Part III:
Sunday, November 29, 2009
By Robert Franklin, Esq.
Many times before, I've expressed my trepidations about how various issues regarding children have served to enormously expand state power into private lives. Perhaps no single thing serves this purpose better than the phrase "the best interests of the child." Beneath that banner have marched countless courts, judges, social workers, psychologists, police and child welfare agencies. Inappropriate expansion of state power over family life was the primary concern of Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud and Albert Solnit, in their 1979 book, "Before the Best Interests of the Child." There they clearly expressed their skepticism about the ability of governments to provide better care than do parents.
But when it comes to expansion of power, governments don't often listen to the voice of reason or moderation. The simple fact is that, given an opportunity, or indeed just an excuse, governments tend to add to their power if they can. That's been proven to be true in family life over the past 40 years or so. Once relatively sacrosanct, the family is now fair game.
As I've written countless times, families find themselves fighting costly tooth-and-nail battles to keep custody of their children over the most trivial and absurd issues. One case in point was the family I wrote about not long ago who committed the unforgiveable sin of photographing their five-year-old girls in the bathtub. Quicker than you can say "It takes a village," the kids were in foster care where they stayed for two months. It cost the parents some $70,000 to wrest control back from the state.
If the "best interests of the child" is the excuse for this vast expansion of state power, the mechanism is money. For every child placed in foster care, and for every day it remains there, a foster parent is paid by the state. Rates vary of course, but, just as one example, the "base" rate paid in Maine for a child with no disabilities, was $500/month in 2008. Some of that is paid by the state and some by the federal government. Whatever you think about the daily, per-child stipends, it's a certainty that there wouldn't be many foster parents without them.
To expand its power, the state needs to make it worth people's while, and payments for foster care do just that. Just to make the purpose of all this clear, civil rights attorney Catherine Campbell pointed out in 2000 that the great majority of children taken by the state and placed in the foster care system were poor. Given that,
If the parents of these children were provided with the same monthly income received by a foster parent, most of their problems would vanish.
Whatever the literal truth of that statement, she makes a good point - as long as the state is spending money on these children, why not give it to the parents instead of to strangers?
Often, children placed in foster care are those of single mothers. That means the state has to make some cursory show of due process of law before separating a the child from its mother. But fathers without custody of their children don't even get that, minimal though it is. An Urban Institute study showed child welfare workers trouble themselves to even contact barely half of the fathers of children they intend to place in care. That's true even though they know the identity of the dad in almost 90% of cases.
Money feeds the beast of state power and "the best interests of the child" is the battle hymn of the republic.
Help for Michigan Dads
Michigan family law attorney Mindy L. Hitchcock has experience fighting for noncustodial parents against Michigan's abusive FOC. Her holistic approach to divorce gets results for her clients while avoiding the scorched earth approach to law that leaves families emotionally and financially devastated. Lady4Justice.com
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http://mensnewsdaily.com/glennsacks/2009/11/29/part-iii-what-if-poor-parents-got-the-money-we-now-give-to-foster-parents/
Isabella Brooke Knightly and Austin Gamez-Knightly
In Memory of my Loving Husband, William F. Knightly Jr. Murdered by ILLEGAL Palliative Care at a Nashua, NH Hospital
Monday, November 30, 2009
CPS Does Not Always Follow The Law (How About Never)
Sunday, November 29, 2009 Swnator Pam Roach Blogspot
In My Opinion...CPS Does Not Always Follow The Law
Reader Ron writes:
"In my dealings with CPS I've only seen them responsive to two things. Court decisions and the law. They are hyper- sensitive to law suits. If laws are passed to hold them accountable they will obey." {sic}
Ron...for Pete's sake! They are successfully sued because they DO NOT always follow the law. And, for Pete's sake, Ron, they repeat their errors! The courts may, once in a while, hold then accountable but they are hardly repentant. They do sin again!
(You see only your family's case. You saw an unresponsive department that was not breaking the law. It was frustrating for you. But, there are many out there who are wronged by the department. For them a child is killed in foster care or by an evil parent. Or, their child is stolen for "gifting" to a more "desirable" adopt situation. These are not "fix it" situations. Consider yourself lucky. But open your eyes to the abuses of the system.)
Posted by State Senator Pam Roach at 10:00
http://pamroachreport.blogspot.com/2009/11/in-my-opinioncps-does-not-always-follow.html
In My Opinion...CPS Does Not Always Follow The Law
Reader Ron writes:
"In my dealings with CPS I've only seen them responsive to two things. Court decisions and the law. They are hyper- sensitive to law suits. If laws are passed to hold them accountable they will obey." {sic}
Ron...for Pete's sake! They are successfully sued because they DO NOT always follow the law. And, for Pete's sake, Ron, they repeat their errors! The courts may, once in a while, hold then accountable but they are hardly repentant. They do sin again!
(You see only your family's case. You saw an unresponsive department that was not breaking the law. It was frustrating for you. But, there are many out there who are wronged by the department. For them a child is killed in foster care or by an evil parent. Or, their child is stolen for "gifting" to a more "desirable" adopt situation. These are not "fix it" situations. Consider yourself lucky. But open your eyes to the abuses of the system.)
Posted by State Senator Pam Roach at 10:00
http://pamroachreport.blogspot.com/2009/11/in-my-opinioncps-does-not-always-follow.html
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Petition for DCYF/CPS Reform
Please go to the link and sign
http://www.rallycongress.com/fight-cps/1448
CPS reform
Sign the Petition : 2,883 Letters and Emails Sent So Far
Nationwide, there are State run agencies who are supposed to be protecting abused children in dangerous situations. Each State has many different titles for them. All of them are main stapled as CPS (Child Protective Services). For example, in Texas they're known as DFPS. (Department of Family and Protective Services)
While there is an important need to find abused children and to protect them, the current system is only finding a small percentage of those truly abused children. The rest of their statistics that guarantee a high departmental income are from families who never abused their children. Where they get this income and the sources of information will be posted after the next paragraph.
