offer in
the way of information be closely examined and researched for both
logic and risk.

On the local level, Harlem hosts two excellent organizations. One,
People
United For Children, began a class action lawsuit against the City of
New York
in 1998 concerning the removal of children from their parents without
investigation.

They would be right to do so, if that were the case...if no followup
investigation were conducted, after the removal to determine the risk
or offense.

It would be interesting, but inhumane, to leave all the children until
the conclusion of an investigation and see what happens to them in the
interum...my bet is the older ones who themselves said they were
abused and neglected in interview would suddenly recant,,,and we might
have a few children disappear.

The organizations director, Sharonne Salaam is an accomplished
and committed activist. The other, the Child Welfare Organizing
Project, offers
what was described by the New York Women’s Foundation as “peer-led
training
on parent’s rights and responsibilities that will build a network of
parent
advocates to improve the child welfare system.�

I should hope. It's a responsibility of citizens to improve our
government legally mandated institutions. Let's hope they aren't a
pack of phony crusaders though. I've seen far too many of those simply
destroy and then replace with something more fitting their ambitions
and agendas, than actually solve any problems.

Much graft and fraud have grown out of destruction and replacement.

The most important thing we must do as a community, to protect our
children as
a whole, is to actively support legislation and organizations that
seek to
address these issues. Part of that is becoming informed and informing
others.
The numbers speak for themselves. We need to understand exactly what
these
numbers say about us and what they mean to our families and our
communities.
Are we that much more likely to abuse or neglect our children?

Yes, or it wouldn't be happening. No, if it's not. The question isn't,
JUST that some group is being targetted, but what are the real factors
that causes more of that group to be involved? Is it solely just
their vulnerability, as this author would have you believe?

Are there other factors the author leaves unexplored?

How does the author propose to reform CPS?

The ONLY reform suggestion in the entire piece is force by suit.

With one exception, and that one questionable....information
promulgated by groups that may or may not have activism as they first
goal...but rather sueing as the force they will use.

Will they be activists in the full sense of the term? Gathering and
distributing unbiased objective information? More importantly lobbying
their representatives with that information? Willing to participate in
bill making work groups, or for amendments to existing laws?

Are they real reformers, or are they phonies?

If this piece is representative, with it's opening a piece of blatant
misinformation, then I have something less than full support for them.
They'll have to clean up their act to earn more.

No More Lies, Please.

Kane


descriptors: NY, NEW YORK HARLEM, CPS, ACS, ADMINISTRATION CHILDRENS
SERVICES,
DSS, KINSHIP CARE, AFRICAN AMERICANS, CHILD PROTECTIVE, KIN CARE,
SOCIAL WORK,
FAMILY LAW, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED
PEOPLE, URBAN
LEAGUE

Kane,

Thank you for this response. I began writing a response to this
absurdity but your response was far better than mine.

Fern's propaganda is exhausting but I no longer view his/her propaganda
as dangerous. The posts are too absurd to be believable.

I also wonder if we are encouraging this individual by continuing to
respond to his/her posts. The individual would disappear if no one
responded.

LaVonne

Kane wrote:

On 15 Sep 2004 14:15:21 GMT, (Fern5827) wrote:

...no! Fern didn't write anything...just cut and pasted yet another
poorly thought out propaganda piece. Let me help to quell the
confusion.

There could be other reasons than the City of NY simply targetting
black families. THAT is what is not addressed in this opinion piece.

What I notice in such bits and piece of the flotsam and jetsom Fern
dumps into this ng or others, facts and knowledge aren't necessary
components of rabble-rousing rhetoric -- and that it's more important
to speak "passionately" than to speak intelligently or truthfully

When looking at an issue one can be easily misled of they do not look
at more than one factor:

http://usliberals.about.com/b/a/2004_03_01.htm
"Half of Black Men in NYC Unemployed, Report Says"
It may be that black families are extremely resource poor, some even
seeking help from the state.

In fact the same article about points to the report finding that the
employment rate for black women in the same time period was 57.1.

And people that are unemployed often spend a great deal of time at
home with their children, thus increasing the chance of abuse.
Frustrated people have been known on occasion to lose it.

And, sadly, the opening claim by the author of this propaganda pile is
incorrect....whites do NOT compromise over half the population of NYC.

In fact they were, in the 2000 census, as this excerpt from the source
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/census/pop2000.html shows, at 35%.

"Among those of a single race, white nonhispanics remained the largest
group, accounting for 35 percent (2.80 million) of the city’s
population., while for the first time in a census, Hispanics were the
largest minority group, with a 27 percent share (2.16 million). Among
others of a single race, Black nonhispanics comprised 24.5 percent
(1.96 million), and nearly 1-in-10 New Yorkers (783,000) was Asian and
Pacific Islander nonhispanic. Those with a multiracial nonhispanic
background accounted for 2.8 percent (225,000) of the population."

It might be possible to make some of the arguments the author makes
based on the actual census figures, but credibility flies out the
window when the first claim is shown to be bogus.

But whites very nearly are not the largest minority, as they are only
8 percentage points from a tie with Hispanics, let alone the
"majority" as the author claims.

