The CPS Juvenile Family Court Criminal Network Pt2/2 - Lawyers, Judges, Activists Speak

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oxcsLfekgM

Baby LK Report For July 4th 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ryirXC1rc&feature=player_embedded#!

Saratoga County approved contract with arrested psychologist because his rates were the cheapest

Saratoga County approved contract with arrested psychologist because his rates were the cheapest
June 6, 7:21 AM Albany CPS and Family Court Examiner Daniel Weaver


According to the September 8, 2009 minutes of the Saratoga County Public Safety Committee, Dr. Steven B. Feldman, who was arrested Friday for having phony credentials, was hired to do work for the county because his rates were the least expensive. The county hired Feldman to do psychological evaluations for the Saratoga County Family Court. Two other psychologists under contract to the county were rarely utilized, regardless of their credentials or expertise, because their rates were higher. Even Feldman, however, exceeded his contract amount of $10,000.
Saratoga County Public Defender, John Ciulla, testified at the meeting.
The minutes stated that:
"Mr. Ciulla said last year, their $10,000 contract with Dr. Feldman was used up before the end of the year. In keeping what has been going on in Family Court, we have used the money up already, he said. We are proposing instead of doing a limited contract, we will do a general contract with him, he said. He said they currently have three psychologists under contract to provide evaluations, and he asked them to update their current fees. Dr. Feldman is the least expensive and the preferred choice, he said. To prevent me coming back here year after year to expand this contract, it was suggested we just have a regular contract, he stated. Mr. Hellwig said the rates will dictate the cost. As long as he does not go above the rate for the evaluations, it will be indefinite, he said. For a higher rate, he will have to come back, he added. Mr. Rider said the Board approves the contract at a certain rate, and the budget will set how much money he has to spend each year. If the Dr. wants more money, the Board will have to approve that. Mr. Ciulla said he does have minor contracts with two other vendors, but their prices are more, and that is why we prefer to use Dr. Feldman. Mr. Grattidge moved to authorize an on-going contract with Dr. Feldman. Mr. Wright seconded. Unanimous." (emphasis added)
In the Proceedings of the Saratoga County Board of Supervisors of January 20, 2009, the following resolution was passed requesting an additional $875 to pay Feldman.
"RESOLUTION 25 - 09
Introduced by Supervisors Wormuth, Barrett, Connelly, Grattidge, Jenkins, Rowland and Wright
AUTHORIZING AN AMENDMENT TO MINOR CONTRACT WITH STEVEN B. FELDMAN, PSYD, PHD,
DAPA, LMHC FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SERVICE WHEREAS, Article 18B of the County Law requires counties to supply counsel, investigators, expert and other services to persons charged with a crime who are financially unable to obtain these services; and WHEREAS, our Public Defender from time to time requires psychological services to assist in the defense of persons represented by that office who are financially unable to obtain these services; and WHEREAS, the County has a contract with Steven B. Feldman, PSYD, PHD, DAPA, LMHC to provide psychological services to indigent defendants represented by the Public Defender’s Office, not to exceed $10,000; and WHEREAS, the cost of Dr. Feldman’s services in 2008 exceeded the authorized $10,000, and an amendment to his contract is required to authorize payment of an additional $875 for his services; now, therefore, be it RESOLVED, that the Chair of the Board is authorized to execute an Amendment to the Minor Contract with
Steven B. Feldman, PsyD, PhD, DAPA, LMHC, of Ballston Spa, New York to provide psychological services to the Public Defender on behalf of persons being represented by that office for a sum not to exceed an additional $875, the form and substance of said Agreement subject to approval of the County Attorney and the Contract Administrator.
BUDGET IMPACT STATEMENT: The additional $875 expense can be covered within the 2008 budget."
Feldman is not a licensed psychologist in New York State but is a licensed mental health counselor. It is not clear how the New York State Office of the Professions issued Feldman a license to be a mental health counselor as an appropriate advanced degree is required for licensing in New York State.
For more info:
Read about the arrest of Steven B. Feldman.
Read about Saratoga County Family Court Judge, Gilbert Abramson.

http://www.examiner.com/x-14537-Albany-CPS-and-Family-Court-Examiner~y2010m6d6-Saratoga-County-approved-contract-with-arrested-psychologist-because-his-rates-were-the-cheapest?cid=examiner-email

Too Late to Apologize: A Declaration

http://www.youtube.com/user/ArchangelTheFallen#p/a/f/1/uZfRaWAtBVg

Youtube's Patiencepoet Calls into The Alex Jones Show - "CPS Exposed"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuYshIhDeVQ&feature=youtube_gdata

How child abuse affects society

How child abuse affects society

by Francis Harris

Of all the ways that child abuse impacts society - from dysfunctional individuals; to families falling apart - it goes without question that child abuse impacts our legislation. As primitive cultures evolve and recognize that the well-being of children is important, they come to create laws concerning children. Above and beyond all the harm that children endure, it is these laws that somehow impact us the most.