I am not calling for an abolishment of CPS. What I am petitioning for is an overhaul and restructure to bring them in line with lawful investigation practices, to maintain Constitutional Rights and proper training for Agents who never had children, and psychological evaluations to find and replace the Agents who were themselves abused as Children and see abuse in every home regardless of the situation. This is not, I repeat, not a rare occurrence. I will supply statistics to support this and how this has escalated. I will also supply the sources.
Departmental income has become more important to CPS and their offices than actually finding abused children and protecting them. Each and every time they remove a child from the home, they get paid from the Federal Government. Here they are:
1. Public Law 93-247 known as the Mondale Act of 1974.
2. Public Law 96-272 known as the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980
3. Social Security Title IV-E funds.
The ASFA- Public Law 105-89 known as American Safe Families Act of 1997 is one of the most horrific laws on the books today. While it sounds nice in the title, when you get through the legal jargon, what this means is so wrong. If you ever had a child removed from your house by CPS, even UNFOUNDED and you are innocent, they will take that child in minutes after the child is born! Babies are highly adoptable and the Federal Government pays out $6,000 to the CPS office who conducts the legal kidnapping and gets them adopted quickly without regards to the biological Mother and her family. Since she was investigated once, they do this in the "best interests of the child" as she is a "potential" abuser.
The largest targeted type of families are folks with low incomes, children on SSI and are minorities. If you even have one of those three issues, you are a target for CPS to illegally investigate you. While these things are a surefire magnet, they have been known to do illegal investigations against families if they were reported falsely with malicious intent. Example is an ex-wife wants to get even with her ex-husband and his new family, she could report them and put them through Hell.
Why are the reasons CPS Agents actually find so little true abuse?
1. Agents who never had children and don't understand that a few toys in the corner of the room is not a hazardous mess.
2. Agents are not trained in real evidence recognition. In fact, no Agent in CPS has any training in evidence, the Constitution or criminal justice. They are given anywhere from 3 to 6 months of training, being taught that it is ok to break into a Home without probable cause or exigent circumstances.
3. Agents are trained to use subjective speculation and not objective factual reporting.
4. The Agents do not get psychological evaluations. A number of Agents who were abused as a child themselves see abuse in every home they go into, even if it's not there.
5. Most States do not require Agents to have a degree in Social Sciences. Any degree will do, doesn't even have to be related to the field.
6. The Agency has no checks and balances. A field Agent can lie to a judge or police officer with absolutely no proof and have it entered as factual evidence in a court of law!
7. Agents are trained to believe they are immune from the authority of the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, Sixth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. They violate this in every investigation done nationwide.
Here are the statistics and sources to support these facts:
Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the United States. These numbers come from The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) in Washington.
CPS- Physical Abuse (160) Sexual Abuse (112) Neglect (410) Medical Neglect (14) Fatalities (6.4)
Parents- Physical Abuse (59) Sexual Abuse (13) Neglect (241) Medical Neglect (12) Fatalities (1.5)
As you can see, children are abused far more in care than at home. The calculated average is for every 1 abused child removed from an abusive home, there are 17 unabused children removed from loving non-offending homes nationwide.
Constitutional Violations and Court Rulings that CPS Ignores to this very day!
1. It's unconstitutional for CPS to conduct an investigation and interview a child on private property without exigent circumstances or probable cause. - Doe et al, v. Heck et al (No. 01-3648, 2003 US App. Lexis 7144)
2. All CPS workers in the United States are subject to the 4th and 14th Amendment - Walsh v. Erie County Dept. of Job and Family Services, 3:01-cv-7588
3. Police officers and social workers are not immune for coercing or forcing entry into a person's home without a search warrant. Calabretta v. Floyd (9th Cir. 1999)
4. The mere possibility of danger does not constitute an emergency or exigent circumstance that would justify a forced warrantless entry and a warrantless seizure of a child. Hurlman v. Rice (2nd Cir. 1991)
5. Police officer and social worker may not conduct a warrantless search or seizure in a suspected child abuse case absent exigent circumstances. Defendants must have reason to believe that life or limb is in immediate jeopardy and that the intrusion is reasonable necessary to alleviate the threat. Searches and seizures in investigation of a child neglect or child abuse case at a home are governed by the same principles as other searches and seizures at a home. Goodv. Dauphin County Social Services (3rd Cir. 1989)
6. The Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures extends beyond criminal investigations and includes conduct by social workers in the context of a child neglect/abuse investigation. Lenz v. Winburn (11th Cir. 1995)
7. Making false statements made to obtain a warrant, when the false statements were necessary to the finding of probable cause on which the warrant was based, violates the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. Aponte Matos v. Toledo Davilla (1st Cir. 1998)
What can be done to change this for a better, more healthy Child Protection System?
I. Child Abuse is a Crime, not a touchy feely civil complaint and should be investigated as a crime.
II. Have the abuse allegations investigated by a Detective or Police Officer, who are trained for this as a career, whereas CPS workers are not. All investigations are joint ones with said Officers of the Law and with warrants properly issues under probable cause.
III. Re-train Agents to respect and obey the laws of the Constitution of the United States. If a family is guilty of abuse, a legal investigation will find it.
IV. Repeal the Mondale Act, Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act, Title IV-E rewards to CPS from Social Security and the American Safe Families Act. Remember, they are not what the title sounds like and has been the root core of many loving homes losing their children to a system that will abuse them.
V. Make CPS legally investigate those who sign up to be foster parents. They do not do this today, and many foster parent who want the money for fostering them are actually child abusers who never get caught!
