Written by Jason Riley
The house was, by all accounts, filthy and unfit for children to live in, filled with dog feces, urine, rotting garbage and other hazards.
It was the type of home from which the state routinely removes children, at least until the the dangers are eliminated.
But more than two years after two toddlers were removed from the home in eastern Jefferson County and placed with a family member, prosecutors entered into what some local officials say is uncharted terrority in so-called “dirty house” cases: prosecuting twin sisters for raising the children in such a hazardous environment.
Local officials say the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services routinely investigates dirty-house cases, but it’s rare for them to wind up in Family Court — and unheard of for anyone to face criminal charges where no child was injured in the home, as is the situation for Jeanette Allen and Janet Doughty, who are charged with criminal abuse and wanton endangerment over the home’s condition.
“It is our belief that these are the only two people in Jefferson County that have ever been prosecuted” in a case like this, Allen’s attorney, Brian Butler, said during a recent court hearing, where he argued that the case should be dismissed for selective prosecution.
“This never happens. ... These people are being treated differently and unfairly.”
The defense claims that Allen and Doughty, in their early 20s, are being singled out because of what happened to their children after they were removed from the home.
Christopher Allen, 2, was beaten to death and Wyatt Allen, his half brother, also then 2, was injured within days of being removed on Aug. 25, 2008, and placed with their aunt, Nereida Allen.
Jeanette Allen is Christopher's mother, and Doughty is Wyatt's mother.
Nereida Allen and her former boyfriend, Joshua Peacher, were convicted last year of wanton murder, assault and criminal abuse and sentenced to 47 and 70 years in prison, respectively, for the death and abuse.
Timing questioned
A day before they were sentenced, the sisters were indicted over the condition of their home. They have pleaded not guilty.
“The timing is suspicious,” said J. Clark Baird, Doughty’s attorney. “These girls were not charged until after this trial was finished.”
Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney David Scott has said prosecutors didn't seek charges sooner because they didn't wish to interfere with the murder case, and Kentucky has no statute of limitations on felonies.
And as unique as the 2011 indictment appears to be, defense attorneys have gone to equally unheard of lengths in trying to get the cases dismissed.
Butler has filed a subpoena for one of the prosecutors, asking a judge to order him to turn over any similar criminal cases ever handled by the Jefferson commonwealth’s attorney’s office; a family law attorney who served as court-appointed guardian for the two children testified that she had never heard of this type of prosecution; and, most recently and most surprisingly, the defense brought a longtime Jefferson Family Court judge in to testify in front of the circuit judge in the case.
On Jan. 30, Judge Joan Byer testified that she has handled thousands of cases, many involving dirty homes where children lived, but had never seen a family member criminally prosecuted over the condition of a home.
In fact, Byer testified, social workers typically keep dirty-home cases out of Family Court, giving the parents a chance to clean up and fix problems — such as a lack of electricity — in order to get the children back.
“The goal is not to send the case to (Family) Court except in the most extreme or extraordinary circumstances,” Byer told Judge Barry Willett.
But prosecutors argue that Allen and Doughty’s case is, in fact, extreme and extraordinary.
“This is more than a dirty-house case,” Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Dorislee Gilbert told Willett on Oct. 31. “The behavior they engaged in was much more than that.”
Not only was the home a health hazard — the prosecution will have an expert testify at trial that the exposure to the feces could have caused long-lasting physical problems for the children — but the sisters admitted that they would lock the children in a room by tying an electric cord from the door handle to a heavy piece of furniture, according to court records.
A social worker told police that the sisters were putting their children “in danger” and that the home was a “safety hazard.” Both sisters, who are out of jail on their own recognizance, admitted to social workers that the home was unfit for their children, according to court records.
Yet the social worker also said in an interview with police that the children were not ill and that the sisters could have gotten them back once the house was cleaned, without any court involvement, according to a transcript of the interview.
The sisters inherited the home, which has been been sold, from their mother.
Butler said in court records that he has subpoenaed Scott to force prosecutors to “admit that they have never prosecuted a dirty-house case despite the fact that they are relatively routine.”
In an interview, Scott said this “case is not simply about a dirty house but the criminal conduct of a parent exposing their children to hazardous conditions, and that constitutes abuse.”
Scott declined to say if the state had tried similar cases, saying the issue was pending before Willett and he couldn’t discuss it.
The newspaper could not find any similar felony cases in Jefferson County. But the county attorney’s office, which handles District Court cases, said criminal prosecution in dirty-house cases is rare but not unheard of.
And there have been similar cases prosecuted outside Jefferson County.
Warren Commonwealth's Attorney Chris Cohron, past president of the Commonwealth’s Attorneys Association, said he had similar cases, including one in which a man pleaded guilty to criminal abuse after being charged with allowing a 4-year-old to be locked in a room with feces on the wall and with urine-soaked carpet.
“We’ve had cases with children living in abject squalor that we believe rose to the level of criminality,” he said.
In the sisters’ case, Butler said that he will argue that Child Protective Services found Christopher and Wyatt were healthy and without any evidence of abuse when they were removed from the home. The agency determined that the children should be temporarily relocated to allow their mothers time to clean the residence.
Prosecutors, Butler said, are creating law, a scenario no different than if they tried to prosecute a parent for smoking around their children or for giving them too much fast food.
“The commonwealth has in fact created a novel crime without any injury to the child,” Butler said in a motion to dismiss. “... Simply put, a prosecutor does not and should not have the power to create law.”
Byer testified that she had reviewed the particulars of the case and found it was not unlike others she had seen.
“Unfortunately ... this type of scenario is not an unusual scenario for the court to get,” she said. “I could give example after example of similar types of situations. ... I have never in 16 years been aware of a criminal prosecution” in a case where the child was not injured in the dirty house.
The judge told Willett that she had a recent case in which a dead dog lay in a bathroom for weeks and another where a man locked a child in a basement, forcing him to urinate in a bottle. Neither led to criminal charges.
Scott questioned Byer, however, on whether she has seen homes so bad that she felt that someone should be charged for putting children’s safety at risk.
Byer said she couldn’t answer that question but believed it would require an intent to do harm.
Susan Meschler, a family law attorney who was appointed guardian for the boys, testified that the uncleanliness of the house was just a minor part of the case and that she has never seen a case where someone has been criminally prosecuted for a dirty home.
Willett has not ruled on whether to dismiss the case before trial, but senior status Judge Geoffrey Morris, sitting in for Willett during a November hearing, said the fact that Byer hadn’t heard of any of these type of cases wouldn’t sway him to dismiss the case, at least before trial.
“It doesn’t make any difference whether another judge had never seen a case like this,” Morris said. “Wouldn’t mean a thing to me.”
Source http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20120219/NEWS01/302190064/house-conditions-child-abuse?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CHome%7Cs
CPS corruption hurts and destroys families worldwide. Please use caution posting about CPS here or anyplace on the internet. For your protection, using your full, real name and precise location is not advised. CPS has eyes everywhere and CPS is notorious for taking what people say, twisting it, embellishing on it and then using it against them in CPS "investigations" and at court proceedings.
Showing posts with label child removal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label child removal. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Friday, December 16, 2011
US officials plan South Dakota summit on Indian foster care
CHET BROKAW Associated Press
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — Federal officials are planning a summit in South Dakota in the wake of allegations that the state has violated federal law by removing too many American Indian children from their homes and placing them in foster care with non-Indian families.
Nedra Darling, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department's Office of Indian Affairs, told The Associated Press that the agency has created a committee to plan the summit, the date of which has not yet been set.
"We hope it will open up a dialogue between tribes and federal and state agencies," Darling said.
The summit is in response to a National Public Radio series in October that said the state routinely broke the Indian Child Welfare Act and disrupted the lives of hundreds of Native American families each year. Federal law requires that Native American children removed from homes be placed with relatives or put in foster care with other Native American families except in unusual circumstances.
The three-part NPR report said 90 percent of the Native American children removed from their homes in South Dakota each year are sent to foster care in non-Indian homes or group homes. It reported that Native American children are placed in South Dakota's foster care system at a disproportionate rate because only 15 percent of the state's child population is Native American, but half of the children in foster care are Native American.
State officials have criticized the NPR report as inaccurate, unfair and biased.
Kim Malsam-Rysdon, secretary of the state Department of Social Services, said the Interior Department has not notified state officials about the planned summit, but that the state has nothing to hide.
"We are very confident that South Dakota is in compliance with federal law in this area, and we really do welcome the opportunity for the federal government and others to understand just how that federal law is being implemented in our state," Malsam-Rysdon said.
The summit suggestion surfaced in a letter to members of Congress who had called for an investigation. The meeting is meant to give state, federal and tribal officials a way to work together so that all involved agencies comply with the law and make sure American Indian children and their families are protected, wrote Larry Echo Hawk, the Interior Department's assistant secretary for Indian Affairs.
The Interior Department also is considering sending lawyers to South Dakota to help tribes enforce the Indian Child Welfare Act, Echo Hawk wrote.
Malsam-Rysdon, whose agency oversees South Dakota's child welfare system, said people need to understand that the system involves her department, tribes, courts, law-enforcement officers and others. Federal officials should not take any action based on the NPR report, but instead should get the facts about what is happening in South Dakota, she said.
"We're glad the Department of Interior is taking it seriously, that they're evidently interested into looking into and ensuring the federal law is being implemented," she said.
Malsam-Rysdon said it's true that a disproportionate number of Native American children are involved in the child welfare system. The state receives more referrals for alleged abuse and neglect involving Native American children, and that leads to more investigations and removals from homes for those children, she said.
"What really permeates our involvement with the child welfare system is safety of the child," Malsam-Rysdon said. "We're involved in homes where there are proven or foreseeable safety concerns regarding a child."
In a written response to the NPR series, the state has said it uses all available Native American foster placement homes.
The series said the state's motive for removing Native American children from their homes might be financial because the state gets federal financial assistance for each child removed from his or her home. The report said the state gets almost $100 million a year to subsidize foster care programs, but state officials said the budget for the entire Division of Child Protection Services last year was only $59 million, and spending specifically on foster care and foster-care support was just $8 million.
The series also said there was a conflict of interest in Gov. Dennis Daugaard's work for Children's Home Society of South Dakota when he was lieutenant governor. That organization received millions of dollars for housing Native American children under contracts the state awarded without competitive bids.
The governor's office responded that Children's Home Society has had contracts with the state since 1978, long before Daugaard became its chief operating officer in 2002.
State officials also have said the Department of Social Services cannot remove children from homes and place them in protective custody. Only law officers and judges have the legal authority to do so, the state officials said.
Source http://m.siouxcityjournal.com/mobile/article_e1ed29d6-1b91-59ab-bfe6-26801493047a.html
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — Federal officials are planning a summit in South Dakota in the wake of allegations that the state has violated federal law by removing too many American Indian children from their homes and placing them in foster care with non-Indian families.
Nedra Darling, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department's Office of Indian Affairs, told The Associated Press that the agency has created a committee to plan the summit, the date of which has not yet been set.
"We hope it will open up a dialogue between tribes and federal and state agencies," Darling said.
The summit is in response to a National Public Radio series in October that said the state routinely broke the Indian Child Welfare Act and disrupted the lives of hundreds of Native American families each year. Federal law requires that Native American children removed from homes be placed with relatives or put in foster care with other Native American families except in unusual circumstances.
The three-part NPR report said 90 percent of the Native American children removed from their homes in South Dakota each year are sent to foster care in non-Indian homes or group homes. It reported that Native American children are placed in South Dakota's foster care system at a disproportionate rate because only 15 percent of the state's child population is Native American, but half of the children in foster care are Native American.
State officials have criticized the NPR report as inaccurate, unfair and biased.
Kim Malsam-Rysdon, secretary of the state Department of Social Services, said the Interior Department has not notified state officials about the planned summit, but that the state has nothing to hide.
"We are very confident that South Dakota is in compliance with federal law in this area, and we really do welcome the opportunity for the federal government and others to understand just how that federal law is being implemented in our state," Malsam-Rysdon said.
The summit suggestion surfaced in a letter to members of Congress who had called for an investigation. The meeting is meant to give state, federal and tribal officials a way to work together so that all involved agencies comply with the law and make sure American Indian children and their families are protected, wrote Larry Echo Hawk, the Interior Department's assistant secretary for Indian Affairs.
The Interior Department also is considering sending lawyers to South Dakota to help tribes enforce the Indian Child Welfare Act, Echo Hawk wrote.
Malsam-Rysdon, whose agency oversees South Dakota's child welfare system, said people need to understand that the system involves her department, tribes, courts, law-enforcement officers and others. Federal officials should not take any action based on the NPR report, but instead should get the facts about what is happening in South Dakota, she said.
"We're glad the Department of Interior is taking it seriously, that they're evidently interested into looking into and ensuring the federal law is being implemented," she said.
Malsam-Rysdon said it's true that a disproportionate number of Native American children are involved in the child welfare system. The state receives more referrals for alleged abuse and neglect involving Native American children, and that leads to more investigations and removals from homes for those children, she said.
"What really permeates our involvement with the child welfare system is safety of the child," Malsam-Rysdon said. "We're involved in homes where there are proven or foreseeable safety concerns regarding a child."
In a written response to the NPR series, the state has said it uses all available Native American foster placement homes.
The series said the state's motive for removing Native American children from their homes might be financial because the state gets federal financial assistance for each child removed from his or her home. The report said the state gets almost $100 million a year to subsidize foster care programs, but state officials said the budget for the entire Division of Child Protection Services last year was only $59 million, and spending specifically on foster care and foster-care support was just $8 million.
The series also said there was a conflict of interest in Gov. Dennis Daugaard's work for Children's Home Society of South Dakota when he was lieutenant governor. That organization received millions of dollars for housing Native American children under contracts the state awarded without competitive bids.
The governor's office responded that Children's Home Society has had contracts with the state since 1978, long before Daugaard became its chief operating officer in 2002.
State officials also have said the Department of Social Services cannot remove children from homes and place them in protective custody. Only law officers and judges have the legal authority to do so, the state officials said.
Source http://m.siouxcityjournal.com/mobile/article_e1ed29d6-1b91-59ab-bfe6-26801493047a.html
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Local Mom Files Claim Against County Child Welfare - California
Joanna Swartwood Says Her Children Were Abused At Shelley's Home Day Care
SAN DIEGO -- A local mother says her children were abused at a day care and claims the county's Child Welfare Services did not properly do their jobs.
In April, Joanna Swartwood, who works full-time, started taking her 1-year old daughter Riley and 3-year-old son Dale to Shelley's Home Day Care in Linda Vista after she received a referral from the YMCA.
Within weeks, Swartwood said Riley came home with broken capillaries under her eye.
"At that age, they're falling all the time," said Swartwood. "I didn't think anything of it."
Soon after, Dale started crying when he was headed to day care. Weeks later, Swartwood received a phone call from the daycare.
"I got a call from the day care owner saying Riley had redness on her face," said Swartwood. She said according to the daycare owner, a trampoline accident may have caused the redness and bruising.
But when Swartwood took Riley to a doctor, she was told someone had likely squeezed Riley's face.
"I broke into tears… couldn't believe it," she said. "That's your worst fear."
