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Trash is Recycled and Tossed Away…Just like a Foster Kid
August 13, 2010
I didn’t go see Dr. Val today. I hate her right now. I called and canceled. She was busy somewhere, so I left a message which said “ I am not coming today, because you suck.”
http://looneytunes09.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/trash-is-recycled-and-tossed-away%E2%80%A6just-like-a-foster-kid/
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
Friday, August 13, 2010
Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit
Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit
Niko J. Kallianiotis for The New York Times
Hillary Transue was sentenced to three months in juvenile detention for a spoof Web page mocking an assistant principal.
By IAN URBINA and SEAN D. HAMILL
Published: February 12, 2009
At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.
David Kidwell/Associated Press
Prosecutors say Judges Michael T. Conahan, and Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., above, took kickbacks to send teenagers to detention centers.
Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.
She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html?_r=1&em
Niko J. Kallianiotis for The New York Times
Hillary Transue was sentenced to three months in juvenile detention for a spoof Web page mocking an assistant principal.
By IAN URBINA and SEAN D. HAMILL
Published: February 12, 2009
At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.
David Kidwell/Associated Press
Prosecutors say Judges Michael T. Conahan, and Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., above, took kickbacks to send teenagers to detention centers.
Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.
She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html?_r=1&em
Social Worker's Abuse Children
Emergency contacts and the Rules for dealing with either CAFCASS or Local Authority social workers. Includes their tactics to appoint and introduce bias into your reports. The two most fashionable syndromes used to snatch children by CAFCASS and Social Workers are Emotional Abuse and Personality Disorders. The links are included to read up on them.
How to research and find your own expert. DO NOT accept the Doctor suggested by the Social worker under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES or you'll be stitched up.
More from the UK Secret Courts
Posted by LK
http://www.legallykidnapped.blogspot.com/
Thursday, August 12, 2010
ADHD: Who makes the diagnosis?
ADHD: Who makes the diagnosis?
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
August 11, 2010 8:10 a.m. EDT
Aidan Barrier, 9, left, and Ian, 11, both have ADHD. They take medication to help them focus.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
CDC: There are 5 million children who have received diagnosis of ADHD
Doctors say it's being overdiagnosed and children are being overmedicated
Some are grateful to day care facilities, schools, for suggesting diagnosis
(CNN) -- As a toddler, Ian Barrier got expelled from day care.
"They just said that he was all over the place, he couldn't handle the structure, they didn't have the staff or the skills to deal with it," said his mother, Amy Barr. "They said, 'We think he has ADD or ADHD' and I'm like, 'What is that?"
Ian, now 11, and his 9-year-old brother Aidan are just two examples of some 5 million children in the United States who have received the diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a condition marked by impulsive behavior and a lack of focus.
But although this is a medical condition with medical treatments available, often doctors aren't the ones suggesting a diagnosis. More on ADHD
Many parents begin their struggles with treating their children's ADHD the way that Barr did: with a suggested diagnosis from a school or day care setting. That's a problem, doctors say, when there could be many other factors contributing to a child's behavior.
For a teacher to suggest that a child has ADHD is "inappropriate and dangerous," says Dr. Elizabeth Roberts, child psychiatrist in Murrieta, California. Depression, anxiety and abuse are all possibilities in a child's life that could lead to attention problems, Roberts said. That means that many children are receiving medication for the wrong problem.
Roberts wants to say to all educators: "There are many, many diagnoses that cause these problems, including abuse and depression and anxiety. So please, withhold your judgment."
But Barr is happy that her son's day care center mentioned the condition to her. It explained Ian's behaviors that she had been excusing with the adage "boys will be boys." The center also directed her to a facility where he could get tested.
"I'm just glad that they brought it up, because I was living in it and didn't know any better," she said.
In Barr's case, having gotten her kids tested for ADHD even before school, the educational system has been supportive. But the question of medication has plagued her, with years of trying different combinations of drugs -- sometimes four or five at a time.