VI. All interviews to be audio and video recorded just like it happens with the police!
VII. Hold CPS Agents and foster parents and the records keeper responsible for every child who vanishes or dies in their care for their location.
VIII. Also investigate the person or persons reporting the abuse, and if done maliciously with intent to disrupt a family, prosecute the reporter to the fullest extent of the Law regarding making false claims to Government Agencies to affect an unnecessary and costly investigation.
IX. Abuse is a Crime, guarantee the accused retain their right to face their accusers in a court of law. As the system currently is, this is not done.
X. The Children are to be tracked on a weekly basis, so no more children vanish in the system.
XI. If a disabled, mentally retarded or sick Child is put into Foster Care, the Child's current Physician will need to provide a copy of the diagnosis and treatment, and medications, if any, will be provided as prescribed by the Physician. All appointments must be kept while in Foster Care. Any violations without a very good reason will result in the Foster Parents losing their certification for Foster Care.
XII. If a Foster Child dies while in Foster Care, there will be an Investigation by the FBI and all parties responsible for the Death of a Child will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
XIII. There will be a National Database where all known abusers are recorded and can be accessed by Law Enforcement. Everyone who is found not guilty won't have their Convictions and Abuse Reports listed. It will be illegal to keep records of any sort on innocent individuals or families. If they are convicted in a court of law by a jury of their peers, then the report of abuse they are guilty of will be the only report listed.
Currently, none of this is done, and innocent families who are not guilty of anything are losing their Children based on the word of others where there is no burden of proof for Prosecution, for the sake of getting Federal Funds for tens of thousands of dollars. The few truly abused children are ending up in a system where they are worse off than where they came from, even to the extent of being killed. Also, the innocent children who are never abused are also killed.
Injustice against one American is injustice against all Americans. Help us put the Justice back into Child Protective Services and get them focused on finding and saving abused children. It's time we removed them from the profitable business of tearing loving non-offending families apart.
http://www.rallycongress.com/fight-cps/1448
CPS reform
Sign the Petition : 2,883 Letters and Emails Sent So Far
Nationwide, there are State run agencies who are supposed to be protecting abused children in dangerous situations. Each State has many different titles for them. All of them are main stapled as CPS (Child Protective Services). For example, in Texas they're known as DFPS. (Department of Family and Protective Services)
While there is an important need to find abused children and to protect them, the current system is only finding a small percentage of those truly abused children. The rest of their statistics that guarantee a high departmental income are from families who never abused their children. Where they get this income and the sources of information will be posted after the next paragraph.
I am not calling for an abolishment of CPS. What I am petitioning for is an overhaul and restructure to bring them in line with lawful investigation practices, to maintain Constitutional Rights and proper training for Agents who never had children, and psychological evaluations to find and replace the Agents who were themselves abused as Children and see abuse in every home regardless of the situation. This is not, I repeat, not a rare occurrence. I will supply statistics to support this and how this has escalated. I will also supply the sources.
Departmental income has become more important to CPS and their offices than actually finding abused children and protecting them. Each and every time they remove a child from the home, they get paid from the Federal Government. Here they are:
1. Public Law 93-247 known as the Mondale Act of 1974.
2. Public Law 96-272 known as the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980
3. Social Security Title IV-E funds.
The ASFA- Public Law 105-89 known as American Safe Families Act of 1997 is one of the most horrific laws on the books today. While it sounds nice in the title, when you get through the legal jargon, what this means is so wrong. If you ever had a child removed from your house by CPS, even UNFOUNDED and you are innocent, they will take that child in minutes after the child is born! Babies are highly adoptable and the Federal Government pays out $6,000 to the CPS office who conducts the legal kidnapping and gets them adopted quickly without regards to the biological Mother and her family. Since she was investigated once, they do this in the "best interests of the child" as she is a "potential" abuser.
The largest targeted type of families are folks with low incomes, children on SSI and are minorities. If you even have one of those three issues, you are a target for CPS to illegally investigate you. While these things are a surefire magnet, they have been known to do illegal investigations against families if they were reported falsely with malicious intent. Example is an ex-wife wants to get even with her ex-husband and his new family, she could report them and put them through Hell.
Why are the reasons CPS Agents actually find so little true abuse?
1. Agents who never had children and don't understand that a few toys in the corner of the room is not a hazardous mess.
2. Agents are not trained in real evidence recognition. In fact, no Agent in CPS has any training in evidence, the Constitution or criminal justice. They are given anywhere from 3 to 6 months of training, being taught that it is ok to break into a Home without probable cause or exigent circumstances.
3. Agents are trained to use subjective speculation and not objective factual reporting.
4. The Agents do not get psychological evaluations. A number of Agents who were abused as a child themselves see abuse in every home they go into, even if it's not there.
5. Most States do not require Agents to have a degree in Social Sciences. Any degree will do, doesn't even have to be related to the field.
6. The Agency has no checks and balances. A field Agent can lie to a judge or police officer with absolutely no proof and have it entered as factual evidence in a court of law!
7. Agents are trained to believe they are immune from the authority of the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, Sixth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. They violate this in every investigation done nationwide.
Here are the statistics and sources to support these facts:
Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the United States. These numbers come from The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) in Washington.
CPS- Physical Abuse (160) Sexual Abuse (112) Neglect (410) Medical Neglect (14) Fatalities (6.4)
Parents- Physical Abuse (59) Sexual Abuse (13) Neglect (241) Medical Neglect (12) Fatalities (1.5)
As you can see, children are abused far more in care than at home. The calculated average is for every 1 abused child removed from an abusive home, there are 17 unabused children removed from loving non-offending homes nationwide.
Constitutional Violations and Court Rulings that CPS Ignores to this very day!
