"Worst thing that ever happened"

Baby taken by child welfare agency at birth alleging mom had drugs in system at birth, and the agency refuses to return the child even after learning Mom's positive drug test result was in error. Oh, let's not forget, the baby had no drugs in her system at birth, either. How do you spell O-V-E-R-Z-E-A-L-O-U-S?

Taking a newborn baby (or any child) without conducting an investigation, without providing--or even considering--services designed to keep the child safely in the home pursuant to statutory reasonable efforts mandates, based solely on an unsupported hot-line call by a rabid child-saver collaborator is simply business as usual in our society. I call it "where there's smoke, there's fire knee-jerk syndrome." Except that often what the reporter sees isn't even smoke, it's only steam from a boiling pot of water, or dust stirred up from shaking a throw rug.

Mandated reporters have become expert at interpreting the most benign and innocuous events into life-and-death situations in order to have children seized and warehoused in stranger foster care.

Do you doubt these facts? Read the Complaint for yourself. It is a recitation of error after error committed by the agency in its rush to snatch a marketable baby to feed the voracious baby mill under the righteous guise of protecting children. Oh. . .and let's assume Mom refused to consent to drug testing. It's mandatory to consent, she refuses, they refuse to admit her for her childbirth. They then report her for medical neglect for leaving the hospital to have her baby. What a set-up.

One problem I see is that the child is not named as a plaintiff. She has the greatest claim to violations of her fundamental rights to family association. She has the right to the same protections as her parents, including a competent and ethical investigation, and the presumption that her parents are fit. She had the right to bond with her parents from birth--the most critical bonding time, which was stolen from her. She has the right to competent representation from her attorney, who won't rubber stamp agency actions at her expense. Her right were violated to a far greater degree than her parents's rights were.

The parents and attorneys are seeking some reform,

"I'm hoping that they'll either change their policies so it doesn't happen to another family, or they'll investigate it better before they take babies from their homes," said Ms. Mort, 21, joined by lawyers, her fiance Alex Rodriguez, 23, and 6-month-old Isabella Rodriguez at the American Civil Liberties Union's Oakland office. Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10302/1098960-455.stm#ixzz150R1NEX6

Changing policies won't prevent this from happening again to anyone else, or to this family in the future. Even if they win, these parents will lose. Nothing will change. Past lawsuits haven't prevented this from happening to this family.

YAWN. . .This story is nothing all that outrageous, or unusual. I've seen this same scenario over and over, thousands upon thousands of times since 1991. You'd think, after nearly twenty years, the so-called experts would get it right.

Since they haven't gotten it right yet, one can only conclude they aren't intended to "get it right." Certainly, the courts aren't enforcing the law, or the rights of the children and parents. Attorneys representing parents and attorneys aren't even demanding the agency get it right. So, is it any wonder the child welfare agencies are more rabid, more overzealous, more wrong than they were twenty years ago?

Getting it wrong has been institutionalized. Lots of luck with the lawsuit. . .the statutory immunity enjoyed by the agency, the workers and the hospital will make this an uphill battle. As for this suit being a catalyst for changes in policy or practice. . .dream on.

Exclusive: Florida DCF approved daycare raided by police

This story has not even been picked up by news organizations yet. 

A daycare center approved by DCF and used by parents accused of child abuse/neglect has been exposed as the source of abuse and neglect of children. The only reason parents weren't accused was because one of the parents was a client of Family Rights Advocacy Institute, whose advocacy exposed this abusive daycare facility.

Reports of child abuse reported against a parent (whose identity is protected for confidentiality) reveals that the abuse suffered by the children was perpetrated by Mrs. Beasleys's Daycare in Lakeland, Florida. Their own website declares:

We are a fully licensed and accredited day care center providing a safe and nurturing environment where children thrive and flourish.

False advertising:
    Reports from children in that daycare indicate that they are not fed, and that they arrive at home in the evening filthy. According to one parent who move their children to another daycare, "My son's socks were white in the morning when he was delivered, and white in the evening when I picked him up.

A very young child reports having lunch set in front of him in the new daycare, and when he was encouraged to eat, he remarked, "You mean this food is for me?" In Mrs. Beasleys's daycare, he was not permitted to eat his lunch and he arrived at home in the evening starving.

This is notable because Mr. Beasleys daycare was licensed by Florida DCF as an approved daycare. Many parents placing their children in this daycare did so as a part of their case plans under DCF child welfare cases. DCF vouched for this daycare.

On Friday, law enforcement and DCF workers was observed raiding Mrs. Beasley's and shut it down. Reports include allegations of unsafe driving causing injury to children in the Mrs. Beasley's vehicle and reported sexual assault of children by other children.

Here we go again. . .DCF demonstrates the inability to judge who is qualified to care for children. . .and permits children to be place with inappropriate and abusive caregivers upon pain of termination of parental rights.

Way to go, Lakeland, Florida.

Couple charged with beating, starving 30-pound 6-year-old

"JEFFERSON COUNTY (Colorado) - A couple accused of beating and starving a 6-year-old adoptive son was formally charged on Thursday morning." See article.