Despite medication, Ian pulled the fire alarm at his fourth day care center, dispatching the same fire department that would get him out of a tree at age 9, Barr said. And both brothers have spent time in a psychiatric ward at a children's hospital; for the younger one, it may have been because of overmedication, Barr said.
Medication is quick and easy but it's not the answer alone for working with kids who have ADHD.
--Cheryl Rode, San Diego Center for Children
RELATED TOPICS
Attention Deficit Disorders
Children's Health
Education
Mental Health
"You go through all of that, and it's just various different medications, and then you start to feel guilty: I'm drugging my kid," said Barr, of Fleming Island, Florida. Her boys are now both on just one medication -- Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine) -- for focusing in school.
All too often, parents come to pediatrician Dr. Claudia Gold's office asking for a prescription for ADHD, based on a recommendation from school. When she consults with parents alone, however, she's likely to hear stories of trauma: a death in the family, an abusive relationship, and other life experiences that the teacher knew nothing about.
"I think that sometimes folks want an immediate answer and they want to help a child as quickly as possible," said Cheryl Rode, Director of Clinical Operations at the San Diego Center for Children in California. "Medication is quick and easy but it's not the answer alone for working with kids who have ADHD."
Experts agree that ADHD does exist as a real disorder, and that some children really do benefit from medication. Studies have shown a biological basis to the disorder and a genetic component, suggesting it can be passed down in families.
But it's not the teacher's place to make diagnoses, or to recommend medication, Gold said.
Teachers and related school personnel have an important role in identifying learning and social challenges faced by students, including those with ADHD, says Clarke Ross, CEO of CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder). But teachers should never give a diagnosis for the purpose of medication use, or advise the use of medications, he said.
Alana Morales, of Thornton, Colorado, is one of those teachers who has brought up the subject of ADHD testing with many parents. She doesn't tell parents to medicate their kids, but brings up the subject of getting children tested because she thinks it's important for parents to know.
"You have to be so careful because, again, we are not doctors," she said. "But does that mean we don't recognize it? No."
Not every child with ADHD needs medication, doctors say, and Morales said some students benefit more from counseling, special adjustments in school, a tutor, or a different environment for doing homework. It's helpful for parents to get informed about the condition and become advocates for their children -- but some may make the situation worse by having a closed mind to interventions and denying that there's anything wrong, she said.
"You're really setting them up for failure, because it's not a crime, it doesn't mean you're less of a parent if your child learns differently," she said.
Rode agrees with Roberts that teachers should not recommend medication, but thinks that teachers have an excellent frame of reference for what is typical or normal development.
Also the parent of two children with ADHD, Morales has specific strategies she uses when there are kids with ADHD in her class: don't seat them together, put them on the edges of the classroom so she can see them better, and sometimes modify assignments.
Providing an environment conducive to helping kids with conditions such as this is getting harder as budget-tightening schools cut back on teachers, Morales said.
Last year, teaching at a public school in Arizona, Morales had one classroom with 37 students, which included at least four kids with ADHD and one with Asperger's syndrome. And teachers whose job it is to provide extra help to those kids get responsibility for more students, leaving them with less time for each one.
Roberts estimates that only about 10 to 20 percent of children who receive the diagnosis of ADHD actually need medication.
While parents like Barr have tried to inform themselves as much as possible about ADHD and treatment options, some doctors say the condition gets misapplied because it is a quick and easy catch-all diagnosis for a variety of behavior problems, with drugs available to treat it.
Parents are also culprits, and bear some responsibility for their children's behavior, Roberts said. She thinks a lot of kids just need better structure and discipline in the home.
"Parents want to leap-frog over the parenting job and get right to the grandparenting," she said. "Everyone wants to have fun with their kids and everyone wants to be popular with their kids like Grandma is. But the reality is: Someone has to be the bad guy or the kid never learns."
Morales recommends that parents stay involved in their child's school lives by helping them with homework, assisting with organizing their papers, and writing notes to teachers so that everyone is on the same page.
On behalf of her own two children with ADHD, Morales is writing letters now to their teachers explaining how her kids learn differently and what accommodations have been made in the past (they are both on medication). She is also asking the teachers to let her know about any problems this school year.
