YouTube - Austin & Edward Bryant Press Conference - EPSO

YouTube - Austin & Edward Bryant Press Conference - EPSO

Oh the stuff I find when not looking for it

Oh the stuff I find when not looking for it


Did you know that...

• 5,800,000 children were referred to Child Protective Services (CPS)

• 3,600,000 were investigated for maltreatment by CPS

• 902,000 children were determined to be victims of abuse or neglect

• The annual estimated direct cost of medical care for child abuse and neglect in the U.S. is $33,101,302,133

• The annual estimated direct AND indirect cost of child abuse and neglect in the U.S. is $103.8 billion in 2007 value
More:

OK, so here's the figures-

5,800,000 reports

3,600,000 investigations (2.2 million "screened out" as obviously false reports to begin with)

902,000 founded cases

Here's how the math works=

Get rid of some extra zeros=

Move the decimal both sides=

Do the math=

THERE'S that magic 15% again. See my previous "85% of all child abuse reports are unfounded" stories.

Leonard Henderson, co-founder
American Family Rights
http://familyrights.us
"Until Every Child Comes Home"©
"The Voice of America's Families"©

COMMENT on this story

"Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own." --Aesop (c. 550 B.C.) legendary Greek fabulist

If CPS hasn't attacked YOUR FAMILY yet, see If you are ever approached by anyone from social services.... and WHEN THEY COME AFTER YOU

Learn as much as you can, as fast as you can at How To Fight CPS

Get YOUR VERSION OF HISTORY ON THE RECORD with your Sworn Declaration

Leonard Henderson, co-founder
American Family Rights Association
http://familyrights.us
"Until Every Child Comes Home" ©
"The Voice of America's Families" ©

I am not a lawyer and I do not pretend to give legal advice. If you need legal advice, see AFRA's Lawyer Friends who certainly are not pretenders (http://familyrights.us/info/law) I merely relate the things I learned in the past that seemed to work in my own case or things that others have related to me that worked in their cases. I provide information for free and do not expect to receive any form of payment or reward on this side of heaven. Therefore, DO NOT rely on this information as legal advice. Real Legal advice would come from a real lawyer who hates CPS and prepares a VIGOROUS DEFENSE against a negative (proving nothing happened) instead of talking you into a plea bargain (http://familyrights.us/bin/The_Problem_with_Plea_Bargaining.htm)

AFRA Editorials are NOT copyrighted. Please feel free to forward widely. We are at 100% total complete WAR with CPS, not trying to be famous or important.

Questionable Conduct

Questionable Conduct


AFRA EDITORIALS
Guest editorial by Carolynn J. Middleton BA BSc
March 15, 2011

Questionable Conduct

Dear Friends of AFRA,

The other day I met with a woman, at her home, just as a caseworker from the local CPS arrived to do a follow-up, on a report that was made against her. The worker identified herself and gave the reason for her home visit. Against my advice, she beckoned the worker into her home. She invited her to the dinning room table and we all sat down. My introduction immediately followed, which the worker explained made her uncomfortable with my being present, for this interview. My client merely said, "Well, this is a friend of mine and I'm not about to shoo her away, just so you can have an interview!" That having been said the interview continued.

The worker began to ask a few preliminary questions;

The size of my client's home?
How many people were living here?
What were their names?
Their relationship to my client? etc...
With each question the worker had for this woman, to my surprise, she had a question of her own;

Do you like working for the CPS?
Do you often find no grounds to pursue a case?
A friend of mine is a good wife and mother, yet a CPS worker seemed to find something to get their agency
involved and it's been an arduous situation ever since, would you lie, cheat, commit fraud, or just plain distort the facts, just to make a case for your agency's involvement in my family?
Doesn't it bother you that so many people are needlessly involved with your agency, and you guys draw out cases as long as you can, just to keep yourselves involved in a family's private, personal business?
- and last but not least -

Are you just a bureaucrat, or do you honestly believe in what you are doing?
Would you lie, cheat, and/or distort facts if your supervisor told you to?
If you did, wouldn't you find it hard dealing with your conscience?
Wouldn't you find it hard to sleep at night, knowing what you did?
Would you still go after someone, even if you knew this was a good family?
Would you want others to do onto you, as you have done to others?
Needless to say, the worker became quite insulted by these questions and belligerent towards this lady. There was nothing for me to do but smile, and even laugh a bit, under my breath. It really was funny how this client of mine was putting this poor worker on the spot, through the wringer and in the spot light, as it were. It was even more fun just to watch this worker squirm at this woman's questions.