This child was adopted through Jefferson County Social Services when he was two. At that time, the article describes he was of above average height and weight. Four years later, he had lost weight, suffered bruising all over his body and his brain was bloody and swelling.

Arnolds took custody of the boy on a foster-to-adopt program when he was two and a half years old. That adoption was completed in 2006, . . .

I have seen Jefferson County Social Services in action. In my experience, their decisions are not based on the best interests of the child. They are petty, abusive and incompetent. They take children from imperfect homes and give them to dangerous homes. Nice work, JeffCo.  They trained, supervised and licensed these superior parents. They approved of them. They preferred them over the child's real mommy and daddy. It seems their judgement was somewhat impaired. 

Nobody will be held accountable for this dreadful outcome. No caseworker will be investigated or sanctioned for her deplorable misuse of her discretion. The agency will not come under any scrutiny. As one caseworker stated the typical attitude with a shrug of her shoulders, "These things happen." Gee, it's a real shame some of us can't be so blase' about this kind of outcome.

The child's biological parents will never know what happened to the child that Jefferson County found or manufactured some reason not to reunify with his parents. Perhaps their case plan wasn't really designed to correct the issues that brought this family under their scrutiny. Perhaps they didn't provide the proper services, or timely services. Perhaps the parents never had a chance. Who knows? It's all water under the bridge. But what if we could know? What if Jefferson County was just too eager to remove this marketable child rather than provide appropriate, compassionate in-home services to keep him with his mommy and daddy? Wouldn't that make this tragedy more deplorable?

We'll never know what happened to cause this child to be declared a legal orphan and redistributed to better parents by the infallible state. All we do know is that this child abuse statistic will be reported as physical abuse by a parent. Not adoptive parent. Parent. The state will not distinguish abuse committed by biological parents as opposed to artificial parents-for-pay. It's all one and the same to the government. If the child dies, his biological parents will never be told where his grave is. 

We'll never know if adoptive homes are safer for children than imperfect biological homes as long as the reports do not distinguish between biological parents and adoptive parents. The only indication we have are these news articles that keep popping up in every community, showing that too many children are abused or killed by these state-approved parents.

Poverty Construed as Neglect. . .HUD Steps up to do the Job CPS Refused to Do

Hud has stepped up to the plate that CPS walked away from. It's providing homes for the indigent to prevent the removal of children in to foster care.

But. . .but. . .that's CPS's job, isn't it? If a family needs a home, Reasonable Efforts mandates that CPS provide a roof for the family before it removes the children. Yet, they don't do their job. This has got to be embarrassing for the professionals who administer child welfare. Another agency got wind they just couldn't get 'er done, and did it better. 

An article in RealEstateRama.com describes HUD's reasons for providing rental assistance to families,

“The foster care system is an important safety net for children when there’s no alternative, but not having the means to obtain affordable housing is hardly a good reason for families to be divided,” said U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan. “Thankfully these vouchers will keep thousands of families together under one roof.”

The true test will be whether or not CPS can finagle an end-run around this solution. They have a knack for creating more obstacles preventing solutions to simple problems, just because they can. After all, holding the child hostage to their demands tends to give them an inordinate degree of power.

Guaranteeing Reunification Failure

The generally accepted practice when a child is at risk of abuse or neglect is to swoop in and remove the child, rather than remove the danger from the child's environment.

The most absurd snatch and grabs occur in hospitals, shortly after the child is born. Right when the most critical bonding between the mother and the child is supposed to occur. According to an article in The Scientific American,

"It’s fairly easy to wrap our heads around the notion of the mother-child bond. The two are intimately connected during the nine months of pregnancy. Hormones, such as oxytocin, that course through a mother’s body biologically link her to the baby. Their heartbeats can even synchronize. Following birth, a mother provides a natural food source for the newborn."

Child welfare professionals insist that this bonding is not critical, at least not as critical as insuring the safety of the child by placing the child in foster care--where studies have proven children are 10 to 35 times more likely to be abused. It is, after all, better for the child to deny him his bond with his mother, his mother's milk, and the comfort of the heartbeat he has heard for the past nine months.

But it gets worse. Science has now proven that dads bond with babies, too. And like the mother, this bonding requires close proximity to the baby, because touch and smell play an important part in this bonding process. According to the article, It seems that this bonding involves hard-wiring the brain, the baby's brain and the father's brain.

"We are now learning that in the first few days after birth, changes occur in the brains of both the dad and the baby, depending on whether the father is around or not."

Child welfare professionals cite "the best interests of the child" as justifying the removal of newborn children from their parents. This argument is only valid if these professionals discount the child's biological and psychological needs for the very two people they have excluded from this child's world.

". . .it seems a child. . . may be born with a brain that expects this bond to form in the first place. "

And the absence of the father from the child's world has proven to cause problems for the child as he grows up.

