From: brunner@telebit.com (Eric Brunner)
Subject: Re: Sounds like a personal problem
Organization: Telebit Corporation; Sunnyvale, CA, USA
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 23:44:15 GMT

Perhaps it is a personal problem as you suggest, and I understand your own
feelings as he's helped your own case and kept you and your daughter together.

Months ago I wrote that there were, and are, institutional weaknesses in
the dependency system, I mentioned only several of those that I knew of
personally, by taking part in the management audit of Santa Clara County's
DFCS agency. I also wrote that it was probably good law that children have
standing to sue their guardians, that was the substance of my postings
to which Bob disagreed. Apparently, the observation that half of the agency
do below average work evoked response. I consider it a fact of life, and
unavoidable if my county is going to improve what are referred to as "front
end services" (emergency intervention, including intake and non-emergency
intake).

What Bob wrote to me as email was, well, curious comming from anyone.

>I've been reading what he has to say, and what you do. I saw as
>you got pretty hot that Bob drew a line between you saying that all
>the CPS places were bad ones and he said some were not so bad.

That's not quite what I recollect, but its reasonable that one might have
had that impression. In any event, some aspects of agency function are
federally mandated (e.g., confidentiality), so anyone's impression that
agency performance in their area was "good" or "bad" can not be arrived
at by case-review by an independent auditor, but only by the agency under
review, or inferred, as we do in auditing our county, by case-load management
statistics and aggragate mandated review hearing deadlines exceeded.

Oh, and by those cases where the individuals are brave enough, or desperate
enough, or silly enough, to breach confidentiality and make their copies
of documents in their case file available, and criticise some aspect of
the individual social worker's involvement in their case.

>                                                               You
>have some sort of problem with people that don't agree with you.

You are right, I do. I really have a problem with hate mail from an
apparently sane person discorsing in a public venue on a subject
I both care about, and am personally affected by.

>                                                                 As
>near as I can see it, you sound a lot like Bob about what you don't
>like in the system.

True.

>                         I see you guys as really different where Bob
>will argue pretty hard on his point, but he doesn't do it to feel
>the pleasure out of grinding on somebody. Sorry but that is the way
>I see you in this you and him thing.

As I mentioned earlier, it is reasonable for you to feel very positive
about Bob.

>Don't need to see what Bob wrote to you. Don't really care. I see 
>him at work here, and that is what counts. He has stood up to the
>court so he's almost gone to jail because he believed in the people
>he defended. The commissioner wanted him to say ok for some way a
>order was worded and he wouldn't do it.

I understand, here the situation is sort of reversed, Bob is a worthless
electronic maggot who hasn't helped anyone, dead or alive, but many of
the family and juvenile judges and staffs, and agency executives, and
the independent auditors, and two or three county supervisors appear to
have some knowledge of my existance, as do about two dozen families.

>I saw him on my case. I have my girl and my boy ONLY because he was
>able to get the facts to the court and show them I was a good parent.

I know how that feels, I really do.

>In the posts I read here, I saw you talking about how you defended
>you, but I didn't see you defending anyone else. You made me pretty
>mad before and I would have told you but I didn't have an account
>to post at. Now I do and now I am telling you.

Go ahead and get mad, if I learn anything I'll benefit. As to why I don't
talk about the people I've helped, well, their right to privacy comes a
long way ahead of my right to look like a knight in shinning armour.

Besides, lobbying the Judicial Council of California's Advisory Committee
on Juvenile Court Law, or talking for days to trial and appelate and
State Supreme Court judges from all over (National Councel of Fam/Juv
Judges), about which front-end programs appear to be effective and what
alternatives exist for counties with large permency-placement backlogs,
isn't really helping anyone in particular. I stopped doing case work
two years ago, it was utterly too depressing, I really understood the
occasional comment that you (almost) never win in juvenile.

>Sometimes I think that Bob is opinionated. But I am glad that he is.
>He won't take anybodys crap. When he took on my kids as their Guardian,
>he wasn't so sure about me. My wife had left with a man and I had the
>kids. I got in trouble at a party and the police took my kids to CPS.
>Bob spent his own money to go all over to get people to write statments
>about me and brought people into the hearings. He wouldn't let the
>court keep the kids in the shelter care and him and his lawyer got me
>my kids back. So you can keep your mail and your poison pen right in
>your desk. The people I talked to and there was lots of them said that
>this guy did more for dads here than anybody they ever saw. They said
>I was lucky I got him. I think I am lucky too.

You were. You missed the permenency placement track. BTW, I also know
about spending my own money, going all over getting supporting statements,
talking to people no social-worker apparently thought to interview...

>So if you have something against him because you don't like what he
>said well OK. But quit slamming him. If you cared about dads and how
>we get treated you would be trying to work with him.

No, I think I'll work on our new preciding judge in juvenile. She's an
activist, and in time she'll want to really know why DFCS functions as
poorly as it does, and the more she knows, the fewer months will go by
before she starts asking questions. As for slamming Bob, why not on those
occasions where he does something egregiously stupid like screwing up
on tender years?

>Flame off like they say.

Sure. How old are your children?

Xref: sparky alt.child-support:2818 soc.men:15269 soc.women:15547 alt.abortion.inequity:3181