Letters show the doctor believed Swartwood and reported the day care to the county's Child Welfare Services.
Swartwood took Riley to an emergency room that same night. Another doctor also confirmed the abuse suspicions. The doctor's note also confirmed the parents were not suspected.
But hours later, the Swartwood family that received a late-night knock at the door. After an interview, the children were taken.
"We didn't know when we'd get our children back," said Swartwood. "They are our life. For parents, it's the worst thing that can happen besides death."
After a two-day investigation, the children were returned. A state probe into the day care recently ended with the owners losing their license.
Swartwood said her son is still coping with the effects of the ordeal, including a fear of strangers and separation anxiety. Swartwood has filed a claim against the day care and the county.
"They should have contacted the doctor and day care before taking any of the children away from their parents," said Spencer Busby, Swartwood's attorney. "They should have done their homework before doing something so drastic."
Swartwood added, "Here is the agency that's supposed to be protecting children and instead, they are traumatizing them."
Child Welfare Services declined to comment, saying they do not comment on specific cases.
The Swartwood family said they were told by prosecutors there is not enough evidence to file criminal charges. The day care provider declined an interview and has denied any wrongdoing.
Source http://www.10news.com/news/29991441/detail.html
SAN DIEGO -- A local mother says her children were abused at a day care and claims the county's Child Welfare Services did not properly do their jobs.
In April, Joanna Swartwood, who works full-time, started taking her 1-year old daughter Riley and 3-year-old son Dale to Shelley's Home Day Care in Linda Vista after she received a referral from the YMCA.
Within weeks, Swartwood said Riley came home with broken capillaries under her eye.
"At that age, they're falling all the time," said Swartwood. "I didn't think anything of it."
Soon after, Dale started crying when he was headed to day care. Weeks later, Swartwood received a phone call from the daycare.
"I got a call from the day care owner saying Riley had redness on her face," said Swartwood. She said according to the daycare owner, a trampoline accident may have caused the redness and bruising.
But when Swartwood took Riley to a doctor, she was told someone had likely squeezed Riley's face.
"I broke into tears… couldn't believe it," she said. "That's your worst fear."
Letters show the doctor believed Swartwood and reported the day care to the county's Child Welfare Services.
Swartwood took Riley to an emergency room that same night. Another doctor also confirmed the abuse suspicions. The doctor's note also confirmed the parents were not suspected.
But hours later, the Swartwood family that received a late-night knock at the door. After an interview, the children were taken.
"We didn't know when we'd get our children back," said Swartwood. "They are our life. For parents, it's the worst thing that can happen besides death."
After a two-day investigation, the children were returned. A state probe into the day care recently ended with the owners losing their license.
Swartwood said her son is still coping with the effects of the ordeal, including a fear of strangers and separation anxiety. Swartwood has filed a claim against the day care and the county.
"They should have contacted the doctor and day care before taking any of the children away from their parents," said Spencer Busby, Swartwood's attorney. "They should have done their homework before doing something so drastic."
Swartwood added, "Here is the agency that's supposed to be protecting children and instead, they are traumatizing them."
Child Welfare Services declined to comment, saying they do not comment on specific cases.
The Swartwood family said they were told by prosecutors there is not enough evidence to file criminal charges. The day care provider declined an interview and has denied any wrongdoing.
Source http://www.10news.com/news/29991441/detail.html
Monday, December 5, 2011
Foster fiasco - Boy on run two years after ‘bungle’
By MITCHEL MADDUX
It’s a colossal foster-care nightmare that ended with the disappearance of a 7-year-old boy two years ago — and it didn’t have to happen.
Top-notch lawyers appointed by a judge to represent the interests of missing Patrick Alford claim that the child, who vanished from his Brooklyn foster home, could have been safe today if not for glaring missteps by city child-welfare workers.
The lawyers argue that the employees with the city’s Administration for Children’s Service outrageously misled the Family Court in their bid to prove the child was in danger and even required placement in foster care in the first place.
It’s not clear why the workers did what they did to justify taking the boy. But they failed to disclose to a Family Court judge that, at the time, the child had actually been living at an aunt’s house and not with his mother, who was battling drug-addiction problems, lawyer Jonathan Lerner argued in papers filed in Brooklyn federal court.
Child-welfare workers lied in a sworn affidavit by “falsely representing to the court” there was “an imminent danger to the child’s life” if he was not immediately removed, “when in truth” young Patrick “was in no danger, imminent or otherwise, from continuing in his aunt’s care,” the documents state.
Lerner, a senior attorney at the white-shoe firm of Skadden Arps now serving as pro-bono counsel for the child, said ACS “made no assessment” that the aunt’s temporary custody of the boy “posed any danger” when its workers decided to seize Patrick on Dec. 29, 2009.
When ACS workers met again with the aunt two weeks later, they even deemed her suitable to serve as a temporary guardian for the boy. But for reasons that are unclear, the child nevertheless continued to remain in the foster home until his disappearance, Lerner wrote in the scathing court papers.
Patrick, who would now be 9 years old, was last seen on the night of Jan. 22, 2010, after he apparently slipped off while taking out the trash with his foster mom at her East New York home.
Adding to the debacle, ACS put him with a foster mother who spoke only Spanish, even though Patrick spoke only English.
The child, who had documented emotional and educational issues, was so unhappy that he began to experience psychiatric problems and tried to run away on several occasions.
Despite a psychologist’s assessment that the boy urgently needed medication and psychiatric care, ACS failed to take immediate action to help the boy, Lerner charged.
This chain of events prompted a federal judge overseeing the lawsuit about the child’s disappearance to suggest that — if proven — the city could be liable for damages.
Lawyers for the city strongly dispute the claim that ACS workers deliberately misled a Family Court judge and contend that facts arose that led them to believe that leaving Patrick with relatives was not a good option.
Source http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/foster_fiasco_2t4PoiyY60swRmOCmHCVXN
It’s a colossal foster-care nightmare that ended with the disappearance of a 7-year-old boy two years ago — and it didn’t have to happen.
Top-notch lawyers appointed by a judge to represent the interests of missing Patrick Alford claim that the child, who vanished from his Brooklyn foster home, could have been safe today if not for glaring missteps by city child-welfare workers.
The lawyers argue that the employees with the city’s Administration for Children’s Service outrageously misled the Family Court in their bid to prove the child was in danger and even required placement in foster care in the first place.
It’s not clear why the workers did what they did to justify taking the boy. But they failed to disclose to a Family Court judge that, at the time, the child had actually been living at an aunt’s house and not with his mother, who was battling drug-addiction problems, lawyer Jonathan Lerner argued in papers filed in Brooklyn federal court.
Child-welfare workers lied in a sworn affidavit by “falsely representing to the court” there was “an imminent danger to the child’s life” if he was not immediately removed, “when in truth” young Patrick “was in no danger, imminent or otherwise, from continuing in his aunt’s care,” the documents state.
Lerner, a senior attorney at the white-shoe firm of Skadden Arps now serving as pro-bono counsel for the child, said ACS “made no assessment” that the aunt’s temporary custody of the boy “posed any danger” when its workers decided to seize Patrick on Dec. 29, 2009.
When ACS workers met again with the aunt two weeks later, they even deemed her suitable to serve as a temporary guardian for the boy. But for reasons that are unclear, the child nevertheless continued to remain in the foster home until his disappearance, Lerner wrote in the scathing court papers.
Patrick, who would now be 9 years old, was last seen on the night of Jan. 22, 2010, after he apparently slipped off while taking out the trash with his foster mom at her East New York home.
Adding to the debacle, ACS put him with a foster mother who spoke only Spanish, even though Patrick spoke only English.
The child, who had documented emotional and educational issues, was so unhappy that he began to experience psychiatric problems and tried to run away on several occasions.
Despite a psychologist’s assessment that the boy urgently needed medication and psychiatric care, ACS failed to take immediate action to help the boy, Lerner charged.
This chain of events prompted a federal judge overseeing the lawsuit about the child’s disappearance to suggest that — if proven — the city could be liable for damages.
Lawyers for the city strongly dispute the claim that ACS workers deliberately misled a Family Court judge and contend that facts arose that led them to believe that leaving Patrick with relatives was not a good option.
Source http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/brooklyn/foster_fiasco_2t4PoiyY60swRmOCmHCVXN
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Brooklyn Family Defense Project Fall Benefit Video 11-17-11
BFDP Fall Benefit Video, 11/17/11 from brooklyn family defense project on Vimeo.
Thank you National Coalition for Child Protection Reform for posting this first and bringing it to everyone's attention.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Interview with a CASA volunteer
Blogger note:
Found this interesting - since most of us know that CASA's are not truly independent (CPS has their hands wrapped tightly around the program and the volunteers) and do not always look out for the child(ren) in many cases.
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by Andrea Poe
EASTON, MD., November 28, 2011 — Last month, The Red Thread profiled CASA as an organization that helps children navigate the legal system. The organization relies on volunteers around the country. This week, The Red Thread interviewed one of those volunteers about her experiences with CASA.
Bonnie Morro, a graduate of the University of Connecticut, is a retired HR director at Becton Dickinson and Company, a medical technology manufacturer headquartered in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey.
Following her retirement in January 2005, she spent three years as a substitute teacher in the Torrington, Connecticut public school system, where she taught Kindergarten through 5th grade, as well as pre K developmentally challenged children.
After moving to Easton, Maryland, Morro became a CASA volunteer.
How did you first become involved with CASA?
I wanted to get involved in a volunteer activity that had substance, one that would challenge me, provide a service to the community and be fulfilling. While waiting to be accepted into the program I read a lot about the work that CASA did and was very impressed with the results of the organization’s efforts.
How extensive was the training? What did it entail?
Once an applicant has passed a background check, there is a requirement for 34 hours of in-house training before getting a CASA appointment. There is also a requirement to complete 12 hours of training each year following an appointment.
Initial training is very rigorous, and is conducted by CASA staff and external resources such as lawyers, judges, and Department of Social Services staff.
Training includes areas such as introduction to the law, child protection systems and the courts, exploring cultural awareness and understanding families and children.
What was your first assignment like?
I am currently working on my first assignment, which began in December of 2010. I have been fortunate to get a case where the biological parent is doing everything that has been outlined in her service plan.
The twins were infants when I was assigned the case and have been living in an excellent foster home. They are doing well and their biological mother is working toward reunification with her children.
As a new CASA volunteer, I have much to learn. Having a case that’s moving forward in a positive direction has given me an opportunity to gain experience without much of the frustration that can accompany so many of these cases.
How does it work?
A CASA is assigned a child who is under the protection of the court due to neglect, abuse or abandonment. Responsibilities include visiting the child, or, in my cases, children, once a month, corresponding with the Department of Social Services, meeting with the child(ren)’s parents, contacting any other sources that may be necessary, such as lawyers, teachers, physicians. You must also submit a written report to the court prior to the hearing for the case. A CASA must observe, question, conduct research and make recommendations based on his or her findings that are in the best interest of the child.
What's the most challenging part of being a CASA volunteer?
My greatest challenge is to ensure that I don't overlook anything that could be detrimental to the children. I work very closely with a Department of Social Services Child Protection worker and under the guidance of a CASA staff person.
What’s the greatest reward?
Knowing that what you are doing will make a positive impact on children’s lives.
Source http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/red-thread-adoptive-family-forum/2011/nov/28/interview-casa-volunteer/
Found this interesting - since most of us know that CASA's are not truly independent (CPS has their hands wrapped tightly around the program and the volunteers) and do not always look out for the child(ren) in many cases.
-----
by Andrea Poe
EASTON, MD., November 28, 2011 — Last month, The Red Thread profiled CASA as an organization that helps children navigate the legal system. The organization relies on volunteers around the country. This week, The Red Thread interviewed one of those volunteers about her experiences with CASA.
Bonnie Morro, a graduate of the University of Connecticut, is a retired HR director at Becton Dickinson and Company, a medical technology manufacturer headquartered in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey.
Following her retirement in January 2005, she spent three years as a substitute teacher in the Torrington, Connecticut public school system, where she taught Kindergarten through 5th grade, as well as pre K developmentally challenged children.
After moving to Easton, Maryland, Morro became a CASA volunteer.
How did you first become involved with CASA?
I wanted to get involved in a volunteer activity that had substance, one that would challenge me, provide a service to the community and be fulfilling. While waiting to be accepted into the program I read a lot about the work that CASA did and was very impressed with the results of the organization’s efforts.
How extensive was the training? What did it entail?
Once an applicant has passed a background check, there is a requirement for 34 hours of in-house training before getting a CASA appointment. There is also a requirement to complete 12 hours of training each year following an appointment.
Initial training is very rigorous, and is conducted by CASA staff and external resources such as lawyers, judges, and Department of Social Services staff.
Training includes areas such as introduction to the law, child protection systems and the courts, exploring cultural awareness and understanding families and children.
What was your first assignment like?
I am currently working on my first assignment, which began in December of 2010. I have been fortunate to get a case where the biological parent is doing everything that has been outlined in her service plan.
The twins were infants when I was assigned the case and have been living in an excellent foster home. They are doing well and their biological mother is working toward reunification with her children.
As a new CASA volunteer, I have much to learn. Having a case that’s moving forward in a positive direction has given me an opportunity to gain experience without much of the frustration that can accompany so many of these cases.
How does it work?
A CASA is assigned a child who is under the protection of the court due to neglect, abuse or abandonment. Responsibilities include visiting the child, or, in my cases, children, once a month, corresponding with the Department of Social Services, meeting with the child(ren)’s parents, contacting any other sources that may be necessary, such as lawyers, teachers, physicians. You must also submit a written report to the court prior to the hearing for the case. A CASA must observe, question, conduct research and make recommendations based on his or her findings that are in the best interest of the child.
What's the most challenging part of being a CASA volunteer?
My greatest challenge is to ensure that I don't overlook anything that could be detrimental to the children. I work very closely with a Department of Social Services Child Protection worker and under the guidance of a CASA staff person.
What’s the greatest reward?
Knowing that what you are doing will make a positive impact on children’s lives.
Source http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/red-thread-adoptive-family-forum/2011/nov/28/interview-casa-volunteer/
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Parents of Adolf Hitler Campbell lose custody of newborn Hons
A New Jersey couple who lost custody of their first three kids after giving them Nazi-inspired names has been denied the right to take home their fourth child, a newborn boy they named Hons.
Heath and Deborah Campbell's other children - Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell - are in foster care. On Monday, the Campbells went to family court in their hometown of Flemington, N.J,. in a bid to regain custody of Hons, who they say was taken from them by state child welfare officials hours after Deborah gave birth on Thursday, reported myfoxphilly.com.
Hons is still in the hospital, but the couple has been barred from seeing the baby, they told FOX. Heath Campbell said police came into the nursery and took Hons without a court order.
“They kidnapped my kid,” Campbell said. “I’ve been sleeping with his little blanket from the hospital.”
The state took custody of the couple’s other children nearly two years ago, saying there were in danger because of previous violence in the Campbell home, The Associated Press has reported. The Campbells have been fighting to get their children back ever since, claiming the violence charges are fabricated. It wasn't clear whether the latest court hearing involved all of the children or just the newborn.
The Campbells came into the spotlight in 2009 when a supermarket refused to ice a birthday cake for their now 4-year-old son Adolf Hitler.