Looking back, Barr wishes that when her children first got the ADHD diagnosis and then started school, she could have had a teleconference with the school and the psychiatrist at the same time. Instead, she had to relay what the teachers said about her children's behavior to the psychiatrist, and then the psychiatrist's treatment decisions back to the school.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/08/11/adhd.medication.schools/
By Elizabeth Landau, CNN
August 11, 2010 8:10 a.m. EDT
Aidan Barrier, 9, left, and Ian, 11, both have ADHD. They take medication to help them focus.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
CDC: There are 5 million children who have received diagnosis of ADHD
Doctors say it's being overdiagnosed and children are being overmedicated
Some are grateful to day care facilities, schools, for suggesting diagnosis
(CNN) -- As a toddler, Ian Barrier got expelled from day care.
"They just said that he was all over the place, he couldn't handle the structure, they didn't have the staff or the skills to deal with it," said his mother, Amy Barr. "They said, 'We think he has ADD or ADHD' and I'm like, 'What is that?"
Ian, now 11, and his 9-year-old brother Aidan are just two examples of some 5 million children in the United States who have received the diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a condition marked by impulsive behavior and a lack of focus.
But although this is a medical condition with medical treatments available, often doctors aren't the ones suggesting a diagnosis. More on ADHD
Many parents begin their struggles with treating their children's ADHD the way that Barr did: with a suggested diagnosis from a school or day care setting. That's a problem, doctors say, when there could be many other factors contributing to a child's behavior.
For a teacher to suggest that a child has ADHD is "inappropriate and dangerous," says Dr. Elizabeth Roberts, child psychiatrist in Murrieta, California. Depression, anxiety and abuse are all possibilities in a child's life that could lead to attention problems, Roberts said. That means that many children are receiving medication for the wrong problem.
Roberts wants to say to all educators: "There are many, many diagnoses that cause these problems, including abuse and depression and anxiety. So please, withhold your judgment."
But Barr is happy that her son's day care center mentioned the condition to her. It explained Ian's behaviors that she had been excusing with the adage "boys will be boys." The center also directed her to a facility where he could get tested.
"I'm just glad that they brought it up, because I was living in it and didn't know any better," she said.
In Barr's case, having gotten her kids tested for ADHD even before school, the educational system has been supportive. But the question of medication has plagued her, with years of trying different combinations of drugs -- sometimes four or five at a time.
Despite medication, Ian pulled the fire alarm at his fourth day care center, dispatching the same fire department that would get him out of a tree at age 9, Barr said. And both brothers have spent time in a psychiatric ward at a children's hospital; for the younger one, it may have been because of overmedication, Barr said.
Medication is quick and easy but it's not the answer alone for working with kids who have ADHD.
--Cheryl Rode, San Diego Center for Children
RELATED TOPICS
Attention Deficit Disorders
Children's Health
Education
Mental Health
"You go through all of that, and it's just various different medications, and then you start to feel guilty: I'm drugging my kid," said Barr, of Fleming Island, Florida. Her boys are now both on just one medication -- Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine) -- for focusing in school.
All too often, parents come to pediatrician Dr. Claudia Gold's office asking for a prescription for ADHD, based on a recommendation from school. When she consults with parents alone, however, she's likely to hear stories of trauma: a death in the family, an abusive relationship, and other life experiences that the teacher knew nothing about.
"I think that sometimes folks want an immediate answer and they want to help a child as quickly as possible," said Cheryl Rode, Director of Clinical Operations at the San Diego Center for Children in California. "Medication is quick and easy but it's not the answer alone for working with kids who have ADHD."
Experts agree that ADHD does exist as a real disorder, and that some children really do benefit from medication. Studies have shown a biological basis to the disorder and a genetic component, suggesting it can be passed down in families.
But it's not the teacher's place to make diagnoses, or to recommend medication, Gold said.
