LYONS: Helping bad parents learn to be better
By Tom Lyons
Published: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Monday, September 27, 2010 at 8:40 p.m.
News that so pleased Richard Wexler went almost unnoticed by most people, and sounds like bureaucratic trivia.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services has granted Florida a 10-month extension -- and it could soon become five years -- on a waiver from foster-care funding rules.
That means federal dollars that in other states can only be spent to hire foster parents can be used here for alternatives, like helping troubled families keep their children and do a better job caring for them.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20100928/COLUMNIST/9281029/2055/NEWS?Title=LYONS-Helping-bad-parents-learn-to-be-better
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
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Special Need's Children and NH DCYF
As many of you may, or may not know, the month of September included special education week, for all the special needs children out there. This includes the many children without issues until DCYF/CPS got their clutches into them and these same children are now considered special needs kids. Many of whom are now being fed psychotropic medication for their newfound behaviors resulting from DCYF involvement.
There are also many children out there whom DCYF denies as having problems and there are reports of DCYF accepting social security check's for these children, while still claiming that the child/children are normal. And my story today mentions one of those children!
I am aware of an adopted child who tried several times to harm and kill his adoptive family and tried to burn their house down. The adoptive mother already could see that the child had special needs as he had difficulty learning colors, difficulty with buttons, zippers, getting dressed, task follow through, etc, and with behaviors. This same child also reported experiencing hallucinations which called him and his family members and told him to hurt others. The mother took him to outpatient providers who stated that the child had RAD and PTSD and other diagnoses and although he received outpatient help, he continued to show aggressive behaviors. The outpatient providers advised her to take him to a local emergency room when he reported the hallucinations. The mother brought her child to a local emergency room where the child was admitted to a NH state child psychiatric hospital, who kept this child inpatient for 4 months, while stating that the child was perfectly normal (what's interesting is that this hospital is supposed to be a short stay only hospital). The mother was concerned that the child was behaving aggressively to his family during phonecalls and visits and the hospital allowed the 5 yr old child to refuse visits and phonecalls. The child continued to talk about making fires and drew pictures on his tee-shirts of a person's head on fire. The hospital said that all of this was just normal behavior. The child reported that he was allowed to room with teenage children and have later bedtimes during this hospital stay. The mother knew her child needed psychiatric help, and this mother wrote a letter stating that there should be a safe discharge plan, as the outpatient providers had recommended a placement outside of the home until the child could learn to behave safely at home and the hospital was in process of sending the child home despite the recommendations of the outpatient providers. The mother did write the letter stating that a safe discharge plan was needed and the result was that NH DCYF took the child into custody from the hospital, via an ex-parte hearing on the day of his hospital discharge. NH DCYF stated to the court that there was nothing wrong with this child, although he had a repeated history of agressive behavior, including trying to strangle his sibling and attempting to jump out of their car enroute to trips/errands.
DCYF took the mother to court and claimed that her child was perfectly normal, and they placed him in a foster home and filed for the Social Security benefits for the child (these social security benefits had begun during the child's inpatient hospital stay, as the government declared that this child was mentally disabled/mentally ill.) DCYF stated to social security that the mother nor any family member's wanted this child, which wasn't true and NH DCYF didn't contact immediate family to even ask if the child could stay with them. DCYF and the foster families collected and cashed the child's social security check's for months, still claiming there was nothing wrong with the child. The mother was alleged of having Munchausen's, which was very quickly proven false. The child's hospital records from the state run child psychiatric hospital showed that the child sexually assaulted another child at the hospital among other incidences of aggressive behavior, but God only know's if this child's parent's were ever told. The psychiatric hospital didn't tell the offender's mother. She only found out about this incident after she was able to read the hospital files, approximately a year later. And DCYF also claimed that the child was at or above grade level and not in need of an IEP. When the mother went to the state run psychiatric hospital to obtain this child's hospital school records a few months after his hospital discharge, she was informed that his school files were destroyed, but she was informed by the hospital staff that the child got all 100's on his school work. And the child harmed the foster family because his aggressive behaviors continued.
The mother fought DCYF for a year and finally won. The neglect charges were dropped and her son was returned, but he had not received the medical help he needed for the past year and his behaviors had become even worse. And even when her child was returned, our own court system refused to recognize this child as a child in need of services. Instead he was denied services and was referred to as a juvenile delinquent!