Heath Campbell defended the children's names and told myfoxphilly.com on Monday that his reverend approved of him naming his new son Hons.
The Campbells have denied that they are neo-Nazis.
Read more on myfoxphilly.com.
Source http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/22/8952917-parents-of-adolf-hitler-campbell-lose-custody-of-newborn-hons
Heath and Deborah Campbell's other children - Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell - are in foster care. On Monday, the Campbells went to family court in their hometown of Flemington, N.J,. in a bid to regain custody of Hons, who they say was taken from them by state child welfare officials hours after Deborah gave birth on Thursday, reported myfoxphilly.com.
Hons is still in the hospital, but the couple has been barred from seeing the baby, they told FOX. Heath Campbell said police came into the nursery and took Hons without a court order.
“They kidnapped my kid,” Campbell said. “I’ve been sleeping with his little blanket from the hospital.”
The state took custody of the couple’s other children nearly two years ago, saying there were in danger because of previous violence in the Campbell home, The Associated Press has reported. The Campbells have been fighting to get their children back ever since, claiming the violence charges are fabricated. It wasn't clear whether the latest court hearing involved all of the children or just the newborn.
The Campbells came into the spotlight in 2009 when a supermarket refused to ice a birthday cake for their now 4-year-old son Adolf Hitler.
Heath Campbell defended the children's names and told myfoxphilly.com on Monday that his reverend approved of him naming his new son Hons.
The Campbells have denied that they are neo-Nazis.
Read more on myfoxphilly.com.
Source http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/22/8952917-parents-of-adolf-hitler-campbell-lose-custody-of-newborn-hons
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Parents of ‘Adolf Hitler’ Lose Custody of Newborn - New Jersey
By Alyssa Newcomb
Heath and Deborah Campbell, the New Jersey parents of three children with Nazi-inspired names, lost custody of their fourth child 17 hours after he was born, the Express-Times of Lehigh Valley, Pa., reported.
Hons Campbell was taken into custody by the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services late Thursday night after the doctor who delivered the baby called the agency, the paper reported.
“There’s no legal binding court order. It’s basically a kidnapping, but they use different terms,” Heath Campbell told the Express-Times.
The Campbell family stepped into the spotlight in December 2008 when a ShopRite grovery store declined to decorate a birthday cake for their son Adolf Hitler Campbell’s third birthday.
The state took custody of Adolf, along with his sisters JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Himler Jeannie Campbell, in January of 2009. The three children have remained in foster care ever since.
A DYFS spokesperson told ABCNews.com in 2009 that she could not comment on a specific case, but said children are only taken into custody if there is a suspicion of abuse or neglect.
“We would never remove a child simply based on their name,” the spokeswoman said.
Neighbor Lori Dilts told ABCNews.com at the time the children were taken that it was certainly not because of their names.
“Those children look outwardly healthy, but they didn’t have much freedom,” Dilts said. “Occasionally, the little boy would come over here and would hate having to go back to his house.”
The couple’s attorney, Pasquale Giannetta, told The Associated Press that a court a hearing has been scheduled for Monday to determine the custody status of the newborn.
ABC News’ Russell Goldman contributed to this report.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/11/parents-of-adolf-hitler-lose-custody-of-newborn/
Heath and Deborah Campbell, the New Jersey parents of three children with Nazi-inspired names, lost custody of their fourth child 17 hours after he was born, the Express-Times of Lehigh Valley, Pa., reported.
Hons Campbell was taken into custody by the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services late Thursday night after the doctor who delivered the baby called the agency, the paper reported.
“There’s no legal binding court order. It’s basically a kidnapping, but they use different terms,” Heath Campbell told the Express-Times.
The Campbell family stepped into the spotlight in December 2008 when a ShopRite grovery store declined to decorate a birthday cake for their son Adolf Hitler Campbell’s third birthday.
The state took custody of Adolf, along with his sisters JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Himler Jeannie Campbell, in January of 2009. The three children have remained in foster care ever since.
A DYFS spokesperson told ABCNews.com in 2009 that she could not comment on a specific case, but said children are only taken into custody if there is a suspicion of abuse or neglect.
“We would never remove a child simply based on their name,” the spokeswoman said.
Neighbor Lori Dilts told ABCNews.com at the time the children were taken that it was certainly not because of their names.
“Those children look outwardly healthy, but they didn’t have much freedom,” Dilts said. “Occasionally, the little boy would come over here and would hate having to go back to his house.”
The couple’s attorney, Pasquale Giannetta, told The Associated Press that a court a hearing has been scheduled for Monday to determine the custody status of the newborn.
ABC News’ Russell Goldman contributed to this report.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/11/parents-of-adolf-hitler-lose-custody-of-newborn/
Friday, November 4, 2011
Lawmaker: Mom’s struggle to keep her children shows problems with DCFS
By Brooke Adams
The Salt Lake Tribune
Price • This is what Jennifer and Brandon Stark brought in a plastic grocery sack as goodbye gifts for their four boys: a few rocks for their oldest son’s collection, puzzles, piggy banks, crayons and letters expressing their love.
On Oct. 25, a week after a judge terminated their parental rights and 14 months after the state Division of Child and Family Services first investigated the couple for alleged drug use and neglect, the Starks saw their sons for what may be the last time.
The case has caught the attention of parental rights advocates and a state legislator who says it exemplifies the way the court and child welfare systems work against parents, especially those with limited resources.
"She lost her children and her major crime was she didn’t have a job and a driver’s license and was therefore dependent on her husband," said Rep. Christine F. Watkins, D-Price. "I just found it astonishing in a very negative way."
Among troubling aspects of the case, according to Watkins, is the amount of time the parents were given to regain their children, the children’s placement with foster parents rather than relatives and the high rate of children in foster care in the region.
The Starks plan to appeal the placement of their boys, who range in age from 6 years to 7 months, with foster parents and say their attorney is optimistic. But odds of success are slim: 97 percent of parental rights terminations are upheld, according to DCFS. The division doesn’t track appeals challenging placements.
Watkins said she began investigating the DCFS Eastern Region, which includes Carbon and Emery counties, about 18 months ago after being overwhelmed with complaints from constituents.
"If you don’t do everything they tell you to do, exactly as they tell you to do it, then you’re done," said Watkins. "They will take your kids. It is tragic."
"There were a lot of things very wrong here," she said. "I worked with the state director, and a lot of changes have been made."
Among those changes: appointment of a new region director about nine months ago. But Watkins is still concerned and is already drafting legislation to address what she sees as flaws in the system. Among them, she says, is the lack of funds put into home services to help families stay together.
Last year, DCFS spent $94 million on foster care and kinship support services, but just $7 million on in-home services to help families correct problems that put their children in jeopardy.
Brent Platt, DCFS director, said he believes with a new director in place, the Eastern Region office is "moving in the right direction, but it takes time. He [the new director] is working closely with the Price office and trying to rebuild that relationship with the community."
It is unclear what, if any, effect the region’s problems played in the Stark case. The division’s stated preference is that in-home services be provided so that children remain with their parents and, if that is not possible, that they be placed with relatives.
Liz Sollis, DCFS spokeswoman, said she couldn’t legally comment on the Stark case specifically other than to note it is the juvenile justice system that ultimately decides what happens in child welfare cases.
That leaves the Starks, who provided some documentation to back their account, and their supporters to tell what happened.
The allegations • The Starks, both in their mid-20s, had three sons in August 2010 when police and child protective service workers first investigated them for alleged drug use and child neglect.
At the time, the Starks had been together for eight years and married for more than two years. Jennifer Stark, pregnant with their fourth child, was employed at a care center while Brandon Stark looked after the kids and ferried his wife to and from work. It was alleged they left the children alone during those trips, which they deny.
When the Starks refused to take drug tests, the state placed their three sons in a temporary shelter. The couple quickly relented.
As with many child welfare cases, some facts are disputed but not this one: as alleged, Brandon Stark periodically used marijuana, methamphetamine and opiate drugs. Over eight months, Brandon Stark was drug tested at least 34 times; about half his tests were positive. Jennifer Stark, in contrast, went through more than 16 drug tests, and each was negative.
After his first positive test, DCFS required Brandon Stark to separate from his wife and children and get drug treatment; he moved in with a friend, got a job at a fast-food restaurant and entered drug counseling.
The couple had moved out of their rented home, and Jennifer had lost her job. Her service plan was to find a place to live, get a job and sign up for counseling and peer parenting support.
Right from the start, Jennifer Stark, whose siblings and parents live in Ohio, asked her caseworker to consider placing the children with her sister, who was more than willing to take them.
"But we never heard from her," said Kim Kisseberth of Findlay, Ohio, one of Jennifer Stark’s nine siblings.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Stark found a place to rent, paid for by her husband, and in late September the boys were returned to her care; about a month later, Brandon Stark was allowed to move back in with his family.
The setbacks • As winter set in, Brandon Stark’s $8 an-hour job wasn’t enough to cover rent, utilities and $50 a week for his drug treatment program. The Starks moved to a cheaper place but were still underwater financially.
"It was either rent for us or it was his drug treatment," Jennifer Stark said. Brandon Stark dropped out of the program and couldn’t afford a second $140 drug assessment the state requested, she said. He soon relapsed.
DCFS drew up a new service plan allowing Brandon Stark to stay with his family as long as he re-entered drug treatment. A caseworker suggested he find a better-paying job or take on a second job to pay for the program and the family’s monthly expenses, according to the couple.
By mid-March, when Jennifer Stark gave birth to their fourth son, Brandon Stark had stopped participating in drug tests and was once again barred from living with his family. Jennifer Stark said she agreed to a new service plan only after the caseworker threatened to remove her children.
"I had no job, no means of transportation because I don’t have my driver’s license and was living far from everyone I know, trying to handle four kids by myself and stay as mentally stable as I could under the conditions," Jennifer Stark said. The caseworker’s advice? Rely on friends, family and the community for childcare, transportation and support, she said.
Jennifer Stark said she was told "something was wrong with me that I was with someone like [Brandon] and hadn’t seen the signs" of his substance abuse.
In early May, a caseworker found Brandon Stark at the home — though Jennifer Stark claims he had just stopped by to drop off a rent check — and the division again took custody of the four children, placing them with a foster family in Orem.
"We were told there were no foster families in this area equipped to take four kids," Jennifer Stark said — something DCFS acknowledges is a problem in rural areas.
A new service plan was drawn up, which looked much like the others: drug treatment for him, increased independence for her through learning to drive, getting a job, counseling. A permanency hearing, when decisions are made about whether to continue efforts to reunify a family, was set for late August.
"I was looking for jobs as much as I could," Jennifer Stark said. With public school out until fall, there was no chance she’d finish driver education and get her license in time.
And Brandon Stark’s plan "failed right off the get-go," Jennifer Stark said. He spent six weeks in jail this summer after falling behind in restitution payments in connection with a March 2010 misdemeanor shoplifting offense, according to court records.
For Jennifer Stark, the result was lost financial support and transportation to job interviews and to visits with their children in Orem. The state suggested she move into a women’s shelter.
"I was offended," Jennifer Stark said. "I had a roof over my head and Brandon was in jail at the time. So why?"
Still, she agreed to check it out.
"I was told I would have to cut all ties [with other family], on top of losing my kids, my husband and everything," Jennifer Stark said. "I didn’t want to lose my mother-in-law and what little support I had. They couldn’t guarantee transportation for anything. They said I would get a month [at the shelter] and then they’d try to find me a place to go. I said no."
But the decision to stick with her husband and stay out of the shelter proved to be more strikes against her, Jennifer Stark said, resulting in caseworkers describing her as "co-dependent."
It’s one of the issues that irks Watkins. "Are we helping families or are we destroying families?" she said.
Kisseberth said she’d offered over the years to help Jennifer when her relationship was in trouble, but her sister would "always say we were raised to not divorce that easily, that she was going to hold it together. She’d said, ‘So what if I leave him and one day my boys are coming to me saying, ‘Why did you take us away from our dad?’ "
The outcome • By June, the Kisseberths had completed all the steps necessary to be a kinship placement and were on track to be certified as foster and adoptive parents by the August hearing, which the state helped pay for them to attend.
The Kisseberths had remodeled their home, completed a home inspection, background check, foster parenting classes and interstate paperwork, and lined up daycare and other support. They had never met the three youngest children and hadn’t seen the oldest boy since he was a toddler but began building a relationship through weekly phone calls over the summer. They also sent a photo album introducing them to their extended family.
Kisseberth said that at the August hearing, the Starks’ caseworker, the state’s attorney and the couple’s attorney all recommended that the boys live with them.
Jennifer Stark said she acknowledged at the hearing that neither she nor Brandon were currently able to provide for their children — an admission they were told would increase odds of their children being placed in the custody of her sister.
People who had worked with the Starks and their children submitted letters describing them as well-bonded and, in Jennifer’s case, as making "a good amount of progress in a short time to be reunited with her children."
But days after the August hearing, 7th District Juvenile Judge Scott Johansen sided with the children’s guardian ad litem, who recommended the boys stay with the foster family with whom they had spent the previous four months and who are interested in adopting them.
"When they take the kids away from us, and put them in foster care, they don’t have any ties, they don’t know the foster parents," Jennifer Stark said. "What would have been the difference with my sister and her husband?"
On Oct. 18, the Starks’ parental rights were terminated. Days later, they bid their boys goodbye.
"Yeah, I made some mistakes, but I don’t feel it was bad enough to lose our children forever," Brandon Stark said.
His wife, he said, did "everything in her power and it was still not good enough for the state because she chose to stick with me. ... All we can do is hope and pray for the appeal to go through and hope her sister will get them so we can see them again."
Their last meeting with the boys was just a half-hour, and they were warned by a caseworker to not make promises, to not talk about the future, to leave their sons’ questions about when they might visit again unanswered, to leave Jennifer Stark’s tears unexplained.
That left them with these words: "Just, ‘Love you,’ " a weeping Jennifer Start said afterward. " ‘No matter what, we love you.’ "
Source http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/jazz/52788018-78/stark-jennifer-brandon-foster.html.csp?page=1
The Salt Lake Tribune
Price • This is what Jennifer and Brandon Stark brought in a plastic grocery sack as goodbye gifts for their four boys: a few rocks for their oldest son’s collection, puzzles, piggy banks, crayons and letters expressing their love.
On Oct. 25, a week after a judge terminated their parental rights and 14 months after the state Division of Child and Family Services first investigated the couple for alleged drug use and neglect, the Starks saw their sons for what may be the last time.
The case has caught the attention of parental rights advocates and a state legislator who says it exemplifies the way the court and child welfare systems work against parents, especially those with limited resources.
"She lost her children and her major crime was she didn’t have a job and a driver’s license and was therefore dependent on her husband," said Rep. Christine F. Watkins, D-Price. "I just found it astonishing in a very negative way."
Among troubling aspects of the case, according to Watkins, is the amount of time the parents were given to regain their children, the children’s placement with foster parents rather than relatives and the high rate of children in foster care in the region.
The Starks plan to appeal the placement of their boys, who range in age from 6 years to 7 months, with foster parents and say their attorney is optimistic. But odds of success are slim: 97 percent of parental rights terminations are upheld, according to DCFS. The division doesn’t track appeals challenging placements.