Teachers and related school personnel have an important role in identifying learning and social challenges faced by students, including those with ADHD, says Clarke Ross, CEO of CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder). But teachers should never give a diagnosis for the purpose of medication use, or advise the use of medications, he said.
Alana Morales, of Thornton, Colorado, is one of those teachers who has brought up the subject of ADHD testing with many parents. She doesn't tell parents to medicate their kids, but brings up the subject of getting children tested because she thinks it's important for parents to know.
"You have to be so careful because, again, we are not doctors," she said. "But does that mean we don't recognize it? No."
Not every child with ADHD needs medication, doctors say, and Morales said some students benefit more from counseling, special adjustments in school, a tutor, or a different environment for doing homework. It's helpful for parents to get informed about the condition and become advocates for their children -- but some may make the situation worse by having a closed mind to interventions and denying that there's anything wrong, she said.
"You're really setting them up for failure, because it's not a crime, it doesn't mean you're less of a parent if your child learns differently," she said.
Rode agrees with Roberts that teachers should not recommend medication, but thinks that teachers have an excellent frame of reference for what is typical or normal development.
Also the parent of two children with ADHD, Morales has specific strategies she uses when there are kids with ADHD in her class: don't seat them together, put them on the edges of the classroom so she can see them better, and sometimes modify assignments.
Providing an environment conducive to helping kids with conditions such as this is getting harder as budget-tightening schools cut back on teachers, Morales said.
Last year, teaching at a public school in Arizona, Morales had one classroom with 37 students, which included at least four kids with ADHD and one with Asperger's syndrome. And teachers whose job it is to provide extra help to those kids get responsibility for more students, leaving them with less time for each one.
Roberts estimates that only about 10 to 20 percent of children who receive the diagnosis of ADHD actually need medication.
While parents like Barr have tried to inform themselves as much as possible about ADHD and treatment options, some doctors say the condition gets misapplied because it is a quick and easy catch-all diagnosis for a variety of behavior problems, with drugs available to treat it.
Parents are also culprits, and bear some responsibility for their children's behavior, Roberts said. She thinks a lot of kids just need better structure and discipline in the home.
"Parents want to leap-frog over the parenting job and get right to the grandparenting," she said. "Everyone wants to have fun with their kids and everyone wants to be popular with their kids like Grandma is. But the reality is: Someone has to be the bad guy or the kid never learns."
Morales recommends that parents stay involved in their child's school lives by helping them with homework, assisting with organizing their papers, and writing notes to teachers so that everyone is on the same page.
On behalf of her own two children with ADHD, Morales is writing letters now to their teachers explaining how her kids learn differently and what accommodations have been made in the past (they are both on medication). She is also asking the teachers to let her know about any problems this school year.
Looking back, Barr wishes that when her children first got the ADHD diagnosis and then started school, she could have had a teleconference with the school and the psychiatrist at the same time. Instead, she had to relay what the teachers said about her children's behavior to the psychiatrist, and then the psychiatrist's treatment decisions back to the school.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/08/11/adhd.medication.schools/
Foster care in Iowa: A dangerous exercise in self-delusion
NCCPR Child Welfare Blog
News and commentary from the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform concerning child abuse, child welfare, foster care, and family preservation.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010
Foster care in Iowa: A dangerous exercise in self-delusion
In writing about child welfare, there's a natural tendency to focus on places where something new is happening. It may be a foster-care panic, making things worse or a reform-minded administration making things better, but one way or another it's new. So child welfare systems that just keep on lousing up the lives of thousands of children year after year, without much changing, don't get the attention they deserve.
One such place is Iowa. Year in and year out, that state's Department of Human Services tears apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation – most recently fifth highest, when poverty is factored in. The rate is more than double the national average.
And there may be no place else in the country where the odds of a child being torn from everyone she or he knows and loves depend so much on which side of a state line they happen to live on. The rate of removal in Iowa is more than four times the rate in neighboring Illinois – but it's Illinois where independent court-appointed monitors have found that reforms have improved child safety.
Now Iowa is proving something else: There is no idea in child welfare so good, no innovation so successful that a lousy child welfare system, suffused with arrogance from top to bottom, can't screw it up.