1. It's unconstitutional for CPS to conduct an investigation and interview a child on private property without exigent circumstances or probable cause. - Doe et al, v. Heck et al (No. 01-3648, 2003 US App. Lexis 7144)
2. All CPS workers in the United States are subject to the 4th and 14th Amendment - Walsh v. Erie County Dept. of Job and Family Services, 3:01-cv-7588
3. Police officers and social workers are not immune for coercing or forcing entry into a person's home without a search warrant. Calabretta v. Floyd (9th Cir. 1999)
4. The mere possibility of danger does not constitute an emergency or exigent circumstance that would justify a forced warrantless entry and a warrantless seizure of a child. Hurlman v. Rice (2nd Cir. 1991)
5. Police officer and social worker may not conduct a warrantless search or seizure in a suspected child abuse case absent exigent circumstances. Defendants must have reason to believe that life or limb is in immediate jeopardy and that the intrusion is reasonable necessary to alleviate the threat. Searches and seizures in investigation of a child neglect or child abuse case at a home are governed by the same principles as other searches and seizures at a home. Goodv. Dauphin County Social Services (3rd Cir. 1989)
6. The Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures extends beyond criminal investigations and includes conduct by social workers in the context of a child neglect/abuse investigation. Lenz v. Winburn (11th Cir. 1995)
7. Making false statements made to obtain a warrant, when the false statements were necessary to the finding of probable cause on which the warrant was based, violates the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. Aponte Matos v. Toledo Davilla (1st Cir. 1998)
What can be done to change this for a better, more healthy Child Protection System?
I. Child Abuse is a Crime, not a touchy feely civil complaint and should be investigated as a crime.
II. Have the abuse allegations investigated by a Detective or Police Officer, who are trained for this as a career, whereas CPS workers are not. All investigations are joint ones with said Officers of the Law and with warrants properly issues under probable cause.
III. Re-train Agents to respect and obey the laws of the Constitution of the United States. If a family is guilty of abuse, a legal investigation will find it.
IV. Repeal the Mondale Act, Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act, Title IV-E rewards to CPS from Social Security and the American Safe Families Act. Remember, they are not what the title sounds like and has been the root core of many loving homes losing their children to a system that will abuse them.
V. Make CPS legally investigate those who sign up to be foster parents. They do not do this today, and many foster parent who want the money for fostering them are actually child abusers who never get caught!
VI. All interviews to be audio and video recorded just like it happens with the police!
VII. Hold CPS Agents and foster parents and the records keeper responsible for every child who vanishes or dies in their care for their location.
VIII. Also investigate the person or persons reporting the abuse, and if done maliciously with intent to disrupt a family, prosecute the reporter to the fullest extent of the Law regarding making false claims to Government Agencies to affect an unnecessary and costly investigation.
IX. Abuse is a Crime, guarantee the accused retain their right to face their accusers in a court of law. As the system currently is, this is not done.
X. The Children are to be tracked on a weekly basis, so no more children vanish in the system.
XI. If a disabled, mentally retarded or sick Child is put into Foster Care, the Child's current Physician will need to provide a copy of the diagnosis and treatment, and medications, if any, will be provided as prescribed by the Physician. All appointments must be kept while in Foster Care. Any violations without a very good reason will result in the Foster Parents losing their certification for Foster Care.
XII. If a Foster Child dies while in Foster Care, there will be an Investigation by the FBI and all parties responsible for the Death of a Child will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
XIII. There will be a National Database where all known abusers are recorded and can be accessed by Law Enforcement. Everyone who is found not guilty won't have their Convictions and Abuse Reports listed. It will be illegal to keep records of any sort on innocent individuals or families. If they are convicted in a court of law by a jury of their peers, then the report of abuse they are guilty of will be the only report listed.
Currently, none of this is done, and innocent families who are not guilty of anything are losing their Children based on the word of others where there is no burden of proof for Prosecution, for the sake of getting Federal Funds for tens of thousands of dollars. The few truly abused children are ending up in a system where they are worse off than where they came from, even to the extent of being killed. Also, the innocent children who are never abused are also killed.
Injustice against one American is injustice against all Americans. Help us put the Justice back into Child Protective Services and get them focused on finding and saving abused children. It's time we removed them from the profitable business of tearing loving non-offending families apart.
Social Work College of Health and Human Services-Students Required to Work For DCYF-So Much for Licensed Social Workers!
Child Welfare Training Grant
In order to promote professional education for child welfare workers, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services/Division for Children, Youth and Families (NH-DCYF) and the UNH Department of Social Work are collaborating to offer Social Work students an opportunity to focus their education and future employment in the area of Child Welfare. The Child Welfare Training Grant, Title IV-E Project, seeks to:
equip selected BSW and MSW students with knowledge, skills, values, and cultural/ethnic competency to become effective public child welfare workers in New Hampshire,
increase the number of BSW and MSW graduates employed by the Division for Children, Youth and Families,
develop curriculum and training resources to support the practice of New Hampshire Child Protective workers.
Benefits to students include:
Full in-state tuition
a stipend of $3000 (MSW) or $2500 (BSW)
access to Child Welfare training and resources
Interested students will need to:
provide three letters of recommendation,
provide a 2-4 page essay describing their experiences, motivation, and career plans related to Child Protection,
be available to be interviewed by the Child Welfare Grant Committee.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
DCYF employees are eligible to apply.Immediately following graduation, students are required to work for eighteen months at NH-DCYF for each year that they are funded by the Title IV-E project. The employment site will be determined by NH-DCYF.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Copyright 2003-2009, University of New Hampshire, College of Health and Human Services.