No More Lies. Or misinformation, please. This was too easy to look up
to just be a mistake. Or this publication has no, or very poor fact
checkers.


Foster Care Crisis: Let The Numbers Speak
By Sharon Secor
(http://www.everybodysmag.com/)


I am amazed that someone writing for THE CARIBBEAN-AMERICAN MAGAZINE
"Everybody," would make such a strange mistake as to claim that whites
are in the majority in NYC. That was shown not to be so in the 2000 US
Census.


Although white people continue to make up the majority of the

population in New

York City, children of color fill the foster care system. In fact,

just over

96% of all children in New York City foster homes last year were

children of

color. According to a New York State Office of Children and Family

Services

report from June of 2003, a mere 3.4% of the children in foster care

were

white.


That is a product, most likely, of the racist institutional reality of
NYC, rather than any deliberate desire to take children of color over
white children. Whites routinely have more resources, and hence could
obviously be getting more in-home services.

For instance, whites tend to live in more upscale dwelling, people of
color in less so....could it be that chidren are not being returned
for in home services because of racist situations such as this, and is
this CPS responsibility or some other agency?

http://www.nmic.org/nyccelp/Documents/browner.htm

On the other hand, I wonder how many of those children of color are in
fact in kinship care...with relatives but under foster system
supervision:

Well now..shucks...seems that of the 9,583, nearly 20 percent are in
kinship care with relatives. Kinds of changes the complexion of
things....if we don't know if those children are white or children of
color.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/pub/soc006.pdf

Foster Care
The number of children in foster care is continuing to decline. In FY
2001, on
average there were 30,858 children in foster care. Admissions to
foster care
were 8,729, an 8.9% decrease from FY 2000, when 9,583 children were
admitted into foster care. While the total number of admissions into
foster care
decreased overall, new admissions placed in kinship foster homes
increased by
2% from 1,868 to 1,906. A total of 2,201 children were admitted into
kinship
care in FY 1999, compared with 2,054 children in FY 1998.

And in addition I will admit to having my research abilities taxed
beyond capacity. I am able to find lots of information from the city
of NY administration and government, but am unable to find any mention
of this 96% of all children in foster care being children of color.

If any of you know of a source for this besides an unfounded claim,
I'd be grateful for the information...and access to the source.


This disparity is nothing less than shocking. It is offensive, an
affront to common sense. Are we really expected to believe that

parents of

color are that much more likely to abuse or neglect their children?


No, but there are circumstances being ignored or undiscovered, that
may well be a major part of the issue of children of color exceeding,
disproportionately, the number of white children in out of home
care..foster placement...and it may have nothing to do with their
color...as being something for CPS to use, but rather a condition of
institutional racism that creates conditions that are high risk for
those children that do not exist for white children.

NYC provides Section 8 vouchers to allow families to recover their
children from foster care if housing (the number of homeless families
is amazing..look it up) is the only reason the family is waiting for
the child to return.


I’d like to be able to tell you that the New York City branches of

the NAACP

are outraged by this fact and what it says about the way child

protective

services are administered in this city, but I can’t.


What would the NAACP have to do with "the way child protective
services are administered in this city?" They are not a child
protection agency.


Indeed, while the
Columbus, Ohio, chapter of the NAACP recently came out against

increasing

funding for their local child protective services agency with a

statement that

used phrases such as “Nazi Gestapo,� “genocidal death camps,� and
“time of slavery� in describing the effects of child protective

services on

black families and the Compton branch is making remarkable strides

against the

chemical control and restraint of black children, New York’s NAACP

seems

rather complacent about the matter.


A very strange statement. Columbus is likely a very different place
than NYC.

In fact the paragraph itself is questionable as to everything but the
clear message this is a propaganda piece....notice the quoting of that
old ploy, that brings in the Nazi's? Hell, I've used it myself, but
much more appropriately to actual behaviors.

And the writer didn't give us enough of the context to know if it was
appropriate and applied to NYC as well.


I wish I could tell you that the NYCLU was on the case, but I can’t.


Notice how that statement attempts to misconstrue the following as not
being a "case" for the NYCLU...who clearly stated they don't know if
it is an issue for them...suggesting possibly, or rather strongly,
that they looked at it and couldn't find the blatant misinformation
warranted more attention.

Or that it isn't an issue they can address because of their mandate.
Or that they know something the author isn't telling us...more likely.

And they are not a "New York City" focused agency...they are a state
wide focused agency.

The ALCU and it's chapters do not take class actions as I recall...the
thrust of this plea...but they take a lot of individual cases. Check
out the NYCLU website. They list them. And they are searchable. It's
not like they haven't been involved in child issues before.


“I don’t know that it is an issue for us,� said Sheila Stainback,
Director of Communications for the New York Civil Liberties Union, in

a recent

telephone conversation. “It may not be the usual suspects on this.�


And with the opening of this entire piece being a lie, or at best,
misinformation, how credible should the report of a "telephone
conversation" be? I'd want to see in writing if the NYCLU was in fact
not concerned about the number of children of color (remember, that
doesn't mean just Black children) in CPS cases.