The innovation in question goes by a variety of names, such as Team Decisionmaking, Family Group Decision Making and Family Group Conferencing. There are differences among them, but they're all variations on a theme: Within 72 hours of removing a child from the home, bring everyone who knows and cares about that child and that family – extended family, friends, neighbors, teachers, etc. - into one room to try to work out a plan to reduce to an absolute minimum the time that child spends in foster care with strangers. The plan may involve bolstering supports for the birth parents so the child can come home right away – or at least sooner – or it may involve placing the child with a relative or a trusted friend instead of a stranger.
It doesn't always work. Some child welfare agencies abuse the process to bully families instead of helping them. But in most places, this approach has shown considerable success in safely getting children out of foster care more quickly.
THE NEXT LOGICAL STEP
Some innovators in child welfare have taken it a step further: Why not see if we can bring everyone together just in the hours from the time a worker decides a child must be removed to the time the physical act of removal is supposed to take place, and try to find a way to prevent the child from being taken away at all? It's been particularly successful in neighborhoods where it's been tried in New York City. (Though the city's Administration for Children's Services has regressed in many other ways, it's stuck with this initiative).
So, could there possibly be a child welfare agency so arrogant about its own omnipotence, so callous about the inherent harm to children that comes from being taken from their families, and so just plain dumb that they would exert all the effort to set up these meetings and then refuse to use them to find alternatives to taking away the child?
Welcome to Iowa.
According to a well-reported story in the Des Moines Register, the Iowa Department of Human Services wants to implement statewide a program in one county called "pre-removal conferences." As the name implies, the conferences are solely for the purposes of issuing what amounts to an ultimatum to the family: We're taking your kids, you can scream and yell about it, or you can cooperate, but we're taking your kids. This way, according to Wendy Rickman, administrator of DHS' Division of Child and Family Services, parents are less likely to make a scene, a child can take his favorite toy with him, etc.
"Our mantra is be very hard on the problem, but be very easy on the people," Rickman told the Register. "We say, 'You cannot abuse or neglect your kids,' but in the process, the system should not further traumatize.'
So taking a child from his entire family and landing him in the home of strangers, away from mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, teachers, friends, and classmates is "very easy" for the child – just so long as he gets to take a teddy bear with him. Right. And it certainly won't "further traumatize" the child if there's a meeting in advance.
I don't know which is worse – if they know better and are just putting out a line for public consumption or if they're actually engaged in mass self-delusion and seriously believe this.
IT'S THE FACT OF REMOVAL THAT'S TRAUMATIC
In case they really don't know, let's put it on the record: The main reason foster care is so traumatic is the fact of removal, regardless of how it's done. And the more DHS workers convince themselves they've made removal harmless by avoiding "a scene," the less likely they are to take the steps needed to actually prevent wrongful removal – steps that other states have used to create systems that take far fewer children than Iowa while keeping children safer.
The ignorance and/or self-delusion is accompanied by a dangerous arrogance, as can be seen in this comment from DHS social work administrator Mike McInroy: "We didn't want it to be a negotiation," McInroy said. "You could be there a couple hours, going back and forth."
Of course not. After all, we certainly wouldn't want to take a couple of hours of Mr. McInroy's precious time in order to save a child weeks, months or maybe a lifetime of foster care.
Even Howard Davidson, executive Director of the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law seemed unable to quite believe what Iowa was doing. He told the Register Iowa's approach is:
"kind of a strange process." "Undoubtedly the agency has very good intentions," Davidson said, "but this needs to be thought through more carefully." Davidson said parents are at a disadvantage because they haven't had time to consult with an attorney, and the court hasn't assigned the child a lawyer yet. "Most parents are very compliant and docile because it's the power of the state and all that," Davidson said.
