CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES REFORM (LOBBY CONGRESS)

Grandparents blog-Dedicated to Austin and Isabella

Sunday, October 17, 2010

CPS reform-Please Sign the Petition

CPS reform-Go to:http://www.rallycongress.com/fight-cps/1448/cps
Sign the Petition : 5,653 Letters and Emails Sent So Far
Nationwide, there are State run agencies who are supposed to be protecting abused children in dangerous situations. Each State has many different titles for them. All of them are main stapled as CPS (Child Protective Services). For example, in Texas they're known as DFPS. (Department of Family and Protective Services)

While there is an important need to find abused children and to protect them, the current system is only finding a small percentage of those truly abused children. The rest of their statistics that guarantee a high departmental income are from families who never abused their children. Where they get this income and the sources of information will be posted after the next paragraph.

I am not calling for an abolishment of CPS. What I am petitioning for is an overhaul and restructure to bring them in line with lawful investigation practices, to maintain Constitutional Rights and proper training for Agents who never had children, and psychological evaluations to find and replace the Agents who were themselves abused as Children and see abuse in every home regardless of the situation. This is not, I repeat, not a rare occurrence. I will supply statistics to support this and how this has escalated. I will also supply the sources.

Departmental income has become more important to CPS and their offices than actually finding abused children and protecting them. Each and every time they remove a child from the home, they get paid from the Federal Government. Here they are:

1. Public Law 93-247 known as the Mondale Act of 1974.

2. Public Law 96-272 known as the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980

3. Social Security Title IV-E funds.

The ASFA- Public Law 105-89 known as American Safe Families Act of 1997 is one of the most horrific laws on the books today. While it sounds nice in the title, when you get through the legal jargon, what this means is so wrong. If you ever had a child removed from your house by CPS, even UNFOUNDED and you are innocent, they will take that child in minutes after the child is born! Babies are highly adoptable and the Federal Government pays out $6,000 to the CPS office who conducts the legal kidnapping and gets them adopted quickly without regards to the biological Mother and her family. Since she was investigated once, they do this in the "best interests of the child" as she is a "potential" abuser.

The largest targeted type of families are folks with low incomes, children on SSI and are minorities. If you even have one of those three issues, you are a target for CPS to illegally investigate you. While these things are a surefire magnet, they have been known to do illegal investigations against families if they were reported falsely with malicious intent. Example is an ex-wife wants to get even with her ex-husband and his new family, she could report them and put them through Hell.

Why are the reasons CPS Agents actually find so little true abuse?

1. Agents who never had children and don't understand that a few toys in the corner of the room is not a hazardous mess.

2. Agents are not trained in real evidence recognition. In fact, no Agent in CPS has any training in evidence, the Constitution or criminal justice. They are given anywhere from 3 to 6 months of training, being taught that it is ok to break into a Home without probable cause or exigent circumstances.

3. Agents are trained to use subjective speculation and not objective factual reporting.

4. The Agents do not get psychological evaluations. A number of Agents who were abused as a child themselves see abuse in every home they go into, even if it's not there.

5. Most States do not require Agents to have a degree in Social Sciences. Any degree will do, doesn't even have to be related to the field.

6. The Agency has no checks and balances. A field Agent can lie to a judge or police officer with absolutely no proof and have it entered as factual evidence in a court of law!

7. Agents are trained to believe they are immune from the authority of the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, Sixth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. They violate this in every investigation done nationwide.

Here are the statistics and sources to support these facts:

Number of Cases per 100,000 children in the United States. These numbers come from The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN) in Washington.

CPS- Physical Abuse (160) Sexual Abuse (112) Neglect (410) Medical Neglect (14) Fatalities (6.4)

Parents- Physical Abuse (59) Sexual Abuse (13) Neglect (241) Medical Neglect (12) Fatalities (1.5)

As you can see, children are abused far more in care than at home. The calculated average is for every 1 abused child removed from an abusive home, there are 17 unabused children removed from loving non-offending homes nationwide.

Constitutional Violations and Court Rulings that CPS Ignores to this very day!

