Parental Alienation Day, the holiday of heartbreak

Parental Alienation Day, the holiday of heartbreak
April 24, 7:38 PMFamily Rights ExaminerTeri Stoddard



Parental alienation information and support
Where can I learn more and hear victim stories?
Why is there a fathers rights movement?
Dirty little secrets of domestic violence programs
Stranger abduction rare, parental abduction as painful
Family court documentary SUPPORT?
Feminist DV agencies fight for cash, not equality
VAWA funds parental child abduction
Sean Goldman reunited with American father
Left-behind parents react to Goldman reunion
Children abducted to the US
Parental Alienation Day is one holiday that no one wants to celebrate. For many the name stirs a mild curiosity. For others, a searing pain that cuts through their very soul.
Mike Jeffries said it best on Basil & Spice when he wrote, "You won’t find an e-card that says, ‘Happy Parental Alienation Day.’ However if more people know why parents alienate a child from the child’s other parent, and how damaging these behaviors are to the child, then more people can help address the problem. Awareness and education are the first steps towards change.” See Parental alienation information and support.
How common is parental alienation? Four out of every 10 children whose parents don't live together haven't seen their fathers in over a year. See Why is there a fathers rights movement?.
Mothers are victims of parental alienation too. Which is why some are left scratching their heads when radical feminist domestic violence advocates and so-called "protective mother" groups film fake documentaries to convince legislators that parental alienation isn't real.

What causes parental alienation? Many things can set parental alienation in motion. From a man taking the advice of his attorney to "go after her" with everything he has, to a woman taking the advice of friends to say she's "scared of him." See VAWA funds parental child abduction. Well-meaning but misinformed people can knock separating parents off-track.
National columnist Kathleen Parker, who is pro-family court reform and a friend to fathers recently won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Fathers & Families quote Parker: “The divorce system is counterintuitive and morally bankrupt, and needs reinventing… What the organized fathers’ groups want isn’t wrong or mean-spirited but right and fair to children. Who among us can blame a man, wrongfully denied his own child, for shouting out that he was framed?”
Equal parenting 101: What's the best way to divorce with children?

http://www.examiner.com/x-15873-Family-Rights-Examiner~y2010m4d24-Parental-Alienation-Day-the-holiday-of-heartbreak?cid=examiner-email

NH courts rate poorly, lawyer survey shows

NH courts rate poorly, lawyer survey shows

CONCORD:
Lawyers around the state gave the states courts a barely passing grade, rating the system 5 ½ on a scale of 1 to 10, the New Hampshire Bar News reports.

The state Bar Association (a professional association to which all lawyers are required to contribute) surveyed members by e-mail, asking them to rate the state courts on a simple scale, and comment on their concerns.

The states Superior and Probate Courts are organized by county, while district courts are regional. Superior courts handle lawsuits, criminal cases and other legal disputes. District courts handle small claims, misdemeanors and restraining orders.

According to an article in this months Bar News, Bar members responding to a recent e-mail survey said they are extremely concerned about the functioning of the state courts.

Cheshire County had the lowest ratings, with an average of 3.8, while Grafton County rated highest at 6.4. Hillsborough South in Nashua rated 5.7, topping the northern division (4.9).

The survey asked lawyers to rate the states court system "in serving the needs of your clients and the public" on a scale of 1 to 10, the Bar News reports.

Over 550 lawyers (just over 10 percent) responded to the survey, the Bar News article reports. Their top concerns included delays in processing motions and orders and inefficient scheduling. Lawyers tended to blame staffing levels and absence of computerized systems for the problems, and some lauded the diligence of court personnel working in difficult circumstances, the article states.

The survey was done at the request of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Broderick , who mentioned it during a recent hearing before the House Finance Committee.

We’re under six on a ten point scale, Broderick said. In one county, 55% of the lawyers gave the court system a 3 or less. That’s embarrassing.

The article quotes one lawyer noting that delays mostly hurt people who already have been harmed in some way.