REMOVAL IS INEVITABLE
To the extent that there is any good news in all this, it is in these two revelations in the Register story:
● First, at least for the moment, DHS is abandoning the fiction one always hears from lousy child welfare agencies that take huge numbers of kids - the one where they piously proclaim that they don't remove kids, they don't make that decision, they don't have the power, blah, blah, blah, it's all up to a judge. For the moment, at least, Iowa DHS has dropped this silly pretense and made clear that they do, indeed, decide when children are going to be taken from their homes. The only job of the judge is to rubber stamp what DHS already has decided. According to the Register:
At Iowa's pre-removal conferences, DHS workers make clear that removal is inevitable. They ask parents to sign a consent for the emergency removal, and tell them DHS will seek a court order if they decline.
● Second, it turns out that Iowa apparently has the nation's most considerate child abusers.
DHS labels every case in which it marches in to remove a child an "emergency" placing children at "imminent" risk of maltreatment. But the Register found that the majority of Iowa child abusers apparently go out of their way to place children at imminent risk only on Mondays through Fridays, during normal business hours, since that's when most "emergency" removals take place.
Posted by NATIONAL COALITION FOR CHILD PROTECTION REFORM at 7:40 AM
http://nccpr.blogspot.com/2010/08/foster-care-in-iowa-dangerous-exercise.html
News and commentary from the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform concerning child abuse, child welfare, foster care, and family preservation.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010
Foster care in Iowa: A dangerous exercise in self-delusion
In writing about child welfare, there's a natural tendency to focus on places where something new is happening. It may be a foster-care panic, making things worse or a reform-minded administration making things better, but one way or another it's new. So child welfare systems that just keep on lousing up the lives of thousands of children year after year, without much changing, don't get the attention they deserve.
One such place is Iowa. Year in and year out, that state's Department of Human Services tears apart families at one of the highest rates in the nation – most recently fifth highest, when poverty is factored in. The rate is more than double the national average.
And there may be no place else in the country where the odds of a child being torn from everyone she or he knows and loves depend so much on which side of a state line they happen to live on. The rate of removal in Iowa is more than four times the rate in neighboring Illinois – but it's Illinois where independent court-appointed monitors have found that reforms have improved child safety.
Now Iowa is proving something else: There is no idea in child welfare so good, no innovation so successful that a lousy child welfare system, suffused with arrogance from top to bottom, can't screw it up.
The innovation in question goes by a variety of names, such as Team Decisionmaking, Family Group Decision Making and Family Group Conferencing. There are differences among them, but they're all variations on a theme: Within 72 hours of removing a child from the home, bring everyone who knows and cares about that child and that family – extended family, friends, neighbors, teachers, etc. - into one room to try to work out a plan to reduce to an absolute minimum the time that child spends in foster care with strangers. The plan may involve bolstering supports for the birth parents so the child can come home right away – or at least sooner – or it may involve placing the child with a relative or a trusted friend instead of a stranger.
It doesn't always work. Some child welfare agencies abuse the process to bully families instead of helping them. But in most places, this approach has shown considerable success in safely getting children out of foster care more quickly.
THE NEXT LOGICAL STEP
Some innovators in child welfare have taken it a step further: Why not see if we can bring everyone together just in the hours from the time a worker decides a child must be removed to the time the physical act of removal is supposed to take place, and try to find a way to prevent the child from being taken away at all? It's been particularly successful in neighborhoods where it's been tried in New York City. (Though the city's Administration for Children's Services has regressed in many other ways, it's stuck with this initiative).
So, could there possibly be a child welfare agency so arrogant about its own omnipotence, so callous about the inherent harm to children that comes from being taken from their families, and so just plain dumb that they would exert all the effort to set up these meetings and then refuse to use them to find alternatives to taking away the child?
Welcome to Iowa.
According to a well-reported story in the Des Moines Register, the Iowa Department of Human Services wants to implement statewide a program in one county called "pre-removal conferences." As the name implies, the conferences are solely for the purposes of issuing what amounts to an ultimatum to the family: We're taking your kids, you can scream and yell about it, or you can cooperate, but we're taking your kids. This way, according to Wendy Rickman, administrator of DHS' Division of Child and Family Services, parents are less likely to make a scene, a child can take his favorite toy with him, etc.
