IT HAPPENED TO ME: I Worked In Child Protective Services

[SHRED]

My sister has worked for 29 years in CPS. She posted this on her Facebook page. I am so proud of her. She is an unsung hero. Instead of the war machine we need to be funding this vital service.

----

NOTE: This article contains descriptions of child abuse.
 
I recently took a kid to this hole in the wall pizza joint where I used to take dates to impress them with my vast knowledge of the city’s underrated food. It blew his mind. He was so impressed that he took a picture of the menu. Turns out my secret restaurant knowledge works on kids, too.
 
After we had pizza, I did not take him home. Instead we got in the car and I took him to one of our city’s youth shelters. He was in the custody of the state and we could not find a foster home. In the two weeks that I had him in custody, he was in five different homes that I can remember (including two shelters), none for more than a couple of nights and some more than once.
 
As the social worker who had taken him into state custody, I was responsible for him when we couldn't find a foster home ("placement&quot for that night. My job was to pick him up in the morning and to take him to school. On one occasion shelter staff asked me to take him during the day on a weekend. So I took him to eat wings and watch baseball.

MORE: http://m.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/it-happened-to-me-i-worked-in-child-protective-services?

[Gormy Cuss]

1. My best friend from childhood was a CPS worker for years.

We came from a neighborhood with plenty of clients-- so much so that my friend had to work in a different county in order to avoid knowing most of the caseload. The job was very much as described in that account. My friend is still in social work but no longer in CPS.

[Puzzledtraveller]

2. I'm a Family Support caseworker.

Foster children are routinely abused in other ways too. One way is by clients taking them in to increase their household size for SNAP benefits. I have filed claims against clients for this reason and some have lead to prosecution. I had a individual in my caseload once who would call every few months to say she needed to add a new person to her case, at the time my state had waived the verification of household members requirement so we were instructed to just take the clients statement and add the new member. I knew this client had a pattern of this and when a new applicant was assigned to me it was discovered that she was a former foster child and was still counting on that case, she had said she lived with the foster parent briefly but had not for several months. Abuses like this one hurt them in several ways, even long after they left the state system.

[CrispyQ]

3. Such tragic situations.

There is the multigenerational abuse, the abuse so entrenched in families that we cannot have the grandparents care for the children while the parents are in treatment because the grandparents have child abuse charges from when the parents were little. There are grandparents telling parents they need to just get over being molested because it happened to them too and they turned out just fine.

I can't even imagine.

[LWolf]

4. This was really difficult for me to read.

Please thank your sister for her service for me.

I'm a teacher. I fully support fully staffing and funding social services. I see every day what happens when the system works, and when it doesn't.

[SHRED]

6. I sent her this posting I made

I'm sure she has read your kind words. Thank you.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

5. DU Rec.

[Shrike47]

7. I was an attorney for Child Protective Services for many years. The cases just eat at you.

All I could do was hope I was helping the children.

[kcr]

8. I wish more people understood this.

A lot of people have the idea that CPS are children snatching monsters.

"I am a social worker and I was in child protective services. It is not like what you see on "Law and Order." We do not cackle while we grab wailing kids from the arms of screaming parents. We do not ineptly disappear for months on end while our kids rot in some faraway foster home that nobody seems to be able to locate. We do not get rich “snatching babies” and we do not get commission for each kid we take. What we do is navigate an understaffed, underfunded, and completely misunderstood system in order to do the best we can by the most vulnerable kids (and parents) that we have."

[IdaBriggs]

9. Kick. Rec.

Thank you for sharing.

[H2O Man]

10. Recommended.

My first job in human services involved investigating cases of child abuse and neglect. It takes a toll on you. I eventually took another job, in another county's mental health clinic.

Every so often, I encounter one of the now adult, children I worked with. Some lead good lives. I saw others, before retiring, at the clinic in forensic groups, and in the county jail. About a decade ago, one committed a brutal murder; his victim was a random stranger that he subjected to his rage.

After reading the OP/article, I find myself thinking that some good came out of my efforts. But not enough. In large part, that was because "the system" had imperfections. More, it was because our society doesn't value children, in too many contexts. And, of course, because there are too many parents without even a hint of parenting skills.

[Blue_Roses]

15. Exactly...

As a caseworker myself, I often told my supervisor the "system" is fighting against us. So many kids fall through the cracks. It's the dedication and love for children from their caseworker that many kids depend on to get through.

[heaven05]

11. trillions of dollars

wasted on wars, committees to impeach, boondoggle F-35's, now grounded and nothing for lost, hurt and hurting children. This is truly an evil, corrupt system driven by a heartless money grubbing capitalism that the rich swears gives everyone an even chance..... .

[SHRED]

12. Well said

[dickthegrouch]

13. And all while waving the flag and the fucking bible /nt

[SHRED]

14. Well capitalism...

... is next to godliness doncha know.

[herding cats]

16. I see quite often after a child dies in a bad family environment people blaming CPS workers

Or when a child is placed in a foster home and then later comes to harm, it's all the fault of the CPS case workers for not doing their jobs. I know better. I know most of the time there was some frustrated person inside the system trying their best to jump through the required hoops to make sure the children were safe. The reality is they're understaffed, underfunded and overworked. They're not the ones who should be demonized when bad things happen to the children they're trying to help.