Those who benefit from the status quo love a clogged, inefficient judicial branch," the lawyer stated.

- Andrew Wolfe

The article can be found on the New Hampshire Bar News Web site:

Social worker files 'whistleblower' suit against state

Saturday, Apr. 24, 2010
Social worker files 'whistleblower' suit against state
state employee files 'whistle-blower' suit

By Valarie Honeycutt Spears - vhoneycutt@herald-leader.com
A state social worker filed a "whistle-blower" lawsuit Friday alleging that Kentucky officials disciplined him because he reported violations by fellow social workers, including the placement of children in the homes of registered sex offenders.
In the suit, filed in Franklin Circuit Court against the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Clay Clement said that in September he complained to the cabinet's inspector general about two cases in which children younger than 4 were placed in the care of registered sex offenders without the cabinet taking any safety precautions or notifying law enforcement.
Clement, who lives and works in Madison County, also alleged in the lawsuit that social work managers changed documents "to justify this dangerous placement of children."
The lawsuit does not provide specifics about the registered sex offenders.
Cabinet for Health and Family Services spokeswoman Vikki Franklin said the cabinet does not comment on pending litigation.
In January, Clement was given a five-day suspension for "a lack of good behavior" and unsatisfactory performance of his duties, according to the lawsuit.
The suspension was in violation of the Kentucky Whistleblower Act, the lawsuit says.
Clement said he told the inspector general that he was removed from a case in August after he criticized managers who forced a parent to put her children in the care of a neighbor who she thought was abusing and neglecting them.
In the lawsuit, Clement said that he also told the inspector general that a cabinet supervisor gave false testimony about the case and withheld critical information from the court.
Clement said he was retaliated against because in March 2009 he gave a deposition in another whistle-blower lawsuit filed by a state social worker. In that deposition, he said managers were falsifying documents and placing children at risk, according to the lawsuit.
"It's a continued pattern. Practices of the cabinet are placing kids at risk, and those who do the right thing and come forward are punished," Shane Sidebottom, a Northern Kentucky attorney who represents Clement, said Friday.
Reach Valarie Honeycutt Spears at (859) 231-3409 or 1-800-950-6397, ext. 3409.


Read more: http://www.kentucky.com/2010/04/24/1237346/social-worker-files-whistleblower.html#ixzz0m78RO3cK

WHAT IS EX PARTE? WHAT IS EX PARTE USED FOR IN CUSTODY FIGHTS?

Family Court Reform Blog

WHAT IS EX PARTE? WHAT IS EX PARTE USED FOR IN CUSTODY FIGHTS?

We, the citizens of the United States, are in desperate need of help in order to change the laws governing the use of EX PARTE. Since these laws are statutes written at the state level we are particularly focusing this plea to individual state lawmakers.

WHAT IS EX PARTE?
In Latin Ex Parte means "On one side only." Ex Parte is used by lawyers in situations in which only one party, always the accuser, appears before a judge. In many situations this type of meeting is obviously forbidden because it alienates the rights to be heard by the accused. In child custody cases it allows unscrupulous lawyers and even abusers to by-pass normal custody routes and remove children without a Constitutionally protected hearing or even any valid evidence.

So well known is the abuse of ex parte in family courts that the National Council of Juvenile & Family Court Judges Family Violence Department published a Judicial Guide to Child Safety in Custody Cases in 2008 that educates judges that “a parent who uses tactics of coercive control may find litigation to be an effective means of controlling the other parent”, specifically the “Abuse of the ex parte process” should be watched for & steps taken to protect the at-risk parent not the abuser.

Normally a judge is required to meet with all parties involved but there are circumstances where this rule does not apply. A judge is allowed to meet with just one side, ex parte, when the plaintiff requests emergency temporary orders, or ex parte, without hearing from the other side. This occurs in situations when time is limited or the court sees no reason to hear the other side of the dispute. A valid example of a good use of ex parte would be if a wife is enduring violence at home, the court can immediately issue an ex parte order to protect her from her husband. After he's out of the home the court will hear his side via a hearing. At this time the court can make the decision decide whether the ex parte order should be made permanent.