With 96 out of every 100 children in New York City foster care being

of color,

it certainly seems as though someone’s civil liberties are being

violated,

usual suspects or not.


It would seem the truth is being violated if the census figures are
correct. Already only 35% of the city is white, and NYC is a target
destination for white SINGLE folks last I heard. In may be the actual
numbers of white children do not adhere to the even the 35% ratio
overall.


“Children don’t always arrive in foster care through abuse or

neglect,�

said Stainback. And, that is, indeed, true. More so, perhaps, than

she is aware

of. While Stainback is referring to the small percentage of children

who are in

care because they are orphaned, their parents hospitalized, jailed or

otherwise

absent and children that are ‘voluntarily relinquished’ to the state,


Nonsense. That's not a small number at all..only one of those is
likely to be small....orphaned...and we might squeeze "voluntary
relinquishment" if it meant what the writer thinks it means, coming to
the door and dropping your kids off...but it has to do with much later
TPR. There a lot of children in CPS systems everywhere because of
incapacity of the parent...jail being a rather common one.

NYC is not immune from the Meth epidemic.


the
fact of the matter is that a frightening number of parents have had

children

seized without ever being proved to have committed crimes against

their

children.


As long as you stick to the propaganda notion that civil violations
aren't crimes. The author ignored, or is ignorant, that only a
minority of child abuse offenses go to criminal court...but I doubt
the ignorance. I think this is a willful distortion of facts. No More
Lies, Please.


While nobody would deny that there are children who are terribly

abused,

An, the old, "I wouldn't defend abusers," while in fact such schemes
as coming in this piece and in the population of anti CPS folks on
this ng and in the organized outfits are doing exactly that. They just
want abuses and negect bar lowered to their standards...which are
painful and injurious to the child.


those
types of cases compose a minority of those in the child protective

system.

Nonsense. No line establishing "no serious abuse" has even been
established. There is no standard for it, and neglect gets lumped in
as less serious. This whole thing of trying to say that some abuse is
serious and deserves attention and the less serious should be left
alone is just misleading nonsense. None of the proponents can actually
name what is "less serious" and should be allowed because they KNOW
the citizens would NOT stand for where THEY want to draw the line.

And because neglect is across the nation higher in death rates than
abuse, and neglect is found in more than half the cases by far, either
by itself or along with abuse and considered "less serious" it would
be covered as that...and deadly to children. And to families that let
it get to the point of "serious."


The
vast majority of children in foster care are not there because of

sexual or

serious physical abuse.


Yes, that is true. Many are there for the more often fatal
circumstances of neglect. Neglect doesn't make the news as abuse does.


According to a National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse
and Neglect Information report detailing child maltreatment data from

2002,

published this year, less than 20% of substantiated reports to child

protective

services involve serious physical abuse, with approximately 10%

having to do

with sexual abuse.


That is correct...and it is not appropriate to negate or diminish the
importance of the 80% that are at risk, or are suffering from neglect.

Again, just as we see in this ng, information is tendered that is
incomplete, prefaced and bolstered throughout by a careful trimming of
enough information from the rest of the context for the reader to make
an objective less biased conclusion.


The United States Department of Health and Human Services

Administration for

Children and Families Child Welfare Outcomes Annual Report from 1999,

published

in 2001, states that nationally, in addition to the children who had
substantiated reports of neglect or abuse, “an estimated additional

49,000

children who were not victims (i.e., children with unsubstantiated

reports)

were placed in foster care.�


Notice how careful the author is to NOT give you the total figure of
substantiated reports, nor to explain what "substantiated" actually
means.......which would allow the reader to understant,
"unsubstantiated" does not mean the abuse didn't happen. The child may
be in the hospital..but if the injuries can't be tied at least in
civil court to the accused the case is "unsubstantiated." And many a
case closes, as authorities have admitted, with a stamp of
"unsubstantiated" simply because time ran out and unless they have
solid enough evidence WITH THE PERP IDENTIFIED, they cannot mark it
substantiated...even if the term used in this ng is, "substantiated
for abuse, or neglect."

The child can still be abused and neglect. Just no perp.


Consider that for a moment, using the government’s own numbers.


With spin, with a failure to consider the meaning of the numbers in
context, with using terminology that is unclear in meaning, and with a
lot of coatings of fertilizer one can claim just about anything.


Without
significant legislative change, at that rate, within a period of 10

years

almost half a million children in our nation will be traumatized by

wrongful

and needless removal from their families due to what the government

itself

refers to as unsubstantiated reports. And in New York City, almost

all of these

children will be of color.


The nonsense claim, built on misinformation and lies. Sad, isn't it.

No mention of the the children abused by their parents, both
substantiated, and interestingly "unsubstantiated" but still abused or
at risk.


The concepts of substantiated and unsubstantiated reports of neglect

or abuse

have little real meaning in the context of the processes by which

these

determinations are made.


Why yes, that is correct. I wonder if the author stopped to consider
she just built an argument indicting NYC by using national information
of "substantiated," and "unsubstantiated."

This piece of, as it was from the opening sentence, falling apart.

Much abuse happens that cannot be substantiated...but the child has
the marks, nonetheless.