Watkins said she began investigating the DCFS Eastern Region, which includes Carbon and Emery counties, about 18 months ago after being overwhelmed with complaints from constituents.
"If you don’t do everything they tell you to do, exactly as they tell you to do it, then you’re done," said Watkins. "They will take your kids. It is tragic."
"There were a lot of things very wrong here," she said. "I worked with the state director, and a lot of changes have been made."
Among those changes: appointment of a new region director about nine months ago. But Watkins is still concerned and is already drafting legislation to address what she sees as flaws in the system. Among them, she says, is the lack of funds put into home services to help families stay together.
Last year, DCFS spent $94 million on foster care and kinship support services, but just $7 million on in-home services to help families correct problems that put their children in jeopardy.
Brent Platt, DCFS director, said he believes with a new director in place, the Eastern Region office is "moving in the right direction, but it takes time. He [the new director] is working closely with the Price office and trying to rebuild that relationship with the community."
It is unclear what, if any, effect the region’s problems played in the Stark case. The division’s stated preference is that in-home services be provided so that children remain with their parents and, if that is not possible, that they be placed with relatives.
Liz Sollis, DCFS spokeswoman, said she couldn’t legally comment on the Stark case specifically other than to note it is the juvenile justice system that ultimately decides what happens in child welfare cases.
That leaves the Starks, who provided some documentation to back their account, and their supporters to tell what happened.
The allegations • The Starks, both in their mid-20s, had three sons in August 2010 when police and child protective service workers first investigated them for alleged drug use and child neglect.
At the time, the Starks had been together for eight years and married for more than two years. Jennifer Stark, pregnant with their fourth child, was employed at a care center while Brandon Stark looked after the kids and ferried his wife to and from work. It was alleged they left the children alone during those trips, which they deny.
When the Starks refused to take drug tests, the state placed their three sons in a temporary shelter. The couple quickly relented.
As with many child welfare cases, some facts are disputed but not this one: as alleged, Brandon Stark periodically used marijuana, methamphetamine and opiate drugs. Over eight months, Brandon Stark was drug tested at least 34 times; about half his tests were positive. Jennifer Stark, in contrast, went through more than 16 drug tests, and each was negative.
After his first positive test, DCFS required Brandon Stark to separate from his wife and children and get drug treatment; he moved in with a friend, got a job at a fast-food restaurant and entered drug counseling.
The couple had moved out of their rented home, and Jennifer had lost her job. Her service plan was to find a place to live, get a job and sign up for counseling and peer parenting support.
Right from the start, Jennifer Stark, whose siblings and parents live in Ohio, asked her caseworker to consider placing the children with her sister, who was more than willing to take them.
"But we never heard from her," said Kim Kisseberth of Findlay, Ohio, one of Jennifer Stark’s nine siblings.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Stark found a place to rent, paid for by her husband, and in late September the boys were returned to her care; about a month later, Brandon Stark was allowed to move back in with his family.
The setbacks • As winter set in, Brandon Stark’s $8 an-hour job wasn’t enough to cover rent, utilities and $50 a week for his drug treatment program. The Starks moved to a cheaper place but were still underwater financially.
"It was either rent for us or it was his drug treatment," Jennifer Stark said. Brandon Stark dropped out of the program and couldn’t afford a second $140 drug assessment the state requested, she said. He soon relapsed.
DCFS drew up a new service plan allowing Brandon Stark to stay with his family as long as he re-entered drug treatment. A caseworker suggested he find a better-paying job or take on a second job to pay for the program and the family’s monthly expenses, according to the couple.
By mid-March, when Jennifer Stark gave birth to their fourth son, Brandon Stark had stopped participating in drug tests and was once again barred from living with his family. Jennifer Stark said she agreed to a new service plan only after the caseworker threatened to remove her children.
"I had no job, no means of transportation because I don’t have my driver’s license and was living far from everyone I know, trying to handle four kids by myself and stay as mentally stable as I could under the conditions," Jennifer Stark said. The caseworker’s advice? Rely on friends, family and the community for childcare, transportation and support, she said.
Jennifer Stark said she was told "something was wrong with me that I was with someone like [Brandon] and hadn’t seen the signs" of his substance abuse.
In early May, a caseworker found Brandon Stark at the home — though Jennifer Stark claims he had just stopped by to drop off a rent check — and the division again took custody of the four children, placing them with a foster family in Orem.
"We were told there were no foster families in this area equipped to take four kids," Jennifer Stark said — something DCFS acknowledges is a problem in rural areas.
A new service plan was drawn up, which looked much like the others: drug treatment for him, increased independence for her through learning to drive, getting a job, counseling. A permanency hearing, when decisions are made about whether to continue efforts to reunify a family, was set for late August.
"I was looking for jobs as much as I could," Jennifer Stark said. With public school out until fall, there was no chance she’d finish driver education and get her license in time.
And Brandon Stark’s plan "failed right off the get-go," Jennifer Stark said. He spent six weeks in jail this summer after falling behind in restitution payments in connection with a March 2010 misdemeanor shoplifting offense, according to court records.
For Jennifer Stark, the result was lost financial support and transportation to job interviews and to visits with their children in Orem. The state suggested she move into a women’s shelter.
"I was offended," Jennifer Stark said. "I had a roof over my head and Brandon was in jail at the time. So why?"
Still, she agreed to check it out.
"I was told I would have to cut all ties [with other family], on top of losing my kids, my husband and everything," Jennifer Stark said. "I didn’t want to lose my mother-in-law and what little support I had. They couldn’t guarantee transportation for anything. They said I would get a month [at the shelter] and then they’d try to find me a place to go. I said no."
But the decision to stick with her husband and stay out of the shelter proved to be more strikes against her, Jennifer Stark said, resulting in caseworkers describing her as "co-dependent."
It’s one of the issues that irks Watkins. "Are we helping families or are we destroying families?" she said.
Kisseberth said she’d offered over the years to help Jennifer when her relationship was in trouble, but her sister would "always say we were raised to not divorce that easily, that she was going to hold it together. She’d said, ‘So what if I leave him and one day my boys are coming to me saying, ‘Why did you take us away from our dad?’ "
The outcome • By June, the Kisseberths had completed all the steps necessary to be a kinship placement and were on track to be certified as foster and adoptive parents by the August hearing, which the state helped pay for them to attend.
The Kisseberths had remodeled their home, completed a home inspection, background check, foster parenting classes and interstate paperwork, and lined up daycare and other support. They had never met the three youngest children and hadn’t seen the oldest boy since he was a toddler but began building a relationship through weekly phone calls over the summer. They also sent a photo album introducing them to their extended family.
Kisseberth said that at the August hearing, the Starks’ caseworker, the state’s attorney and the couple’s attorney all recommended that the boys live with them.
Jennifer Stark said she acknowledged at the hearing that neither she nor Brandon were currently able to provide for their children — an admission they were told would increase odds of their children being placed in the custody of her sister.
People who had worked with the Starks and their children submitted letters describing them as well-bonded and, in Jennifer’s case, as making "a good amount of progress in a short time to be reunited with her children."
But days after the August hearing, 7th District Juvenile Judge Scott Johansen sided with the children’s guardian ad litem, who recommended the boys stay with the foster family with whom they had spent the previous four months and who are interested in adopting them.
"When they take the kids away from us, and put them in foster care, they don’t have any ties, they don’t know the foster parents," Jennifer Stark said. "What would have been the difference with my sister and her husband?"
On Oct. 18, the Starks’ parental rights were terminated. Days later, they bid their boys goodbye.
"Yeah, I made some mistakes, but I don’t feel it was bad enough to lose our children forever," Brandon Stark said.
His wife, he said, did "everything in her power and it was still not good enough for the state because she chose to stick with me. ... All we can do is hope and pray for the appeal to go through and hope her sister will get them so we can see them again."
Their last meeting with the boys was just a half-hour, and they were warned by a caseworker to not make promises, to not talk about the future, to leave their sons’ questions about when they might visit again unanswered, to leave Jennifer Stark’s tears unexplained.
That left them with these words: "Just, ‘Love you,’ " a weeping Jennifer Start said afterward. " ‘No matter what, we love you.’ "
Source http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/jazz/52788018-78/stark-jennifer-brandon-foster.html.csp?page=1
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Thousands of Kids Taken From Parents In U.S. Deportation System
by Seth Freed Wessler
Clara’s eldest kid was 6 years old and her youngest just a year old when it happened. Josefina’s baby was 9 months. All three children were ripped from their mothers and sent to live in foster homes with strangers. Clara and Josefina, sisters in their early 30s who lived together in a small northern New Mexico town, had done nothing to harm their children or to elicit the attention of the child welfare department. Yet one morning last year, their family was shattered when federal immigration authorities detained both sisters. Clara and Josefina were deported four months later. For a year, they had no contact with their children.
The sun was rising on a late summer morning in Farmington. Clara (all parents’ names in this story have been changed) was asleep inside the trailer that she shared with the children and Josefina, who was finishing a night shift at the local restaurant where both sisters worked. Clara says she was jolted awake by the sound of banging and yelling. A group of uniformed officers, some marked with ICE, for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and others DEA, for Drug Enforcement Administration, burst through the door.
The agents put Clara in handcuffs, while two of the officers began walking and carrying the children out of the trailer. Clara pleaded with them, asking what they would do with her children. “We’re taking them where we take all the kids,” Clara remembers one of the agents saying. She begged them to let her call a friend who could come pick up the children. The agents refused.
When Josefina arrived home from work several hours later, ICE officers were waiting. The sisters were locked up in the San Juan County jail, where they stayed for several weeks until ICE transported them to an immigration detention center in Albuquerque, three hours to the south. Their children remained in foster care.
This family is one among thousands who’ve been through the same ordeal. In a yearlong investigation, the Applied Research Center, which publishes Colorlines.com, found that at least 5,100 children whose parents are detained or deported are currently in foster care around the United States. That number represents a conservative estimate of the total, based on extensive surveys of child welfare case workers and attorneys and analysis of national immigration and child welfare trends. Many of the kids may never see their parents again.
These children, many of whom should never have been separated from their parents in the first place, face often insurmountable obstacles to reunifying with their mothers and fathers. Though child welfare departments are required by federal law to reunify children with any parents who are able to provide for the basic safety of their children, detention makes this all but impossible. Then, once parents are deported, families are often separated for long periods. Ultimately, child welfare departments and juvenile courts too often move to terminate the parental rights of deportees and put children up for adoption, rather than attempt to unify the family as they would in other circumstances.
While anecdotal reports have circulated about children lingering in foster care because of a parent’s detention or deportation, our investigation provides the first evidence that the problem occurs on a large scale. If these cases continue mounting at the same pace over the next five years, 15,000 children of detained and deported mothers and fathers will likely be separated from their parents and languish in U.S. foster homes.
Citizen Kids Caught in the Deportation Dragnet
Josefina and Clara’s children are among the hidden victims of an expanding immigration detention and deportation system that now expels nearly 400,000 people each year.
According to Clara and Josefina, the ICE and DEA agents came to their home looking for drugs, but found none. Clara believes a neighbor called in the false report to ICE. A criminal background check confirms that charges against the sisters were dropped and that neither had ever been convicted of any crime. ICE nonetheless detained them because of their undocumented immigration status, moving them from the county jail to the immigration detention center where they were held for three months. They were deported to Mexico in December 2010.
According to over 100 child welfare caseworkers and attorneys we interviewed around the country, as rates of deportations increase, so do the numbers of children from immigrant families in foster care. Indeed, federal data released to the Applied Research Center through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that almost one in four people deported in the last year was the mother or father of a United States citizen. (Next week, Colorlines.com will publish a follow-up story further detailing and explaining this startling data.)
Roberta is one such parent. Almost a year ago, she was arrested on a drunken driving charge that would likely have triggered only a short interruption in her child custody, if she were a citizen. Instead, it threatens to result in the termination of the 35-year-old’s parental rights, because she is an undocumented immigrant and was deported after being charged. Her five young children are now in two different foster homes in Phoenix. Separated from them by the U.S.-Mexico border, Roberta cannot make the journey back to fight for her kids.
ICE detained Roberta after the Phoenix police stopped her one evening as she drove three of her children home from a family party, where Roberta acknowledges she had one beer too many. Police administered a breathalyzer and charged her with driving under the influence and with child endangerment.
“I know I’ve made a mistake, but I’ve never before had a problem and I’ve paid,” Roberta told me in late January 2011, while still at the Eloy Detention Center, a 1,600-bed facility run by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America. A criminal background check confirms that this was Roberta’s first conviction in her 15 years living in the United States.
Phoenix is one of almost 70 jurisdictions around the country where local police have signed agreements with the federal government to act as immigration agents. The “287(g)” agreement, as the program is called, turns a simple traffic stop into a path to deportation by deputizing local cops as immigration enforcement agents.
Our research found that children in areas where local cops aggressively engage in immigration enforcement are more likely to be separated from their parents and face barriers to reunification. In the counties we surveyed where local police have signed 287(g) agreements with ICE, children in foster care were 29 percent more likely to have a detained or deported parent than in other counties. That disparity remained statistically significant when controlling for the size of the foreign-born population.
In Roberta’s case, as the police officer arrested her, he called the county Child Protective Services, which came quickly to the side of the road and took the children away. The agency placed them in what were supposed to be temporary foster homes, until Roberta could get out of jail.
But she was not released—not until she was deported, without her children.
A Morally Corrupted System
Local immigration enforcement is metastasizing through initiatives like the 287(g) agreements and, most significantly, through a controversial program called Secure Communities, which allows ICE access to data on every person booked into a county jail. As the federal government shifts its deportation tactics away from high-profile workplace raids and toward enforcement that’s silently tied to the day-to-day functions of local police departments, a growing number of long-time residents with families and deep ties to the U.S. are deported. The program is turning jurisdictions around the country into deportation hotspots. We have identified at least 22 states where children in foster care face barriers to reunifying with their detained or deported mothers and fathers.
Whatever the state of the debate, or rancor, over who should and should not be allowed to live in the U.S., the moral and bureaucratic fallout of deporting 400,000 people a year are accumulating to toxic levels. Child welfare caseworkers say that in the face of an opaque detention system, they are helpless to reunify families. And although federal law requires child welfare departments to make diligent efforts toward family reunification, when parents are detained that’s basically impossible.
In Los Angeles, where according to our research, the mother or father of approximately one in every 16 children in foster care has been detained or deported, a caseworker for the country described the frustration. “Ultimately, as social workers our role is to reunify families. I’m not saying that ICE is right or wrong; what I’m saying is, let us do our job, let us reunify families.”
An immigration enforcement system that operates anything like the one we have will run roughshod over most everything.
Some of the most unsettling cases that our research has uncovered involve children who entered foster care when local police arrested non-citizen mothers after they or neighbors called 911 to report domestic violence.
Hilaria, of Phoenix, was arrested because she tried to defend herself against her abusive husband. One day in October 2010, he began berating her and threatening her. In minutes, the words escalated into hitting and choking. Hilaria fought back, freeing herself from the man and running to the kitchen, where she says she picked up a screwdriver and threw it at him, drawing blood.