The mother moved out of state, after losing everything due to DCYF's unwanted involvement. Her child was placed in a facility in the state she now resided in. The facility did testing on the child, something NH DCYF failed to do. The child was found to have RAD, PTSD and FAS amongst several other mental issues, and was also found to be educationally handicapped which resulted in him receiving the title 1 reading, title 1 math, one on one help with schoolwork and smaller group settings that he needed all along, and there has been no time when this child got all 100's, even with all of the help he's received. And the child has been recognized as a mentally ill child and a child in need of services! The mother was told that since the child could not display safe behaviors, he should not go home.
So this is the life of a child from NH, who was not given the psychiatric help his mother pleaded for, which could have made a big difference in the life of this child, had he gotten the treatment he needed year's earlier. He is not the only special needs child in NH being denied his constitutional rights by the state to receive the care he needed to live a normal life. There are many others like this child. There are also many other parents like the parent I've told you about. Parents should be in charge of the wellbeing, health, medical and education of the child instead of the state of NH being in charge. With the state being in charge of our kids' health/wellbeing/education instead of the parents, the parents may be charged with neglect if they fight for the rights of their children. Then there are normal children, illegally taken from their families, who end up severely traumatized and medicated because DCYF doesn't have a clue as to the needs of a child. They medicate them instead, because they don't know how to a handle a child that they've torn from their families, illegally. If they don't understand the mind of a child, they shouldn't be drugging them to calm them down. But then how would they be reeling in so much federal money if they didn't incapacitate normal, sometimes hyperactive children?
ALL children are special gifts from God and should all be treated equally and they shouldn't be denied their rights because they have been taken into "the NH DCYF system". Their lives are just as important as anyone else's and they deserve to have an education, and prompt medical treatment. And of course, they have the right to be with their families and shouldn't lose that right because of NH DCYF or anyone else!
There are also many children out there whom DCYF denies as having problems and there are reports of DCYF accepting social security check's for these children, while still claiming that the child/children are normal. And my story today mentions one of those children!
I am aware of an adopted child who tried several times to harm and kill his adoptive family and tried to burn their house down. The adoptive mother already could see that the child had special needs as he had difficulty learning colors, difficulty with buttons, zippers, getting dressed, task follow through, etc, and with behaviors. This same child also reported experiencing hallucinations which called him and his family members and told him to hurt others. The mother took him to outpatient providers who stated that the child had RAD and PTSD and other diagnoses and although he received outpatient help, he continued to show aggressive behaviors. The outpatient providers advised her to take him to a local emergency room when he reported the hallucinations. The mother brought her child to a local emergency room where the child was admitted to a NH state child psychiatric hospital, who kept this child inpatient for 4 months, while stating that the child was perfectly normal (what's interesting is that this hospital is supposed to be a short stay only hospital). The mother was concerned that the child was behaving aggressively to his family during phonecalls and visits and the hospital allowed the 5 yr old child to refuse visits and phonecalls. The child continued to talk about making fires and drew pictures on his tee-shirts of a person's head on fire. The hospital said that all of this was just normal behavior. The child reported that he was allowed to room with teenage children and have later bedtimes during this hospital stay. The mother knew her child needed psychiatric help, and this mother wrote a letter stating that there should be a safe discharge plan, as the outpatient providers had recommended a placement outside of the home until the child could learn to behave safely at home and the hospital was in process of sending the child home despite the recommendations of the outpatient providers. The mother did write the letter stating that a safe discharge plan was needed and the result was that NH DCYF took the child into custody from the hospital, via an ex-parte hearing on the day of his hospital discharge. NH DCYF stated to the court that there was nothing wrong with this child, although he had a repeated history of agressive behavior, including trying to strangle his sibling and attempting to jump out of their car enroute to trips/errands.
