The Unintended Consequences of Child Protection Laws

The Unintended Consequences of Child Protection Laws
Grandparents Are the Only Hope Some Children May Have
By Christine Korn

http://www.associatedcontent.com/pop...ype_ id=78386


Grandparents can make the difference.

There is a growing number of children finding themselves separated from
their parents for one reason or another. The Child Protection Services
agencies have determined that permanency in a child's life is vital, and
has expedited the process of attempting to rehabilitate a parent who has
neglected or harmed his/her child. The current rule is that if the child
has spent 15 of the past 22 months in an out of home placement, such as
foster care, the states can petition the court to terminate the parental
rights and seek adoptive homes for the children. At this point in the
process, grandparents may step in and petition the court for custody.
Many are finding that if they have not continuously been involved in the
case before this stage, the agencies recommend against grandparent
custody. Many times, some innocent event in your distant history can
eliminate you from consideration as a caregiver for your own
grandchildren. If the agency and the attorney or advocates for the child
align against your taking custody, you will have to fight a legal battle
in the courts which can bankrupt the average family. This problem may
never intrude on your family, but if it does, the only protection for
your grandchildren is to know your rights, and know the children's
rights before you encounter the "intervention". This is definitely one
of those things we all presume only happen to low income or "other"
people. My research indicates that this presumption could not be more wrong.

A string of well-intended legislation, coupled with some poorly designed
incentive programs are now culminating in a climate of hysteria.
Americans have historically over-reacted to crises, often doing more
harm with the perceived remedies. This is a classic example. While no
one wishes to leave an abused child in a dangerous home, it appears that
the combination of our desire to protect a child, and our failure to
embed proper safeguards in the laws is causing a generation of children
to be traumatized in many instances unnecessarily.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for
Children and Families has collected statistics for several years from
reports which are required of the states to receive federal
reimbursements and block grant funds. Although those statistics are not
always reliable, and often are only partially collected, or using
varied, unstandardized criteria for collection from state to state, even
the somewhat anemic reports reveal some startling facts. According to
the ACF:

· In 2002, 2.6 million reports alleging possible maltreatment of
approximately 4.5 million children were made.

Many of these reports are made anonymously, due to legislation intended
to encourage the reports. It was believed that persons who might
hesitate to call, in fear of retaliation from families, would be more
likely to report, possibly saving a child, if they were allowed to do so
anonymously. The UNINTENDED consequence of this legislation is that
false allegations can be made without any danger of prosecution for that
false report. Nearly all states have laws against this sort of report,
but it is rare to find those being enforced. An angry ex-spouse, intent
on discrediting the other parent to gain full custody, or a disgruntled
neighbor, or some intrusive stranger in a grocery store can call in an
anonymous report and start a series of events which can destroy a family
and forever sever a child from his home. Much like most government
agencies, the machinery often fails to see individuals, instead of
simply funding streams and statistics. There is possibly no other arena
where individual agent responsibility and good faith is more vital.

· About two-thirds of those reports were found to warrant further
investigation or assessment. That would amount to 1,742,000 reports
involving an estimated 2,970,000 children.

Those investigations culminated in the determination that approximately
896,000 children were abused or neglected.

This would mean that 2,074,000 children were interrogated, frightened
and traumatized for no reason. The very nature of a child protection
investigation is scary for a child. He is often questioned relentlessly,
sometimes without benefit of parent or advocate present. He is often
physically examined, subjected to forensic interviews, and many times
removed from his family for at least a few days until the validity of
the report can be ascertained. This common decision to "err on the side
of the child" neglects to consider or give proper recognition to the
fact that unless that child is in serious danger, the protection
intervention may be the most trauma he ever experiences. The reliance of
a child on his family, even when that family is not optimal, is
absolute. His world depends on his sense of safety and security and on
the sense of his own place in the world Even older children need their
place in the family tree to anchor their own sense of self worth. When
we disrupt that faith, we forever shake the foundation upon which
healthy children grow. Children who feel that they don't belong, or who
feel unsafe tend to develop emotional maladies which may take years to
emerge.

Statistics show that over half, about 60% of those 896,000 children were
the victims of neglect. This amounts to about 537,600 children.

About 20% of those children were physically abused. That would be about
179,200.

About 10% of those children were sexually abused. That would be 89,600.

Roughly 7% were found to be emotionally or psychologically neglected,
which includes criticizing, rejecting, or refusing to nurture a child.

When the definitions of those terms are reviewed, and the common
"treatments" applied by social workers, the problems become crystal
clear. For instance:

In the agency terminology, "neglected" means that the parent or
responsible adult failed to provide some component of the basic needs of
537,600 children. This could be something as innocuous as allowing the
water service to the house to be interrupted for failure to pay the
bill. While this is not a preferable situation, often those children
were removed and their families subjected to months of agency management
viewed as "rehabilitative services" which created stress and duress far
more than the original condition in the home. Once a child has been
removed, despite the claims of the agencies that they are only
"helping", the process becomes very adversarial and accusatory. The laws
in family courts are not what anyone who has not encountered it would
expect, and often the result is the destruction of families who truly
needed help. Almost universally, the ignorance of the process and the
language renders a parent helpless before a veritable room full of
people who presume the worst of them.

The law requires that a list of "core services" intended to help
families remedy minor problems be offered before a foster placement is
initiated as a last resort. Because of the perverse incentives which
inadvertently were built into the funding mandates, those services are
often not offered, and are more often not funded adequately. The ACF
reports that in this same year, 2002, $6.5 Billion Dollars (with a ‘B')
was spent on Foster care and adoption subsidies while only $630 Million
Dollars (with an ‘M') was spent to help families in crisis to prevent
the need for a removal or to reunify families who were separated. If the
worker sees a child in possible need of services, and the only way to
access the funding to provide those services is to remove the child, the
perverse truth is that often, children who could have been kept at home
with some help provided to families are removed and traumatized
horrendously in the process. Simply realigning our priorities would
remedy this unintended consequence, but so far, the machinery just seems
to be growing more and more lop-sided.