In custody battles it can be a very valauble tool for the treacherous who put their desire to win ahead of the best interest of the children. This tactic is so widely used in family custody battles that it is even taught in DIY articles online that educate people on how to manipulate your spouse to give in when discussing child support or marital division of properties in a divorce on websites like e-How:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5008233_file-parte-child-custody-forms.html
A portion of the site states - "An Ex Parte child custody order in your favor is a huge bargaining chip to force your spouse to the table if they are at all concerned about being with the children. Remain level-headed and calm because it is the just the beginning of what may turn out to be a long and fretful ordeal, especially for the children involved. If the dividing of assets is a paramount concern, you can use those to reach a settlement in the case and agree to maintain the Status Quo of child custody unless there are other extenuating circumstances. If your spouse decides to challenge the Ex Parte order (a costly endeavor) at least you will be the plaintiff and a strong offense is usually the best defense."

If you think that the parent must be guilty you are wrong and if you assume that Ex Parte could never happen to you - remember - the only difference between you and this family is that no one has came for your children yet.

WE ASK YOU - IN HONOR OF THE CHILDREN WHO CAN'T PROTECT THEMSELVES - CALL YOUR STATE LEGISLATORS TODAY AND MORE EMPOWERING THAN THAT - REGISTER TO VOTE! AND USE THAT POWER TO PUT LEGISLATORS IN OFFICE WHO CARE ABOUT OUR CHILDREN AND PUT JUDGE'S ON THE BENCH WHO PROTECT THE CITIZENS AND THE CONSTITUTION.

http://www.ex-parte-abuse-in-custody-cases.com/

Adopted boy's return highlights problems in Russian orphanages

Adopted boy's return highlights problems in Russian orphanages

By Darshak Sanghavi
Sunday, April 25, 2010
"I no longer wish to parent this child."

When 7-year-old Justin Hansen, whose name used to be Artyom Savelyev, was sent back to his native Russia this month with that note from his American adoptive mother, much of the ensuing criticism focused on the U.S. side of the matter. Some said that Justin's adoptive parents were not equipped to care for an allegedly disturbed and violent child and that they had failed to seek proper professional help. Others blamed the questionable practices of some U.S. adoption agencies.

But there is no doubt that families adopting children from Russia face unique challenges. In particular, Russian orphans suffer from psychological disorders at much higher rates than do orphans in many other countries. Last year, sociologists reported in the journal Pediatrics that Russian and eastern European adoptees were three to seven times more likely to have mental problems than Chinese and Korean adoptees. Philip Cohen, one of the study's authors, speculated to me that this might be because of high rates of fetal alcohol syndrome in former Eastern Bloc nations.

Yet at least some of the blame for the children's problems must be placed on flawed child-rearing practices common in Russian orphanages. These facilities offer a time capsule of a medicalized approach to child-rearing that was popular in the Unites States decades ago, before the critical importance of children's attachment to their caregivers was widely recognized and before we realized how damaging orphanages can be.

My colleague Richard Moriarty, a pediatrician and expert on international adoptions, recently traveled to an orphanage in Russia's Pskov province, where he witnessed an odd scene. More than a dozen infants wrapped tightly in blankets were lined up in cribs, observed by staff members through a series of glass windows. The room was uncomfortably warm and eerily silent, since none of the babies bothered to make any effort at vocalization. Occasionally, Moriarty told me, the infants were taken out for walks in strollers, but even then each was positioned to face away from the person pushing him. Staff members almost never held or cuddled the babies. "They didn't want the kids to get attached to people," Moriarty recalled. The problem wasn't that the children were neglected: They were kept fastidiously clean and were well groomed and well fed. The problem was that they were bereft of normal human contact.



