SILENCE ONLY ENABLES THE PREDATOR - IT DOES NOTHING FOR THE PREY: REFORM CPS NOW

I have to stand up and tell everything I know to anyone who will listen and see CPS' grip around the throats of every family in America loosened - to see them held at least to laws already on the books.

There is no more fundamental right than the right to raise your child - and to be raised by your parent. Stripping a family of their inalienable right to be together should be a rare exception out of absolute neccessity.

That's how the laws around juvenile dependency are written. 

It is not how they are practiced by Child Protective Services. 

I have to try to change that. It is maybe too late for my little family. (See #1 below) Still ~ I have to try...for all those kids who should be home tonight.

So here goes...

As a paralegal, parent and plaintiff, I have seen dozens of cases first hand - and heard hundreds more from many vantage points - that demonstrate how Child Protective Services systematically:

• rips families apart without necessity,
• intentionally sets families up to fail throughout the process,
• traumatizes our children - and parents - repeatedly and without compunction,
• warehouses then sells those kids off without ever having to account for their conduct,
• enjoys ample and steady funding from our tax dollars,
• milks financial incentives inadvertently built into the system to keep those funds rolling in,
• has corrupted the entire process to that end, and
• manipulates judges, law enforcement, the public and the children themselves to strip families of their fundamental, moral and constitutional rights EVERY SINGLE DAY.

I believe CPS has rendered every taxpayer an ostensible baby broker whether the people know it or like it or not, and when made aware, the public will demand its reform.

I believe that approaching the subject as an intervention of sorts - and with the acknowledgement and appreciation of those who do their jobs well - will prove more fruitful in educating and informing those who pay the bill, but haven't seen just what CPS is capable of. (See #2 below)

I believe the system currently in place in this country is a major factor in the overall breakdown of the family and the gut-wrenching, mind-bending rise in violence at schools and public gathering spots.

I believe - if we do nothing to fix it - we become guilty of what CPS accuses: failing to protect the most vulnerable among us.

I believe that we can reform the juvenile dependency system without one more dime in taxes spent while strengthening families - especially those who are struggling - just by:

• enforcing laws already on the books,
• tightening the scope of worker immunities,
• allowing civil suits that hold them accountable for their brazen and devastating misconduct, and
• eliminating the lavish financial incentives to counties for detaining kids rather than strengthening their homes, and
• restructuring the departments' funding overall.

I believe that the laudable goals of legislatures' very sane statutes can be applied and enforced as intended, without shielding under-trained, underqualified workers and their goal oriented management from the very conduct those laws seek to eradicate.

I believe that workers and their supervisors should be qualified and trained to a standard higher than a crossing guard and further educated on a continuous basis, including but not limited to psychiatric evaluations upon hire and as a condition of any and all promotions into management positions - just as we require of military officers, pilots and others who have  innocent lives in their hands on a regular basis.

I believe that even unfit parents have the right to representation before the initial hearing to remove their children from the home - as, say, a multiple murderer can expect in a criminal court - instead of leaving parents to face that hearing alone and uninformed - where workers are generally the only ones heard and their strongest immunities kick in. (See #3 below)

I believe that because those workers and their supervisors enjoy immunities that rival far more educated and accomplished professionals, they have an enhanced responsibility to account for their decisions (and their results) to some authority and keep statistics on a far wider range than they do now so that their performance can be discussed and evaluated. (See #4 below)

I believe that the confidentiality built into the process has in fact shielded CPS and its workers far more effectively than it has the children it was meant to safeguard. (See #5 below)

I believe that older children especially can be brought into the solutions that affect them directly, making them a part of that solution (and should the fight to unify be lost, leave them less likely to internalize that failure.)

I believe that - based on results - these critical changes to the system will only come with large scale public and private opposition - and without the rightfully passionate anger injected into reform up until now. (See #6, below)

I believe those heroes - not to mention parents - need these changes in the very cultural underpinnings of the department as much as the children do and that the spectre of huge caseloads overwhelming the system and the workers will ease as a result, allowing better servce to those rightfully  in the system. (See#7 below)

I believe the time to stand up and take back our rights to raise our own families, to demand accountability from those who would strip us of those  rights and to see the end of the financial incentives that perpetuate these crimes is NOW.

There are almost a half a million children in the US detained by CPS outside their own homes tonight ~ and under the current system, we have no idea how many of them shouldn't be there.  Even if it's only 5% of them,  that's 25,000 kids who need our help to get home.

And I would bet my life it's an alarmingly higher percentage. Let's discover together if CPS could prove me wrong.

I would truly like nothing better than to be dead wrong.

LET'S START this revolution to save our children's childhood right here, right now.

HELP ME get our voices heard.

TELL EVERYONE you know about the issue and the petition.

SHARE THE LINK: SILENCE ONLY ENABLES THE PREDATOR ~ IT DOESN'T DO A DAMN THING FOR THE PREY

SIGN this petition - and I will make it make a difference.

GET INVOLVED in any way you can and we'll do it together.