Even the term substantiated has different meanings in
different states, ranging from “probable cause� to “reasonable� to
“credible� to “preponderance� to “clear and convincing.� Thus, what
is substantiated in one state may not be in another. Outside of the

small

percentage of cases in which the degree of abuse or neglect makes the

decision

to remove painfully obvious, CPS workers theoretically rely on risk

assessment,

assumption and instinct.


And they should rely on what in their place?

Leaving the child and waiting, while hoping for the best, is to be
preferred?

The risk assement tools are based on decades of empiracal data and
hundreds of thousands of case outcomes, good and bad, to create
indicators that have high probability of harm if no intervention is
made. And some that indicate it is unlikley to come to harm...that is
why people that call in sometimes don't see a worker show up at their
neighbors, or their daughter-in-laws.

I'll give you an example. If the neighbors are regularly feeding the
children, then that is AN INDICATOR THERE IS NO NEGLECT...even if the
mother NEVER feeds the child. This gets many a neighbor into the
"special certs" placement fostering volunteerism when later the mother
DOES do something dangerous and the children are removed...guess whose
call will be remembered....why, yes, the caring neighbor. smile

As described by Emrich Thoma in Predicting the Future and the

Codification of

Poverty, risk assessment is “the systematic collection of information

to

determine the degree to which a child is likely to be abused or

neglected at

some future point in time.�


Do look up Thoma and his hobby. And it's Emerich.

He's a long time critic of CPS. Some of that criticism is useful and
true.

And indicator lists are well conceived and executed systems of risk
assessment.

Yep...and it's good enough I'd love to have the same odds in Vegas.


There is not a uniform standard of risk
assessment in place nationally and frequently there are significant

differences

in standards even within a single state – often, almost as many

standards as

there are caseworkers. For example, different states have different

ages at

which it is deemed acceptable to leave a child at home alone. Some

states have

no specific age at all. Thus, where one CPS worker may find 10 years

to be an

acceptable age, another may find that leaving a 13-year-old at home

alone is an

act of neglect worthy of removing the child.


I'm always amused at arguments such as this. Stop and think, if you
haven't already caught on and are chuckling.........the point of STATE
law over FEDERAL law is to address the concerns of individual states
as to their differences from their neighbors.

A kid in rural Alabama wandering about their front, side, and back
yard or the lower fourty unattended for hours at a time is a bit
different than a kid in NYC, in some of its parts, under the same
conditions.

What passes for moral and ethical in one place does not in another,
and the states have always fought for the right to decide their own
fate, in all things...including child rearing practices. Should
liberal CA have exact same standards, and hence laws, that
conservative, and very religious, OK has?

And in fact I have heard, by propagandists, and also by those that
think and are honest, the very opposite argument against NATIONWIDE
conformity in child welfare issues. It imposes restraints or standards
that are not, as a judge would say, community standards.


The majority of children seized from parents are taken for neglect,

often the

result of a highly subjective decision making process,


Nothing to rebut that with but that it's simply utter BS and a lie.
Anyone even minimally familiar with the issue knows that neglect is
harder to spot, but much more deadly than abuse...easy to see usually.
And the assessments for neglect are highly OBJECTIVE because they
nearly always require a professional...usually a medical professional
to even make that determination.

And there is somewhat more objectivity than "subjective" decision
making going on in those neglect cases by virtue of medical
assessment.

The claims are rot, but then rot is good fertilizer.


all too often left in
the hands of a narrowly educated case worker, lacking experience or

education

in other cultures and religions.


Once would be "all too often."

The language of the propagandist, as usual. Appeals to emotion subtly
encased in what appears to be fact but is not.

Cultural sensitivity is the watchword at CPS and has been for years.
Certain "jacklegs" that have been blamed for sucking up the tax
payer's money have been doing trainings on the subject for 2 decades.
Now it's done by colleges and universities for state agencies and has
been for years in many states.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i... lege&spell=1

Which only came up with the following results title: "Results 1 - 10
of about 6,110 for "cultural sensitivity" state employees college"

And, what this writer fails to tell you is this: Hiring practices for
the past ten years have given priority to minority recruiting...and I
know of at least one state that pays their workers who speak another
language a small extra pay boost....because they are often pulled away
from their regular work to rush out to reception and help a walkin, or
a client whose reglar worker, who share the same language, is absent.

Hispanic recruiting for foster parents is specially funded project in
some areas. Now we are seeing the same thing for Eastern Europeans, of
the old soviet block, getting the same thing.


Often, many researchers have found, poverty
and neglect are confused, or thought to be one and the same.


Well, by those dim enough to believe propaganda pieces such as this.
So tell me reader, are YOU confused about the difference between
poverty and neglect, other than figuring out for yourself that the
incidence might be a tad higher in the poor than the rich?


Middle-class
standards of financial achievement and material possessions are the

norm

against which all others are compared, despite the fact that the vast

majority

of the world lives with much less.


Oh ****....that went out in the 70's, as a product of the
consciousness raising of the 60 and 70s. What a crock. It's reflected
in the routine dressing down that workers do who have high contact
levels with the public....they just can't show up in court that way.