DCYF took the mother to court and claimed that her child was perfectly normal, and they placed him in a foster home and filed for the Social Security benefits for the child (these social security benefits had begun during the child's inpatient hospital stay, as the government declared that this child was mentally disabled/mentally ill.) DCYF stated to social security that the mother nor any family member's wanted this child, which wasn't true and NH DCYF didn't contact immediate family to even ask if the child could stay with them. DCYF and the foster families collected and cashed the child's social security check's for months, still claiming there was nothing wrong with the child. The mother was alleged of having Munchausen's, which was very quickly proven false. The child's hospital records from the state run child psychiatric hospital showed that the child sexually assaulted another child at the hospital among other incidences of aggressive behavior, but God only know's if this child's parent's were ever told. The psychiatric hospital didn't tell the offender's mother. She only found out about this incident after she was able to read the hospital files, approximately a year later. And DCYF also claimed that the child was at or above grade level and not in need of an IEP. When the mother went to the state run psychiatric hospital to obtain this child's hospital school records a few months after his hospital discharge, she was informed that his school files were destroyed, but she was informed by the hospital staff that the child got all 100's on his school work. And the child harmed the foster family because his aggressive behaviors continued.
The mother fought DCYF for a year and finally won. The neglect charges were dropped and her son was returned, but he had not received the medical help he needed for the past year and his behaviors had become even worse. And even when her child was returned, our own court system refused to recognize this child as a child in need of services. Instead he was denied services and was referred to as a juvenile delinquent!
The mother moved out of state, after losing everything due to DCYF's unwanted involvement. Her child was placed in a facility in the state she now resided in. The facility did testing on the child, something NH DCYF failed to do. The child was found to have RAD, PTSD and FAS amongst several other mental issues, and was also found to be educationally handicapped which resulted in him receiving the title 1 reading, title 1 math, one on one help with schoolwork and smaller group settings that he needed all along, and there has been no time when this child got all 100's, even with all of the help he's received. And the child has been recognized as a mentally ill child and a child in need of services! The mother was told that since the child could not display safe behaviors, he should not go home.
So this is the life of a child from NH, who was not given the psychiatric help his mother pleaded for, which could have made a big difference in the life of this child, had he gotten the treatment he needed year's earlier. He is not the only special needs child in NH being denied his constitutional rights by the state to receive the care he needed to live a normal life. There are many others like this child. There are also many other parents like the parent I've told you about. Parents should be in charge of the wellbeing, health, medical and education of the child instead of the state of NH being in charge. With the state being in charge of our kids' health/wellbeing/education instead of the parents, the parents may be charged with neglect if they fight for the rights of their children. Then there are normal children, illegally taken from their families, who end up severely traumatized and medicated because DCYF doesn't have a clue as to the needs of a child. They medicate them instead, because they don't know how to a handle a child that they've torn from their families, illegally. If they don't understand the mind of a child, they shouldn't be drugging them to calm them down. But then how would they be reeling in so much federal money if they didn't incapacitate normal, sometimes hyperactive children?
ALL children are special gifts from God and should all be treated equally and they shouldn't be denied their rights because they have been taken into "the NH DCYF system". Their lives are just as important as anyone else's and they deserve to have an education, and prompt medical treatment. And of course, they have the right to be with their families and shouldn't lose that right because of NH DCYF or anyone else!
Monday, September 27, 2010
Child Protective Services’ Criminals Get What’s Coming to Them
The truth will out, it always does. This is just the beginning. What is to come will make Nuremberg look like Romper Room. =============================== Under RICO, a person who is a member of an enterprise that has committed any two of 35 crimes—27 federal crimes and 8 state crimes—within a 10-year period can be charged with racketeering. Those found guilty of racketeering can be fined up to $25000 and/or sentenced to 20 years in prison per racketeering count. In addition, the racketeer must forfeit all ill-gotten gains and interest in any business gained through a pattern of “racketeering activity.” RICO also permits a private individual harmed by the actions of such an enterprise to file a civil suit; if successful, the individual can collect treble damages. When the US Attorney decides to indict someone under RICO, he or she has the option of seeking a pre-trial restraining order or injunction to temporarily seize a defendant’s assets and prevent the transfer of potentially forfeitable property, as well as require the defendant to put up a performance bond. This provision was placed in the law because the owners of Mafia-related shell corporations often absconded with the assets. An injunction and/or performance bond ensures that there is something to seize in the event of a guilty verdict. CONSPIRACY – 18 USC 371 makes it a separate Federal crime or offense for anyone to conspire or agree with someone else to do something which, if actually carried out, would …
http://thelawtonlawyer.com/lawtalk/child-protective-services-criminals-get-whats-coming-to-them/
Agency Admits Fault in Death of Child
Agency Admits Fault in Death of Child
By RAY RIVERA
Published: September 24, 2010
A supervisor and a caseworker for New York City’s child welfare agency have been suspended without pay for failing to adequately oversee the case of a bruised and emaciated 4-year-old girl who was found dead in her mother’s apartment in Brooklyn this month, the agency said Friday.