Notes referenced above:

#1 - My child was taken from me 2 months before her 6th birthday, and five days after my mother died in the home we all shared.

After more than 6 years clean, my home was "raided" by police and I was arrested on multiple drug charges I was not guilty of (all were dropped by the DA citing "a lack of evidence").

I spent days in jail without a single word from anyone about what was going on or why. (See #1. below for details)

On the third day, I was led out of the jail, into the courthouse and put in a holding cell. After about an hour, a woman came into the cell with a uniformed marshall and told me that my daughter was put in foster care and that she was better off without me.

She handed me CPS' petition to remove the child from my care since I had not made proper arrangements for her when I was arrested or while I was in jail. (I didn't leave out the part where they offered me the chance to do so - they never even told me it was possible, let alone my lawful right.)

That was only the first of a hundred chapters that very nearly destroyed me personally, decimated my relationship with the only daughter I'll ever have, and shattered the strained family ties to my sisters (who'd started the ball rolling).

It was - as so many episodes with the department are - a long, terrifying, infuriating, hideously shameless attack, not to mention a test of resillience and love and injustice. 

I did the only thing I could do - I went to the law library every day they were open and learned everything I could about the department, the laws and the system that had brutalized both my daughter and me - and I fired 2 court appointed attorneys who were just handing her over to the Department without objection.

The dependency was terminated 14 months later, restoring my full legal and physical custody of the child, though all the damage wasn't done.

I ended up working for the 3rd attorney the judge appointed, who got my girl back to me - and the research into CPS and their tactics continued for three more years, more than most attorneys spend on this specialized area of law.

I then sued the county Department and the social workers in state court - without an attorney...another completely unbelievable odyssey I will spare the reader here. 

My daughter is an adult now, so CPS cannot scare me anymore, they can't threaten me anymore ~ and I can't live with it any longer.

#2 - I think workers who do this very difficult job well will back these suggestions and agree that it can allow them to do the job they have always wanted to do - and weed out the unconscionable among them, since they know better than anyone who should not be given such absolute public trust.

#3 - The Juvenile Dependency system is legally considered a "non-adversarial" branch of justice. In practice that couldn't be further from the truth. It does however mean that parents and children are not afforded the same kinds of protections as criminal courts, nor are social workers held to the same standards of proof. Some lawmakers have likened severing parental rights to a child in dependency court as equal in severity "to the death penalty" in a criminal court, yet nowhere near as hard to achieve. 

Once a judge is involved in any depemdency, anyone involved from CPS is considered absolutely immune from prosecution or even liabilty for any and all conduct for the duration of that dependency - even when a child is beaten, raped or in fact dies as a result of worker or management negligence or intent.

Just as the guilty deserve a fair criminal trial, the possibly unfit deserve representation from the moment they are compelled into the process (whether investigation commences or their child is taken) and before the detention hearing (the "arraignment" of dependency)is held. 

As it stands now, if they can keep a child from a parent and parents from any help or advice just until the initial hearing (no more than a week in most cases), then workers - who enjoy a presumptive integrity as "professionals in child welfare" -  can say or do anything in that initial petition and state their case in the hearing, unchallenged. 

Because the parents or children - or an attorney on their behalf -  have not been heard - judges see no opposition to the charges brought and thus have no reason to deny the petition from supposed professionals. 

Even where workers can be proved liars, there is no recourse after that initial hearing. Period. So it is imperative that workers be challenged at the Detention Hearing, at the very least. In turn, that makes representation for the parents and the child vital and indeed a right I think most believe is already guaranteed and afforded families. It is not. But the workers can bank on those immunities come hell or high water. 

That's what happened in my case - and so many others' I have seen. 

#4 - The unbridled ire so evident in calls for reform to date are too easily dismissed by the public and government as disgruntled - and guilty - parents who've lost their children or are currently embroiled in the system.

#5 - Because CPS is not subject to the same oversight as law enforcement, DAs or even judges, and since they have gone decades (indeed generations) unmonitored and unchallenged, base human nature has brought their workers and supervisors to believe they know how children should be raised (and who should raise them) better than even parents do. This has, of course, created a monster of arrogant righteousness and intolerance and false confidence. They believe they are always right and in my case actually stated that they are never wrong in my civil case against them.

#6 - CPS banks on this - and their ironclad civil immunities - claiming it as the right to do whatever they want, no matter what that may include or who or how many it injures.

#7 - How can any reasonable adult disagree with the idea that we should enforce laws on the books? Who can honestly advocate for CPS' right to condone and indeed sponsor shattering misconduct? Who could doubt that good workers invariably have to endure if not bolster bad ones? And  snatching babies that don't need snatching has created overwhelming caseloads such that important and dangerous cases of abuse and neglect go unattended - but it does keep your money flowing to support this brutal and broken system. No one could say that this system doesn't need improving, with more attention paid to what constitues best practice and even stellar performance. Indeed, reform benefits all involved, including workers who are capable and who do care about the families they serve.