And it's basic training for all workers that such standards are not
allowed to apply.

There is no doubt that some workers might fall into this bias but it
isn't a practice and can be claimed as "possible" for anyone NOT from
the social strata of "poverty."

Is anyone fooled so far?


In determining who is neglectful, class and race play a major role. A
disproportionate number, for example, of mothers that test positive

for drugs

at the time of birth are poor and/or of color because these are the

women who

are most likely to be tested, not because white women over the

poverty level do

not use drugs or alcohol.


And white women, and their babies, aren't tested? Mandatory testing is
for those that have a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Color and
income has nothing to do with it. One can turn down the test, but face
the possibility of a warrant if they have any history, such as a DUI,
or drug related arrest. Or even the behaviors of the patient.


"The possible dual use of toxicology results for both medical and
legal purposes also raises important questions about informed consent.
Community standards vary for obtaining consent in cases involving
prenatal substance abuse. Some medical facilities conduct toxicology
testing under a general "conditions of admission" form that authorizes
various medically indicated procedures. Other facilities require a
special consent specifically authorizing toxicology testing. Other
hospitals require that a patient be specifically informed of potential
legal consequences before testing is conducted.

Many hospitals conduct toxicology screening of newborns, either under
the general admissions "conditions of admission" form or in accordance
with State child abuse and neglect laws that allow for certain testing
and evaluation procedures without parental consent for the purpose of
diagnosing prenatal drug exposure. Other institutions, however,
require specific parental consent for toxicology screening. If parents
refuse permission for testing, a court order can then be obtained in
some States.

Because practices vary, it is important that professionals are aware
of alcohol and drug abuse confidentiality regulations (e.g., 42 CFR,
Part 2), the standards used within their local communities for
obtaining consent for toxicology testing and for disclosing test
results to child protection agencies. Hospital protocols also provide
guidance for staff as well as help ensure consistency in hospital
practice.
"


Economic status and ethnicity affect the way
situations are assessed. A light skinned woman with a certain degree

of

financial security who articulately explains childrearing practices

based on

studies on attachment parenting and the family bed and a less

financially

stable, darker skinned woman or one that struggles a bit with the

English

language without obvious sleeping accommodations for her child are

judged

differently. One is an enlightened and sensitive parent and the other

is

neglectful, unable to provide even a crib for her child.


And reverse the colors and what do you get? The same assessment would
free up the darker skinned woman and result possibly in a report on
the white women.

This is just nonsense.


Yet, if a family is in financial crisis, the political and welfare

systems

begrudge every dime of assistance that they receive.


Whaaat! What the hell is this babbling accomplishing? It's an appeal
to emotions because the author can count on EVERYONE reacting
negatively because ALL POLITICAL AND WELFARE SYSTEMS begrudge every
dime of assistance received.

That's what the feeilng is when one has to answer reams of questions
on reams of forms.


Often the state will pay
more to take a child from a poor mother than they would to help that

family

stay together.


"Often?" Well when they also have a file filled with information on
the poor past parenting, substance abuse, or other higly limiting
factors.


“We spit on the welfare mother as a parasite,� wrote Nev Moore in a
Massachusetts News article of May 27, 2000, describing a typical

mother on

welfare with two children who receives $539 per month in assistance.

“The

foster mother who gets her kids gets $820 plus,� Moore continued,

“yet we

hold the foster and adoptive parents… up as saints.�


If you haven't recognized a propaganda piece by now, does the name Nev
Moore ring a bell for you?


At first CPS contact, a parent enters a distorted mirror image of

what our

legal system is supposed to be.


Nonsense.


Everything is backwards.


More nonsense.


There are no Miranda
warnings, yet everything she says will be used against her, and

perhaps even

some that she hasn’t.


Then just make all civil proceedings have the same requirement in
investigation and proceedures that criminal ones do. Simple, eh?
Except the public won't buy.


Her accuser can choose to remain anonymous.


She isn't "convicted" on the word of the accuser, but on found or not
on the evidence.


Which makes
little difference, as she has no right to know who is accusing her.

The

confidentiality of the reporter is guaranteed by law.


Because it's not a criminal proceeding, as the author would like you
to believe, without naming civil law as the issue.


The parent is presumed
guilty and must prove innocence.


Again and appeal to emotions based on the fear we all feel, even when
pulled over by a police officer...for what may well turn out to be a
taillight out.


"There's definitely an assumption of guilt. People who commit murder

have more

rights than a family that has its children taken away," said

Republican Senator

Parley Hellewell, according to a Sunday, January 18, 2003, Salt Lake

Tribune

article by Kirsten Stewart and Rebecca Walsh.


The issue is just a tad more critical for the accused in murder than
child abuse. Now if these folks would prefer the proceedures common to
a murder charge, there are likely large segments of the public that,
fed up with "services," and their cost, would be more than happy to
bump all child abuse up to criminal status, close to or the same as a
murder charge.


The entire investigative process is built upon coercion and a

deliberate

misleading of families as to their rights.