I have to admit I was not in any way suborning what this woman was doing, but she was very clever, with her approach. By the end of the interview, this worker seemed in a hurry to leave. This woman escorted the worker throughout her kitchen and the rest of her home, then answered the worker's questions carefully, honestly, but with an air of caution, and cleverly composed responses. When the worker left, my client showed me a very small tape recorder, she had hidden beneath the dinning room table. She demonstrated how she had started the tape recorder, before the worker came to the door and was just now turning it off.

My client said she would be making a complete transcript of the conversation and the interview, adding aspects that a mere audio recording could not pick up. She also informed me she would be adding quite a bit of narration to the transcript, in order to reveal just what transpired, visually.

About a week later this woman contacted me to let me know she had just received a letter, informing her this worker found no evidence to substantiate the report that had allegedly been filed against her, that there would be no further involvement with the agency, and that the case was closed. My client seemed quite proud of the way she handled the situation. She wasn't belligerent, she wasn't insulted, she wasn't shocked or overwhelmed, but she was very clever in the way she handled this worker's visit;

I must say...

I'm not saying this will work for most people. In fact, if insulted, a worker is just as likely to turn on the client and make a case, just to be annoying and intrusive. But lo and behold, my client's attitude and behavior was just the ticket, in this situation, and she told me that she was fully prepared to deal with this worker.

I asked her how?

She explained that, between information she had received from THE COMMITTEE, and from various articles and material she had read from AFRA, as well as other websites, she determined she was not going to fall into traps and contrivances that others had become victimized by. When she invited this worker into her home, I found it hard to believe that she was following our advice, but as it luckily turned out for her, she handled this worker very well indeed.

Here's one unusual one, for the record, I guess.

And here's one for us...!

Sincerely,

Carolynn J. Middleton BA BSc
( Executive Secretary )

COMMENT on this story

"Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own." --Aesop (c. 550 B.C.) legendary Greek fabulist

If CPS hasn't attacked YOUR FAMILY yet, see If you are ever approached by anyone from social services.... and WHEN THEY COME AFTER YOU

Learn as much as you can, as fast as you can at How To Fight CPS

Get YOUR VERSION OF HISTORY ON THE RECORD with your Sworn Declaration

Leonard Henderson, co-founder
American Family Rights Association
http://familyrights.us
"Until Every Child Comes Home" ©
"The Voice of America's Families" ©

I am not a lawyer and I do not pretend to give legal advice. If you need legal advice, see AFRA's Lawyer Friends who certainly are not pretenders (http://familyrights.us/info/law) I merely relate the things I learned in the past that seemed to work in my own case or things that others have related to me that worked in their cases. I provide information for free and do not expect to receive any form of payment or reward on this side of heaven. Therefore, DO NOT rely on this information as legal advice. Real Legal advice would come from a real lawyer who hates CPS and prepares a VIGOROUS DEFENSE against a negative (proving nothing happened) instead of talking you into a plea bargain (http://familyrights.us/bin/The_Problem_with_Plea_Bargaining.htm)

AFRA Editorials are NOT copyrighted. Please feel free to forward widely. We are at 100% total complete WAR with CPS, not trying to be famous or important.

End kids court totalitarianism

End kids court totalitarianism | court, system, child - Opinion - The Orange County Register

The most heart-wrenching issues I've written about involved the state's dependency court and foster-care systems. Officials have the power to remove children from their family homes and to place them in the care of strangers, yet the system that exercises these vast powers is veiled in secrecy and, therefore, off-limits to serious news coverage and oversight.
Fortunately, Assembly Bill 73, by Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, offers hope of fixing that system with a simple but time-tested approach: sunshine. His new legislation would make hearings in dependency court presumptively open, meaning that the public and media could cover the goings-on unless a judge finds good reason to close the proceedings.