How does child abuse impact society?

1. Society creates legislation: As societies develop from primitive cultures to advanced ones concerned about children's welfare we see legislation enforced to protect children. Overtime we have seen Western laws change: they now prohibit children working under the minimum age; restrict the ages they may marry - or have sexual relations; control the hours they can work (and where); demand that they must receive education; prohibit them from voting and so on.

2. Legislation has its backlash on children: Where legislation is created there is always a backlash that impacts (negatively) those it is intended to help. The legislation concerning children has been abused in some places buy malicious individuals who falsely report child abuse and neglect. Often there are no repercussions for these individuals (since the state wants to investigate ANYTHING) although children and their lives can be devastated by unchecked malicious individuals who report falsely; repeatedly and on occasion end up having the child separated from parent, placed in foster care or otherwise permanently traumatized from people abusing the law and deceiving the authorities about the child's real well-being.

3. Legislation is controversial: As soon as we start to lay down the law we bring out the differences of opinion that exist. We often think that we have the "absolute" and ultimate answer to children's welfare - without realising that there are many other valid alternatives. For example, some nations legislate precisely how parents may discipline children. In those nations if a parent smacks a child in discipline the child can be placed in foster care and the parents given a criminal record and sent to prison.The same parent who "hi-5s" a child and impacts them with the same force receives no such criminal record - because apparently it is ok to hit a child with any forced desired in this cultural greeting, but not ok to smack a child in discipline and stop them killing themselves by running into a road.

4. Legislation is not implemented: While societies can have legislation about children's welfare actually implementing this is another matter. The continued existence of child sex abuse and trafficking in Western nations that have strict laws against this is evidence of the fact that laws do not change and eradicate the problems that children face.

5. Legislation does not capture the absolute "best" for children: As late as 1989 the United Nations drew up the Convention on the Rights of a Child. It is an internationally, legally binding document signed by hundreds of nations that outlines the things that children and the rights that they have - from spiritual and religious rights, to the most fundamental right - the right to life itself. This legally binding document is left to individual states to actually implement.



While this apparently leaves scope for different cultural, religious and social customs concerning children (like what age children can marry; and whether they can be aborted) it certainly does not capture some absolute answer to child-rearing.The laws merely reflect one nation's ideas about what might help children. We easily forget that there is no absolute best for children, and assume that the laws of one nation (maybe ours) are the "right" way to help children thrive within those parameters of the United Nations.

The US and some rogue African states have declined to sign this United Nations convention. The US declines since some states still issue the death penalty and technically this can include children. Since America is prepared to put a child on death row it does not feel it can sign up to the legislation that binds the rest of the world. So it honestly wont sign the declaration on the rights of the child as of 2010.

6. Legislation creates unhelpful labels: When society legislates to protect children it automatically creates a situation where some nations label something as abuse that other nations do not. Even a child growing up in one state may be termed "abused" and in another state not. We still have no universal definition of what is child abuse and this discrepancy between states and nations shows how equally healthy children in identical situations can in one place be labeled "abused" and not in another. The child's life is negatively impacted by this label. They are never the same after they have been told they are abused; while a child growing up elsewhere can lead a normal happy life and not have the psychological issues that follow from the state intervening and labeling a child.

7. We become complacent: The legislation about child abuse (that has come into being as society has evolved) often leads to a situation where societies become complacent to the socially accepted abuses that children are subjected to every day. We think we have everything covered, and blinded to our hypocrisy, we allow "abusive" - but accepted - practices to continue: from fast food diets, to advertising aimed at children; from childcare (with all its negative effects), to parents made from multi-paired homosexual liasons that just do not give children the stable nurture of the mother and father parent role model that they need; from abortion, to divorce. We fail to see the harm we still do to children in a myriad of ways.



8. Legislation dis-empowers children: While legislation often has clauses about "taking the child's wishes into consideration" the reality is that legislation is written by adults, for adults, giving adults the ultimate control over a child's life. Unlike any other citizen the child is actually totally powerless to change anything they do not like. The child is forced to remain a second-class citizen, an underdog,who cannot even have any say in the laws that govern them. We like it that way.

Children and young people account for over 40% of the world and would turn the world upside down overnight if we heard their voice. If children were asked whether they wanted mum and dad to stay together or divorce we would not like the answer. If children were asked whether they wanted a childcare centre or a home we would not like the answer. If children were asked whether there should be more recreation parks and child-friendly spaces we would not like the answer. If children were asked whether mummy should kill the babygrowing inside her because it was her right, or not, we would not like the answer.