"The entire?" Please. Hyperbole. Much of it is based on actual
evidence that leads to more evidence...exactly as if I saw someone
climbing into a window of a store at night and reported it to the
police, and they questioned the person they found climbing out....who
turned out to the be store owner, innocent of any crime.....or THE
STORE OWNER COMMITTING ARSON for insurance.

There are many ways an investigation proceeds, but you can be sure if
the police know "coercion" or deliberate misleading as to one's
rights, they damn well will use it if you are stupid enough to fall
for it. And IT'S PERFECTLY LEGAL.

As in this definition of Coercion under that for issues pertaining to
law:

"\Co*er"cion\, n. [L. coercio, fr. coercere. See Coerce.] 1. The act
or process of coercing.

2. (Law) The application to another of either physical or moral force.
When the force is physical, and cannot be resisted, then the act
produced by it is a nullity, so far as concerns the party coerced.
When the force is moral, then the act, though voidable, is imputable
to the party doing it, unless he be so paralyzed by terror as to act
convulsively. At the same time coercion is not negatived by the fact
of submission under force. ``Coactus volui'' (I consented under
compulsion) is the condition of mind which, when there is volition
forced by coercion, annuls the result of such coercion. --Wharton."

Notice the "moral force" bit....that IS what CPS is about. It is an
agency of society to enforce moral controls over the citizens the
citizens have agreed to.

When the law changes that, then it's gone. Until then, it is the law
of this land.


CPS workers won’t mention that
parents do not have to let them in,


Nor do police or other investigators, not even the health department
inspectors, unless you wish to press it. Then they'll call in a
requrest for a warrant while they sit there and block your exit with
the possible evidence.


nor do they have to submit themselves or
their children to interrogation without a warrant and in many systems

case

workers are directed by superiors to deny that these rights even

exist.

Lie.


This,
despite Supreme Court constitutional interpretations and rulings to

the

contrary.


It has been a regular practice for years to inform those being
questioned initially that they do not have to answer without a lawyer
or others present.


Yet, even if parents are aware of the few constitutionally protected

rights

that they do have at that first knock on the door, it frequently

becomes clear

that by asserting these rights, they run a risk of an immediate

retaliatory

removal for at least 72 hours.


Or an immediately removal for safety. That's an interesting way to use
the requirement for the state to produce evidence within the 72 hours
as to the reason for removal...but it's the law, not something dreampt
up by corrupt CPS workers or their supervisors.


The case worker has up to three days after the
removal to get what is often a rubber-stamped court order for an

emergency

removal – yet another subjective concept -- from a busy and

overburdened

system that doesn’t devote much time to a real consideration of

individual

circumstances. In addition to the purely arbitrary nature of that

initial

removal, the CPS worker pays no consequences for a wrongful removal.

Not even

if a child is hurt or killed while in state care.


Speculative nonsense, and proven untrue by actual events. If someone
else murders a child though, where YOU left that child...your own
say...do you think it fair if you are charged with a crime in criminal
court? Or that the child's attorney, a petitioner such as a g'parent
can start that up easily, should sue you for the child's estate?


On a national level, even using the most conservative of government

figures,

one simple fact stands out. Children in the custody of the state are

more

likely to be neglected, abused, sexually assaulted or killed than

they are in

the general population.


No, they are more likely to be caught and counted. And the wordage is
misleading. And inaccurate. ...that would be children in the physical
custody of the state...as in removed from the home....where the test
cannot ethically be made to determine that claim as true or false.

If all children, or even a reasonable sample size for research, at
random, were left with parents they would have otherwise be removed
from would THAT sample show a lower incidence of abuse and child
fatality than a random sample of the same size from similar bio
families placed in foster care, or other state physical custody, such
as treatment centers.

(The data doesn't really count foster PARENTS, but "foster care"
meaing the child died in a location, but not by a specific identified
person.) The date was recently posted and pointed to with clickable
URL by myself, and I believe Ron.


The sheer number of children who go into the system,
many without real cause, and come out beaten, maimed, sexually

assaulted,

emotionally disabled or damaged from the powerful drugs used to keep

them

submissive is more than shocking. It is the abuse of human rights on

a broad

scale.


That is yet another blatant lie. We do not KNOW that those conditions
prevailed before they were placed in out of home care, or if the total
number of "the children who go into the system" where in state
physical custody, or in their own bio homes with in home services and
state custody...something different from physical custody.


City Agency’s Psych Drugs Imperil Foster Kids, an April 16. 2001

article by

Douglas Montero, described the “cocktail of psychiatric medications�

that

many New York City foster children are forced to take. Sometimes

these are made

up of four or more powerful drugs.

The Administration for Children’s Services, according to the article,

isn’t

sure how many of the 31,000 children in their care have been

prescribed

psychiatric drugs, but “a state audit of 401 randomly selected kids

last year

found that more than half were being treated for mental problems –

and that

most likely means medication.�


That is a blantant lie. The author cannot know that for a fact. A
great many children are receiving mental health treatment without
drugs.


If Montero’s name seems familiar, it may be from his recent New York

Post

article, in which he wrote of a shocking abuse of drugs, power and

infants in

state foster care. And, we know from which ethnic and financial

groups those

babies in all probability came from.