Typically, I would hear from a distraught parent whose child had been taken into protective custody. Imagine the horror of such a situation. Often, the child would be taken by force as child-protective services officials would show up with armed deputies. In the world of CPS, the parent has no rights, and the child is taken away based mainly on the opinion of the social worker, who might start an investigation based on an anonymous tip. It's a "guilty until proven innocent" system, based on the idea that if a child is in danger, that child must be removed from the home immediately.
Obviously, we all want children removed from abusive and dangerous situations, but government officials don't always get it right. Many times, families are torn asunder based on unproven allegations and hearsay. The parents have no real standing in the court system and no real rights. The overburdened court system makes quick decisions that involve the fate of children and their families. Parents spend their life's savings hiring attorneys and battling this impenetrable system.
America remains a remarkably free society, but there are parts of our society that are frighteningly totalitarian. This is one of them. In one case I wrote about, Russian immigrants watched as the authorities removed their autistic son from their home and placed him in one of those developmental institutions, where he was pumped full of drugs and kept away from his loving family. No one had ever accused the family of mistreating the boy, but the authorities decided that it would be better to treat him with drugs than in the drug-free manner preferred by the family.
I recall the parent telling me that the authorities would never touch your family in the Soviet Union. He was shocked that such a travesty could take place in America. In another case I wrote about, an 8-year-old girl was taken from the loving care of her grandmother and placed in the custody of a foster parent who had been accused of some rather bad behavior at his foster home. In yet another case, a social worker was credibly accused of committing fraud – by claiming that a child's burn was the result of abuse rather than a household accident. It was extremely difficult getting any information about these situations. The approach from the authorities was clear: It was none of anybody's business. No wonder so many parents live in fear.
On the other end of the spectrum, we've all read about children who are left in abusive homes and end up being brutally abused, even murdered. Many of the bigger CPS systems are bureaucratic nightmares. We'd like to think that the people who make these decisions operate with a Solomonic sense of justice, yet we know better given what we know about closed bureaucracies.
A recent San Jose Mercury News editorial supporting AB73 detailed the same problems: "Three years ago, Mercury News reporter Karen de Sá documented the troubled state of this system. Her yearlong investigation found that overwhelmed, undertrained lawyers weren't properly representing their clients, that older children were too often excluded from proceedings affecting their lives, and that parents' and children's rights were routinely at risk."
Year after year, we see attempts to increase funding or reform the system, yet nothing ever changes. This is not a money issue but, rather, a problem rooted in the nature of the system. Feuer's bill could actually help. There's nothing like sunshine to expose injustice and create a push for reform.
Here is the bill summary: "Existing law provides that the public shall not be admitted to a juvenile court hearing in a dependency proceeding, unless requested by a parent or guardian and consented to or requested by the minor concerning whom the petition has been filed. Existing law permits the judge or referee to admit those persons as he or she deems to have a direct and legitimate interest in the particular case or the work of the court. This bill would express the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation to provide that juvenile court hearings in juvenile dependency cases shall be presumptively open to the public, unless the court finds that admitting the public would not be in a child's best interest."
Feuer is still crafting the final measure and is considering a pilot program. Seventeen states have presumptively open dependency court hearings, and the results are good. One judge from Minnesota attended a recent hearing in Sacramento and testified about the value of an open system. We don't need much testimony to know that openness is the preferred path in a free society.
While legislators waste their time introducing bills designed to play to their partisan base, here's someone who is looking to fix an actual problem. I don't often agree with Feuer's politics, but this is a stellar effort and proof that there can be areas of genuine bipartisanship. Possible resistance might come from unions, which generally prefer that their workers be able to do their jobs without much public input.
We'll see how it plays out, but let's hope legislators from both sides of the aisle take the side of openness and reform.
Steven Greenhut is editor of www.calwatchdog.com; write to him at sgreenhut@calwatchdog.com.
FOLLOW US @OCRegLetters

Maine-LePage: Federal auditors to look into DHHS Medicaid payments-What about NH DHHS Audit?

WLBZ2.com | Bangor, ME | LePage: Federal auditors to look into DHHS Medicaid payments
AUGUSTA, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- Governor Paul LePage's office says Federal auditors are coming to Maine to review Medicaid payments for school-based services from 2006-2008.

The payments totaled $138.9 million.

LePage's office says Maine Department of Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew recently learned that auditors from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General will conduct the audit. Maine DHHS officials say the notice of audit was not shared with them by the previous leadership of the department.

"The outgoing leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services failed to share information that my team needed to make budget decisions," said Governor LePage.

A state auditor is also looking into nearly $12 million in adjustments to claims that take advantage of higher Federal medical assistance rates. LePage's office says DHHS often has to make adjustments to MaineCare claims. The auditor is questioning the practice of processing these adjustments at higher federal match rates than those that were in place when the original claim was processed. If the auditor's concerns are affirmed, DHHS may have overbilled the federal government by several million dollars.

DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew said, "We are committed to a comprehensive analysis of the Department's finances to ensure that our limited state resources are spent appropriately and most importantly are focused on the direct care needs of the most vulnerable people in Maine. To move forward we must first resolve these problems from the past and get our financial house in order."

