Home
News
In 2002 I became a CASA volunteer (Court Appointed Special Advocate) working with kids. The CASA program is based on the principle, "To work in the best interest of the child." In my first year I began to hear unfavorable things about Child Protective Services (CPS). I put in four years as a CASA volunteer and the complaints about CPS never stopped. I retired from my volunteer work with CASA last year and now several families have asked me to help them with their CPS problems. In many cases the kids are in separate foster homes in other counties. Why must brothers and sisters be separated? Being separated from a brother or sister can change a child's life forever.
One or two or six complaints about CPS are one thing, but 15 to 20 complaints is an indication that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. Children must not be used as weapons to punish the parents, and children must not be used as leverage to coerce the parents. Kids come first, before bureaucracies, before rules and regulations, before personalities and before private agendas. Children need a loving home and without it they can be scarred for life.
I found help online at: FightCPS.com, Kidjacked.com, www.nccpr.org (the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform), www.aecf.org (Annie E. Casey Foundation), and FamilyRightsAssociation.com. According to the Internet, children are sexually molested and die in foster care on a regular basis. You can see a recent example in Seattle at King5.com. Type the words, "multi-million-dollar lawsuit" in the "Search" box. The Internet critics of CPS claim the dollar-driven adoption industry has a major influence in CPS cases. Thousands of dollars are involved in the taking of children and foster care placement. We have started a group here in Tahoe to help parents navigate the CPS gauntlet; it is called Tahoe Victims of CPS. See us at TahoeVictims.tripod.com and e-mail us at TahoeVictims@hotmail.com. We need volunteers willing to contact elected officials, print fliers, distribute leaflets, and participate in informational pickets and to work on a "Parents' and Children's Bill of Rights." We also need a child psychologist willing to help us in court.
Unfortunately, young mothers who cannot afford the expense of a good attorney are the ones who fall victim to CPS. We are looking for attorneys willing do pro bono work to help with these moms. There are "seven determining state requirements for intervention by CPS." For example, CPS cannot intervene if there is already an open referral from another person or agency. CPS cannot intervene if the allegation does not meet the legal definition of child abuse, which is "serious harm." CPS cannot intervene after the police go to the home and it has been cleared. We need attorneys to help us with our legal points of contention.
We are asking for CPS reform and we have found it at the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR). They offer many options, and I have listed some below. None of the alternatives described below will work in every case or should be tried in every case. These alternatives can keep many children now needlessly taken from their parents safely in their own homes. All of the things that go wrong in the worst child welfare systems also go wrong in the best, but they go wrong less often.
1. Doing nothing. There are, in fact, cases in which the investigated family is entirely innocent and perfectly capable of taking good care of their children without any "help" from Child Protective Services. In such cases, the best thing the child protective services worker can do is apologize, shut the door, and go away.
2. Basic help. Sometimes it may take something as simple as emergency cash for a security deposit, a rent subsidy, or a place in a day care center (to avoid a "lack of supervision" charge) to keep a family together.
3. Intensive family preservation services. The first such program, Homebuilders, in Washington State, was established in the mid-1970s. The largest replication is in Michigan, where the program is called Families First. The very term "family preservation" was invented specifically to apply to this type of program, which has a better track record for safety than foster care.
4. The Alabama "System of Care." This is one of the most successful child support reforms in the country. The reforms are the result of a consent decree growing out of a lawsuit brought by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. The consent decree requires the state to rebuild its entire system from the bottom up, with an emphasis on keeping families together. The rate at which children are taken from their homes is among the lowest in the country.
5. Family to Family. This is a multi-faceted program developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. One element of the program, Team Decision Making is described at the Casey Web site, www.aecf.org/. A comprehensive outside evaluation of the program found that it led to fewer placements, shorter placements, and less bouncing of children from foster home to foster home.
6. Community/Neighborhood Partnerships for Child Protection. These partnerships, overseen by the Center for the Study of Social Policy in Washington, are similar to the Family to Family Projects. They mobilize formal and informal networks of helpers to prevent maltreatment and avoid needless foster care placement.
7. Changing financial incentives. While not a program per se, making this change spurs private child welfare agencies to come up with all sorts of innovations. This is clear from the experience in Illinois. Until the late 1990s, Illinois reimbursed private child welfare agencies the way other states typically do: They were paid for each day they kept a child in foster care. Thus, agencies were rewarded for letting children languish in foster care and punished for achieving permanence.
Now those incentives have been reversed, in part because of pressure from the Illinois Branch of the ACLU, which won a lawsuit against the child welfare system. Today, private agencies in Illinois are rewarded both for adoptions and for returning children safely to their own homes. They are penalized for prolonged stays in foster care. Today, Illinois takes away children at one of the lowest rates in the country.
My background in the Teamster Union and the Operation Engineers Local 3 has taught me about how much power the people have. It boils down to the size of the picket lines. If need be, we will go to the streets. The longer CPS continues on its present course and the more word spreads about CPS abuses, the more people will be willing to picket.