A neighbor heard screaming and called the police. When the cops arrived, Hilaria’s husband told them that she attacked him and, as is too often the case in domestic violence reports, the officers arrested Hilaria for assault. Because their children were home at the time, the police called Child Protective Services. But when the officers and Hilaria’s abuser told the CPS worker that Hilaria had been the assailant, the caseworker left the children with him. Two weeks later, the child welfare department returned to check on the children. The caseworker now suspected that Hilaria’s husband was using drugs and removed the children from him, placing them in foster care.
Two months later, Hilaria sat on a plastic chair in a small detention center visitation room, speaking through tears. “I’ve had domestic violence before, but I took it for my kids,” she said. “Now they’ve robbed me. I did what I did to defend myself and my kids.”
Hilaria is now applying for a reprieve from deportation, which is available to some victims of domestic violence. But because of the charge of assault against her, it’s not clear the government will grant her a visa—she violates a zero-tolerance policy against “criminal” immigrants. The Obama administration recently announced that it would review the deportation cases of all 300,000 people slated for removal. The policy change, which is designed to stop the deportations of people brought to the U.S. as children and other target populations, does not appear to have helped even those like Hilaria. One year after her arrest, Hilaria is still detained. Her children are still in foster care.
The Abyss of Detention
Four months after Roberta lost her children, she also sat in detention center visitation room, sifting through crinkled papers in a bulging folder to find a photo of two of her children. “It has been four months since I’ve talked to my kids,” she said, looking at the photo of her then 7-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter. The children stood shoulder to shoulder, smiling at the camera in front of a graffiti-scrawled wall near the family’s Phoenix apartment. The boy wore camouflage pants and the girl a pink shirt.
“I would rather die than lose my kids,” Roberta said, tears running down her round face.
“They treat us like animals here,” she complained of the barbed-wire ridged jail in Arizona’s basin cotton fields. According to Roberta, women inmates were given unwashed underwear and detainees were fed stale bread and dirty vegetables for their two meals a day. “But the worst,” said Roberta, echoing the sentiments of other detained parents, “is that I can’t see my kids.”
Three weeks after ICE detained Roberta, the juvenile court held a hearing about her family. Roberta, however, did not know about it. Neither her court appointed attorney nor the child welfare caseworkers or attorneys contacted her.
All of the parents with children in Child Protective Services custody whom we interviewed inside six detention centers said that they missed at least one of their juvenile court hearings. From detention, they could not access the courts and their attorneys could not find them.
ICE is not by law required to detain many of those it plans to deport, but it keeps non-citizens locked up to prevent them from absconding. A parent whose singular concern is getting her kids back is scarcely a flight risk. ICE nonetheless takes confinement to an extreme. Even when parents know about their juvenile court hearings, ICE categorically refuses to transport them to juvenile court hearings where vital decisions about their families are made. In hundreds of interviews with attorneys and caseworkers, not one had ever seen a detained parent appear in person at a hearing. Some detainees are not even able to arrange to phone into the hearings.
Unsurprisingly for a system in which about 85 percent of detainees lack legal representation and can be held for months, sometimes years, in squalid conditions, ICE functions without any obligation to the legal needs of the people it detains. And juvenile court judges are powerless to compel ICE to do anything.
“Parents [should] have an absolute right to be present in a court hearing,” a juvenile court judge in Pima County, Ariz., told us, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We order that if they are in custody they appear, but these orders are not honored by the detention facilities. We don’t have the authority over the federal centers.”
A month after she was initially detained, Roberta was finally able to contact her court appointed attorney by phone. But the attorney spoke no Spanish and they could not communicate. Roberta still arranged to call in to the next court hearing, but she says that because of a bad phone connection over the detention center phone, she understood nothing uttered in the courtroom.
Without any specific policy for addressing the needs of detained parents, child welfare agencies often treat them as if they’ve abandoned their children. And so, after several months in detention and no contact with her children, Roberta says she got a letter in the mail. “All [the court] sent me was a Spanish sheet with threats,” she said. “If you don’t appear, you’ll lose kids. That’s all it said.”
There was also little chance she could have complied with the child welfare department’s overall plan for family reunification. Detention centers provide parents no access to the services and programs needed to take part in their case plans for reunification, which for her would have consisted of treatment for alcohol abuse, parenting classes and visitation with her children.
Because detainees are often moved to detention centers far away from their homes—an average of 370 miles—they can rarely see their children. Though the Obama administration has said that it plans to overhaul immigration detention practices, including making efforts to detain non-citizens closer to their homes, as of August 2011, this promise did not appear to have taken effect in any significant way.
Parental Rights End at the Border
Josefina and Clara were deported to Mexico after three months in immigration detention. They made their way to Michoacán, 1,000 miles south of the border, to their mother’s home, where they began trying to regain custody of their children.
During a July 2011 phone interview from Michoacán, Josefina spoke quietly about the baby she never got to bid goodbye. “I don’t know where my child is, I have no contact with my baby,” she said. “I didn’t do anything wrong to have my children taken away from me. I didn’t steal, I didn’t do drugs, nothing. Why did they take my children?”
Once parents are deported, the threats to their families grow. While parents are detained, child welfare departments are largely prostrate to reunify families. Once mothers and fathers are deported, however, the agencies often switch gears, actively slowing down the reunification process and sometimes halting those efforts altogether.
Soon after they were deported, the sisters contacted the Mexican consulate in New Mexico to ask for help in regaining their parental rights. The consulate began corresponding with the child welfare department on the sisters’ behalf. For months after their deportation, a staff person at the consulate repeatedly told Clara and Josefina that the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department planned to reunify the family as soon as the sisters could prove that they had stable housing and jobs. Yet, even after they found work and were set up in their mother’s home, the children remained in foster care. Reunification dates cited by the department came and went, but still, no children.
According to the sisters, the New Mexico child welfare department would not let the mothers speak by phone with the youngest two of the three children and Clara spoke only once to her 6 year old. According to Josefina and Clara, they heard word that their children were placed in three different foster homes and the babies were being raised entirely in English. They feared their children would not remember them even if they were reunified and they began to believe they might never see their children again.
“I miss everything about my kids,” said Clara through sobs over the phone. “How I spent Saturday and Sundays with them, how I made my home with them, all of it. Then my children were just gone.”
Many deported parents make the tormented decision to make the bloody desert journey over the U.S.-Mexico border without papers so that they can be present at juvenile court hearings. Caseworkers around the country said that in many cases, when a parent of a foster child is deported, they are back weeks later to appear in a juvenile courtroom to try and reclaim their children.
The risks of crossing are enormous. In addition to growing violence in Mexico against migrants crossing into the U.S., immigrants caught in the country after a previous deportation now face prison time. Until recently, immigrants who were deported before were simply deported again. Now, “illegal reentry” is treated as a federal criminal offense that carries sentences of years. The charge now accounts for nearly half of all federal criminal prosecutions.
Clara and Josefina did not risk crossing back over the border; the fear of violence on the border or of extended incarceration was too great. So for a year, they waited, in fear their parental rights would be terminated.
In late September 2011, their hope dwindling, the Mexican consulate in New Mexico phoned the sisters at their mother’s house in Michoacán. “They told us to go to the airport the next day,” said Clara.
In the morning they drove three hours to the airport. Two employees of the Mexican government escorted the three children off the plane. In the middle of a waiting room at the airport, after 14 months apart, Josefina and Clara took the children into their arms.
The next day, now back at their mother’s home with the sounds of pouring rain in the background, Clara said over the phone, “It hurts me so much to talk about this. I don’t want to remember anymore.” Now the family will try to piece themselves back together.
For many, however, separation is not memory. It is a present horror. In July, after seven months of detention, Roberta was deported to Mexico. She was given no notice before she was loaded onto an ICE bus and dropped at the border. ICE did not give her time to call her children’s caseworker or her court-appointed attorney before her removal and she arrived in Mexico with nothing but $10, given to her by another deportee.
Deportation too often leads to the seamless termination of parental rights. In jurisdictions around the country, child welfare departments and children’s attorneys have successfully argued that it is in a child’s best interest to remain in the U.S. rather than join their parents in another country. Though child welfare departments are required by law to try to reunify children with their parents, and research shows that children fare better with their families than in foster care, the principal is often quashed when a border stands in the way.
Many caseworkers and attorneys noted to us a pervasive bias against placing children in another country. “When you break down the cases, placement with parents in Mexico happens very rarely,” an attorney who represents children and parents in El Paso, Texas, told us. “The knee-jerk reaction of almost everyone is that the children are better off in U.S.”
As a parents’ attorney in Takoma, Wash., said in describing several cases like Roberta’s, “They’re deported and they’re treated like they fall off the face of the earth.”
Some jurisdictions, especially those near the U.S.-Mexico border, are working to interrupt this rapid move to sever families. In San Diego County, Calif., and El Paso County, Texas, for example, the child welfare departments have established international liaisons who work with the Mexican consulate and Mexican child welfare department to place children with their families in Mexico. Without the consulate, Clara and Josefina would still be without their children.
Yet most countries lack any formal policy for deported parents and ultimately, when parents are detained and deported, families are shattered.
In the detention center, before she was deported, Roberta looked up from the photo of her children and stated a policy that many would think is common sense. “If you send the mom to Mexico,” she said, “let her take her kids with her.” It has now been one year since she lost custody of her children. Her family’s status remains in limbo.
Esther Portillo-Gonzales joined Seth Freed-Wessler in the year-long investigation that produced this story. Their research is ongoing.
Source http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/11/thousands_of_kids_lost_in_foster_homes_after_parents_deportation.html
Clara’s eldest kid was 6 years old and her youngest just a year old when it happened. Josefina’s baby was 9 months. All three children were ripped from their mothers and sent to live in foster homes with strangers. Clara and Josefina, sisters in their early 30s who lived together in a small northern New Mexico town, had done nothing to harm their children or to elicit the attention of the child welfare department. Yet one morning last year, their family was shattered when federal immigration authorities detained both sisters. Clara and Josefina were deported four months later. For a year, they had no contact with their children.
The sun was rising on a late summer morning in Farmington. Clara (all parents’ names in this story have been changed) was asleep inside the trailer that she shared with the children and Josefina, who was finishing a night shift at the local restaurant where both sisters worked. Clara says she was jolted awake by the sound of banging and yelling. A group of uniformed officers, some marked with ICE, for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and others DEA, for Drug Enforcement Administration, burst through the door.
The agents put Clara in handcuffs, while two of the officers began walking and carrying the children out of the trailer. Clara pleaded with them, asking what they would do with her children. “We’re taking them where we take all the kids,” Clara remembers one of the agents saying. She begged them to let her call a friend who could come pick up the children. The agents refused.
When Josefina arrived home from work several hours later, ICE officers were waiting. The sisters were locked up in the San Juan County jail, where they stayed for several weeks until ICE transported them to an immigration detention center in Albuquerque, three hours to the south. Their children remained in foster care.
This family is one among thousands who’ve been through the same ordeal. In a yearlong investigation, the Applied Research Center, which publishes Colorlines.com, found that at least 5,100 children whose parents are detained or deported are currently in foster care around the United States. That number represents a conservative estimate of the total, based on extensive surveys of child welfare case workers and attorneys and analysis of national immigration and child welfare trends. Many of the kids may never see their parents again.
These children, many of whom should never have been separated from their parents in the first place, face often insurmountable obstacles to reunifying with their mothers and fathers. Though child welfare departments are required by federal law to reunify children with any parents who are able to provide for the basic safety of their children, detention makes this all but impossible. Then, once parents are deported, families are often separated for long periods. Ultimately, child welfare departments and juvenile courts too often move to terminate the parental rights of deportees and put children up for adoption, rather than attempt to unify the family as they would in other circumstances.
While anecdotal reports have circulated about children lingering in foster care because of a parent’s detention or deportation, our investigation provides the first evidence that the problem occurs on a large scale. If these cases continue mounting at the same pace over the next five years, 15,000 children of detained and deported mothers and fathers will likely be separated from their parents and languish in U.S. foster homes.
Citizen Kids Caught in the Deportation Dragnet
Josefina and Clara’s children are among the hidden victims of an expanding immigration detention and deportation system that now expels nearly 400,000 people each year.
According to Clara and Josefina, the ICE and DEA agents came to their home looking for drugs, but found none. Clara believes a neighbor called in the false report to ICE. A criminal background check confirms that charges against the sisters were dropped and that neither had ever been convicted of any crime. ICE nonetheless detained them because of their undocumented immigration status, moving them from the county jail to the immigration detention center where they were held for three months. They were deported to Mexico in December 2010.
According to over 100 child welfare caseworkers and attorneys we interviewed around the country, as rates of deportations increase, so do the numbers of children from immigrant families in foster care. Indeed, federal data released to the Applied Research Center through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that almost one in four people deported in the last year was the mother or father of a United States citizen. (Next week, Colorlines.com will publish a follow-up story further detailing and explaining this startling data.)
Roberta is one such parent. Almost a year ago, she was arrested on a drunken driving charge that would likely have triggered only a short interruption in her child custody, if she were a citizen. Instead, it threatens to result in the termination of the 35-year-old’s parental rights, because she is an undocumented immigrant and was deported after being charged. Her five young children are now in two different foster homes in Phoenix. Separated from them by the U.S.-Mexico border, Roberta cannot make the journey back to fight for her kids.
ICE detained Roberta after the Phoenix police stopped her one evening as she drove three of her children home from a family party, where Roberta acknowledges she had one beer too many. Police administered a breathalyzer and charged her with driving under the influence and with child endangerment.
“I know I’ve made a mistake, but I’ve never before had a problem and I’ve paid,” Roberta told me in late January 2011, while still at the Eloy Detention Center, a 1,600-bed facility run by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America. A criminal background check confirms that this was Roberta’s first conviction in her 15 years living in the United States.
Phoenix is one of almost 70 jurisdictions around the country where local police have signed agreements with the federal government to act as immigration agents. The “287(g)” agreement, as the program is called, turns a simple traffic stop into a path to deportation by deputizing local cops as immigration enforcement agents.
Our research found that children in areas where local cops aggressively engage in immigration enforcement are more likely to be separated from their parents and face barriers to reunification. In the counties we surveyed where local police have signed 287(g) agreements with ICE, children in foster care were 29 percent more likely to have a detained or deported parent than in other counties. That disparity remained statistically significant when controlling for the size of the foreign-born population.
In Roberta’s case, as the police officer arrested her, he called the county Child Protective Services, which came quickly to the side of the road and took the children away. The agency placed them in what were supposed to be temporary foster homes, until Roberta could get out of jail.
But she was not released—not until she was deported, without her children.
A Morally Corrupted System
Local immigration enforcement is metastasizing through initiatives like the 287(g) agreements and, most significantly, through a controversial program called Secure Communities, which allows ICE access to data on every person booked into a county jail. As the federal government shifts its deportation tactics away from high-profile workplace raids and toward enforcement that’s silently tied to the day-to-day functions of local police departments, a growing number of long-time residents with families and deep ties to the U.S. are deported. The program is turning jurisdictions around the country into deportation hotspots. We have identified at least 22 states where children in foster care face barriers to reunifying with their detained or deported mothers and fathers.
