Dangerous Prank Aimed At Mother Of Three By Her Ex's Wife

Dangerous Prank Aimed At Mother Of Three By Her Ex's Wife

This morning the TODAY show featured Tracy Wilder, a divorced mother of three, who "began getting phone calls, text messages and visits to her home from men she didn't know seeking sex," last February, TODAY reports.

Foster care in America: Sometimes it takes a lawsuit to save a child

NCCPR Child Welfare Blog: Foster care in America: Sometimes it takes a lawsuit to save a child

Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Foster care in America: Sometimes it takes a lawsuit to save a child
In a previous post to this Blog, I took issue with an attempt by Bryan Samuels, who runs the federal government’s Administration on Children Youth and Families, to try to let the foster care system off the hook for the dismal prospects of so many former foster children.

Fortunately, Samuels now has a new boss who believes in accountability.

In that same interview, with Youth Today, Samuels made comments that were nearly as absurd concerning class-action lawsuits to reform child welfare systems. He appears to suggest that these lawsuits really aren’t needed anymore because now the federal government has its own process for evaluating child welfare systems, known as Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs).

Yeah, right.

As it happens, one of the very few issues on which there is near-unanimity in the child welfare community is the consensus that CFSRs are c-r-a-p. Some of the reasons are described in this publication on our website. Samuels himself acknowledges how bad the CFSRs are in response to the very next question from Youth Today.

No one has been more critical than I of the group that so arrogantly calls itself “Children’s Rights” and their McLawsuits. But the notion that somehow a CFSR process, even a reformed CFSR process, could have brought about the transformation of the Alabama child welfare system into, relatively speaking, a national model is an act of self-delusion. As The New York Times documented in this story, that transformation took a lawsuit, R.C. v. Hornsby. (The suit was brought by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. Their legal director, Ira Burnim is a member of NCCPR’s volunteer Board of Directors.)

Similarly, New York City wasn’t about to stop taking children from battered mothers just because expert after expert says that’s a terrible thing to do to children. And, needless to say, that issue isn’t covered by the CFSRs. Once again, it took a class-action lawsuit, Nicholson v. Scoppetta. (Co-counsel for that one was NCCPR’s volunteer Vice President, Carolyn Kubitschek.)

It is particularly absurd to read such a comment from Samuels who, before taking his present job, ran the child welfare system in Illinois. No state has benefitted more from aggressive class-action litigation.

●There is no way federal regulators would have broken the iron grip of private agencies on the Illinois system and changed financial incentives for those agencies – reducing the foster care population from over 50,000 to under 16,000. That took a lawsuit, brought by the Illinois Branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, B.H. v. Coler.

●There is no way Illinois would have volunteered to provide concrete help to families so their children are less likely to be taken when family poverty is confused with neglect. That took another lawsuit – Norman v. Johnson, brought by the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago.

●It took still another lawsuit, Dupuy v. McDonald, to provide a bare minimum of due process for families – and children – trapped in the Illinois central registry of alleged child abusers, problems Samuels whitewashed in that same Youth Today interview.

The lead plaintiff in that suit was a child who was, herself, listed as a child abuser because she’d pulled up the pants of some children playing “doctor” in her parents’ day care home. For months she was exiled from her own home from 7am until 9pm; since that was a condition of her parents’ continuing to earn a living. At one point she tried to kill herself – all because of a listing in a central register. Good thing some good lawyers at the Family Defense Center had a problem with that, since apparently Commissioner Samuels does not.
And because lawsuit settlements usually come with independent court monitors we know that in both Alabama and Illinois, child safety has improved.

Of course these suits also have one key element in common – they were not brought by “Children’s Rights.” But even CR’s suits occasionally are helpful, particularly when other groups get them to craft better settlements than anything they come up with on their own, as in New York City and New Jersey. Their other suits sometimes lead to slight improvements, if only because of the publicity they get.

The key problem with CR is that their litigation has been getting worse – and they crossed a bright line in Michigan, where their litigation has made a bad system worse.

But that doesn’t mean we can simply replace all such suits with an idiotic federal evaluation process and expect that America’s vulnerable children will live happily ever after.
Posted by National Coalition for Child Protection Reform at 6:00 AM

State Fact Sheets for Grandparents and Other Relatives Raising Children

State Fact Sheets for Grandparents and Other Relatives Raising Children

Fact Sheet

October 2007

More than six million children - approximately 1 in 12 - are living in households headed by grandparents (4.5 million children) or other relatives (1.5 million children). In many of these homes, grandparents (approximately 2.4 million) and other relatives are taking on primary responsibility for the children’s needs. Often they assume this responsibility without either of the child’s parents present in the home.