- Ernie Claudio moved to Lake Tahoe from San Jose with his wife six years ago. He is a retired city of San Jose employee and an amateur photographer. He can be reached at (530) 541-2245.
One or two or six complaints about CPS are one thing, but 15 to 20 complaints is an indication that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. Children must not be used as weapons to punish the parents, and children must not be used as leverage to coerce the parents. Kids come first, before bureaucracies, before rules and regulations, before personalities and before private agendas. Children need a loving home and without it they can be scarred for life.
I found help online at: FightCPS.com, Kidjacked.com, www.nccpr.org (the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform), www.aecf.org (Annie E. Casey Foundation), and FamilyRightsAssociation.com. According to the Internet, children are sexually molested and die in foster care on a regular basis. You can see a recent example in Seattle at King5.com. Type the words, "multi-million-dollar lawsuit" in the "Search" box. The Internet critics of CPS claim the dollar-driven adoption industry has a major influence in CPS cases. Thousands of dollars are involved in the taking of children and foster care placement. We have started a group here in Tahoe to help parents navigate the CPS gauntlet; it is called Tahoe Victims of CPS. See us at TahoeVictims.tripod.com and e-mail us at TahoeVictims@hotmail.com. We need volunteers willing to contact elected officials, print fliers, distribute leaflets, and participate in informational pickets and to work on a "Parents' and Children's Bill of Rights." We also need a child psychologist willing to help us in court.
Unfortunately, young mothers who cannot afford the expense of a good attorney are the ones who fall victim to CPS. We are looking for attorneys willing do pro bono work to help with these moms. There are "seven determining state requirements for intervention by CPS." For example, CPS cannot intervene if there is already an open referral from another person or agency. CPS cannot intervene if the allegation does not meet the legal definition of child abuse, which is "serious harm." CPS cannot intervene after the police go to the home and it has been cleared. We need attorneys to help us with our legal points of contention.
We are asking for CPS reform and we have found it at the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR). They offer many options, and I have listed some below. None of the alternatives described below will work in every case or should be tried in every case. These alternatives can keep many children now needlessly taken from their parents safely in their own homes. All of the things that go wrong in the worst child welfare systems also go wrong in the best, but they go wrong less often.
1. Doing nothing. There are, in fact, cases in which the investigated family is entirely innocent and perfectly capable of taking good care of their children without any "help" from Child Protective Services. In such cases, the best thing the child protective services worker can do is apologize, shut the door, and go away.
2. Basic help. Sometimes it may take something as simple as emergency cash for a security deposit, a rent subsidy, or a place in a day care center (to avoid a "lack of supervision" charge) to keep a family together.
3. Intensive family preservation services. The first such program, Homebuilders, in Washington State, was established in the mid-1970s. The largest replication is in Michigan, where the program is called Families First. The very term "family preservation" was invented specifically to apply to this type of program, which has a better track record for safety than foster care.
4. The Alabama "System of Care." This is one of the most successful child support reforms in the country. The reforms are the result of a consent decree growing out of a lawsuit brought by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. The consent decree requires the state to rebuild its entire system from the bottom up, with an emphasis on keeping families together. The rate at which children are taken from their homes is among the lowest in the country.
5. Family to Family. This is a multi-faceted program developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. One element of the program, Team Decision Making is described at the Casey Web site, www.aecf.org/. A comprehensive outside evaluation of the program found that it led to fewer placements, shorter placements, and less bouncing of children from foster home to foster home.
6. Community/Neighborhood Partnerships for Child Protection. These partnerships, overseen by the Center for the Study of Social Policy in Washington, are similar to the Family to Family Projects. They mobilize formal and informal networks of helpers to prevent maltreatment and avoid needless foster care placement.
7. Changing financial incentives. While not a program per se, making this change spurs private child welfare agencies to come up with all sorts of innovations. This is clear from the experience in Illinois. Until the late 1990s, Illinois reimbursed private child welfare agencies the way other states typically do: They were paid for each day they kept a child in foster care. Thus, agencies were rewarded for letting children languish in foster care and punished for achieving permanence.
Now those incentives have been reversed, in part because of pressure from the Illinois Branch of the ACLU, which won a lawsuit against the child welfare system. Today, private agencies in Illinois are rewarded both for adoptions and for returning children safely to their own homes. They are penalized for prolonged stays in foster care. Today, Illinois takes away children at one of the lowest rates in the country.
My background in the Teamster Union and the Operation Engineers Local 3 has taught me about how much power the people have. It boils down to the size of the picket lines. If need be, we will go to the streets. The longer CPS continues on its present course and the more word spreads about CPS abuses, the more people will be willing to picket.
- Ernie Claudio moved to Lake Tahoe from San Jose with his wife six years ago. He is a retired city of San Jose employee and an amateur photographer. He can be reached at (530) 541-2245.