1. It's unconstitutional for CPS to conduct an investigation and interview a child on private property without exigent circumstances or probable cause. - Doe et al, v. Heck et al (No. 01-3648, 2003 US App. Lexis 7144)

2. All CPS workers in the United States are subject to the 4th and 14th Amendment - Walsh v. Erie County Dept. of Job and Family Services, 3:01-cv-7588

3. Police officers and social workers are not immune for coercing or forcing entry into a person's home without a search warrant. Calabretta v. Floyd (9th Cir. 1999)

4. The mere possibility of danger does not constitute an emergency or exigent circumstance that would justify a forced warrantless entry and a warrantless seizure of a child. Hurlman v. Rice (2nd Cir. 1991)

5. Police officer and social worker may not conduct a warrantless search or seizure in a suspected child abuse case absent exigent circumstances. Defendants must have reason to believe that life or limb is in immediate jeopardy and that the intrusion is reasonable necessary to alleviate the threat. Searches and seizures in investigation of a child neglect or child abuse case at a home are governed by the same principles as other searches and seizures at a home. Goodv. Dauphin County Social Services (3rd Cir. 1989)

6. The Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures extends beyond criminal investigations and includes conduct by social workers in the context of a child neglect/abuse investigation. Lenz v. Winburn (11th Cir. 1995)

7. Making false statements made to obtain a warrant, when the false statements were necessary to the finding of probable cause on which the warrant was based, violates the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement. Aponte Matos v. Toledo Davilla (1st Cir. 1998)

What can be done to change this for a better, more healthy Child Protection System?

I. Child Abuse is a Crime, not a touchy feely civil complaint and should be investigated as a crime.

II. Have the abuse allegations investigated by a Detective or Police Officer, who are trained for this as a career, whereas CPS workers are not. All investigations are joint ones with said Officers of the Law and with warrants properly issues under probable cause.

III. Re-train Agents to respect and obey the laws of the Constitution of the United States. If a family is guilty of abuse, a legal investigation will find it.

IV. Repeal the Mondale Act, Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act, Title IV-E rewards to CPS from Social Security and the American Safe Families Act. Remember, they are not what the title sounds like and has been the root core of many loving homes losing their children to a system that will abuse them.

V. Make CPS legally investigate those who sign up to be foster parents. They do not do this today, and many foster parent who want the money for fostering them are actually child abusers who never get caught!

VI. All interviews to be audio and video recorded just like it happens with the police!

VII. Hold CPS Agents and foster parents and the records keeper responsible for every child who vanishes or dies in their care for their location.

VIII. Also investigate the person or persons reporting the abuse, and if done maliciously with intent to disrupt a family, prosecute the reporter to the fullest extent of the Law regarding making false claims to Government Agencies to affect an unnecessary and costly investigation.

IX. Abuse is a Crime, guarantee the accused retain their right to face their accusers in a court of law. As the system currently is, this is not done.

X. The Children are to be tracked on a weekly basis, so no more children vanish in the system.

XI. If a disabled, mentally retarded or sick Child is put into Foster Care, the Child's current Physician will need to provide a copy of the diagnosis and treatment, and medications, if any, will be provided as prescribed by the Physician. All appointments must be kept while in Foster Care. Any violations without a very good reason will result in the Foster Parents losing their certification for Foster Care.

XII. If a Foster Child dies while in Foster Care, there will be an Investigation by the FBI and all parties responsible for the Death of a Child will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

XIII. There will be a National Database where all known abusers are recorded and can be accessed by Law Enforcement. Everyone who is found not guilty won't have their Convictions and Abuse Reports listed. It will be illegal to keep records of any sort on innocent individuals or families. If they are convicted in a court of law by a jury of their peers, then the report of abuse they are guilty of will be the only report listed.

Currently, none of this is done, and innocent families who are not guilty of anything are losing their Children based on the word of others where there is no burden of proof for Prosecution, for the sake of getting Federal Funds for tens of thousands of dollars. The few truly abused children are ending up in a system where they are worse off than where they came from, even to the extent of being killed. Also, the innocent children who are never abused are also killed.

Injustice against one American is injustice against all Americans. Help us put the Justice back into Child Protective Services and get them focused on finding and saving abused children. It's time we removed them from the profitable business of tearing loving non-offending families apart.
Posted byunhappygrammyat8:06 AM

Mom, Son Reunited After 2-Year CPS Nightmare

The following is an article by Fathers & Families Board Member Robert Franklin, Esq.:

The case that’s dropped jaws all across the U.S. and Canada is finally coming to an end. Judge Kip Leonard is finally allowing Noah Kirkman to return to his native Calgary after two years in foster care in Oregon. Read about it here (Yahoo, 5/29/10).