In a story published on February 29, 2004, Montero reported that the

New York

State Health Department “has launched a probe into potentially

dangerous drug

research conducted on HIV-infected infants and children� -- foster

children

at Incarnation Children's Center in Manhattan.

With money from “federal grants and, in some cases, pharmaceutical
companies,� approximately 36 different experiments were performed,

including

13 that used about 50 children – some just three months old -- to

test the

effects of high does of AIDS medicines, according the information

cited in

Montero’s report. Other experiments included studying the "safety,"
"tolerance" and "toxicity" of AIDS drugs, through methods that mixed

up to six

different medications. Yet another sought to determine the effects of
double-dosing infants with measles vaccine.


"They are torturing these kids, and it is nothing short of murder,"

said

Michael Ellner, as quoted by Montero. Ellner is a minister and

president of

Health Education AIDS Liaison, which is an advocacy group for HIV

parents.

Dr. David Rasnick, a biochemist and expert in the field of AIDS

medicine,

Methinks one should, whenever offerred "authority" on subject, as in
the logical fallacy of "an appeal to authority," look up that person.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i... Google+Search

Dr. Rasnick is an outspoken opponent of certain widely held
assumptions about AIDS and its cause and treatment...and not in the
majority in his position. It would be nice if he were
right...but......


was,
according to Montero, “outraged,� citing the “acute toxicity� and

fatal

potential of the medications, as well as the variety of severe side

effects

associated with the drugs.

Montero also wrote that “the foster-care agency described the

experiments on

its own Web site, which was abruptly shut down after The Post began

making

inquiries.�


This is a different issue than everything up to this point. An aside
and the usual overkill employed by propagandists.

This may well be an issue, and highly deserving of citizen action, but
it changes nothing on the issue of whether or not children of color
are being targetted by NYC at the rates claimed by the author.


As citizens, frequently we look to our government when we seek

information

concerning the governmental policies that affect our lives. The

current child

protective climate is built primarily upon two governmental acts, the

Child

Abuse Prevention And Treatment Act (CAPTA), which has continued to

evolve since

its initial legislative appearance in 1974, and the Adoption and Safe

Families

Act of 1997 (ASFA).


I see this isn't about the 'outrage' of children of color being
targetted by NYC at all, now is it?


And, indeed, our government does address the question of why such

great numbers

of children are removed from homes in which, as so many experts

agree, they

could remain, with the appropriate services. In fact, unnecessary

removals are

specifically mentioned.


Notice how, even as dependent on vague generalities to convince the
reader of the malfeasance of CPS this piece was, it has decended into
even more vague generalites?

"as so many experts agree, they could remain with the appropriate
services," Honey, I could remain almost anywhere if I had the
resources to. There is such a thing as a limit.

Well, if they are mentioned let's see that mention and the supporting
argument.


“While reimbursement for foster care and related case management

services is

open-ended, title IV-E funds may not be used for other types of

services that

could prevent a child from needing to be placed in care in the first

place or

that could facilitate the child's returning home or moving to another

permanent

placement,� said Wade F. Horn, Ph.D.,


Well now let me see....as I recall there are OTHER programs to address
that...one is called ADC. That IS one of the preventive programs,
along with others. CPS is not mandated to FIRST do prevention. It is
primarily an enforcement agency, but is NOT allowed to contact
families that are NOT reported to them to offer services...since that
would encroach on OTHER programs that have services and outreach to
address prevention.

http://nccanch.acf.hhs.gov/topics/pr...rs/federal.cfm

http://www.friendsnrc.org/contacts/nrccontacts.asp

Why do we not hear more about these when we are looking at child
protection? Because they are so universally underused by the families
that come to be investigated for abuse and neglect.

Essentially...they do not care enough about their children to seek aid
for their malparenting, nor their drinking, drugging, and partying.

As usual, the propagandists move far from the real problems and focus
on issues they do not even represent correctly, and demand solutions
from sources that are not involved in that part of the problem.

CPS is not a prevention agency except in it's risk assessment portion,
and casemanagement to put client and resources together, often just
such resources provided that some would refer to as being staffed by
"jacklegs." Freeloaders and opportunists...unfortunately those
"jacklegs" are in such short supply that the "experts" themselves are
the one's pointing out the lack of adequate service access as a major
problem in child protection and welfare.


Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Department of the

United States

Department of Health and Human Services, in a statement given to the

Committee

on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Human Resources, U.S. House of
Representatives,
on June 12, 2003.

“Furthermore,� continued Horn, “a State that is successful in

preventing

unnecessary removals or in shortening lengths of foster care stays

actually is

apt to receive less Federal funding than a State where children

remain in

foster care for long periods of time.�


Then those states need to wake up the one classification of society
mandated to do something about the problem...the senators and
representatives that vote for programs...and have them vote to have
more money given to prevention.

This is not brain surgery,,, and diatribes such as this author offers
is leading the reader directly away from reform through representation
lobbying...and to what? Screaming in the streets? Whining at the
keyboard? Nothing but hand wringing?

Or more suits...and more money for those that are on the anti CPS
bandwagon?


