Teaching Children to Protect Themselves and Their Family

Readers can now get Knowing My Rules: Who Do I Trust for Nook and Kindle

This book teaches children how to recognize when it is unsafe to answer questions by police, caseworkers or school personnel, and what to do when faced with unsafe questioning.

We are living in an age where our children have become extremely vulnerable to influences that are destructive to the family unit. It is no secret that children are easily manipulated and even coerced into making false disclosures during child abuse investigations. The children are not to blame for this. The professionals charged with protecting America’s children have an extensive history of validating accusations with a blatant disregard for the truth and at the expense of the best interests of the child. The only way to protect your children is to teach them how to protect themselves when you are not present.

Missing Adopted Boys in Colorado

Edward Bryant, 58, and Linda Bryant, 54, adopted nine children out of foster care. The concern of officials is that these parents fraudulently obtained adoption subsidies for two of these children who went missing in 2003 at ages seven and under. They are looking for these boys, but it seems to be too little, too late. 

El Paso County, Colorado, is the agency who licensed and approved these parents. This is the same agency that spearheaded the efforts to shut down the American Family Advocacy Center in Colorado because I was publicly critical of this agency's administration of child welfare cases, and of the judges who heard these cases.

The agency is not returning calls to the media about this case.They cite confidentiality, but it strikes me as quite convenient that this confidentiality protects them from public scrutiny and accountability for a very public exposure of their chronic failures to act in the best interests of the children they puportedly protect.



This incident will undoubtedly surface among the family rights whackadoodles as it being all about the money, and as usual, they miss the point. If you follow the money, you will find how the federal funding drives the redistribution of children, but that is not the be-all and end-all of the issue. For many of the whackadoodles, the money is just a convenient excuse that distracts from the fact that they needed intervention for abusing or neglecting their own children.


The adoption subsidy/follow the money problem could be easily solved with two simple solutions:

1. Provide this subsidy to the child's family as part of their case plan before terminating parental rights, especially if neglect (often due to poverty) is an issue that brought the child under the jurisdiction of the court. This will dramatically improve reunification rates. This would be short term subsidies, not intende to last until the child turns eighteen.
2. Eliminate all adoption subsidies for children adopted out of foster care. This would effectively eliminate all adoptive parents whose motives are not centered on loving the legal orphans.
After all, why should adoptive parents get paid to raise the children their own parents couldn't afford to raise in the manner the state demanded? Dosen't it make more sense to help the parents get adequate housing, medical, and food for their kiddies in the family home rather than susidizing it in a stranger's home?

More on this story is at the Denver Post.

Florida DCF - Task Force Report into Death of Adopted Twin

The final report on Nubia Barahona's death at the hands of her adopted parents in Florida has been released.

This report was authored by experts, professionals in the field of child welfare. I have consistently bemoaned the fact that "professionals" dominate the issue when it comes to investigations, or recommendations, and that parents, who are the only true experts regarding their own children, are excluded from participation in every aspect of child welfare case administration and legislation.

It seems my concerns are justified. While this report was authored by professionals--experts--it reveals to the astute reader that professionals contributed to the practices that caused the death of this child, and the attempted murder of her brother.

I have linked the report for the reader's reference, but I can only address one issue at a time. Today, it will be item (1) of the Findings on page 6, which states:

The court-ordered psychological evaluation of Nubia and Victor performed on Feb. 12, 2008 by Dr. Vanessa Archer recommending adoption of Nubia and Victor by the Barahonas to be “clearly in their best interest” and “to proceed with no further delay” --- failed to consider critical information presented by the children’s principal and school professionals about potential signs of abuse and neglect by the Barahonas. That omission made Dr. Archer’s report, at best, incomplete, and should have brought into serious question the reliability of her recommendation of adoption. Several professionals, including the Our Kids’ case manager, the GAL, and the Children’s Legal Services attorney, as well as the judge, were, or should have been, aware of that significant omission, and yet apparently failed to take any steps to rectify that critical flaw in her report.

The psychologist's recommendation was found to be unreliable. Yet the court gave it great weight in arriving at it's determination that these children be adopted by the Barahonas.

How does this happen? I'm so glad you asked.

In practice, nationwide, these court-appointed professionals are under contract to the child welfare agency. They perform their evaluations and therapies at a discounted rate, deeply discounted. They obtain the large majority of--if not all--their referrals from the child welfare agency.

They have a vested, monetary interest in maintaining their flow of referrals. These referrals will dry up if the provider does not produce the recommendations and diagnoses the agency desires.

I have interviewed dozens of mental health professionals who have worked in some capacity on child welfare cases. Every one of them has disclosed that when the caseworker calls with the referral, she will invariably advise the service provider of the history of the client family, and state what diagnosis and recommendations she wants. She rigs the case, and the mental health professional goes along with it. Not surprisingly, those who maintained their professional ethics and conducted a competent evaluation consistent with the standards of their practice often returned diagnoses and recommendations that were refused by the caseworker, who then shopped for a more compliant professional to treat the family.

My investigations have revealed that the family history is often wrong, at the very least exaggerated and at the worst, completely false. Yet, the providers who rely on CPS referrals will accept this history as valid, and provide recommendations and treatments based on the false history, that conform to what the caseworker wants. Attempts by the parent to correct this erroneous history often results in the provider stating the parent is in denial, or out of touch with reality, and cite it as a contributing factor in their recommendation to keep the children out of the family home. The family members receive treatment for issues that do not exist, and these treatments invariably fail to remedy the issues. duh.

It appears this was a compliant mental health professional, who did exactly what the caseworker wanted. There is no way the caseworker, even knowing of the reports of abuse that raised concerns, was going to dispute the finding she had elicited. The GAL, being a typical GAL, rubber-stamped what the caseworker wanted. The judge did what judges do, accept agency recommendations without demanding evidence to support their recommendations.

This is one reason, a big reason, why the system failed Nubia. Why it fails all the children. I've stated this for years, and now, finally, some experts agree. It's about time.