I and countless others have written outraged pieces about the case. Noah Kirkman is now 12 years old. When he was taken into foster care by Oregon authorities two years ago, he had not been abused; he had not been neglected. No one has ever claimed that his mother Lisa Kirkman (pictured) or his stepfather John Kirkman has ever been anything but a good parent to him. That’s reflected in his grades which are straight A’s despite Noah’s severe ADHD.

No, in their zeal to substitute foster care for parental care, Oregon child welfare authorities decided that Lisa Kirkman had abandoned her son. How did they figure that? Well, he was living with his stepfather in Oregon, that’s how. Make sense to you? After all, John has been the boy’s steadfast and true dad for 10 of his 12 years on this earth. How Oregon child welfare workers and Judge Leonard concluded that a boy, who’s never been abused or neglected in any way and who’s living with his stepfather, had been abandoned is one for the record books. In all the annals of state intervention into families, has there ever been a case more arbitrary or capricious?
Recently, Lisa Kirkman asked what Oregon child welfare authorities do with kids who go to summer camp. She had a point. If a stepfather has no parental authority, does a camp counselor? Can we look forward, in the upcoming weeks, to child welfare sweeps of Oregon summer camps for kids?

In the meantime, we can also enquire as to what’s changed to make the judge allow Noah to return to Canada. Is he in some way less “abandoned” now than he was two years ago? Have Lisa and John miraculously become better parents? I doubt it. I think the extreme level of public and media-based outrage at the highhandedness of the judge and the Oregon DHS forced them to do the obvious - the thing that any non-zealot would have done from the very first day - send Noah home to his dad and move on to real cases of children who suffer from parental abuse or neglect. In other words, Oregon DHS should have done its job.

Amazingly enough though, Judge Leonard didn’t return Noah to John and Lisa; he returned him to his grandparents in Calgary. How that makes sense is anyone’s guess, but it looks suspiciously like a judge trying to make himself look like a little less of a fool than most people probably think. He actually maintains the fiction that the Kirkman’s household may not be the best thing for Noah, although he doesn’t mention why it wouldn’t be.
Whatever the case, I have a couple of pieces of advice for the Kirkmans. First, once your son is beyond the jurisdiction of the Oregon court, bring him home to your house. He can see his grandparents any time and he’ll be beyond the reach of Judge Leonard’s draconian grasp.

Second, talk to an Oregon attorney about suing the state’s DHS under Oregon’s tort claims act. My antennae tell me that there was a lot of negligence involved in the decision to take your son. And you can count on a sympathetic jury. Almost every one on it will sit in court listening to the evidence while the sentence “there but for the grace of God go I” runs through his/her head.

Robert Franklin, Esq., is a board member of Fathers & Families, America’s largest family court reform organization. To learn more, see www.fathersandfamilies.org.

10/22/2010 3:48:55 PM EDT
Case: Texas agency didn't stop foster home abuse





In this June 22, 2010 photo, the Vick family home is shown in Elkhart,... ((AP Photo/LM Otero))


ELKHART, Texas—A frame house surrounded by connecting mobile homes served for years as a home for dozens of the most vulnerable children in Texas foster care. But instead of being a safe haven, it was a place where young girls were repeatedly molested and the abuse long ignored.

In a case with implications that reach beyond Elkhart, a community of 1,215 about 125 miles southeast of Dallas, a criminal prosecution has revealed how the state continually ruled out allegations of child abuse at the home before many of the same charges sent the man who served as its foster father to prison last year.

Officials with the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services consider the case an aberration, saying it in no way reflects how standard cases in the child services system are managed. But some foster care experts say it calls into question how the state investigates abuse in its largely privatized network of foster homes. The Anderson County district attorney says investigations should be done by an independent office.

James Vick, who operated the home for 10 years with his wife, Marilyn, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to 18 counts of indecency with a child by contact. Marilyn Vick was not charged in the case.