Yeah, I agree, in a better society we'd be funding this vital service the way we fund our wars.

[pnwmom]

17. A good article. And it indirectly highlights why the Justina Pelletier case was so crazy.

According to the article, "I’m glad we can’t just do what they show on TV, which is take a kid the second the report alleging abuse or neglect comes in and terminate the parents’ rights three days later. (I wish TV would stop portraying it like this, by the way. It keeps people from calling because they think calling is somehow automatically going to result in the kid being removed and immediately adopted.)"

But this is exactly what happened with Justina -- other than an adoption. A doctor made an allegation 12 hours after Justina entered the E.R. A social worker prepared a report and took it to the judge -- a report that included no input from her real doctors at Tufts -- and three days after Justina entered the hospital her parents were charged with "medical child abuse." She was taken away from them and her doctors at Tufts and put into state custody in a locked psychiatric ward at Boston Children's.

According to the article, only a tiny percentage of cases result in parents losing custody. It makes no sense that Justina's was ever one of them. Her parents lost custody for 16 months because the psychiatrists at BC decided the metabolic specialists were wrong in their diagnosis of mitochondrial disorder. And the parents wouldn't sign a document handing over all control of her care to B.C. What a fiasco.

[moriah]

20. In that case, though, basically the hospital already "had" custody of her.

I think that's why it went down the way they did -- while an adult can sign out AMA, I'm pretty sure it's far harder legally to sign out a kid against medical advice. It was seen as evidence of child abuse by the hospital and by MA's CPS.

If she'd been at home and not had such severe symptoms at the time that she had to be hospitalized, I'm pretty sure it would have went down very differently, more like the case in CT went when a report was made regarding the reluctance about a home feeding tube. She obviously wasn't taken then, and since the case was dropped pretty quickly I'm pretty sure that the Pelletiers cooperated.

[pnwmom]

21. Doesn't matter. The State shouldn't have been able to make such a quick grab for custody.

Justina wasn't at any risk -- except for not getting needed treatment for her mitochondrial disorder. Getting second opinions on the somatic disorder diagnosis, as her parents wanted, wouldn't have hurt her. And it wouldn't have hurt her to have her doctors brought in from Tufts to examine her and to speak with the BC doctors. (Or to let Dr. Flores, her Tufts GI doc who had transferred to BC, get involved in her care.) Alternatively, it wouldn't have hurt her to transfer to the Tufts hospital in an ambulance. Patients make transfers all the time.

Where was the due process? The social worker didn't include in her report the fact that the Tufts doctor had explained the diagnosis to her. And the psychiatrists didn't even examine her medical records at Tufts before they made their own diagnosis.

The CT story demonstrates that the Pelletiers were trying to cooperate. But who can blame parents for being nervous about being told that they needed to insert feeding tubes into their daughters throat?

The irony of ironies is that when they entered B.C., one of the criticisms against them was that they attempted to handle the feeding themselves.

So they were damned no matter what they did.

[moriah]

22. As I've said. I'm just saying possession is 9/10ths of the law, and in this case, the hospital....

.... had it. If she'd been at home when the same complaint was made to CPS, I think it would have been far different. The fact she was already in a hospital gave the family fewer rights, whether it should have or not, at least in the practicality standard -- they didn't have to get a warrant or come into the home to take her, all they had to do was refuse to let her be moved from where she was.

[Sissyk]

18. Yes, your sister is an unsung Hero.

Please give her our thanks.

[Squinch]

19. That has to be the hardest job in the world.

[smirkymonkey]

23. I know this is going to sound terrible, but I really think abusive parents should

be sterilized. What is the point of bringing a child into the world only to make his or her life an absolute living hell?

[CPSdocumentary]

24. CPSdocumentary begs to disagree

What a lovely, system apologist, story. And yes, it's a story. The writers sister, worked with CPS for 29 years and the reasons she quits are ONLY, the reasons, stated by top brass, in every state of the union, which is understaffing, and please give us more money.

We are the makers of a documentary about CPS that exposes the financial 'incentives' to taking children and the loss of Due Process in Family/Dependency court. We will be posting our response to this post on our page tonight. Maybe some of those parents, grandparents, and families will take a moment of their time and disabuse you of your 'they are only there to help' nonsense.

Because the number one threat to democracy is this ability to take children without due Process. People have referenced Justina Pelletier...that's the tip of the iceberg.

[SHRED]

25. My sister hasn't quit

She still works for CPS and she posted the story about someone else.

Please try and keep up.

[no_ethics_at_CAS]

27. Congrats on your CPSdocumentary!

Hello,

In Canada we have very similar CPS abuse problems. Congrats on your well made, calm and factual documentary. We're posting a link on our Resources Page of our website!