When you examine the official definition of the terminology used in the
legislation, and consider the possible subjective interpretations of the
laws, you will readily see a huge gap between the clear intent of those
laws, and the actual result of their day-to-day application. The term
"reasonable efforts" is liberally found throughout the manuals and
statutes related to child protection. A cursory examination of the
legislative intent of the mandate that reasonable efforts will always be
made to avoid a removal of a child from his family, will reveal that
there is a vast disparity between the intent and the actual bottom line
results of our zeal to protect children.

The conclusion of my research in this area is that the government has
long-since begun to do more harm than good with our billions of dollars
in funding. When the occasional legislative hearing is held to examine
the failures of the system, the various professionals align to declare
that those failures are the result of needing more money, more staff,
more programs. It has been estimated by national data surveys that over
25 individuals derive their primary income from the removal and foster
care of a child. The most egregious horror stories are paraded to
punctuate their claims that they are just expected to do too much with
too little, motivating the legislators, with all good intentions, to
appropriate more funding. What is rarely done is an examination of how
the current funds have been spent. Even a very limited look at the
statistics will assure you that we are NOT doing a good job of budgeting
and monitoring. As with any government agency, public oversight is the
only sure way to prevent rogue and unaccountable results.

Our generation, the grandparents, are the watchdogs. We must know the
details of this agency above all others, and demand that it work
efficiently, and with open accountability to the public. It is the only
way that true child abuse prevention will ever come about.
Confidentiality laws are said to protect the identities of children.
Truly, simply redacting their names would be sufficient, however the
agencies routinely refuse all public access to documents, standing
behind the supposed need to shield the child. The effect is to provide a
screen behind which any and all manner of agency malfeasance and
incompetence can be hidden. The public must demand full accountability
and disclosure.

It is estimated that the placement of one child in a foster home will
cost the tax-payer about $3000 per month on the average. Many times,
helping the single mother gain proper child care, or teaching her to
discipline properly, or helping the family to find community resources
to address a loss of income, or other crisis would cost us pennies
comparatively. As long as the funding streams are weighted so heavily on
the foster care services, those preservations will never be honestly
implemented. The only solution I can find is for more grandparents to
know the facts, know the laws of their state, and take an active part in
the protection of their grandchildren.

The good news is that although many times, an intervention will be
unavoidable, if a grandparent is aware, and able to assert his/her
rights soon enough, the child can be saved from untold emotional
upheavals. Even though parents may believe that the social worker will
never knock on their door, we, the older generation realize the fallacy
of that belief that such things only happen to other people. We can
prepare our adult children, educate ourselves and our grandchildren, and
we can also press our legislators to address the unintended consequences
of previous poor planning and research. Above all else, my research
convinced me that the answer will be found by my generation, the
grandparents who realize the danger of allowing the government to take
over the management and protection of families.

If you are interested in doing some reading and research of your own, I
highly recommend typing terms like "family rights" or "child protection
services" into your favorite search engine. The revelations will astound
you. The safety and integrity of your family may depend on your
knowledge of the truth.

Christine Korn is the director of Colorado Family Rights Advocacy
Institute, a non-profit agency dedicated to education related to child
neglect and abuse, and to the preservation of the fundamental human
right to family association.





CURRENTLY CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES VIOLATES MORE CIVIL RIGHTS ON A
DAILY BASIS THEN ALL OTHER AGENCIES COMBINED INCLUDING THE NATIONAL
SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY WIRETAPPING PROGRAM....

CPS Does not protect children...
It is sickening how many children are subject to abuse, neglect and even
killed at the hands of Child Protective Services.

every parent should read this .pdf from
connecticut dcf watch...

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com/8x11.pdf

http://www.connecticutdcfwatch.com

Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the US
These numbers come from The National Center on
Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington. (NCCAN)
Recent numbers have increased significantly for CPS

*Perpetrators of Maltreatment*

Physical Abuse CPS 160, Parents 59
Sexual Abuse CPS 112, Parents 13
Neglect CPS 410, Parents 241
Medical Neglect CPS 14 Parents 12
Fatalities CPS 6.4, Parents 1.5

Imagine that, 6.4 children die at the hands of the very agencies that
are supposed to protect them and only 1.5 at the hands of parents per
100,000 children. CPS perpetrates more abuse, neglect, and sexual abuse
and kills more children then parents in the United States. If the
citizens of this country hold CPS to the same standards that they hold
parents too. No judge should ever put another child in the hands of ANY
government agency because CPS nationwide is guilty of more harm and
death than any human being combined. CPS nationwide is guilty of more
human rights violations and deaths of children then the homes from which
they were removed. When are the judges going to wake up and see that
they are sending children to their death and a life of abuse when
children are removed from safe homes based on the mere opinion of a
bunch of social workers.


CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES, HAPPILY DESTROYING THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT
FAMILIES YEARLY NATIONWIDE AND COMING TO YOU'RE HOME SOON...


BE SURE TO FIND OUT WHERE YOUR CANDIDATES STANDS ON THE ISSUE OF
REFORMING OR ABOLISHING CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES ("MAKE YOUR CANDIDATES
TAKE A STAND ON THIS ISSUE.") THEN REMEMBER TO VOTE ACCORDINGLY IF THEY
ARE "FAMILY UNFRIENDLY" IN THE NEXT ELECTION...