Anderson County prosecutors believe as many as nine preteen girls were abused by Vick, 47, and his adopted son, Michael, over 13 years, usually under the pretense of playing games such as hide and seek. Michael Vick has pleaded not guilty to three counts of indecency with a child and is free while awaiting trial. The number of victims makes the case one of the worst examples of foster care abuse to emerge in recent years, experts said. But as troubling for many is the back story, detailed in court records, of how state investigators ruled out allegations of sexual abuse against James Vick on at least three occasions before his arrest. Even if the Department of Family and Protective Services couldn't immediately prove the allegations, the mounting number should have been a sign something was seriously wrong, foster care experts said.

"This is damaging in a million ways," said Susan Lambiase, associate director of the New-York based child welfare advocacy group, Children's Rights.

The case raises questions about the personnel group within the Department of Family and Protective Services that oversees foster homes. That unit, Residential Child Care Licensing, allowed the Vick home to continue taking in children even as case workers removed those who alleged abuse.

Patrick Crimmins, spokesman for the Department of Family and Protective Services, acknowledged mistakes were made in the Vick case, but said they don't point to a larger problem. He said no other case has presented similar circumstances.

"Our investigators are well-trained and do good work, and the Vick case was an unfortunate exception to that," Crimmins said.

Law enforcement authorities began investigating in April 2007 after receiving a videotape in which two sisters, ages 11 and 12, alleged during an interview at a child advocacy center that they had been abused in the foster home three years earlier. The allegations surfaced when the department's Child Protective Services division was called to investigate an accidental shooting involving a gun belonging to the adoptive father of the two girls.

The videotape, sent anonymously to the Anderson County sheriff, led to a grand jury's indictment of James Vick.

But a Residential Child Care Licensing investigator who viewed the tape ruled out the allegations because she said the girls didn't mention Vick's prosthetic leg and, therefore, weren't believable. After Vick's arrest, a supervisor from the unit revisited the matter and issued a report citing "overwhelming evidence" that six foster children had been sexually abused.

The report also questioned whether the collection of mobile homes, converted into bedrooms, was suitable for children. In a September interview with The Associated Press at the state prison unit in Snyder, Vick said he doesn't consider himself a predator. He said he pleaded guilty and avoided a trial largely out of fear that he could receive a life sentence.

"I believe God knows the truth," he said. "He's the one who let me come in (prison), and He's going to bring me out."

Vick's son, Michael, is a 22-year-old Army private who was serving in Iraq at the time of his arrest and remains on active duty. His attorney, Jeff Herrington of Palestine, did not respond to AP's interview requests.

Court records show that Michael Vick acknowledged to a military investigator that as a teenager he fondled some of the young girls living in his parents' home as foster children and felt remorse. "I can't change the past or what I did, but I can assure you that I am changing what tomorrow holds for myself and everyone around me," he told the investigator, according to the records.

James Vick and his wife were affiliated with the Bair Foundation, one of the approximately 200 child-placing agencies that have contracts with the state to recruit and train foster parents. The Pennsylvania-based nonprofit, which describes itself on its website as a "Christian foster care ministry," typically takes in more than 1,000 children a year in Texas, making it one of the largest doing business with the state.

The Vick home was a significant part of the system because it could accommodate as many as 12 children, including those with severe behavioral problems.

James Vick told the AP he and his wife were paid as much as $70,000 a year as foster parents and that it became their sole source of income.

Anderson County District Attorney Doug Lowe contends the state's failure to verify cases of abuse in the home reflects a conflict of interest in the investigative process. He said investigators are prone to minimizing problems because Residential Child Care Licensing is the same unit that approves the agencies and regularly monitors their homes.

Crimmins, the Family and Protective Services spokesman, said suggesting state investigators lack objectivity is "an enormous leap" that isn't justified.

Besides initially dismissing the allegations of sexual abuse detailed in the two young sisters' videotape, state licensing investigators ruled out similar allegations against James Vick by other girls in foster care in 2003 and 2004, court records show. The records do not specify why those cases were ruled out.

Family and Protective Services did not provide its records to the AP because the attorney general's office ruled them confidential. The 2003 case involved an 11-year-old girl who claimed Vick fondled her breasts within a week of her arrival at the home, according to court records. The girl and her sister, with whom she had confided, were both to testify against Vick at trial, the records show.

Lowe said a 2003 videotape of the girl's allegations wasn't made available to his office until the criminal investigation four years later. "We didn't have a chance to review it, so more kids were harmed," the district attorney said.

Yet another failure by CPS.