All rights reserved. 217 Hewitt Hall, 4 Library Way, Durham, New Hampshire 03824
ADA Disclaimer | E-mail CHHS Web Manager
Last Updated Thursday, 27-Mar-2008 16:45:39 EDT
UNH Search: Powered by Google
http://www.shhs.unh.edu/sw/cwtg.html
In order to promote professional education for child welfare workers, the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services/Division for Children, Youth and Families (NH-DCYF) and the UNH Department of Social Work are collaborating to offer Social Work students an opportunity to focus their education and future employment in the area of Child Welfare. The Child Welfare Training Grant, Title IV-E Project, seeks to:
equip selected BSW and MSW students with knowledge, skills, values, and cultural/ethnic competency to become effective public child welfare workers in New Hampshire,
increase the number of BSW and MSW graduates employed by the Division for Children, Youth and Families,
develop curriculum and training resources to support the practice of New Hampshire Child Protective workers.
Benefits to students include:
Full in-state tuition
a stipend of $3000 (MSW) or $2500 (BSW)
access to Child Welfare training and resources
Interested students will need to:
provide three letters of recommendation,
provide a 2-4 page essay describing their experiences, motivation, and career plans related to Child Protection,
be available to be interviewed by the Child Welfare Grant Committee.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
DCYF employees are eligible to apply.Immediately following graduation, students are required to work for eighteen months at NH-DCYF for each year that they are funded by the Title IV-E project. The employment site will be determined by NH-DCYF.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Copyright 2003-2009, University of New Hampshire, College of Health and Human Services.
All rights reserved. 217 Hewitt Hall, 4 Library Way, Durham, New Hampshire 03824
ADA Disclaimer | E-mail CHHS Web Manager
Last Updated Thursday, 27-Mar-2008 16:45:39 EDT
UNH Search: Powered by Google
http://www.shhs.unh.edu/sw/cwtg.html
Saturday, November 28, 2009
CPS/DCYF Crimes against Children An Investigative Report
CPS/DCYF admit taking a child is all about the money. Please watch this video
http://media.causes.com/661255?p_id=54253497
http://media.causes.com/661255?p_id=54253497
The 'Best Interests of the Child' Concept - Misused from the Beginning
November 28th, 2009 by Robert Franklin, Esq.
Even the casual observer of family law and practice can be struck by the astonishing, er, flexibility of the term "best interests of the child." For example, in 1995, a New Mexico court approved of the outright theft of a child by an adoption agency and his subsequent placement with an adoptive couple as in the "best interests of the child."
The boy had lived with the mother and father for all his year and a half of life. One weekend when the father was out of town working, the mother took the child to the adoption agency, lied about the father's whereabouts and gave the child up for adoption. Two days later, the father informed the adoption agency that he had no intention of giving up the child. But the agency kept the child with the adoptive parents anyway and let the glacial pace of the judicial system do the rest.
A year and a half later, the child was deemed to have "bonded" with the adoptive parents and the father was out of luck. The "best interests of the child," you understand, meant that breaking those new bonds was impermissible. At the same time, the "best interests of the child" did permit breaking the bonds between the father and the child. That's what I mean when I say the concept is "flexible."
The conduct of the mother and the agency violated New Mexico civil law, and the father sued them and won a judgment for monetary damages. Those damages were never paid as the agency receded behind the impenetrable veil of bankruptcy.
Given the mutability of the 'best interests' standard, it's interesting to know a little of its history. In 1973, Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud and Albert Solnit published a book that would have enormous influence on family courts and child protective agencies nationwide, albeit not the one they intended. They were, respectively, a law professor at Yale, a child psychologist and a researcher at the Child Study Center at Yale. Their book was entitled "Beyond the Best Interests of the Child." It was an effort to guide courts and placement agencies that had to decide issues of family dissolution and child custody about how best to do that.
But by 1979, the same authors were so horrified at the misuse of their book by those very courts and child protective agencies that they wrote another one entitled "Before the Best Interests of the Child."
With their first book, they meant well; they truly didn't anticipate the distortions to which judges, social workers and child welfare agencies would subject its message. In it, they were dealing only with cases in which a family had already broken down and required intervention by the state to protect the children. The authors limited their discussion to that. The "best interests of the child" concept was discussed solely as a goal to be obtained after family breakdown.
But the courts and other state agencies had no intention of limiting their use of the book's concepts in the same way the authors did. In direct contradiction to the authors' intentions, states began using the "best interests of the child" concept to achieve family breakdown by state intervention and removal of the children.
That's what horrified the authors and prompted them to publish "Before the Best Interests of the Child" in 1979. Here's what they said:
[W]e believe that a child's need for continuity of care by autonomous parents requires acknowledging that parents should generally be entitled to raise their children as they think best, free of state interference. This conviction finds expression in our preference for minimum state intervention and prompts restraint in defining justifications for coercively intruding on family relationships...
So long as a child is a member of a functioning family, his paramount interest lies in the preservation of his family. Thus our preference for making a child's interests paramount is not to be construed as a justification in and of itself for intrusion. (Emphasis in the original.)
I'll write a bit more on this later, but remember what the authors said: the child's "paramount interests lies in the preservation of his family."
It's a concept that escaped the New Mexico courts back in 1995, even as it continues to escape so many today.
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 28th, 2009 at 1:24 pm and is filed under Family Law, Children's Rights, Child Protective Services/Child Welfare System.
http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=4415
Even the casual observer of family law and practice can be struck by the astonishing, er, flexibility of the term "best interests of the child." For example, in 1995, a New Mexico court approved of the outright theft of a child by an adoption agency and his subsequent placement with an adoptive couple as in the "best interests of the child."
The boy had lived with the mother and father for all his year and a half of life. One weekend when the father was out of town working, the mother took the child to the adoption agency, lied about the father's whereabouts and gave the child up for adoption. Two days later, the father informed the adoption agency that he had no intention of giving up the child. But the agency kept the child with the adoptive parents anyway and let the glacial pace of the judicial system do the rest.