ARE WE DOOMED TO BECOME A ONE-GENERATION SOCIETY?

one-generation famiies

ARE WE DOOMED TO BECOME A ONE-GENERATION SOCIETY?
By Judge Walter L. Blackwell III (ret)
bellasophie.com
As a nation, we have strongly endorsed and encouraged solid, functioning families. Families have been touted as the bedrock of this nation. And by families, I mean multi-generational families. The federal government even funds a foster grandparent program. Granted, not all families are functioning entities but we have long viewed non-functioning families with sadness and disappointment.

Catholic Charities Bow's Out Of Foster care

David McClure leads agency to take on foster-care children dropped by Catholic Charities in Rockford - chicagotribune.com

What about Catholic Charities from every state? I hope so, seeing as St. Charles Childrens Home in Rochester, NH is run by Catholic Charities. The same children's home who held my grandson Austin hostage for NH DCYF and then illegally adopted him out! Since when does it cost $300.00 per day to take care of a child? This is a huge cost to the states, especially when there is family, fit and able to raise their own!


Guided by his church's teachings, Bishop Thomas Doran of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockford believes state legislators — by legalizing civil unions for gay couples without protecting religious organizations — forced Catholic Charities to terminate its tradition of caring for foster children in 11 northern Illinois counties.

OCS staff, lawmakers hear heartbreaking stories at community meeting

Local News : OCS staff, lawmakers hear heartbreaking stories at community meeting - Frontiersman

WASILLA — Some called them “The Gestapo.” Others called them incompetent. One person said they act as if they sit at the right hand of God. Many called them liars.

Everyone seemed to agree that the Alaska Office of Children’s Services is broken and needs fixing before more children and their families are harmed by a system intended to heal and protect them.

Antidepressant use in pregnancy may raise autism risk

Antidepressant use in pregnancy may raise autism risk - CNN.com

This article lead's me to wonder about my granddaughter Isabella, whose mother was taking anti-depressant's during her pregnancy. I wonder if she has autism. I wonder if she has any of the other health problems her REAL family has. Not ever getting to see her I wouldn't know and never being told of any of her hospitalization's while in foster care, we have no idea if she is still the healthy little girl born to my daughter on August 31st, 2005.
We were told anti-depressant's were safe and were told their were no studies that proved different. We were also told they didn't cause withdrawls in newborn's, yet research proved that they definitely do. Even my daughter's court-appointed puppet and CPS argued with us about their safeness and withdrawl symptom's. Who gave them a license to practice medicine? It's funny they're too stupid and deceitful to admit morphine given to a mother in labor, spill's into the baby, which also causes withdrawls.
Whether Isabella has autism or anything else, we still want her. She is our blood and always will. Just like you can't choose your parent's, neither can CPS!

This is a picture of Isabella, in foster care. Notice the big dig on the right side of her forehead. This wasn't the only time she had marks on her. There were plenty more. Doesn't CPS do a great job picking and choosing stranger's for our children?