"Our mantra is be very hard on the problem, but be very easy on the people," Rickman told the Register. "We say, 'You cannot abuse or neglect your kids,' but in the process, the system should not further traumatize.'
So taking a child from his entire family and landing him in the home of strangers, away from mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, teachers, friends, and classmates is "very easy" for the child – just so long as he gets to take a teddy bear with him. Right. And it certainly won't "further traumatize" the child if there's a meeting in advance.
I don't know which is worse – if they know better and are just putting out a line for public consumption or if they're actually engaged in mass self-delusion and seriously believe this.
IT'S THE FACT OF REMOVAL THAT'S TRAUMATIC
In case they really don't know, let's put it on the record: The main reason foster care is so traumatic is the fact of removal, regardless of how it's done. And the more DHS workers convince themselves they've made removal harmless by avoiding "a scene," the less likely they are to take the steps needed to actually prevent wrongful removal – steps that other states have used to create systems that take far fewer children than Iowa while keeping children safer.
The ignorance and/or self-delusion is accompanied by a dangerous arrogance, as can be seen in this comment from DHS social work administrator Mike McInroy: "We didn't want it to be a negotiation," McInroy said. "You could be there a couple hours, going back and forth."
Of course not. After all, we certainly wouldn't want to take a couple of hours of Mr. McInroy's precious time in order to save a child weeks, months or maybe a lifetime of foster care.
Even Howard Davidson, executive Director of the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law seemed unable to quite believe what Iowa was doing. He told the Register Iowa's approach is:
"kind of a strange process." "Undoubtedly the agency has very good intentions," Davidson said, "but this needs to be thought through more carefully." Davidson said parents are at a disadvantage because they haven't had time to consult with an attorney, and the court hasn't assigned the child a lawyer yet. "Most parents are very compliant and docile because it's the power of the state and all that," Davidson said.
REMOVAL IS INEVITABLE
To the extent that there is any good news in all this, it is in these two revelations in the Register story:
● First, at least for the moment, DHS is abandoning the fiction one always hears from lousy child welfare agencies that take huge numbers of kids - the one where they piously proclaim that they don't remove kids, they don't make that decision, they don't have the power, blah, blah, blah, it's all up to a judge. For the moment, at least, Iowa DHS has dropped this silly pretense and made clear that they do, indeed, decide when children are going to be taken from their homes. The only job of the judge is to rubber stamp what DHS already has decided. According to the Register:
At Iowa's pre-removal conferences, DHS workers make clear that removal is inevitable. They ask parents to sign a consent for the emergency removal, and tell them DHS will seek a court order if they decline.
● Second, it turns out that Iowa apparently has the nation's most considerate child abusers.
DHS labels every case in which it marches in to remove a child an "emergency" placing children at "imminent" risk of maltreatment. But the Register found that the majority of Iowa child abusers apparently go out of their way to place children at imminent risk only on Mondays through Fridays, during normal business hours, since that's when most "emergency" removals take place.
Posted by NATIONAL COALITION FOR CHILD PROTECTION REFORM at 7:40 AM
http://nccpr.blogspot.com/2010/08/foster-care-in-iowa-dangerous-exercise.html
Judge recommends changes to foster care
Judge recommends changes to foster care
Mike Franklin, Global News: Thursday, August 12, 2010
Pallbearers carry the casket on March 9, 2010, into the funeral mass at Edmonton's Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples of a 21-month-old girl, who died in foster care.
Photo Credit: John Lucas, edmontonjournal.com
Following the 2005 death of a foster child, an Alberta judge has proposed a long list of changes to the province's foster care program.
Easier access to the foster parents' criminal histories, full body X-rays before children are placed into care, and proper training for foster parents with special respect to Shaken Infant Syndrome.
In the inquiry, the judge found that the caseworker relied heavily on information from the foster parent to provide his own criminal history. The man admitted to his two convictions for assault causing bodily harm, but neglected to mention he had originally been charged with attempted murder.