A year and a half later, the child was deemed to have "bonded" with the adoptive parents and the father was out of luck. The "best interests of the child," you understand, meant that breaking those new bonds was impermissible. At the same time, the "best interests of the child" did permit breaking the bonds between the father and the child. That's what I mean when I say the concept is "flexible."
The conduct of the mother and the agency violated New Mexico civil law, and the father sued them and won a judgment for monetary damages. Those damages were never paid as the agency receded behind the impenetrable veil of bankruptcy.
Given the mutability of the 'best interests' standard, it's interesting to know a little of its history. In 1973, Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud and Albert Solnit published a book that would have enormous influence on family courts and child protective agencies nationwide, albeit not the one they intended. They were, respectively, a law professor at Yale, a child psychologist and a researcher at the Child Study Center at Yale. Their book was entitled "Beyond the Best Interests of the Child." It was an effort to guide courts and placement agencies that had to decide issues of family dissolution and child custody about how best to do that.
But by 1979, the same authors were so horrified at the misuse of their book by those very courts and child protective agencies that they wrote another one entitled "Before the Best Interests of the Child."
With their first book, they meant well; they truly didn't anticipate the distortions to which judges, social workers and child welfare agencies would subject its message. In it, they were dealing only with cases in which a family had already broken down and required intervention by the state to protect the children. The authors limited their discussion to that. The "best interests of the child" concept was discussed solely as a goal to be obtained after family breakdown.
But the courts and other state agencies had no intention of limiting their use of the book's concepts in the same way the authors did. In direct contradiction to the authors' intentions, states began using the "best interests of the child" concept to achieve family breakdown by state intervention and removal of the children.
That's what horrified the authors and prompted them to publish "Before the Best Interests of the Child" in 1979. Here's what they said:
[W]e believe that a child's need for continuity of care by autonomous parents requires acknowledging that parents should generally be entitled to raise their children as they think best, free of state interference. This conviction finds expression in our preference for minimum state intervention and prompts restraint in defining justifications for coercively intruding on family relationships...
So long as a child is a member of a functioning family, his paramount interest lies in the preservation of his family. Thus our preference for making a child's interests paramount is not to be construed as a justification in and of itself for intrusion. (Emphasis in the original.)
I'll write a bit more on this later, but remember what the authors said: the child's "paramount interests lies in the preservation of his family."
It's a concept that escaped the New Mexico courts back in 1995, even as it continues to escape so many today.
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 28th, 2009 at 1:24 pm and is filed under Family Law, Children's Rights, Child Protective Services/Child Welfare System.
http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=4415
NH sees greater need for special ed services -I wonder why!
Saturday, November 28, 2009
By SARAH PALERMO Keene Sentinel
AMANDA BOROZINSKI / Sentinel Staff Teacher Allison A. Carr reads a book to her class in the Symonds School learning center in Keene. She is working with the students on vocabulary and story structure. Enlarge
AMANDA BOROZINSKI / Sentinel Staff Using dice, Jonathan Durrant works on adding two numbers. Using her hands, teacher Nancy Elliott demonstrates how to count the sum of the dice. Last year in the Granite State, 13.8 percent of students needed special education services. . Enlarge
AMANDA BOROZINSKI / Sentinel Staff Teacher Allison A. Carr reads a book to her class in the Symonds School learning center in Keene. She is working with the students on vocabulary and story structure.
Enlarge
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of a three-day package by the Keene Sentinel about special education in the state’s southwestern corner.
Peek into the big room off the main hallway in Symonds Elementary School in Keene.
Two beanbag chairs slouch in one corner, ready for quiet reading time. Someone drew wild circles on the paper tacked to the easel in the middle of the room.
This is Symonds’ learning center. Every elementary school in Keene has a learning center; it’s where students with special educational needs work in small groups with teachers such as Allison A. Carr and Nancy A. Elliott.
Roughly one in five students in the Keene School District receives special education services, slightly more than the national average, which has steadily grown since special education became law in 1975.
Some students’ reading troubles might leave them bewildered and overwhelmed in a large class.
One of Carr’s students needs a squishy rubber cushion on his seat during reading time, so he can fidget by shifting his weight, without moving his whole body around and disrupting the other students. Another has a ball to hold and squeeze under the table, to keep his hands busy so they don’t wander and cause distractions.
What unique services these students need in order to learn is something Carr, Elliott and other special education teachers try to work out over time.
Why these children are part of a growing population is a more complicated question. Education officials have theories, but are quick to point out that they don’t know for certain.
Changing diagnosis dynamic
In 1975, the federal government passed the first special-education law, which would eventually become the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
At the time, most people assumed it would affect only the most dramatically disabled children, the ones living in state institutions or kept home their entire lives.
The first year students with disabilities were included in public schools, they represented about 8 percent of the nation’s school population.
That increased to 10 percent by 1980, 11 percent by 1990 and 13.6 percent by 2006 – an increase of nearly 3 million special education students over 35 years.
Last year in the Granite State, 13.8 percent of students needed special education services like those provided in the Symonds learning center, one of several in the district. That’s up from 12.9 percent in 2000.
Between 17 and 20 percent of students in the Keene School District receive special education services. On the first day of school, 776 of the district’s 3,700 students received some kind of special education services, according to Reeves.
It’s not that the laws or regulations are rewritten every time a new disorder is identified.
Conditions such as Attention Deficit Disorder, autism and emotional problems have always been covered under the law.
Schools have also always been required to provide related services – things like speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and physical therapy – to help kids meet their educational goals.
“What’s changed is society’s attitude toward disabilities, and the school’s ability to pinpoint a problem,” said Catherine L. Reeves, director of special education for New Hampshire School Administrative Unit 29, which serves Keene, Chesterfield, Harrisville, Marlow, Marlborough, Nelson and Westmoreland school districts.