Charles Nelson, a professor at Harvard Medical School who has studied and worked closely with Romanian orphanages for more than a decade, told me that although the caregivers he encountered there were well-meaning, they "raised kids in a way that was devoid of any affect." And Lisa Albers, a pediatrician at Children's Hospital Boston who studies international adoption, said that "Russian child welfare is still wedded to the medical model" -- meaning that it focuses on nutrition and cleanliness, not nurturing.

Russian orphans don't typically suffer from a deficit of medical care: If anything, physicians tend to overdiagnose them with dozens of labels, such as intestinal dysbacteriosis, pyramidal insufficiency and spastic tetraparesis, which have no meaning to my American colleagues (who, upon examining the children, often find them to be healthy).

All this would sound very familiar to observers of institutionalized children in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. Worried about the risk of infection, hospitals prohibited parents from visiting their ill children for more than one hour a week, and infants received minimal handling. In 1910, for example, homesick kids who cried too much at Massachusetts General Hospital were moved into isolation wards.

This approach wasn't limited to hospitals; it went to the heart of beliefs about child development in the early decades of the last century. At that time, an accidental alliance -- pediatricians trying to reduce infections and psychologists warning about overdependence -- encouraged parents and other caregivers to treat kids just as today's Russian orphanages do.

As Deborah Blum has written in "Love at Goon Park," her history of psychologist Harry Harlow's work on infant development, parenting books from the 1920s discouraged mothers from hugging children (the head of the American Psychological Association went so far as to recommend only one kiss per year). Parents magazine praised a psychologist whose books, according to Blum, foresaw "a baby farm where hundreds of infants could be taken away from their parents and raised according to scientific principles."

But soon thereafter, things began to change. The psychoanalyst Rene Spitz produced sensationalist, disturbing movies of infants growing up in what amounted to solitary confinement in New York orphanages. Chicago pediatrician Joseph Brennemann discovered that babies sometimes died of what could only be called loneliness.

In Britain, the psychologist John Bowlby published his theory of infant attachment, which argued that a strong, affectionate tie to a caregiver is essential to a child's mental health and development. And in Wisconsin, Harlow performed a series of cruel but dramatic experiments showing that lonely baby monkeys would repeatedly return to a lifeless doll he called the "iron maiden" for affection, even when the device was rigged to stab them or hurl them away or blast them with compressed air. Children, it became clear, desperately needed parental attachments for healthy development.

With these ideas gaining traction, Congress in 1961 created a federally funded foster-care program that shifted kids out of orphanages and into family homes. By 1965, only 4 percent of American orphans remained in institutions.

But attachment theory did not influence child welfare programs in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. And so, while Americans and western Europeans largely abandoned institutional care for orphans, Russians continued relying on it. At the time of a 1998 Human Rights Watch report, hundreds of thousands of children were committed to orphanages in Russia, while only several hundred lived in family-size foster-care settings.

Of course, many factors contribute to the plight of Russian orphans, including inadequate family-planning resources, underfunding of child welfare services and widespread alcoholism. And a culture of adoption has never taken off in Russia: Of an estimated 800,000 Russian orphans today, only about 15,000 are adopted each year, half of them by foreigners.

Child-development experts have long believed that foster care is better than orphanage care, but until recently, the data were lacking. Then in 2007, Charles Nelson, the Harvard professor working in Romania, published in Science the results of a groundbreaking study in which 136 infants were placed either in foster care or orphanages. Foster care produced significantly higher IQ scores, and the younger the child at the time of placement, the bigger the difference. "Institutional care is bad for kids," Nelson told me. "The fact is that institutional care always does worse than family care." (This may be one reason that adoptees from South Korea, which has a well developed foster-care system, have fewer mental disabilities than Russian adoptees.)

Washing, feeding and dressing needy children, it turns out, is the easy part. What child welfare institutions in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union still need help with is providing environments that nurture strong, loving attachments between children and their caregivers. As history shows, that's a lesson that can take a long time to learn.