Whatever the state of the debate, or rancor, over who should and should not be allowed to live in the U.S., the moral and bureaucratic fallout of deporting 400,000 people a year are accumulating to toxic levels. Child welfare caseworkers say that in the face of an opaque detention system, they are helpless to reunify families. And although federal law requires child welfare departments to make diligent efforts toward family reunification, when parents are detained that’s basically impossible.
In Los Angeles, where according to our research, the mother or father of approximately one in every 16 children in foster care has been detained or deported, a caseworker for the country described the frustration. “Ultimately, as social workers our role is to reunify families. I’m not saying that ICE is right or wrong; what I’m saying is, let us do our job, let us reunify families.”
An immigration enforcement system that operates anything like the one we have will run roughshod over most everything.
Some of the most unsettling cases that our research has uncovered involve children who entered foster care when local police arrested non-citizen mothers after they or neighbors called 911 to report domestic violence.
Hilaria, of Phoenix, was arrested because she tried to defend herself against her abusive husband. One day in October 2010, he began berating her and threatening her. In minutes, the words escalated into hitting and choking. Hilaria fought back, freeing herself from the man and running to the kitchen, where she says she picked up a screwdriver and threw it at him, drawing blood.
A neighbor heard screaming and called the police. When the cops arrived, Hilaria’s husband told them that she attacked him and, as is too often the case in domestic violence reports, the officers arrested Hilaria for assault. Because their children were home at the time, the police called Child Protective Services. But when the officers and Hilaria’s abuser told the CPS worker that Hilaria had been the assailant, the caseworker left the children with him. Two weeks later, the child welfare department returned to check on the children. The caseworker now suspected that Hilaria’s husband was using drugs and removed the children from him, placing them in foster care.
Two months later, Hilaria sat on a plastic chair in a small detention center visitation room, speaking through tears. “I’ve had domestic violence before, but I took it for my kids,” she said. “Now they’ve robbed me. I did what I did to defend myself and my kids.”
Hilaria is now applying for a reprieve from deportation, which is available to some victims of domestic violence. But because of the charge of assault against her, it’s not clear the government will grant her a visa—she violates a zero-tolerance policy against “criminal” immigrants. The Obama administration recently announced that it would review the deportation cases of all 300,000 people slated for removal. The policy change, which is designed to stop the deportations of people brought to the U.S. as children and other target populations, does not appear to have helped even those like Hilaria. One year after her arrest, Hilaria is still detained. Her children are still in foster care.
The Abyss of Detention
Four months after Roberta lost her children, she also sat in detention center visitation room, sifting through crinkled papers in a bulging folder to find a photo of two of her children. “It has been four months since I’ve talked to my kids,” she said, looking at the photo of her then 7-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter. The children stood shoulder to shoulder, smiling at the camera in front of a graffiti-scrawled wall near the family’s Phoenix apartment. The boy wore camouflage pants and the girl a pink shirt.
“I would rather die than lose my kids,” Roberta said, tears running down her round face.
“They treat us like animals here,” she complained of the barbed-wire ridged jail in Arizona’s basin cotton fields. According to Roberta, women inmates were given unwashed underwear and detainees were fed stale bread and dirty vegetables for their two meals a day. “But the worst,” said Roberta, echoing the sentiments of other detained parents, “is that I can’t see my kids.”
Three weeks after ICE detained Roberta, the juvenile court held a hearing about her family. Roberta, however, did not know about it. Neither her court appointed attorney nor the child welfare caseworkers or attorneys contacted her.
All of the parents with children in Child Protective Services custody whom we interviewed inside six detention centers said that they missed at least one of their juvenile court hearings. From detention, they could not access the courts and their attorneys could not find them.
ICE is not by law required to detain many of those it plans to deport, but it keeps non-citizens locked up to prevent them from absconding. A parent whose singular concern is getting her kids back is scarcely a flight risk. ICE nonetheless takes confinement to an extreme. Even when parents know about their juvenile court hearings, ICE categorically refuses to transport them to juvenile court hearings where vital decisions about their families are made. In hundreds of interviews with attorneys and caseworkers, not one had ever seen a detained parent appear in person at a hearing. Some detainees are not even able to arrange to phone into the hearings.
Unsurprisingly for a system in which about 85 percent of detainees lack legal representation and can be held for months, sometimes years, in squalid conditions, ICE functions without any obligation to the legal needs of the people it detains. And juvenile court judges are powerless to compel ICE to do anything.
“Parents [should] have an absolute right to be present in a court hearing,” a juvenile court judge in Pima County, Ariz., told us, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We order that if they are in custody they appear, but these orders are not honored by the detention facilities. We don’t have the authority over the federal centers.”
A month after she was initially detained, Roberta was finally able to contact her court appointed attorney by phone. But the attorney spoke no Spanish and they could not communicate. Roberta still arranged to call in to the next court hearing, but she says that because of a bad phone connection over the detention center phone, she understood nothing uttered in the courtroom.
Without any specific policy for addressing the needs of detained parents, child welfare agencies often treat them as if they’ve abandoned their children. And so, after several months in detention and no contact with her children, Roberta says she got a letter in the mail. “All [the court] sent me was a Spanish sheet with threats,” she said. “If you don’t appear, you’ll lose kids. That’s all it said.”
There was also little chance she could have complied with the child welfare department’s overall plan for family reunification. Detention centers provide parents no access to the services and programs needed to take part in their case plans for reunification, which for her would have consisted of treatment for alcohol abuse, parenting classes and visitation with her children.
Because detainees are often moved to detention centers far away from their homes—an average of 370 miles—they can rarely see their children. Though the Obama administration has said that it plans to overhaul immigration detention practices, including making efforts to detain non-citizens closer to their homes, as of August 2011, this promise did not appear to have taken effect in any significant way.
Parental Rights End at the Border
Josefina and Clara were deported to Mexico after three months in immigration detention. They made their way to Michoacán, 1,000 miles south of the border, to their mother’s home, where they began trying to regain custody of their children.
During a July 2011 phone interview from Michoacán, Josefina spoke quietly about the baby she never got to bid goodbye. “I don’t know where my child is, I have no contact with my baby,” she said. “I didn’t do anything wrong to have my children taken away from me. I didn’t steal, I didn’t do drugs, nothing. Why did they take my children?”
Once parents are deported, the threats to their families grow. While parents are detained, child welfare departments are largely prostrate to reunify families. Once mothers and fathers are deported, however, the agencies often switch gears, actively slowing down the reunification process and sometimes halting those efforts altogether.
Soon after they were deported, the sisters contacted the Mexican consulate in New Mexico to ask for help in regaining their parental rights. The consulate began corresponding with the child welfare department on the sisters’ behalf. For months after their deportation, a staff person at the consulate repeatedly told Clara and Josefina that the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department planned to reunify the family as soon as the sisters could prove that they had stable housing and jobs. Yet, even after they found work and were set up in their mother’s home, the children remained in foster care. Reunification dates cited by the department came and went, but still, no children.
According to the sisters, the New Mexico child welfare department would not let the mothers speak by phone with the youngest two of the three children and Clara spoke only once to her 6 year old. According to Josefina and Clara, they heard word that their children were placed in three different foster homes and the babies were being raised entirely in English. They feared their children would not remember them even if they were reunified and they began to believe they might never see their children again.
“I miss everything about my kids,” said Clara through sobs over the phone. “How I spent Saturday and Sundays with them, how I made my home with them, all of it. Then my children were just gone.”
Many deported parents make the tormented decision to make the bloody desert journey over the U.S.-Mexico border without papers so that they can be present at juvenile court hearings. Caseworkers around the country said that in many cases, when a parent of a foster child is deported, they are back weeks later to appear in a juvenile courtroom to try and reclaim their children.
The risks of crossing are enormous. In addition to growing violence in Mexico against migrants crossing into the U.S., immigrants caught in the country after a previous deportation now face prison time. Until recently, immigrants who were deported before were simply deported again. Now, “illegal reentry” is treated as a federal criminal offense that carries sentences of years. The charge now accounts for nearly half of all federal criminal prosecutions.
Clara and Josefina did not risk crossing back over the border; the fear of violence on the border or of extended incarceration was too great. So for a year, they waited, in fear their parental rights would be terminated.
In late September 2011, their hope dwindling, the Mexican consulate in New Mexico phoned the sisters at their mother’s house in Michoacán. “They told us to go to the airport the next day,” said Clara.
In the morning they drove three hours to the airport. Two employees of the Mexican government escorted the three children off the plane. In the middle of a waiting room at the airport, after 14 months apart, Josefina and Clara took the children into their arms.
The next day, now back at their mother’s home with the sounds of pouring rain in the background, Clara said over the phone, “It hurts me so much to talk about this. I don’t want to remember anymore.” Now the family will try to piece themselves back together.
For many, however, separation is not memory. It is a present horror. In July, after seven months of detention, Roberta was deported to Mexico. She was given no notice before she was loaded onto an ICE bus and dropped at the border. ICE did not give her time to call her children’s caseworker or her court-appointed attorney before her removal and she arrived in Mexico with nothing but $10, given to her by another deportee.
Deportation too often leads to the seamless termination of parental rights. In jurisdictions around the country, child welfare departments and children’s attorneys have successfully argued that it is in a child’s best interest to remain in the U.S. rather than join their parents in another country. Though child welfare departments are required by law to try to reunify children with their parents, and research shows that children fare better with their families than in foster care, the principal is often quashed when a border stands in the way.
Many caseworkers and attorneys noted to us a pervasive bias against placing children in another country. “When you break down the cases, placement with parents in Mexico happens very rarely,” an attorney who represents children and parents in El Paso, Texas, told us. “The knee-jerk reaction of almost everyone is that the children are better off in U.S.”
As a parents’ attorney in Takoma, Wash., said in describing several cases like Roberta’s, “They’re deported and they’re treated like they fall off the face of the earth.”
Some jurisdictions, especially those near the U.S.-Mexico border, are working to interrupt this rapid move to sever families. In San Diego County, Calif., and El Paso County, Texas, for example, the child welfare departments have established international liaisons who work with the Mexican consulate and Mexican child welfare department to place children with their families in Mexico. Without the consulate, Clara and Josefina would still be without their children.
Yet most countries lack any formal policy for deported parents and ultimately, when parents are detained and deported, families are shattered.
In the detention center, before she was deported, Roberta looked up from the photo of her children and stated a policy that many would think is common sense. “If you send the mom to Mexico,” she said, “let her take her kids with her.” It has now been one year since she lost custody of her children. Her family’s status remains in limbo.
Esther Portillo-Gonzales joined Seth Freed-Wessler in the year-long investigation that produced this story. Their research is ongoing.
Source http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/11/thousands_of_kids_lost_in_foster_homes_after_parents_deportation.html
Ramsey, Dakota counties at odds over case of 8-year-old beaten at school by mom
By Emily Gurnon
Socorro Eaton's daughter deserved a beating, Eaton believed. And it didn't matter that the girl's entire second-grade class in St. Paul was there to see it.
But within hours, her 8-year-old daughter had been placed in emergency foster care. Child protection in Dakota County, where the family lived, followed up. Two weeks later, she was returned to her mother. Three weeks after that, she was removed again and remains away from her mother's home, living with her father.
Eaton was convicted Thursday in Ramsey County District Court of malicious punishment of a child and will be sentenced Dec. 14.
But her daughter's future is less certain - and the actions of Dakota County staff raise questions about how safe she will be.
"I really am concerned about this child," said Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Yasmin Mullings, speaking at a July 20 pretrial hearing.
"This is unusual in that these are the types of behavior that (usually) occur inside the home only," Mullings said. "That this behavior happened in a school and in such a blatant way leaves me (with) extreme concern of what is happening in the home."
She noted that only when the girl was punched in the classroom June 14 did child protection get involved.
After the school incident, the child told police and a doctor that her mother had hit her with a belt on more than one occasion. She had telltale parallel welts on her back.
On the witness stand last week, Eaton denied using a belt to hit any of her four children - including a 10- year-old daughter and twin 4-year-olds, who were temporarily removed from Eaton's home after the school incident.
Eaton's attorney, Leah Morgan, said that child protection workers were giving Eaton high marks for her work with them on improving her parenting skills since the incident. They believe the girl - whose first initial is J. - should go home, Morgan said.
But Ramsey County District Judge Margaret Marrinan denied a defense motion Thursday that the no-contact order be lifted.
FACTORS IN REMOVING CHILDREN
Marrinan explained Friday.
Eaton struck her child in front of a teacher and 19 other children, the judge said. She was constantly agitated in court, shaking her head and mouthing things. And she has failed to check in weekly with the agency overseeing her conditional release from jail.
"Add that to these other factors and it does not give me a lot of confidence about how this child would be treated (at home)," the judge said.
Removing a child from his or her home is complicated, and workers must weigh several factors. State law requires that "reasonable efforts" be made to "eliminate the need for removal and to reunite the child with the child's family at the earliest possible time ..."
An exception is made when a parent "has subjected a child to egregious harm." What happened to J. does not appear to constitute egregious harm as defined by state law.
Sharon Madsen, a spokeswoman for Dakota County, said officials there could not comment, because the case involved confidential information.
'SAFETY NET' IN PLACE
Two Ramsey County court hearings in July in the criminal case shed light on decisions made by child protection - and why the judge and prosecutor were so critical of those moves.
The incident at Bruce Vento Elementary School took place on the last day of school, June 14.
A Dakota County social worker, Susan Boreland, conducted an investigation and, within a week, wrote a letter stating she believed no assault or injury occurred and that the no-contact order should be lifted, prosecutor Mullings said in the July 20 hearing.
Boreland also decided to place J. with her father, who has an extensive criminal record that includes convictions for kidnapping, domestic assault, drug possession and providing false information to police.
J. remains in her father's custody, the girl said during her mother's trial this past week.
Based on the initial child-protection investigation and information from the social worker, Ramsey County District Judge George Stephenson canceled the no-contact order in Eaton's case June 30, and J. returned home.
Defense attorney Morgan told the judge that child protection had been working to put a "safety net" in place for J.
Eaton had been cooperating with child protection, she said. The girl provided "the names of her sister and her best friend, all of whom live nearby and can come over to help at any time," Morgan said. And Dakota County assigned J. a guardian ad litem to represent her interests. The guardian ad item, Jake Trotzky-Sirr, gave J. his card and said she could call him if she were ever afraid.
JUDGE WEIGHS IN
In the meantime, another child protection worker, Betsy Dantoft, had taken over the case in early July. During the second of her two visits to the family's home, J. was not present. The mother said things were fine.
Marrinan was appalled.
"The daughter should have been there," the judge said at the July 20 hearing. "I think that's extremely sloppy work by something that calls itself child protection....
"I'm familiar with how Ramsey County handles things, but Dakota County is like another country, frankly."
She also speculated on how much help a young child would get from a business card.
"I'm not impressed with the fact that a guardian ad litem gives his card to an 8-year-old kid and says, 'If you have problems, give me a call,' " she said.
She ordered July 20 that the no-contact order be reinstated.
Another hearing was set for July 29.
Dantoft testified at that hearing that she had spoken with J. four times - twice privately - and visited the family twice, including the one occasion when J. was not there.
Her mother told the child protection worker that J. was at a sleepover and could be called to come home. Not necessary, Dantoft told Eaton.