"One of the concerns raised was the impact of privacy legitslation on the ability of Children and Youth Services to access police investigation files of a prospective foster parent," Provincial Court Judge Donna Valgardson wrote.
The 13-month-old boy died on Nov. 26, 2005, two days after paramedics found him lying in the living room at his foster parent's home. His foster father said that he was playing with his older brother when he suddenly started shaking, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed.
The autopsy, however, revealed evidence of severe head injuries consistent with shaken infant syndrome.
The father was initially charged with second-degree murder, but pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2006.
NDP children and youth services critic Rachel Notley said a kinship care report released in 2009 did not describe the level of scrutiny Elson said is taking place.
"It acknowledged they were still putting kids in temporary care without the criminal record check being completed," she said, adding the government will have trouble following the recommendations unless they hire more staff.
"They're not going to be able to do it with the staff they have -- they've cut funding in this area since this inquiry was completed."
The report, released nearly two years after the fatality inquiry wrapped up, brought little comfort to the boy's mother.
"The pain and the loss of my son will always be there," she said Wednesday. "I live with the pain every day. I see people walk down the street holding their son's hand, and I wonder, why couldn't that be me? "The guy only got four-and-a-half years for killing my son and I've got a lifetime of pain to live through."
She said she fears the recommendations will not be implemented because they're not binding. Even if the law changes to allow caseworkers to access criminal histories, it's still not mandatory for caseworkers to read them.
"I hope that this will help other children. My son's death has to come to something. I hope. But who knows."
With files from the Journal
© Copyright (c) CW Media Inc.
http://www.globalwinnipeg.com/Judge+recommends+changes+foster+care/3390777/story.html
Mike Franklin, Global News: Thursday, August 12, 2010
Pallbearers carry the casket on March 9, 2010, into the funeral mass at Edmonton's Sacred Heart Church of the First Peoples of a 21-month-old girl, who died in foster care.
Photo Credit: John Lucas, edmontonjournal.com
Following the 2005 death of a foster child, an Alberta judge has proposed a long list of changes to the province's foster care program.
Easier access to the foster parents' criminal histories, full body X-rays before children are placed into care, and proper training for foster parents with special respect to Shaken Infant Syndrome.
In the inquiry, the judge found that the caseworker relied heavily on information from the foster parent to provide his own criminal history. The man admitted to his two convictions for assault causing bodily harm, but neglected to mention he had originally been charged with attempted murder.
"One of the concerns raised was the impact of privacy legitslation on the ability of Children and Youth Services to access police investigation files of a prospective foster parent," Provincial Court Judge Donna Valgardson wrote.
The 13-month-old boy died on Nov. 26, 2005, two days after paramedics found him lying in the living room at his foster parent's home. His foster father said that he was playing with his older brother when he suddenly started shaking, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he collapsed.
The autopsy, however, revealed evidence of severe head injuries consistent with shaken infant syndrome.
The father was initially charged with second-degree murder, but pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2006.
NDP children and youth services critic Rachel Notley said a kinship care report released in 2009 did not describe the level of scrutiny Elson said is taking place.
"It acknowledged they were still putting kids in temporary care without the criminal record check being completed," she said, adding the government will have trouble following the recommendations unless they hire more staff.
"They're not going to be able to do it with the staff they have -- they've cut funding in this area since this inquiry was completed."
The report, released nearly two years after the fatality inquiry wrapped up, brought little comfort to the boy's mother.
"The pain and the loss of my son will always be there," she said Wednesday. "I live with the pain every day. I see people walk down the street holding their son's hand, and I wonder, why couldn't that be me? "The guy only got four-and-a-half years for killing my son and I've got a lifetime of pain to live through."
She said she fears the recommendations will not be implemented because they're not binding. Even if the law changes to allow caseworkers to access criminal histories, it's still not mandatory for caseworkers to read them.
"I hope that this will help other children. My son's death has to come to something. I hope. But who knows."
With files from the Journal
© Copyright (c) CW Media Inc.
http://www.globalwinnipeg.com/Judge+recommends+changes+foster+care/3390777/story.html
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