A better understanding
The past three decades have brought a “broadening and clarifying of definitions” of student disabilities, Reeves said. And as evaluations have improved, she said, “we know more and we are better able to diagnose disabilities.”
In the past, learning disabilities were often diagnosed based on statistical discrepancies. Students were given tests in isolated, quiet rooms, and if they scored within a certain range, they were diagnosed with a certain disability.
Under those conditions, kids fell through the cracks, Reeves said.
For starters, children usually perform better during formal testing, where they’re one-on-one with the tester in a distraction-free room, than they perform in the everyday classroom, Reeves said.
“So, students who have problems in a regular classroom were performing just well enough (in the testing situations) to disqualify themselves for services. The process didn’t take into account their actual performance in the classroom.”
If students scored too high on the test, educators were unable to provide services to them, even though they obviously needed help, she said.
Evaluations today take into account whether a child can learn in a classroom setting, or whether there’s something holding him or her back.
Tests are still administered, and precautions are taken to be sure the problem isn’t just a situation, like being bullied.
Other factors can influence the numbers of students needing services, and some start years before the students set foot in a classroom or an evaluator’s office.
The United States’ infant mortality rate has fallen dramatically over the past several decades, from 26 per 1,000 live births in 1960 to 6.9 per 1,000 in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available.
“A decreasing infant mortality rate means many things,” Reeves said. “It means mothers are receiving better prenatal care and giving birth in cleaner facilities than in centuries past. It also means more disabled babies are surviving when in the past, they might not have lived more than a few hours or days.”
Dr. Geraldine Rubin, chairman of the pediatrics department at Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene, agrees.
Some infants, especially those born months early, wouldn’t have survived if they were born a generation ago, she said. Today, they eventually show up at preschool.
Beyond the classroom
Increased awareness of disabilities makes parents and teachers more likely to refer a child for evaluation, experts say.
“Once you develop clinical language and it becomes part of the culture, then you’re going to start to see more and more of it,” said MacLean Gander, a professor and former vice president at Landmark College.
Landmark, founded in the early 1980s in Putney, Vt., bills itself partly as the “premier college for students with learning disabilities.”
Today more than ever, parents are alert to the possibility that their child’s fidgeting, poor concentration and low grades might not be the results of laziness or a lack of motivation, but symptoms of a neurological, developmental or emotional disability, Gander said.
In years past, a learning-disabled student might have been yelled at and disciplined until he dropped out of school. Today, he might have one session a day in the learning center, or with a counselor.
Emotional or behavioral counseling is, to some, unrelated to education. Behavioral problems should be treated at home, they say. But it’s a special education service that’s been part of the law for 35 years.
A federal measure passed in 1975 required each state to establish guidelines for public school special education.
Previously, New Hampshire’s special education law said schools had to help students with “serious” emotional disturbances. Today, the law includes all children with emotional difficulties that impede their ability to learn.
The new language doesn’t change the eligibility criteria, though.
The emotional problem in question still needs to be severe enough to interrupt a child’s education. He or she still follows the multi-step eligibility process before an “individual education plan” is written and services are provided on a regular basis.
Keene Co-Superintendent William B. Gurney remembers being in school and seeing students who misbehaved being sent to the principal’s office time after time for disrupting class.
Some of those students found school so alienating they dropped out as soon as possible. Now that New Hampshire state law says students must stay in school until they’re 18, leaving isn’t an option.
Today, parents and school officials know better how to apply the protections of special education laws to all students who are entitled to them.
“Kids with a behavioral problem were marginalized. Now the understanding is these kids should have an equal chance to be productive members of society and if it’s a matter of us giving them more services, that’s what we owe them,” he said.
“We only have them 6 hours a day, but we have a responsibility to keep them safe in an environment to learn to the best of their potential. Hopefully we’re doing it.”
Finally, there’s the effect of the recession. Stress outside the classroom – Did she get a good breakfast? Does she have warm, clean clothes today? How was the morning bus ride? – can be enough to tip a young child’s emotional state from “ready to learn” to “shutdown mode.”
More and more kids are at that tipping point this year, said Elliott, one of Symonds’ special education teachers.
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/456196-227/nh-sees-greater-need-for-special-ed.html
By SARAH PALERMO Keene Sentinel
AMANDA BOROZINSKI / Sentinel Staff Teacher Allison A. Carr reads a book to her class in the Symonds School learning center in Keene. She is working with the students on vocabulary and story structure. Enlarge
AMANDA BOROZINSKI / Sentinel Staff Using dice, Jonathan Durrant works on adding two numbers. Using her hands, teacher Nancy Elliott demonstrates how to count the sum of the dice. Last year in the Granite State, 13.8 percent of students needed special education services. . Enlarge
AMANDA BOROZINSKI / Sentinel Staff Teacher Allison A. Carr reads a book to her class in the Symonds School learning center in Keene. She is working with the students on vocabulary and story structure.
Enlarge
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of a three-day package by the Keene Sentinel about special education in the state’s southwestern corner.
Peek into the big room off the main hallway in Symonds Elementary School in Keene.
Two beanbag chairs slouch in one corner, ready for quiet reading time. Someone drew wild circles on the paper tacked to the easel in the middle of the room.
This is Symonds’ learning center. Every elementary school in Keene has a learning center; it’s where students with special educational needs work in small groups with teachers such as Allison A. Carr and Nancy A. Elliott.
Roughly one in five students in the Keene School District receives special education services, slightly more than the national average, which has steadily grown since special education became law in 1975.
Some students’ reading troubles might leave them bewildered and overwhelmed in a large class.
One of Carr’s students needs a squishy rubber cushion on his seat during reading time, so he can fidget by shifting his weight, without moving his whole body around and disrupting the other students. Another has a ball to hold and squeeze under the table, to keep his hands busy so they don’t wander and cause distractions.
