American Chronicle | Grandparent is set to change the laws governing the legal rights for grandparents within adoption
January 30,2011 Christina England
In the USA today grandparents have no legal rights to have any contact with a child once parental rights have been terminated. In fact, the law specifically states that if the parental rights are removed, the rights of the grandparents are removed along with them. This leaves many children raised by their grandparents from infancy, with no legal grandparents or any other relative with any rights to bring them up. One brave and determined grandparent from South Carolina, John Schafer, has decided that this is one law that must be changed. Outraged by the way loving grandparents are treated, he has single-handedly taken on the South Carolina State Representatives and Senators. Taking remarkable steps, he has began to make changes that could effectively change the way we view adoption forever.
Mr Schafer's grandchildren were removed from him and his wife and put into care when the children's parents parental rights to care for them were removed. Mr Schafer and his wife were deemed too old and too sick to care for them adequately. The children had been happy and settled with their grandparents who are in their mid sixties. There had been problems in the past with the placement but Mr Schafer felt that these had been dealt with adequately. The CPS decided however, that it was in was in the children's best interest to be adopted. The children aged 10 and 8 were to have no further contact with any member of their birth family.
In South Carolina a massive $722 million a year is spent on child protection. On the document South Carolina Spending Transparency in the section 'Case Services', this figure is shown very clearly. As this figure is for one State in the USA it is frightening to comprehend the amounts of money being spent on child protection throughout the country as a whole. There is no doubt that child abuse exists. However, we have to ask ourselves when children could be cared for by loving family members, is the child care system the right place for them to grow up? Mr Schafer is adamant that every effort should be made to keep families together. He says:
"Grandparents are a soft place to fall when there are problems at home, they have a special kind of love and compassion that no other family member can possibly own, and to deprive a child of that should be criminal. I think it is a very sad commentary of our society when it is necessary to seek legislation to affirm that fact."
Mr Schafer says that the state can simply snatch children from often the only home they have ever known, and put them in a broken and overloaded foster care system, then up for adoption. In many cases, these children end up spending their early lives under the thumb of the DSS until they are 18, then they are told to just go and be an adult. He feels that this a deplorable situation that must be changed.
I spoke to one adopted child who had the most incredible bond with his grandfather before he was adopted. The severing of this bond has since caused him much pain and distress. I asked him to explain to me hows he feels. He told me that he would have liked to have had the opportunity to have been adopted by his grandfather because he feels that they had a lot in common. He made it quite clear to me that age is not important when there is a loving bond. He now feels that older children should have more rights to speak out and make choices in adoption. Fortunately now that he is an adult he has full contact with his grandfather and they are making up for all the years that they lost together.
Mr Schafer feels that these type of situations should not be allowed to continue. He feels so strongly about these important issues that he has set up the website Grandparents Rights Association of South Carolina He has issued a letter to ALL senators, representatives and candidates for Governor and Lt. Governor in the state of South Carolina. This letter addresses the issues surrounding the rights of the grandparent when their grandchild enters the child care system. In his letter he has pointed out that:
"Every voter in South Carolina either is, had, or has grandparents. In thousands of families throughout the state, those grandparents are deeply involved, and in many cases, have had to totally take over, the raising of grandchildren."
He continues to point out the fact that research shows that there are NO laws specifically protecting the rights of grandparents. This means that there are in fact no laws to protect a massive section of our society. In fact it seems that everybody has rights except the grandparents.
Mr Schafer has spoken out on the behalf of the members of his site and has continued his letter making the following points:
"We are not in favour of usurping the authority of good parents, rather, give the children the right to stay with their own loving family in cases where the parents either can´t or won´t take the responsibility themselves. With all this in mind, we want to know how you stand.
1.Do you support legislation which would protect grandparents and their grandchildren from being separated when parental rights of the children´s parents are being terminated, and allowing the grandparents the right to adopt said children? This would be conditional on the grandparents being deemed appropriate caregivers.
2. Would you consider introducing such legislation?
3.Do you consider grandparents appropriate caregivers for children whose parents either can´t or won´t take responsibility for them?
4.Do you consider age and/or minor disability a disqualifying factor when considering grandparents as caregivers or adoptive parents?"
The letter went out to the legislators prior to the election which was November 2010. At that time he had received responses from one of 46 State Senators, and 11 of 124 current members of the State House of Representatives. To read their responses please see his website GRASC. He tells me that much of the response he has had has been very positive.
The great news is that Schafer has now had a total of 17 Representatives respond to the letter, several of whom did not originally respond. They have signed on as co-sponsors of the new bill, and a second Senator has also given Mr Schafer and his team a positive response. Amazingly he has not received one single negative response.
Mr Schafer has given the full laws governing grandparents rights from every state in the USA. These can be found in full on the page entitled General State By State Description.
I have spoken to several parents whose children are in the care system. One parent whose children were removed after false allegations of child abuse spoke out very strongly and said:
"I agree!! My parents have been trying to get my children and the state keeps resisting them. They had to hire an attorney to file a motion to intervene to try to get custody of my daughter. It has been 3 months and they are still awaiting an answer. My father also hasn't been allowed to see my older two children because their father simply doesn't like him, so its been a year and a half since he's seen them. And, it's true that if my children are adopted, they will not get to see them anymore. They were not given a final visit with ******** either. I'm organizing a family rights protest for August that will include grandparents' rights."
Mr Schafer said that he was also working on a rally:
"I am helping a friend organize a synchronized Nationwide protest (rally). She is doing most of the work, but I am maintaining and updating the website. We have a majority of the states being organized. It is being organized well in advance due to the logistics involved in coordinating protests to all happen at the same time in front of courthouses in all 50 states, and in several counties in each state.
The rally will be on the 12th August 2011. To read what is happening go to: Government Abuse is Child Abuse"
So far the progress that Mr Schafer has made has been outstanding. He is currently working on getting a bill passed to amend the code of laws of South Carolina, 1976, by adding section 63-15-35. This will determine the best interests of the child in cases where a grandparent/s could offer a loving and stable home. To find out what is happening with this and full updates, his page is the tracking for the bill, simply return from time to time and you will see updates on its progress through the legislature Tracking of the bill If Schafer succeeds then we could start to see changes throughout the USA and perhaps the world.
He said:
"The new legislation going through the system at this time, will be the first to even mention grandparents in custody/foster/adoption cases in this state. The game plan is to take it a step at a time. This first amendment will establish the direction. It will be the mandate for priority consideration. The next step will be to establish the child's right to keep his natural grandparents, even if adopted. The "system" needs to do a better job of looking at the situation from the child's point of view."
Now that the election is over Mr Schafer's website has been updated and many of the original responses have been deleted. This is because the movement is moving on to the bill passage. This means that much of original data is now irrelevant. He has assured me these will be reposted in the future on an archive page. However, with the speed that this is now moving this has had to be shelved until a later date.
It often takes the little people of this world to make the biggest changes. I would like to thank Mr Schafer for allowing me to write this article.
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