So. . .let me get this right. . .rather than go through the bother of conducting a valid investigation and providing appropriate in-home services to the parents, it is best for the child to inhibit this bond with his parents by excluding them from his world. Shuffle the child from stranger's home to stranger's home. Expose him to abuse, neglect and abandonment. Put him on drugs when he acts out, dump him on the street when he turns eighteen without a dime, without a job, without the safety net a family affords, and take the babies he makes to repeat the cycle because he's a product of the system and presumed unfit to be a parent.

Yeah, right.

Given the overwhelming recommendations to terminate parental rights based on the lack of the child's bond with the parent, because the "professionals" felt one hour a week was sufficient time to facilitate that bond, removing the child instead of providing in-home services looks remarkably like a set up to fail. After all, these "professionals" are presumed to know what a child needs, and they can't possibly argue they didn't know removing a newborn from his parents would insure the child would not bond with them, could they?

When CPS Claim Parents are "Enmeshed" With Their Children. . .and it's Bad

. . .they are wrong.

I know, it sounds strange. . .CPS tells the court mom is "enmeshed" with her child. She dotes on him, pays too much attention to him, praises him, smothers him. They express concerns that the child is not permitted to be his own person. This is unhealthy, they say. The child must be protected from this sick parent. They ask the court to limit the parents's contact with this poor, unfortunate child so that the close bonds between the parent and child may be weakened, or broken. It is, after all, in the best interests of the child to disrupt this relationship.

According to a recent Health.com article, it is not bad for mothers to be affectionate or attentive to the kiddies. It seems there was a study done, following children from eight months to thirty years old. Researchers observed the mothers interacting with the kiddies and followed the effects of the various parenting style into adulthood. According to the article,

The psychologists rated the mother's affection and attention level on a five-point scale ranging from "negative" to "extravagant." The vast majority of the interactions (85 percent) were considered "warm," or normal.

In what is sure to be an ugly shocker to those know-it-all, micromanaging caseworkers--and the pompous judges who rely on them--researchers found that children whose mother's affection and attention were "extravagant" turned out to be the most well-adjusted adults:

The adults whose mothers had displayed "extravagant" or "caressing" affection (the two top ratings) were much less likely than their less-doted-on peers to be anxious. They were also less likely to report hostility, distressing social interactions, and psychosomatic symptoms.

Evidently, it is NEVER in the best interests of the child to interfere with the parent-child relationship simply because they are enmeshed. It seems a degree of enmeshment is healthy and beneficial for a child, and creates "a more stable mental health picture, a more stable individual."

So, if the child welfare agencies are really concerned about outcomes, leave the unharmed kiddies with their loving parents, even if you find that kind of attachment too disgusting. You should be more concerned about the disastrous outcomes associated with placing children in foster care.

Review-presentation offered by Judicial Council of California

In this final review, I discuss the video game component of this presentation.

There are two games offered, one for attorneys representing parents in dependency cases, and one for attorneys representing children - Guardians ad litem (GAL). Each completed game is worth 2 California Minimum Continuing Legal Education credits.

The game takes you through a typical day in your dependency practice, including three areas of your practice; interviews with the client, court proceedings, and work performed in your office. The introduction to the games states, "The purpose of this game is to orient you to the kinds of situations you will encounter, give you an idea of the demands you would be facing in daily practice, and instill a set of professional values that will optimize your professional practice."

The case scenarios and the parties are similar for each game. You are presented with a case, in which a series of events is described. You are required to select actions to perform from a list of choices for three areas of your practice. One action is optimal, the others are varying degrees below that. Each choice carries a particular reward of consequence. No matter what you choose to do, the game explains how your choice rated and why. You can earn promotions and extra points depending on your responses.

You earn overall points for the quality of your response. You also learn credibility coins depending on the quality of your response in the context of the situation--and can be promoted and get a raise. You are also working on a burnout meter, and if your burnout level reaches 100%--again based on the stress any particular response causes, you will quit your job and the game ends.

I played both games. I found that politics was a contributing factor in the points awarded for certain responses. The game was clever in its application of a variety of factors that come into play during an attorney's representation in these cases. However, because it was limited to multiple choice answers, there was no room for creativity in representing your clients during these informal proceedings.

It is a competent basic orientation tool for a lawyer whose practice includes dependency cases. The game provides useful perspectives on dealing with adult and child clients, rewarding the player for tactful handling of their clients. It also seems to be reinforce some of the best practice models that many attorneys and agencies tend to avoid in the interests of expediency. This game stays more focused on the best interests of the child than real live practicing attorneys seem to. However, it is quite weak in the esoteric critical issues unique to child welfare cases. It is much stronger in management of your practice than in actual child welfare law. It is a fair start to a complex and unique area of practice.

Oh. It doesn't matter what your score is, you get the MCLE credits simply for completing the game. I can report that I got promoted and a raise, never got anywhere near burnout, and my final score was 1468 points. The game generates a California MCLE certificate with your points included.

You can obtain this disk from Center for Families, Children & the Courts, 455 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102-3668. (415)865-7739.