By Anne Harding, Health.com
July 5, 2011 5:59 a.m. EDT
The study is the first to look at the association between the use of antidepressants during pregnancy and the risk of autism.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The study doesn't prove taking SSRIs during pregnancy directly causes autism
The findings will need to be confirmed in future studies
Women should not be dissuaded from starting or continuing to take SSRIs
Untreated depression during pregnancy has its own risks, such as preterm birth
(Health.com) -- Children whose mothers take Zoloft, Prozac, or similar antidepressants during pregnancy are twice as likely as other children to have a dianosis of autism or a related disorder, according to a small new study, the first to examine the relationship between antidepressants and autism risk.
This class of antidepressants, known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), may be especially risky early on in a pregnancy, the study suggests. Children who were exposed to the drugs during the first trimester were nearly four times as likely to develop an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared with unexposed children, according to the study, which appears in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
The study included fewer than 300 children with a diagnosed ASD and does not prove that taking SSRIs during pregnancy directly causes ASDs, which affect approximately 1 percent of children in the U.S. The findings will need to be confirmed in larger studies, and should not dissuade women from starting or continuing to take SSRIs, experts on prenatal drug exposure and mental health say.
Health.com: Signs you should stop, adjust or switch antidepressants
"Poor maternal mental health during pregnancy is a major public health issue," says Tim Oberlander, M.D., a professor of developmental pediatrics at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver. "Nontreatment is not an option. While some children might be at risk from an SSRI exposure-and we don't know who, and how that works-there are many mothers and their children as well who will benefit."
Study shows increase in autism cases
RELATED TOPICS
Autism Spectrum Disorders
Antidepressants
Women's Health
Prenatal Health, Labor and Delivery
The lead author of the study, Lisa Croen, Ph.D., the director of autism research at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, a large nonprofit health plan based in Oakland, emphasizes the preliminary nature of her team's findings. "This is the first study of its kind to look at the association, and the findings have to be interpreted with a lot of caution," she says. "We can't detect causality from one study."
Untreated depression during pregnancy carries its own risks, such as preterm birth and growth problems, Croen adds, and "the potential risks to the child really have to be balanced with the risk to the untreated mom. We don't want people to rush off and stop taking antidepressants if they're on them. They really need to talk to their doctors about the risk-benefit ratio."
Health.com: Surprising facts about antidepressants
Max Wiznitzer, M.D., a pediatric neurologist at Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital and an associate professor of pediatric neurology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, both in Cleveland, says the study is too small to draw any conclusions. The study is a "signal," he says, "but with a really small group."
Using Kaiser Permanente's patient database, which includes more than 3.2 million people, Croen and her team identified 298 children with an ASD who were born between 1995 and mid-1999, and matched them with 1,507 children without autism who were roughly the same age and were born in the same hospitals.
The authors then cross-checked whether their mothers, in the year before delivery, filled prescriptions for an SSRI, including Prozac, Zoloft, Luvox, Celexa, and Paxil (or their generic versions). The researchers could not confirm whether the mothers actually took the medication, however.
Twenty of the children with an ASD (or 6.7 percent) were exposed to SSRIs in the womb, compared with 50 (3.3 percent) of the control children. After taking into account other factors that could affect both autism risk and SSRI use (such as the mother's age, ethnicity, and history of depression or other mental illness), the researchers found that any exposure to the drugs in the womb increased the risk of ASD diagnosis 2.2-fold, while first-trimester exposure increased the risk 3.8-fold.
Health.com: Do pregnancy and bipolar disorder mix?
Roughly 12 percent of the mothers whose children had an ASD were diagnosed with depression or another mental disorder. Previous research has reported an increased risk of autism in the offspring of mothers with mental disorders, but the new study did not find such a relationship in mothers who did not also take SSRIs.
Slightly more than 2 percent of all autism cases among children born in the late 1990s could be attributed to SSRI exposure, Croen and her colleagues estimate. That percentage might be higher today, Croen says, because SSRI use during pregnancy has become more common. A large 2005 study found that 6.5 percent of pregnant women were taking the drugs.
Croen and her colleagues thought to investigate a possible SSRI-autism link for two reasons. First, the rise in autism rates over the past several decades-which may be due to better awareness and diagnosis, rather than a true increase in cases-has roughly paralleled the growth of SSRI use during pregnancy. (The first SSRI, Prozac, was approved in the U.S. in 1987.)
Health.com: CDC: Autism, ADHD rates on the rise
Second, evidence from previous studies suggests that people with autism have abnormalities in their levels and regulation of serotonin, a brain chemical involved in mood and numerous other biological processes. SSRIs are thought to increase the availability of serotonin in the brain, and since the drugs pass through the placenta, they could conceivably influence the development of a baby's serotonin system.
In animal studies, changes in serotonin levels during pregnancy have been shown to have "downstream effects" on the development of the fetus and offspring, says Oberlander.
If similar effects occur in humans, they may vary depending on a child's genetic makeup, adds Oberlander, stressing that the vast majority of children in the study who were exposed to SSRIs in the womb did not develop autism. "There are many children who have prenatal SSRI exposure who are really quite resilient, and I think part of our job is to figure out who's at risk and who's not," he says.
Health.com: Questionnaire may help predict autism at 1 year
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has assigned most SSRIs a "C" grade for safety during pregnancy. When given at high doses, drugs in this category have been linked with birth defects in animal studies, but they have not been proved safe or unsafe in humans because few studies have been conducted. Pregnant women should use them "only if the potential benefit justifies the potential risk to the fetus," according to the FDA.
Nouchine Hadjikhani, M.D., an ASD expert and associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, in Boston, urges pregnant women to err on the side of caution. Animal studies provide strong evidence that exposure to high levels of serotonin in the womb produces autism-like behaviors and changes in brain structure, she says.
"I think one has to be aware of the potential risks of having these types of drugs during pregnancy, and really think twice before allowing them during pregnancy," says Hadjikhani, author of a 2010 paper speculating that excess serotonin levels in pregnancy due to SSRI use could be behind the rise in autism rates.