Would you Weep- DFCS Stealing Children

Would you Weep- DFCS Stealing Children
January 8, 2010 yvonnemason




Georgia

Things That Make Us Weep
Would you weep if your daughter’s children had been seized and swept into foster care by the
Department of Family and Children Services (DFACS) that didn’t bother to
contact you before farming them out to strangers?
Would you weep if your granddaughters were placed with foster parents who already housed 18
foster children and were told they could adopt your grandchildren?
Would you weep if your oldest granddaughter told you that the foster father molested her on two
different occasions?
Would you weep if a juvenile judge reneged on a promise to remove your granddaughters from
that overcrowded foster home, where the foster father molested one of them?
Would you weep if that judge wrote a new order to send the girls to live with their father on the
West Coast, where he worked in “adult entertainment,” whose girl friend
worked as an “escort” and his brother, also in the business, had a sexual charge
brought against him?
Would you weep if the father of your granddaughters were to come knocking on your door to
take them, kicking and screaming, to California to live with him?
Would you weep if you had five years of debilitating experiences with a powerful government
agency that did the above and denied your right to visit your granddaughters?
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The above facts, written here in the form of questions, outline a story related to Senator Nancy
Schaefer of District 50. The grandmother sorrowfully shared her desperation over continuing
circumstances surrounding the custody of her grandchildren. She told how agency personnel
had her daughter sign “a paper” to give up her children, if she ever wanted to see them again.
She signed and has never recovered from having her girls permanently taken away from her.
Senator Schaefer’s Findings. “Throughout this case and through the process of dealing with
multiple other mismanaged cases of the Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS), I
have worked with other desperate parents and children across the state because they have no
rights and no one to turn [to]. I have witnessed ruthless behavior from many caseworkers,
social workers, investigators, lawyers, judges, therapists, and others such as those who ‘pick up’
the children. I have been stunned by what I have seen and heard from victims all over the state
of Georgia.
“In this report, I am focusing on the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services
(DFCS). However, I believe Child Protective Services nationwide has become corrupt and that
the entire system is broken almost beyond repair. I am convinced. Parents and families should
be warned of the dangers.”
At the Mercy of a “Protected Empire”
“Having worked with probably 300 cases statewide,
I am convinced there is no responsibility and no accountability in the system.”
– Senator ancy Schaefer, District 50
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“The Department of Child Protective Services, known as DFCS in Georgia and other titles in
other states, has become a ‘protected empire’ built on taking children and separating families.
This is not to say that there are not those children who do need to be removed from wretched
situations and need protection. This report is concerned with the children and parents caught up
in ‘legal kidnapping,’ ineffective policies, and DFCS who do not remove a child or children
when a child is enduring torment and abuse.
“In one county in my District, I arranged a meeting for thirty-seven families to speak freely and
without fear. These poor parents and grandparents spoke of their painful, heart wrenching
encounters with DFCS. Their suffering was overwhelming. They wept and cried. Some did
not know where their children were and had not seen them in years.
“I had witnessed the ‘Gestapo’ at work and I witnessed the deceitful conditions under which
children were taken in the middle of the night, out of hospitals, off school buses, and out of
homes. In one county a private drug testing business was operating within the DFCS
department that required many, many drug tests from parents and individuals for profit. In
another county children were not removed when they were enduring the worst possible abuse.
“Due to being exposed, several employees in a particular DFCS office were fired. However,
they have now been rehired, either in neighboring counties or in the same county again.
According to the calls I am now receiving, the conditions in that county are returning to the
same practices that they had before the light was shown on their deeds. I have come to this
conclusion. Poor parents often times are targeted to lose their children because they do not have
the where-with-all to hire lawyers and fight the system.
“The Adoption and the Safe Families Act, set in motion by President Bill Clinton, offered cash
‘bonuses’ to the states for every child they adopted out of foster care. In order to receive the
‘adoption incentive bonuses,’ local child protective services need more children. They must
have merchandise (children) that [will] sell and [they must] have plenty of them so the buyer
can choose. Some counties are known to give a $4,000 bonus for each child adopted and an
additional $2,000 for a ‘special needs’ child. Employees work to keep federal dollars flowing.
“Children, of whom I am aware, have been raped and impregnated in foster care and the head of
a Foster Parents Association in my District was recently arrested because of child molestation.
Some parents are even told if they want to see their children or grandchildren, they must divorce
their spouse. Many, who are under privileged, feeling they have no option, will divorce.
“There’s double dipping. The funding continues as long as the child is out of the home. When
a child in foster care is placed with a new family, ‘adoption bonus funds’ are available. When a
child is placed in a mental health facility and is on 16 drugs per day, like two children of a
constituent of mine, more funds are involved. There are no financial resources and no real drive
[for DFCS] to unite a family and help keep them together.”