“The county,� wrote Troy Anderson, of the LA Daily News, in Foster

Care

Cash Cow, one of a series of investigative articles concerning the

foster care

system and published over the last few months, with the most recent

appearing

on March 5, 2004, “receives nearly $30,000 a year from federal and

state

governments for each child placed in the system -- money that goes to

pay the

stipends of foster parents, but also wages, benefits and overhead

costs for

child-welfare workers and executives. For some special-needs

children, the

county receives up to $150,000 annually.�


Yep. $30,000 a year for a child in out of home care doesn't sound like
all that much, when you think about it. And especially when you think
of all the services provided....legal costs (no, they don't come
free), counseling, therapy, rehab, transportation, medical support.


Without a continuous influx of children, the system would collapse.

Jobs and

pensions would be lost. Executives would suffer.


Nonsense. The usual. Same old nonsense. The problem, as defined by the
author, would disappear with just one thing: the ending of parents
abusing and neglecting their children. CPS doesn't create that.
Citizens do, and other citizens feel responsible for society, and the
child, and the family, and have mandated their government act.


According to Anderson, a report by the state Department of Social

Services

Child Welfare Stakeholders Group described the situation as being

"called the

'perverse incentive factor,' states and counties earn more revenues

by having

more children in the system -- whether it is opening a case to

investigate a

report of child abuse and neglect or placing a child in foster care."


And how would this need be paid for sans the "incentive" to do
investigations and placement?


And, thus, it would seem, we arrive at the bottom line reason why it

is the

families of the poor and families of color that are ravaged by the

child

protective system. These are the families that often lack the

resources and

power to fight back.


This sad attempt founders on an interesting fact...the state can bill,
and does, the family for services. Now consider, who would best be
able to pay for those services...the poor, or the rich...so why isn't
CPS going after the rich? If it's "Show Me the Money" they sure got
the wrong target.


And when the organizations that are traditionally associated with

protecting

the rights of those in need fail to act, what can a parent do?


A completely mindless question. CPS hasn't failed to act. The
complaint in this piece is that they HAVE acted.

It's just an emotion laden entrancing spin to capture your feelings
rather than your reason, as the reader.


Parents must arm
themselves with knowledge, so that they are able to protect

themselves and

their families, so that they can make informed decisions.


And neither CPS or the government is against that.


There are national
organizations, such as the American Family Rights Association that

are able to

provide a great deal of information.


R R R R R R ............and I suggest every single thing they offer in
the way of information be closely examined and researched for both
logic and risk.


On the local level, Harlem hosts two excellent organizations. One,

People

United For Children, began a class action lawsuit against the City of

New York

in 1998 concerning the removal of children from their parents without
investigation.


They would be right to do so, if that were the case...if no followup
investigation were conducted, after the removal to determine the risk
or offense.

It would be interesting, but inhumane, to leave all the children until
the conclusion of an investigation and see what happens to them in the
interum...my bet is the older ones who themselves said they were
abused and neglected in interview would suddenly recant,,,and we might
have a few children disappear.


The organizations director, Sharonne Salaam is an accomplished
and committed activist. The other, the Child Welfare Organizing

Project, offers

what was described by the New York Women’s Foundation as “peer-led

training

on parent’s rights and responsibilities that will build a network of

parent

advocates to improve the child welfare system.�


I should hope. It's a responsibility of citizens to improve our
government legally mandated institutions. Let's hope they aren't a
pack of phony crusaders though. I've seen far too many of those simply
destroy and then replace with something more fitting their ambitions
and agendas, than actually solve any problems.

Much graft and fraud have grown out of destruction and replacement.


The most important thing we must do as a community, to protect our

children as

a whole, is to actively support legislation and organizations that

seek to

address these issues. Part of that is becoming informed and informing

others.

The numbers speak for themselves. We need to understand exactly what

these

numbers say about us and what they mean to our families and our

communities.

Are we that much more likely to abuse or neglect our children?


Yes, or it wouldn't be happening. No, if it's not. The question isn't,
JUST that some group is being targetted, but what are the real factors
that causes more of that group to be involved? Is it solely just
their vulnerability, as this author would have you believe?

Are there other factors the author leaves unexplored?

How does the author propose to reform CPS?

The ONLY reform suggestion in the entire piece is force by suit.

With one exception, and that one questionable....information
promulgated by groups that may or may not have activism as they first
goal...but rather sueing as the force they will use.

Will they be activists in the full sense of the term? Gathering and
distributing unbiased objective information? More importantly lobbying
their representatives with that information? Willing to participate in
bill making work groups, or for amendments to existing laws?

Are they real reformers, or are they phonies?

If this piece is representative, with it's opening a piece of blatant
misinformation, then I have something less than full support for them.
They'll have to clean up their act to earn more.

No More Lies, Please.

Kane



descriptors: NY, NEW YORK HARLEM, CPS, ACS, ADMINISTRATION CHILDRENS

SERVICES,

DSS, KINSHIP CARE, AFRICAN AMERICANS, CHILD PROTECTIVE, KIN CARE,

SOCIAL WORK,

FAMILY LAW, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED

PEOPLE, URBAN

LEAGUE