NEWS CENTER

DHS, foster parents settles lawsuit over foster child's death

DHS, foster parents settles lawsuit over foster child's death | NewsOK.com

The mother of a toddler who died in foster care has settled her lawsuit against the Oklahoma Department of Human Services and the foster parents for $400,000

BY NOLAN CLAY nclay@opubco.com
Published: March 18, 2011
The mother of a toddler who died in foster care has settled her lawsuit against the state Department of Human Services and the foster parents for $400,000, records show.
ADVERTISEMENT

Tamara Ely, of Ardmore, and her attorneys accepted $100,000 this year to dismiss her claims against DHS, records show.
She accepted $300,000 last year to dismiss her claims against the foster parents, the records show.
Raymond Palmer died on June 28, 2008, while under the care of foster parents Dale and Darla Owen. He was 19 months old when he was run over by a pickup in a pasture near Ardmore. He had been taken from his mother four months earlier.
In 2009, Ely sued DHS, the foster parents and the pickup driver, Heath Claborn. She alleged in her lawsuit that DHS knew the couple had too many foster children in the home to properly supervise.
Two weeks before the death, a Chickasaw Nation child welfare worker had visited the home and found no adults supervising the foster children, records show. The worker's supervisor reported the concerns to DHS, records show.
Raymond and his sister were among seven children at the foster home, DHS said. A DHS investigation confirmed child neglect, DHS said. No criminal charges were filed.
At the time of the accident, Dale Owen and some of his friends had been drinking a few beers and watching their children swim at a pond, DHS said.
The DHS settlement came from the state's self-insurance liability funds and not from the agency's operating funds.
The foster parents' settlement came from a foster parent liability insurance policy paid for by the state, records show.
The mother also reached a separate, undisclosed settlement with the driver's auto insurance, records show.


Read more: http://newsok.com/dhs-foster-parents-settles-lawsuit-over-foster-childs-death/article/3549651#ixzz1GxKyqgtA

Study puts blame on DHS for deaths of five children while in State Custody

Study puts blame on DHS for deaths of five children | Tulsa World

By GAVIN OFF World Data Editor
Published: 3/18/2011  2:31 AM
Last Modified: 3/18/2011  5:11 AM

Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20110318_11_A9_Achild667628&allcom=1

Read a Children’s Rights report on the Oklahoma Department of Human Services.

A children's advocacy group that is suing the Oklahoma Department of Human Services for failures in its foster-care system released an independent study Thursday intended to bolster claims it is making in federal court.

According to the report - conducted by child-welfare advocate John Goad and released by the group Children's Rights - proper DHS intervention could have prevented the deaths of at least five children who died between 2007 and 2009 of abuse or neglect while in state custody.

Additionally, the study found that:

It took personnel in the DHS Office of Client Advocacy a month or more to contact one-third of the alleged victims who lived in large group homes.

DHS Child Protective Services Division investigators failed to take the proper steps to protect 20 percent of the alleged victims in foster care and kinship/family member homes.

About half of all investigations of foster or kinship/family member homes ignored or discounted credible evidence of abuse or neglect.

DHS failed to interview nearly a quarter of key sources, including doctors, police and caseworkers.

"What the findings do is confirm that children in the foster care system in Oklahoma are in danger and are being neglected by the child-welfare system," said Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of Children's Rights.

DHS officials discredited the report.

In a news release, DHS officials state that Goad's Oklahoma report is strikingly similar to his 2003 report on Georgia's child-welfare system. Goad was paid $62,000 for his expertise, DHS officials stated.

Marq Youngblood, DHS' chief coordinating officer, stated in the news release: "Protecting the children who are placed in OKDHS care is our top priority. The people working in this agency have dedicated their lives to making sure kids are safe while getting the care and treatment they need."

Children's Rights sued DHS in February 2008, seeking widespread reforms in the state's child-welfare system. Reforms include lowering worker caseloads, adding training for foster families and increasing oversight.

The federal trial is expected to begin as early as October.

Thursday's report is the second study released by Children's Rights in recent months to target DHS.

Last month, the group released a report stating that one in eight children in the department's custody suffered from confirmed abuse or neglect. The Center for the Support of Families conducted that report.

Sheree Powell, a spokeswoman for DHS, said that in the coming days, the department will examine how Goad reached the conclusions found in the latest study.

She said Goad's conclusions differ sharply from the state's review of the same data.

But Lowry said DHS is ignoring the problem and that Oklahoma traditionally has been one of the worst states for abuse in the foster care system.

The Children's Rights report pointed to specific Oklahoma cases, such as a 5-year-old who died from blunt-force trauma less than five weeks after DHS reunited the child with his parents, who repeatedly abused him.

Also, a 1-year-old was struck and killed by a truck nine days after DHS screened out allegations from a child-welfare worker that the child and six others were left in the foster care home without adult supervision, the Children's Rights report said.

Goad attributed many of the problems to "systemic failures among DHS' responses to reports of child maltreatment in foster placements," the group's new release states.
Gavin Off 918-732-8106
gavin.off@tulsaworld.com