S.B. 415 Limits DHR Power Over Children
When Senator Nancy Schaefer heard, repeatedly, that state agencies were taking far too many
children into custody and putting them in foster care, she began probing the system to get the
facts. Soon she was face to face with the real possibility of corruption in the Department of
Family and Children Services (DFACS), a division of the Department of Human Resources.
Senator Schaefer’s District 50 stretches into eight of Georgia’s northeast counties. Many of her
constituents have experienced instances in which children were, arbitrarily, seized by the state
and placed in foster care or given in adoption, without sufficient evidence of abuse or neglect
and without consent from parents who are intimidated into cooperating. Parents want their
children back, but have no idea where they are or whether they’ll see them again.
S.B. 415 was introduced by Senator Schaefer on February 6th to rectify unethical, if not illegal,
treatment by DFACS. The first thing the bill does is reduce from seven days to three days the
time children may be held without a court order. Currently, DHR has power to order unlimited
medical treatment for children without parental consent. If S.B. 415 passes, “no medication
shall be administered to the child over the objection of the custodial parent or legal custodian.”1
Current law gives blanket immunity from liability to DHR, its employees, agents, and assigns
that consent to medical treatment for children under their care and supervision. But, that will be
gone, if the following statement remains in the bill. “This immunity shall not extend to seizures
of children that are found to be in violation of this article nor to the administration of
medication to a child over the objection of the custodial parent or legal custodian.”
S.B. 415 includes another important change that requires DHR to place children with a relative,
unless there is no relative willing and able to accept the responsibility. DFACS would have to
prove reasonable efforts were made to contact each and every one of a child’s relatives via a
registered letter, phone calls and e-mails, before placing the child in DHR custody.
Current law allows closed hearings in deprived child cases, but S.B. 415 requires open hearings
in such cases unless the parents or guardians object. Section 5 prohibits DHR from badgering
parents by, repeatedly, filing the same charges, in efforts to terminate their rights.
Sections 6 and 7 give parents facing termination of parental rights the right to full disclosure of
the charges against them. Within 48 hours prior to the termination hearing, parents must have
access to the names, addresses, telephone numbers and statements (written or oral) of witnesses.
They must be allowed to inspect, copy or photograph all physical evidence to be introduced, as
well as photographs, police incident reports and other reports forming the basis of the charges.
Section 8 prohibits the practice of paying bonuses to agents that seize children by stating that no
entity of the State of Georgia shall apply for, obtain, receive, or accept any adoption incentive
payments under the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997.
ACTION – Support. Contact Senate Judiciary Committee Senators Smith, Ch., 404 656-0034; Harp, 463-3931; Hamrick,
656-0036; Adelman, 463-1376; Brown, 656-5035; Carter, 651-7738; Cowsert, 463-1366; Fort, 656-5091; Hill, 656-0150;
Meyer von Bremen, 656-0037; Reed, 463-1379, Ex-Officio; Seabaugh, 656-6446 Ex-Officio; Wiles, 657-0406.
1Georgia Insight’s Proposed Amendment to Tighten S.B. 415
Specifically require DHR to obtain parental consent before medicating children. The current wording, actually,
allows DHR to drug children unless the parent proactively says they can’t. Parents need DHR to inform them
of pending medication, so parents would know they could and, probably, should opt their children out.

When elected officials in our representative republic think expanding government by creating an
appointed agency is a good thing, there’s something wrong.
House passed H.B. 881, Moving Charter Schools Further from Voters
It’s anti-parent, anti-voter and anti-local control.
It gives the federal government total control over schools, curriculum and students.
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This subject is one of the most misunderstood things I’ve ever tried to explain. But, despite its
passage in the House by a vote of 119 – 48, here goes. (a) Charter schools are unconstitutional
in Georgia, because our constitution puts schools under the management and control of locally
elected school board members, who must reside within the territory embraced by the school.
(b) Charters are with the State Board of Education that’s appointed by the governor – one from
each of Georgia’s 13 congressional districts. (c) Therefore, the appointed State Board of
Education is not authorized by the state constitution to manage and control local schools.
Likewise, members of locally elected school boards are not authorized to give the State Board
of Education power to manage and control schools in the local board’s district.
(d) Charter schools are not projects of states, but were created by a federal initiative in order to
gain federal control over education. The control is a slick accomplishment via legal slight-ofhand.
This is how it’s done. Charter schools may waive local and state laws, policies, rules and
regulations, but they are not authorized to waive federal laws, policies, rules and regulations.
Background. The federal charter schools project surfaced in 1991 when the first President
Bush created the New American Schools Development Corporation to put a “radical, break-themold”
charter school in each congressional district throughout the country. About 1,000 charter
schools existed when President Clinton gave his 1997 State of the Union speech and said, “Our
plan will help America to create 3,000 of these charter schools by the next century.” With
funding of $500 million over five years granted in his Charter School Expansion Act of 1998,
schools took the bait, despite the loss of local rights or states’ rights or damages to education.
(e) In 1993 Georgia’s first charter school bill passed, allowing individual schools to apply to
local school boards for charter status. That continued until last session when S.B. 39 authorized
entire school systems to be chartered in unison. But, this year’s H.B. 881 “takes the cake!”
H.B. 881 passed the House January 31st, causing previous bills to pale in comparison. No
matter how hard I try, I cannot understand why our legislators voted for H.B. 881, knowing
they’re under oath to uphold the State constitution. Although they were elected, they are
willing to create a non-elected appointed commission to govern an unconstitutional form of
education in Georgia. It’s bad that parents are misled into believing charter schools will mean
more parental input and better education, when that’s only a sound byte to charter more schools.
http://protectingourchildrenfrombeingsold.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/would-you-weep-dfcs-stealing-children/