But recently, the glacial pace of transition to family-based care has thawed. Kemlin Furley, UNICEF's deputy representative to Russia, sees increasing commitment from top officials to the principle that, as she said, "kids should be in families." She points to President Dmitry Medvedev's creation of a program that has promoted foster care in provinces such as Perm. As a result of these changes, tens of thousands of children have moved to foster care in the past few years.

Femmie Juffer, a Dutch sociologist who has reviewed studies involving hundreds of thousands of adoptees, told me that, across cultures, "pre-adoption adversity" predicts later behavior problems. Perhaps some good may yet come from young Justin Hansen's story, if it highlights the adversity faced by many Russian orphans who have never known a family's love.

Darshak Sanghavi, the chief of pediatric cardiology at the University of Massachusetts medical school, is Slate's health-care columnist and a contributing editor at Parents.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/23/AR2010042302223.html

Letter from A former GAL/CASA worker to Maggie Bishop,NH DCYF-A MUST READ!

Letter from A former GAL/CASA worker to Maggie Bishop,NH DCYF-A MUST READ!

The Author of this letter has given permission to forward this letter far and wide. Please see attachment.


http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&ik=47167b6cfa&view=att&th=128267a11f38c3cb&attid=0.1&disp=attd

Foster care overhaul planned

Foster care overhaul planned
By DEBORAH CIRCELLI, STAFF WRITER
April 23, 2010 12:05 AM Department of Children & Families , foster care

DAYTONA BEACH -- More than 60 percent of local child-abuse cases stem from a combination of substance abuse, mental health and domestic violence, officials said.

In an attempt to prevent abuse in the first place and get services to families more quickly, local child-welfare officials are changing the way they do business.

Changes to the foster-care system will begin in the next several months, with the goal of reducing the number of children entering foster care.

Child-welfare officials have been working with others in the community since September and have developed a proposed Foster Care Redesign. The plan will be discussed in community meetings before July 1.

"There are some exciting things that will come out of this," said Reggie Williams, local administrator for the state Department of Children & Families.

Currently, 803 children are in out-of-home care, which is foster and group homes or with relatives/nonrelatives. Another 392 are getting services at home.

"It's really about solving problems on the front end and thinking about things differently," said Bill Babiez, CEO of Community Partnership for Children, the main local foster-care agency.

Here is more information about the redesign:

What is the goal?

To reduce the number of children in out-of-home care by 50 percent by 2012 and create more services for families, Williams said.

How has the redesign helped in other areas of the state?

Similar plans were formed in 2008 in the Jacksonville and Gainesville areas. Nancy Dreicer, director of DCF's Northeast Region, said the Jacksonville area has seen a 64 percent reduction in children in foster and group homes, while Gainesville has seen a 45 percent decrease. More services are also going to families.

"We're helping the whole family and keeping the family intact and keeping frequent contact with that family so we know the children are safe," Dreicer said.

What changes are proposed locally?

Adding two family intervention specialists in May with expertise in substance abuse and mental health. The specialists with Stewart-Marchman-Act Behavioral Healthcare will work with child protective investigators, Williams said. Families will get referrals for services and specialists will follow up over a four-month period.

What other new teams will there be?

An outreach unit would be formed by the end of August with eight people, including six counselors. The counselors will work with families who have multiple prior abuse reports, but where the risk to the child is not high. In dealing with domestic violence, agreements would also be made between area agencies to provide crisis intervention and assist investigators. Grants would be sought to fund domestic violence victim advocates by the end of December to work with families. A team within the Community Partnership for Children will staff critical cases and work to keep families together.

How much will the redesign cost and where will the money come from?

An estimate has not been determined. Existing resources will be used. By reducing the number of children in foster care, Williams said, a federal waiver allows officials to use those foster care dollars for prevention services.

When are the community meetings?

A special Community Alliance meeting in Daytona Beach has been scheduled for 2:30 p.m. May 18 at DCF at 210 N. Palmetto Ave., Room 148.

Copyright © 2010 The Daytona Beach News-Journal

http://www.news-journalonline.com/news/local/east-volusia/2010/04/23/foster-care-overhaul-planned.html