What unique services these students need in order to learn is something Carr, Elliott and other special education teachers try to work out over time.
Why these children are part of a growing population is a more complicated question. Education officials have theories, but are quick to point out that they don’t know for certain.
Changing diagnosis dynamic
In 1975, the federal government passed the first special-education law, which would eventually become the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
At the time, most people assumed it would affect only the most dramatically disabled children, the ones living in state institutions or kept home their entire lives.
The first year students with disabilities were included in public schools, they represented about 8 percent of the nation’s school population.
That increased to 10 percent by 1980, 11 percent by 1990 and 13.6 percent by 2006 – an increase of nearly 3 million special education students over 35 years.
Last year in the Granite State, 13.8 percent of students needed special education services like those provided in the Symonds learning center, one of several in the district. That’s up from 12.9 percent in 2000.
Between 17 and 20 percent of students in the Keene School District receive special education services. On the first day of school, 776 of the district’s 3,700 students received some kind of special education services, according to Reeves.
It’s not that the laws or regulations are rewritten every time a new disorder is identified.
Conditions such as Attention Deficit Disorder, autism and emotional problems have always been covered under the law.
Schools have also always been required to provide related services – things like speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and physical therapy – to help kids meet their educational goals.
“What’s changed is society’s attitude toward disabilities, and the school’s ability to pinpoint a problem,” said Catherine L. Reeves, director of special education for New Hampshire School Administrative Unit 29, which serves Keene, Chesterfield, Harrisville, Marlow, Marlborough, Nelson and Westmoreland school districts.
A better understanding
The past three decades have brought a “broadening and clarifying of definitions” of student disabilities, Reeves said. And as evaluations have improved, she said, “we know more and we are better able to diagnose disabilities.”
In the past, learning disabilities were often diagnosed based on statistical discrepancies. Students were given tests in isolated, quiet rooms, and if they scored within a certain range, they were diagnosed with a certain disability.
Under those conditions, kids fell through the cracks, Reeves said.
For starters, children usually perform better during formal testing, where they’re one-on-one with the tester in a distraction-free room, than they perform in the everyday classroom, Reeves said.
“So, students who have problems in a regular classroom were performing just well enough (in the testing situations) to disqualify themselves for services. The process didn’t take into account their actual performance in the classroom.”
If students scored too high on the test, educators were unable to provide services to them, even though they obviously needed help, she said.
Evaluations today take into account whether a child can learn in a classroom setting, or whether there’s something holding him or her back.
Tests are still administered, and precautions are taken to be sure the problem isn’t just a situation, like being bullied.
Other factors can influence the numbers of students needing services, and some start years before the students set foot in a classroom or an evaluator’s office.
The United States’ infant mortality rate has fallen dramatically over the past several decades, from 26 per 1,000 live births in 1960 to 6.9 per 1,000 in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available.
“A decreasing infant mortality rate means many things,” Reeves said. “It means mothers are receiving better prenatal care and giving birth in cleaner facilities than in centuries past. It also means more disabled babies are surviving when in the past, they might not have lived more than a few hours or days.”
Dr. Geraldine Rubin, chairman of the pediatrics department at Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene, agrees.
Some infants, especially those born months early, wouldn’t have survived if they were born a generation ago, she said. Today, they eventually show up at preschool.
Beyond the classroom
Increased awareness of disabilities makes parents and teachers more likely to refer a child for evaluation, experts say.
“Once you develop clinical language and it becomes part of the culture, then you’re going to start to see more and more of it,” said MacLean Gander, a professor and former vice president at Landmark College.
Landmark, founded in the early 1980s in Putney, Vt., bills itself partly as the “premier college for students with learning disabilities.”
Today more than ever, parents are alert to the possibility that their child’s fidgeting, poor concentration and low grades might not be the results of laziness or a lack of motivation, but symptoms of a neurological, developmental or emotional disability, Gander said.
In years past, a learning-disabled student might have been yelled at and disciplined until he dropped out of school. Today, he might have one session a day in the learning center, or with a counselor.
Emotional or behavioral counseling is, to some, unrelated to education. Behavioral problems should be treated at home, they say. But it’s a special education service that’s been part of the law for 35 years.
A federal measure passed in 1975 required each state to establish guidelines for public school special education.
Previously, New Hampshire’s special education law said schools had to help students with “serious” emotional disturbances. Today, the law includes all children with emotional difficulties that impede their ability to learn.
The new language doesn’t change the eligibility criteria, though.
The emotional problem in question still needs to be severe enough to interrupt a child’s education. He or she still follows the multi-step eligibility process before an “individual education plan” is written and services are provided on a regular basis.
Keene Co-Superintendent William B. Gurney remembers being in school and seeing students who misbehaved being sent to the principal’s office time after time for disrupting class.
Some of those students found school so alienating they dropped out as soon as possible. Now that New Hampshire state law says students must stay in school until they’re 18, leaving isn’t an option.
Today, parents and school officials know better how to apply the protections of special education laws to all students who are entitled to them.
“Kids with a behavioral problem were marginalized. Now the understanding is these kids should have an equal chance to be productive members of society and if it’s a matter of us giving them more services, that’s what we owe them,” he said.
“We only have them 6 hours a day, but we have a responsibility to keep them safe in an environment to learn to the best of their potential. Hopefully we’re doing it.”
Finally, there’s the effect of the recession. Stress outside the classroom – Did she get a good breakfast? Does she have warm, clean clothes today? How was the morning bus ride? – can be enough to tip a young child’s emotional state from “ready to learn” to “shutdown mode.”
More and more kids are at that tipping point this year, said Elliott, one of Symonds’ special education teachers.
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/456196-227/nh-sees-greater-need-for-special-ed.html
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