Our 'Children's Aid Societies' ('CAS') are 'nonprofit' corporations licensed by the government to provide child services. Here there is no incentive to adopt children, rather, keep them warehoused for 18 yrs for the monthly payments. Each child taken at birth is worth $1,000,000 in funding for 18 years. Then they are 'aged out' and tossed on the street. Overall, under 10% of these 'Crown Ward' children are ever adopted, mostly to give the appearance that adoptions are done at all. They are worth more when kept in custody called 'care'.

Disabled children are often denied treatment by using doctors to under-assess their needs and the reports (denying treatment) are used in court to claim a child is 'adoptable' as is. This amounts to 'failing to provide the necessities of life' a Section 215 Canadian Criminal Code offense! Local Police officials often sit as board members of these CASs and are willfully blind to the reputation of the CAS.

At www.CanadaCourtwatch.org we specialize in finding and posting court decisions where the court criticize the CAS Doctors for botched assessments, but fail to prohibit by order these same CAS 'approved' Doctors from conducting more flawed assessments to be used against unsuspecting parents and other courts! By posting these decisions on FB, Twitter, our website and in our brochure distribution program in Ontario Canada, we help parents avoid being mislead by CASs that 'recommend' these doctors for 'Parenting Capacity Assessments'.

Mike S,
CanadaCourtWatch.org Twitter: @no_ethics_atCAS

[Liberal_in_LA]

26. kick

[CPSdocumentary]

28. More info

Shred -

You might consider working on your sentence structure to make your posts a bit more clear.

That being said, and considering your Noam Chomsky signature, exactly which Due Process 'rights' are you willing to give up?

Parents all over the United States are denied a jury trial in Family Dependency Court.
Parents are not allowed to have exculpatory evidence introduced into their files.
Children are taken without warrants.
Children NOT in imminent danger are taken.
Children are taken for the risk of 'future harm'.
The courts are closed to 'protect the children' but in reality protect the courts from exposure.
Gag orders are routine and parents can go to jail for speaking out about the illegal methods
the courts used to silence them. Justina Pelletier was only freed because her father spoke
out in defiance of those court orders.
Private industry, when settling lawsuits, seal the files so the taxpayers, us, are unable to find
what the corporation did and why we are paying these multimillion dollar settlements to
the few parents who manage to fight the system (read middle-class well to do parents) and
win.
Even if cleared of wrongdoing, there is no way to get off the sex abuser/neglect registries.

Social workers have unlimited immunity from prosecution for malicious, false testimony.
If a social worker is actually fired for the above, he/she is rehired in the next county.
Social workers sit in court, swearing their report is 'the truth' but in reality, it's ghostwritten.
Some states allow social workers to adopt the children they've 'serviced'
Some states allow social workers to 'moonlight' at the service provider they refer too.
Some states allow social workers to receive referral fees from service providers.

We have no doubt that there are good social workers out there, but only the ones who have retired, and therefore are done with the system, are willing to be filmed about what is happening to these children.

And do not pretend that the children are safer - government data shows they are 6 X to 11 X more likely to be raped or assaulted in care. GOVERNMENT DATA. Check out AFCARS if you have a minute, and a strong stomach.

And the private industry has contracts, signed by our public officials, that lessen the reporting these group/foster homes have to do. Child raped...not reported.

So, please, think about that 6X to 12X number and extrapolate the numbers of children raped, assaulted in care and say 'ok, let's give those poor CPS agencies MORE money to hire more workers to bring in more kids without parental Due Process in place to protect the innocent.

CPSdoc
PS - you also might be interested in knowing that the original CAPTA legislation, and yes, I've read it, targets the poor. They get more 'incentives' for taking in children of color. Yeah, that's Democratic.
PSS - It's not just the social workers, the entire Judiciary gets 'incentive' bonuses for keeping children in the system. Heck, most of their retirement pensions are calculated on 'how many children they've helped'.
PSSS - no_ethics_at_CAS - thank you. We are aware of the same problems in CAN, the EU, and worldwide. Unfortunately, we had to focus on the US in order to open the discussion. If like the AU, CAN and the EU would organized, this would come to the forefront much sooner.

[RobinA]

29. If Only I Had Known

as a caseworker for 5 years that I was supposed to be getting incentives for keeping kids in the system. Day-um! I could have made some actual money!

On one, and only one, point we agree. There are due process issues. However, in my state at least, children cannot be taken without a court order.

[CPSdocumentary]

30. still more info

Robin,

In ALL states they are not supposed to be taking children without a court order. However, there are news station videos (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX) in every state in the US all showing that what is on the books isn't what is actually happening. In MI, they used a SWAT teams and the police to take children with rubberstamped court orders. IN CA too. SWAT TEAM = more money for the police involved. And more need to increase budget allocations for next year.

Incentives work in myriad ways, and that's why they are sometimes called 'perverse incentives'. The unintended consequences of these 'incentives' is that more children are being taken not for actual abuse, but RISK of future abuse. And more children are left in care of families that should have their children removed instead of returned as soon as possible for the Title IV-E money.

And while you may be down low enough on the totem pole, and your state may prohibit double-dipping moonlighting or referral fees, many states DO in fact allow them and many supervisors DO get bonuses for 'beating last years numbers'. We have been collecting government data on the issue. And if the GOV is keeping track of the money; it's there.