Admitting for the first time that there had been internal breakdowns in the case, the agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, said in a brief statement that there had been “lapses in frontline protective practice.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/nyregion/25acs.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
By RAY RIVERA
Published: September 24, 2010
A supervisor and a caseworker for New York City’s child welfare agency have been suspended without pay for failing to adequately oversee the case of a bruised and emaciated 4-year-old girl who was found dead in her mother’s apartment in Brooklyn this month, the agency said Friday.
Admitting for the first time that there had been internal breakdowns in the case, the agency, the Administration for Children’s Services, said in a brief statement that there had been “lapses in frontline protective practice.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/nyregion/25acs.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
Baby LK Report For September 26th 2010 - National Failure To Protect Week Special
http://www.legallykidnapped.blogspot.com/
Drug Laws Violated for Foster Kids, Part Two : Deeper Concerns
Drug Laws Violated for Foster Kids, Part Two : Deeper Concerns
by Kieron McFadden
In the wake of a little boy's suicide and the admission by child welfare chiefs
that they violated a 2005 law aimed at protecting kids from psychiatric-drug use, some Florida lawmakers suggest the death may be a symptom of deeper problems.
The 2005 law came about when Florida lawmakers became concerned that kids in foster care were being needlessly medicated to control "difficult" behavior.
On April 27, Sen. Ronda Storms, who chairs the Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee, wrote to DCF Secretary George Sheldon, ''This case raises serious concerns which demand attention and answers,'' Among the questions, she asked was, ``To what degree, if any, has the [department] ignored or circumvented . . . the 2005 law which curbed the use of psychotropic drugs in the treatment of our children in department care?''
A former lawmaker who authored the 2005 legislation, Walter G. ''Skip'' Campbell, who also chaired the children's committee, accused the DCF of ''cooking the numbers'' so as to make it look as if had curbed the use of mental health drugs to "manage" the behavior of unruly children.
In a report last September to the Florida Senate, the DCF claimed that less than 7percent (2,307!) foster kids were on such drugs. It also claimed that in almost all cases the agency had "received proper consent". But that report was based on figures from the DCF's internal database (known as the Florida Safe Families Network, or FSFN) long acknowledged by administrators to be unreliable.
In a memo as long ago as September 2006, the DCF's then-director of family safety, Patricia Badland, said DCF's computer system recorded that only 4 percent of children in the state's care were being given psychotropic drugs -- while a separate system kept by Medicaid said nearly 12 percent - three times as many - of foster children were on psychotropic medications.
''This discrepancy would . . . indicate there is under-reporting of children being prescribed psychotherapeutic medications,'' Badland wrote. "It is critical that the . . . database be accurate and up-to-date to assure that we are able to monitor all children taking these medications.''
Eight months later, DCF did report to the Senate that 11.3 percent of children in its care from September through November 2006 had been prescribed mind-altering drugs.
Concerns over the drugging of children were raised as long ago as 2001, when The Miami Herald reported that child welfare administrators were relying on powerful mind-altering drugs to manage the behavior of unruly foster kids, and that those children sometimes suffered dangerous side-effects. Advocates accused the department of using such drugs as ''chemical restraints'' and this concern eventually led to the 2005 law.
Dr. Ewald Horwath, interim chairman of the University of Miami Medical School's psychiatry and behavioral sciences department, said, ''What use can one have for an anti-psychotic drug, other than a psychiatric one?''
He also said, ''It seems to me you would want parental consent before prescribing. You would want someone exercising judgment in place of the child, who cannot make decisions on whether benefits outweigh risks.''
It appears that in Florida children were illegally denied that basic right.
http://freedom-plaza-humor.blogspot.com/2010/09/drug-laws-violated-for-foster-kids-part.html
Tell Senator Chris Dodd to Leave our Children Alone!!!
S. 3817:
A bill to amend the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, the Family Violence Prevention and...
Primary Source
See S. 3817 on THOMAS for the official source of information on this bill or resolution.
A bill to amend the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act of 1978, and the Abandoned Infants Assistance Act of 1988 to reauthorize the Acts, and for other purposes.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-3817
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)