CONCLUSION

In conclusion, child abuse certainly affects the legislation of societies. These laws are always limited; sometimes backlash against children; still need to be implemented to help children; can be controversial; are not universally accepted or agreed upon; do not capture the best practice in child-rearing; force the child to remain firmly under adult control and always give us a false sense of security that we are civilized and have found the best for children.


Learn more about this author, Francis Harris.

http://www.helium.com/items/1881374-child-abuse-society-legislation-laws

Forced adoption is a truly dreadful scandal Social workers are removing children from loving families without proper justification

Forced adoption is a truly dreadful scandal
Social workers are removing children from loving families without proper justification, says Christopher Booker


By Christopher Booker
Published: 7:44PM BST 03 Jul 2010
45 Comments

Ripped from their families: some of the stories should shock the conscience Photo: ALAMY
In recent months, I have been reporting on what is one of the most alarming scandals in Britain today – the secretive system that allows social workers to remove children from loving families without any proper justification, and to send them for adoption or fostering with no apparent concern for their interests.
Four more examples have come to light in the past week. The first came to my attention via Lynn Boleyn, a former councillor from Dudley, who first became concerned about "forced adoption" when she sat on various committees concerned with child care. Last week, she was in court with a mother of five girls, whose family tragedy began when her partner was sentenced to 14 years for abusing the eldest girl, who was sent to live with a relative. Although there was no evidence of their mother harming them in any way, the other four girls were seized by Dudley social services and placed in foster care. Three were kept together, separated from their two-year-old sister whom the council now wants to put out for adoption.

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The three girls, aged 11, 10 and 7, are desperately unhappy, constantly asking to be reunited with their mother. But on Friday, a judge said he had no power to stop social services summarily withdrawing them from their local school to be sent to a new home. The 11-year-old was looking forward to being in the school play and the end of term Leavers' Service. She has now been torn away from friends she has known since she was four, the nearest thing to stability left in her life. The children's wishes were not taken into account.
A second case concerns another woman, for 20 years an NHS nurse who served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in the first Gulf War. Until recently, she was a semi-professional dog breeder, living happily at home with her eight-year-old son (his father having walked out when she was pregnant).
In March, their home was raided by two RSPCA officials and five policemen, complaining she had too many dogs in the house. Her home was untidy because she was clearing an attic, but the seizing of the dogs (breaking the leg of one of them) left it a befouled mess.
Acting on a tip-off from the RSPCA, Leeds social workers then intervened, and expressed surprise that the house was tidier than they expected. Nevertheless, they told the mother to bring her son's clothes to school, from where he was taken into foster care.
After three months, during which he has only been allowed short supervised "contact" with his mother, the boy is miserable, constantly asking when he can return home. His mother has repeatedly had to draw the social workers' attention to various conditions, such as head lice and threadworm, which indicated that he was not being properly cared for. Last week they announced that they were moving him to another foster home.
Although there was no evidence that she was anything other than an admirable mother, apart from the temporary mess made of the house in March, the social workers say her son cannot be allowed home until they have both undergone "psychiatric assessments". These cannot be arranged until October. Nor has the boy yet been given a guardian to represent him, as the law lays down.
My other two cases come from Ian Josephs, the former county councillor and businessman who runs the Forced Adoption website and has helped hundreds of families in a similar plight. When, in January, a couple brought their newborn son to hospital with a fractured arm, Coventry social services were called in on suspicion that the child might have been injured by his parents. After the mother had been arrested, handcuffed and held by the police for nine hours, the couple were terrified that their baby would be taken from them. Although not charged with any offence, they are on police bail, which prevents them from leaving the country.
The child's Irish grandmother took the baby to Ireland, where he is now surrounded by a large, supportive family. Social services are attempting to get an order through the courts for the grandmother to return to England with the baby.
My last case is so shocking that I will return to it in more detail at a later date. It centres on a London couple who, earlier this year, had their six children seized by social workers on what appears to be flimsy hearsay evidence (I have seen the court papers).
The mother was pregnant again. Last month, after the boy was born, three social workers and five policemen entered the hospital ward where she was breastfeeding at 3am, wresting the baby from her by force. They then discovered that they had nowhere to keep him. The boy was put into intensive care, where his mother was taken to breastfeed him for four days, until she was fit to leave the hospital. She saw her baby for the last time two weeks ago.
I will return to this story when I have had some explanation from the council responsible.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7870342/Forced-adoption-is-a-truly-dreadful-scandal.html