"I guess at this point in time, I don't feel that there is a need for the no-contact order," the child protection worker testified. "(J.) has really shared that she feels safe with her mom and is very confused about what's going on and would like to return to her mom's home."
Mullings, the prosecutor, was not satisfied.
"What we have is, at most, a cursory (review), where the child protection worker comes in and makes an assessment largely based upon self-reporting (by the mother)," Mullings said.
She noted that J. has a "documented history of not speaking up," having never told anyone about the beatings before one was witnessed at the school.
Marrinan ordered July 29 that Eaton could have supervised visits with her daughter.
'SYSTEM FAILING YOU'
Morgan, Eaton's defense attorney, said Friday that she has been cooperative with child protection "since Day One" and taken all the required steps, including parenting classes, counseling with her daughter and supervised visits with J.
Dakota County continues to recommend that J. be returned home. But "none of that favorable information was allowed into the criminal case," Morgan said.
Marrinan told Eaton on July 20 not to lose hope.
"This is a question of the system failing you and your daughter," the judge said. "We're going to just see that (Dakota County) follow(s) through with what they're supposed to do."
Source http://www.twincities.com/ci_19229865
Socorro Eaton's daughter deserved a beating, Eaton believed. And it didn't matter that the girl's entire second-grade class in St. Paul was there to see it.
But within hours, her 8-year-old daughter had been placed in emergency foster care. Child protection in Dakota County, where the family lived, followed up. Two weeks later, she was returned to her mother. Three weeks after that, she was removed again and remains away from her mother's home, living with her father.
Eaton was convicted Thursday in Ramsey County District Court of malicious punishment of a child and will be sentenced Dec. 14.
But her daughter's future is less certain - and the actions of Dakota County staff raise questions about how safe she will be.
"I really am concerned about this child," said Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Yasmin Mullings, speaking at a July 20 pretrial hearing.
"This is unusual in that these are the types of behavior that (usually) occur inside the home only," Mullings said. "That this behavior happened in a school and in such a blatant way leaves me (with) extreme concern of what is happening in the home."
She noted that only when the girl was punched in the classroom June 14 did child protection get involved.
After the school incident, the child told police and a doctor that her mother had hit her with a belt on more than one occasion. She had telltale parallel welts on her back.
On the witness stand last week, Eaton denied using a belt to hit any of her four children - including a 10- year-old daughter and twin 4-year-olds, who were temporarily removed from Eaton's home after the school incident.
Eaton's attorney, Leah Morgan, said that child protection workers were giving Eaton high marks for her work with them on improving her parenting skills since the incident. They believe the girl - whose first initial is J. - should go home, Morgan said.
But Ramsey County District Judge Margaret Marrinan denied a defense motion Thursday that the no-contact order be lifted.
FACTORS IN REMOVING CHILDREN
Marrinan explained Friday.
Eaton struck her child in front of a teacher and 19 other children, the judge said. She was constantly agitated in court, shaking her head and mouthing things. And she has failed to check in weekly with the agency overseeing her conditional release from jail.
"Add that to these other factors and it does not give me a lot of confidence about how this child would be treated (at home)," the judge said.
Removing a child from his or her home is complicated, and workers must weigh several factors. State law requires that "reasonable efforts" be made to "eliminate the need for removal and to reunite the child with the child's family at the earliest possible time ..."
An exception is made when a parent "has subjected a child to egregious harm." What happened to J. does not appear to constitute egregious harm as defined by state law.
Sharon Madsen, a spokeswoman for Dakota County, said officials there could not comment, because the case involved confidential information.
'SAFETY NET' IN PLACE
Two Ramsey County court hearings in July in the criminal case shed light on decisions made by child protection - and why the judge and prosecutor were so critical of those moves.
The incident at Bruce Vento Elementary School took place on the last day of school, June 14.
A Dakota County social worker, Susan Boreland, conducted an investigation and, within a week, wrote a letter stating she believed no assault or injury occurred and that the no-contact order should be lifted, prosecutor Mullings said in the July 20 hearing.
Boreland also decided to place J. with her father, who has an extensive criminal record that includes convictions for kidnapping, domestic assault, drug possession and providing false information to police.
J. remains in her father's custody, the girl said during her mother's trial this past week.
Based on the initial child-protection investigation and information from the social worker, Ramsey County District Judge George Stephenson canceled the no-contact order in Eaton's case June 30, and J. returned home.
Defense attorney Morgan told the judge that child protection had been working to put a "safety net" in place for J.
Eaton had been cooperating with child protection, she said. The girl provided "the names of her sister and her best friend, all of whom live nearby and can come over to help at any time," Morgan said. And Dakota County assigned J. a guardian ad litem to represent her interests. The guardian ad item, Jake Trotzky-Sirr, gave J. his card and said she could call him if she were ever afraid.
JUDGE WEIGHS IN
In the meantime, another child protection worker, Betsy Dantoft, had taken over the case in early July. During the second of her two visits to the family's home, J. was not present. The mother said things were fine.
Marrinan was appalled.
"The daughter should have been there," the judge said at the July 20 hearing. "I think that's extremely sloppy work by something that calls itself child protection....
"I'm familiar with how Ramsey County handles things, but Dakota County is like another country, frankly."
She also speculated on how much help a young child would get from a business card.
"I'm not impressed with the fact that a guardian ad litem gives his card to an 8-year-old kid and says, 'If you have problems, give me a call,' " she said.
She ordered July 20 that the no-contact order be reinstated.
Another hearing was set for July 29.
Dantoft testified at that hearing that she had spoken with J. four times - twice privately - and visited the family twice, including the one occasion when J. was not there.
Her mother told the child protection worker that J. was at a sleepover and could be called to come home. Not necessary, Dantoft told Eaton.
"I guess at this point in time, I don't feel that there is a need for the no-contact order," the child protection worker testified. "(J.) has really shared that she feels safe with her mom and is very confused about what's going on and would like to return to her mom's home."
Mullings, the prosecutor, was not satisfied.
"What we have is, at most, a cursory (review), where the child protection worker comes in and makes an assessment largely based upon self-reporting (by the mother)," Mullings said.
She noted that J. has a "documented history of not speaking up," having never told anyone about the beatings before one was witnessed at the school.
Marrinan ordered July 29 that Eaton could have supervised visits with her daughter.
'SYSTEM FAILING YOU'
Morgan, Eaton's defense attorney, said Friday that she has been cooperative with child protection "since Day One" and taken all the required steps, including parenting classes, counseling with her daughter and supervised visits with J.
Dakota County continues to recommend that J. be returned home. But "none of that favorable information was allowed into the criminal case," Morgan said.
Marrinan told Eaton on July 20 not to lose hope.
"This is a question of the system failing you and your daughter," the judge said. "We're going to just see that (Dakota County) follow(s) through with what they're supposed to do."
Source http://www.twincities.com/ci_19229865
Monday, October 31, 2011
Texas - CPS removes kids after mysterious incident prompts investigation
By Anna Waugh
Almost three months after an 11-year-old Willis girl disappeared one evening and was discovered delirious and bleeding in a ditch hours later, she and her 13-year-old sister were removed by a Child Protective Services emergency order from their home because of possible neglect.
CPS officials arrived around 5 p.m. Tuesday at the family’s home in the Royal Forest subdivision when the girls’ parents were grocery shopping, mother Jade Polk said. Polk’s mother was watching the girls and refused to open the door, but agreed to do so after they allegedly threatened to kick the door down and have the grandmother arrested.
Without cell phone reception inside the store, Polk said listening to a voicemail in the parking lot left by her panicked mother “just killed her,”knowing she would go home to a house without her kids.
“It was a shock,” she said.
Polk’s youngest daughter went missing for a few hours July 31 after she was last seen playing with their family dog around 7:45 p.m. and later found around 9:50 p.m. in front of a home on Royal Sterling Drive, about 1-1/2 miles from her home. She was covered in bruises with blood splattered across her body from a nose bleed and did not recognize her parents.
She was rushed to Conroe Regional Medical Center, where she was diagnosed with a severe concussion. The possibility of a sexual assault was ruled out with a rape kit, and she was released a few days later on Aug. 2.
Since then, Polk said, numerous doctor visits later at three hospitals have made doctors conclude that her daughter has a neurological disorder, but a three-month waiting list to see a pediatric neurologist at Texas Children’s Hospital has delayed any more tests and answers.
“She still doesn’t know what happened to her,” Polk said. “She’s blank.”
According to the emergency order, CPS presented the case Tuesday before 410th state District Court Judge K. Michael Mayes and was granted an emergency removal based on an "immediate danger to the physical health or safety of the children or the children have been the victims of neglect or sexual abuse.”
CPS workers told Polk and her husband Wednesday that the reason for removing their children was because they did not continue to take their daughter to counseling or participate in family counseling, which was recommended by a CPS case worker after a home visit suggested the girl see a counselor at Children’s Safe Harbor in Conroe to help her try to remember what happened the night she disappeared.
But after one visit, Polk said, her daughter was uncomfortable with the constant questions by the counselor asking if her parents hurt her. Her parents then decided to have a family friend who attends a nearby church to counsel her so she would feel more comfortable, Polk said.
Instructions can be either verbal or written and in CPS cases where the safety is a concern, parents are asked to participate in services relevant to the case – like counseling – and the children are removed without warning by emergency removal if they do not comply, CPS spokeswoman Gwen Carter said.
“If a family doesn’t cooperate and abuse or neglect is a concern, we can go to the court to request to remove the children and put them in a safe environment,” Carter said, adding that both girls are together in a foster home.
Now knowing the lack of official counseling was viewed by CPS as a neglectful decision, Polk said she had no idea her decision would result in her daughters' removal because she was never given any written documentation about counseling, so did not think continuing to take her daughter to CSH or participate in family counseling was mandatory.
In such situations, CPS is "put into the position where it is more difficult to explain inaction as opposed to action," regardless of the validity of the accusation at the time it was made, Conroe attorney E. Tay Bond said.
“When you have a governmental agency that is tasked with performing a family function," he said, "there is no possible way for CPS to function as well as a caring family does.”
The family’s financial situation also leads Polk to believe that her family is being targeted because they are low-income. Polk has a job, she said, but her husband recently filed for disability.
Regardless of their income, Polk said, she always ensures her children have food to eat and clothes to wear every day, as well as proper medical care.
“I think we’ve been wrongly accused,” she said. “There’s been no neglect.”
She has lined up 10 character witnesses to speak on her behalf at a hearing Monday morning that will consist of neighbors, friends and the girls’ teachers, and plans to request that the girls be turned over to another family member for the time being so they will be around family.
“I’m there for my kids. I do not neglect my kids,” Polk said. “I would bleed for them.”
James Ridgway, Jr. contributed to this report.
Source http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/courier/news/cps-removes-kids-after-mysterious-incident-prompts-investigation/article_de53db32-003c-55ad-8666-228bdb3d6aec.html
Almost three months after an 11-year-old Willis girl disappeared one evening and was discovered delirious and bleeding in a ditch hours later, she and her 13-year-old sister were removed by a Child Protective Services emergency order from their home because of possible neglect.
CPS officials arrived around 5 p.m. Tuesday at the family’s home in the Royal Forest subdivision when the girls’ parents were grocery shopping, mother Jade Polk said. Polk’s mother was watching the girls and refused to open the door, but agreed to do so after they allegedly threatened to kick the door down and have the grandmother arrested.
Without cell phone reception inside the store, Polk said listening to a voicemail in the parking lot left by her panicked mother “just killed her,”knowing she would go home to a house without her kids.
“It was a shock,” she said.
Polk’s youngest daughter went missing for a few hours July 31 after she was last seen playing with their family dog around 7:45 p.m. and later found around 9:50 p.m. in front of a home on Royal Sterling Drive, about 1-1/2 miles from her home. She was covered in bruises with blood splattered across her body from a nose bleed and did not recognize her parents.
She was rushed to Conroe Regional Medical Center, where she was diagnosed with a severe concussion. The possibility of a sexual assault was ruled out with a rape kit, and she was released a few days later on Aug. 2.
Since then, Polk said, numerous doctor visits later at three hospitals have made doctors conclude that her daughter has a neurological disorder, but a three-month waiting list to see a pediatric neurologist at Texas Children’s Hospital has delayed any more tests and answers.
“She still doesn’t know what happened to her,” Polk said. “She’s blank.”
According to the emergency order, CPS presented the case Tuesday before 410th state District Court Judge K. Michael Mayes and was granted an emergency removal based on an "immediate danger to the physical health or safety of the children or the children have been the victims of neglect or sexual abuse.”
CPS workers told Polk and her husband Wednesday that the reason for removing their children was because they did not continue to take their daughter to counseling or participate in family counseling, which was recommended by a CPS case worker after a home visit suggested the girl see a counselor at Children’s Safe Harbor in Conroe to help her try to remember what happened the night she disappeared.
But after one visit, Polk said, her daughter was uncomfortable with the constant questions by the counselor asking if her parents hurt her. Her parents then decided to have a family friend who attends a nearby church to counsel her so she would feel more comfortable, Polk said.
Instructions can be either verbal or written and in CPS cases where the safety is a concern, parents are asked to participate in services relevant to the case – like counseling – and the children are removed without warning by emergency removal if they do not comply, CPS spokeswoman Gwen Carter said.
“If a family doesn’t cooperate and abuse or neglect is a concern, we can go to the court to request to remove the children and put them in a safe environment,” Carter said, adding that both girls are together in a foster home.
Now knowing the lack of official counseling was viewed by CPS as a neglectful decision, Polk said she had no idea her decision would result in her daughters' removal because she was never given any written documentation about counseling, so did not think continuing to take her daughter to CSH or participate in family counseling was mandatory.
In such situations, CPS is "put into the position where it is more difficult to explain inaction as opposed to action," regardless of the validity of the accusation at the time it was made, Conroe attorney E. Tay Bond said.
“When you have a governmental agency that is tasked with performing a family function," he said, "there is no possible way for CPS to function as well as a caring family does.”
The family’s financial situation also leads Polk to believe that her family is being targeted because they are low-income. Polk has a job, she said, but her husband recently filed for disability.
Regardless of their income, Polk said, she always ensures her children have food to eat and clothes to wear every day, as well as proper medical care.
“I think we’ve been wrongly accused,” she said. “There’s been no neglect.”
She has lined up 10 character witnesses to speak on her behalf at a hearing Monday morning that will consist of neighbors, friends and the girls’ teachers, and plans to request that the girls be turned over to another family member for the time being so they will be around family.
“I’m there for my kids. I do not neglect my kids,” Polk said. “I would bleed for them.”
James Ridgway, Jr. contributed to this report.
Source http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/courier/news/cps-removes-kids-after-mysterious-incident-prompts-investigation/article_de53db32-003c-55ad-8666-228bdb3d6aec.html
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Hawaii Couple's Daughter Taken Away for 18 Hours Over Alleged Sandwich Theft
A Hawaii couple’s 3-year-old daughter was taken away from them for 18 hours after they were arrested for forgetting to a pay for two $5 sandwiches.
"This is unreal this could happen to a family like ours," Nicole Leszczynski told Hawaii’s KHON.
