From: bouche2@server.uwindsor.ca (BOUCHER DAVID            )
Newsgroups: misc.kids,alt.child-support,soc.men,soc.women,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Neglected or Abused Children, CPS, Foster Care and Prison
Date: 17 Dec 1992 18:02:09 GMT
Followup-To: misc.kids
Organization: University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada

In article <00724551115@elgamy.jpunix.com> elg@elgamy.jpunix.com (Eric Lee Green) writes:
>From article <ykLsVB1w165w@dogear.spk.wa.us>, by bobk@dogear.spk.wa.us (Bob Kirkpatrick):
>> petel@sequent.com (Pete Lancashire) writes:
>>> Could someone tell me (without emotion) that why is it better to return
>>> a child to to its bio-parents if the parents can not be helped (ex: on
>>> drugs) or will not accept help (ex: "We have done nothing wrong", "no one
>>> is going to tell us how")
>>>
>>> Why do these experts feel that this is better that a subsitute family
>>> that cares ? Is the bio-attachment more important in a child then his
>>> or her family environment.
>
>I think the basic problem is that the foster care system has failed in the
>face of policies intended to ease return of the child to the natural
>family. 

The problem is deeper than that.  The state receives federal money for each 
child placed in foster care.  Some of that money goes to the foster family, 
but most of it goes to feed the bloated bureacracy of the Child Protection 
Services.  That is a tremendous incentive to seize children on the flimsiest
of evidence, and hang onto them for as long as possible.  But because the
availability of suitable foster parents is limited, the system is overwhelmed
and truly urgent cases get lost in the shuffle. 

The promise to eventually return the children to the parents is essentially 
a carrot to keep the biological parents in line.  If there were no hope of
regaining the children by legal means, many parents would seize their children
and flee to another state, or perhaps even storm the agency en masse and burn 
it to the ground.

The solution is not to give more power and discretion to the agencies that have
already made a total mess of the system.  It would be far better to take 
control away from the so-called "experts", to remove the financial incentive 
for the unwarranted seizing of children, and to target resouces to those who
are most at-risk.

>          For example, in many locations CPS makes a practice of moving
>children to different foster families regularly, "in order to prevent the
>child from attaching to the foster family, which would make return to the
>natural parents a traumatic event." This sort of nomadic, insecure
>lifestyle, though, will almost certainly produce emotionally scarred
>children. In addition, many foster families are not screened adequately and
>are not supervised with enough rigor. They are often the "dregs of
>society", rather than people who you would want to raise YOUR children.

I agree that this is horrible.  In part it comes out of the need for the 
caseworkers to "cover their asses".  Often they don't really have the skills
necessary to determine if a child is truly at-risk, so their response is 
"Grab the kid first, sort it out later" for every report that lands on
their desk.  If it turns out six months down the road that the seizure 
was unwarranted, well, "no harm done, the kid's back home now".

A good book to read for a better understanding of this issue is "Wounded 
Innocents" by Richard Wexler (sp?).  It describes in detail, with  
statistics and real-life incidents, how the Child Protection system has
run amok, and often causes more harm than good.  As I recall, about 40 pages
of the book are citatations of court cases and other references.

- db



Newsgroups: misc.kids