The outing-turned-nightmare happened Wednesday while the family was shopping at a local Safeway.
"We walked a long way to the grocery store and I was feeling faint, dizzy, like I needed to eat something so we decided to pick up some sandwiches and eat them while we were shopping," Leszczynski told the news station.
Leszczynski, who is 30-weeks pregnant, her husband, Marcin, and daughter Zophia bought $50 worth of groceries -- but forgot about their two chicken salad sandwiches.
"It was a complete distraction, distracted parent moment," Leszczynski told KHON.
As the family left, they were stopped by store security, who asked for their receipt.
"I offered to pay, we had the cash. We just bought the groceries," Leszczynski told the station.
Instead, the expectant mother told KHON that the Safeway manager called police. They were taken to the main Honolulu police station where they were booked for fourth degree theft. Then Zophia was taken into custody by Child Protective Services.
"When they notified us that they would have to take her because we both would be arrested, I just couldn't believe it, couldn't believe this was happening, because I forgot to pay for the sandwich and that she's never been away from us this long," Leszczynski told KHON.
CPS told Hawaii News Now the department takes a child when both parents are arrested.
Zophia’s mom said she spent a sleepless night worrying about her daughter and shared the ordeal on the parenting website www.babycenter.com. Her post grabbed the attention of hundreds of outraged moms and dads.
"We didn't know where our daughter was, didn't know what the situation was, she didn't have any clothes they just took her right from the grocery store," Leszczynski told KOHN.
Zophia was returned to her parents 18-hours later.
Safeway Management issued this statement: "Safeway is aware of the incident and is working closely with the appropriate law enforcement authorities. The incident is under review but until the investigation is finalized it would be premature to comment."
A day later, Safeway issued an additional statement, saying that there may have been a mistake.
"It appears we may not have handled this matter in the best possible way and we are taking the situation seriously," the store said.
The couple says they never intended to steal the sandwich, and that they plan to argue against the charges when they appear in court in November.
"I hope no one else has to go through this," Leszczynski said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/10/29/hawaii-couples-daughter-taken-away-for-18-hours-over-alleged-sandwich-theft/
"This is unreal this could happen to a family like ours," Nicole Leszczynski told Hawaii’s KHON.
The outing-turned-nightmare happened Wednesday while the family was shopping at a local Safeway.
"We walked a long way to the grocery store and I was feeling faint, dizzy, like I needed to eat something so we decided to pick up some sandwiches and eat them while we were shopping," Leszczynski told the news station.
Leszczynski, who is 30-weeks pregnant, her husband, Marcin, and daughter Zophia bought $50 worth of groceries -- but forgot about their two chicken salad sandwiches.
"It was a complete distraction, distracted parent moment," Leszczynski told KHON.
As the family left, they were stopped by store security, who asked for their receipt.
"I offered to pay, we had the cash. We just bought the groceries," Leszczynski told the station.
Instead, the expectant mother told KHON that the Safeway manager called police. They were taken to the main Honolulu police station where they were booked for fourth degree theft. Then Zophia was taken into custody by Child Protective Services.
"When they notified us that they would have to take her because we both would be arrested, I just couldn't believe it, couldn't believe this was happening, because I forgot to pay for the sandwich and that she's never been away from us this long," Leszczynski told KHON.
CPS told Hawaii News Now the department takes a child when both parents are arrested.
Zophia’s mom said she spent a sleepless night worrying about her daughter and shared the ordeal on the parenting website www.babycenter.com. Her post grabbed the attention of hundreds of outraged moms and dads.
"We didn't know where our daughter was, didn't know what the situation was, she didn't have any clothes they just took her right from the grocery store," Leszczynski told KOHN.
Zophia was returned to her parents 18-hours later.
Safeway Management issued this statement: "Safeway is aware of the incident and is working closely with the appropriate law enforcement authorities. The incident is under review but until the investigation is finalized it would be premature to comment."
A day later, Safeway issued an additional statement, saying that there may have been a mistake.
"It appears we may not have handled this matter in the best possible way and we are taking the situation seriously," the store said.
The couple says they never intended to steal the sandwich, and that they plan to argue against the charges when they appear in court in November.
"I hope no one else has to go through this," Leszczynski said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/10/29/hawaii-couples-daughter-taken-away-for-18-hours-over-alleged-sandwich-theft/
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Hitler's Parents Claim Judge Found No Abuse of Little Adolf, Aryan Nation
Hitler's Parents Claim Judge Found No Abuse of Little Adolf, Aryan Nation
Parents of "Adolf Hitler" and "Aryan Nation" claim a judge found no evidence of abuse, but the state still hasn't given their kids back
By Teresa Masterson
Heath and Deborah Campbell, who named two of their children Adolf Hitler and JoyceLynn Aryan Nation, are claiming that a court vindicated them of all abuse allegations last month. But after 33 months in foster care, the children are still not home.
New Jersey Family Court officials had no comment Tuesday.
“Actually, the judge and DYFS told us that there was no evidence of abuse and that it was the names! They were taken over the children's names,” Heath Campbell told NBC 10 Tuesday.
Court records last year stated that the children were not removed from the home because of their names, but because of tangible evidence of abuse or neglect.
Protesting the fact that they still don't have their kids, the Campbells picketed with three other people outside of child services offices in Flemington, N.J. Tuesday. The couple spoke exclusively to NBC 10, saying that the state has no right to keep their children away from them now that the court allegedly ruled that the kids were taken away without cause.
“I don’t sleep, I don’t eat much. I miss my kids. Miss their pitter patters on the floor,” Heath Campbell told NBC 10’s Doug Shimell. “It’s hard. I fall asleep with their pictures.”
The Campbell’s three small children were removed from their Holland Township home by the state in January 2009 after they asked a grocery store in Greenwich, N.J., to write “Adolf Hitler” on their son’s birthday cake.
Though a local Wal-Mart honored the birthday cake request, Adolf Hitler Campbell and siblings JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell were put into foster care.
“They beg to come home all of the time,” Deborah told NBC 10 Tuesday. “They beg to see their dad, they want to see their dad all the time.”
While the Campbells maintained from the beginning that the only reason their children were taken away is because of their given names, New Jersey court documents stated last year that there was alleged abuse and parental incompetence.
A New Jersey appeals court ruled in August 2010 that there was sufficient evidence of abuse or neglect because of domestic violence in the home, and though there was a gag order for both parties in the case (which the Campbells have broken multiple times to deny the allegations), authorities have stated in the past that putting the children into the foster system had nothing to do with their names.
Court records stated last year that both parents were victims of childhood abuse and both were unemployed and suffering from unspecified physical and psychological disabilities.
The Campbells say that a judge will decide by early December if the kids will come home.
"Can't wait for the decision," Heath Campbell said Tuesday. "Can't wait for them to come home."
Source http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/weird/Hitler-Parents-Claim-Judge-Found-No-Abuse-of-Adolf-Aryan-Nation.html
Parents of "Adolf Hitler" and "Aryan Nation" claim a judge found no evidence of abuse, but the state still hasn't given their kids back
By Teresa Masterson
Heath and Deborah Campbell, who named two of their children Adolf Hitler and JoyceLynn Aryan Nation, are claiming that a court vindicated them of all abuse allegations last month. But after 33 months in foster care, the children are still not home.
New Jersey Family Court officials had no comment Tuesday.
“Actually, the judge and DYFS told us that there was no evidence of abuse and that it was the names! They were taken over the children's names,” Heath Campbell told NBC 10 Tuesday.
Court records last year stated that the children were not removed from the home because of their names, but because of tangible evidence of abuse or neglect.
Protesting the fact that they still don't have their kids, the Campbells picketed with three other people outside of child services offices in Flemington, N.J. Tuesday. The couple spoke exclusively to NBC 10, saying that the state has no right to keep their children away from them now that the court allegedly ruled that the kids were taken away without cause.
“I don’t sleep, I don’t eat much. I miss my kids. Miss their pitter patters on the floor,” Heath Campbell told NBC 10’s Doug Shimell. “It’s hard. I fall asleep with their pictures.”
The Campbell’s three small children were removed from their Holland Township home by the state in January 2009 after they asked a grocery store in Greenwich, N.J., to write “Adolf Hitler” on their son’s birthday cake.
Though a local Wal-Mart honored the birthday cake request, Adolf Hitler Campbell and siblings JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell were put into foster care.
“They beg to come home all of the time,” Deborah told NBC 10 Tuesday. “They beg to see their dad, they want to see their dad all the time.”
While the Campbells maintained from the beginning that the only reason their children were taken away is because of their given names, New Jersey court documents stated last year that there was alleged abuse and parental incompetence.
A New Jersey appeals court ruled in August 2010 that there was sufficient evidence of abuse or neglect because of domestic violence in the home, and though there was a gag order for both parties in the case (which the Campbells have broken multiple times to deny the allegations), authorities have stated in the past that putting the children into the foster system had nothing to do with their names.
Court records stated last year that both parents were victims of childhood abuse and both were unemployed and suffering from unspecified physical and psychological disabilities.
The Campbells say that a judge will decide by early December if the kids will come home.
"Can't wait for the decision," Heath Campbell said Tuesday. "Can't wait for them to come home."
Source http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/weird/Hitler-Parents-Claim-Judge-Found-No-Abuse-of-Adolf-Aryan-Nation.html
Report: S.D. skirts law protecting Native American children
By Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY
Thirty-two states are failing to abide by the Indian Child Welfare Act, a law passed by Congress in 1978 to stop thousands of Native American children from being forcibly removed from their families and being sent to boarding schools, where they were abused, or into other abusive conditions, a National Public Radio investigation has found.
The problem is most pronounced in South Dakota, NPR reports.
"Cousins are disappearing, family members are disappearing," Peter Lengkeek, a Crow Creek Tribal Council member, tells NPR. "It's kidnapping. That's how we see it."
About 700 Native American children in South Dakota are removed from their homes, some of them under questionable circumstances, NPR finds. The majority of those placed in foster care are sent to non-native homes or group homes, although the Child Welfare Act requires that Native American children must be placed with their relatives or tribes, except in rare circumstances.
South Dakota state officials say they have to do what's in the best interest of the child.
"We come from a stance of safety," Virgena Wieseler of South Dakota's Department of Social Services tells NPR. "That's our overarching goal with all children. If they can be returned to their parent or returned to a relative and be safe and that safety can be managed, then that's our goal."
Critics say the situation appears to be financially lucrative for foster care providers, one of whom has ties with state officials, NPR reports.
Source http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/10/report-south-dakota-skirts-law-protecting-native-american-children/1
Thirty-two states are failing to abide by the Indian Child Welfare Act, a law passed by Congress in 1978 to stop thousands of Native American children from being forcibly removed from their families and being sent to boarding schools, where they were abused, or into other abusive conditions, a National Public Radio investigation has found.
The problem is most pronounced in South Dakota, NPR reports.
"Cousins are disappearing, family members are disappearing," Peter Lengkeek, a Crow Creek Tribal Council member, tells NPR. "It's kidnapping. That's how we see it."
About 700 Native American children in South Dakota are removed from their homes, some of them under questionable circumstances, NPR finds. The majority of those placed in foster care are sent to non-native homes or group homes, although the Child Welfare Act requires that Native American children must be placed with their relatives or tribes, except in rare circumstances.
South Dakota state officials say they have to do what's in the best interest of the child.
"We come from a stance of safety," Virgena Wieseler of South Dakota's Department of Social Services tells NPR. "That's our overarching goal with all children. If they can be returned to their parent or returned to a relative and be safe and that safety can be managed, then that's our goal."
Critics say the situation appears to be financially lucrative for foster care providers, one of whom has ties with state officials, NPR reports.
Source http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/10/report-south-dakota-skirts-law-protecting-native-american-children/1
Thursday, October 6, 2011
D.C. child welfare agency often acts too quickly to remove children, study says
By Teresa Tomassoni, Published: October 5
The number of children removed from their homes by child abuse investigators in the District has fallen in the past year, but a recent review of some cases concluded that children are still regularly separated from their parents without adequate justification.
The study, conducted by a federally mandated panel of volunteer monitors, examined 27 cases involving 41 children over several years. In many of the instances examined by the panel, children who were placed briefly in foster care should have stayed with their families, the report concluded.
The Citizens Review Panel said the District’s Child and Family Services Agency has not done enough to keep families together and urged the agency to do better.
“CFSA’s child removal decisions must balance the need to protect children from serious abuse or neglect with the need to protect children from the significant emotional trauma that comes from the government separating them from their families,” the report, released last week, stated.
The review, released last week, is the latest examination of the challenges that CFSA, like other child welfare agencies, faces in balancing the inclination to remove children when neglect or abuse is suspected and the imperative to leave them in the home unless they are in imminent danger.
In more than half of the reviews conducted, panel members found that the case record did not justify removal.
In one case cited in the report, a social worker removed a child upon discovering suspicious marks on the child’s body, most likely from being whipped with a cord. The social worker placed him and his three siblings, who did not show signs of abuse, into foster care without obtaining a family court order.
After the removal, the social worker met with the mother to work out a strategy, known as a safety plan, for addressing the problems in the home. Less than a week later, the children were back at home. The report said that if this conversation had taken place before the children were taken, foster care would not have been necessary.
CFSA’s statistics show that even as the number of removals are on pace to be their lowest in years, the percentage of children who are being returned home within four months is at 35 percent, roughly the same rate as last year and a higher rate than in any of the previous three years.
Debra Porchia-Usher, the child welfare agency’s interim director, said how quickly children are removed from their families and how quickly they are returned is an issue the CFSA continues to monitor. “We all agree fewer removals are better,” she said. But she does not agree that the problem is as prevalent as the report suggests.
In an effort to make better decisions about removals, the agency recently launched a pilot program of a strategy known as differential response, which acknowledges that not every abuse or neglect report is an indicator of imminent danger.
Earlier this year, the agency also completed a policy manual on conducting investigations. All social workers, supervisors and program managers have been trained using this new resource, Porchia-Usher said.
Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-child-welfare-agency-often-acts-too-quickly-to-remove-children-study-says/2011/09/29/gIQAIGweOL_story.html
The number of children removed from their homes by child abuse investigators in the District has fallen in the past year, but a recent review of some cases concluded that children are still regularly separated from their parents without adequate justification.
The study, conducted by a federally mandated panel of volunteer monitors, examined 27 cases involving 41 children over several years. In many of the instances examined by the panel, children who were placed briefly in foster care should have stayed with their families, the report concluded.
The Citizens Review Panel said the District’s Child and Family Services Agency has not done enough to keep families together and urged the agency to do better.
“CFSA’s child removal decisions must balance the need to protect children from serious abuse or neglect with the need to protect children from the significant emotional trauma that comes from the government separating them from their families,” the report, released last week, stated.
The review, released last week, is the latest examination of the challenges that CFSA, like other child welfare agencies, faces in balancing the inclination to remove children when neglect or abuse is suspected and the imperative to leave them in the home unless they are in imminent danger.
In more than half of the reviews conducted, panel members found that the case record did not justify removal.
In one case cited in the report, a social worker removed a child upon discovering suspicious marks on the child’s body, most likely from being whipped with a cord. The social worker placed him and his three siblings, who did not show signs of abuse, into foster care without obtaining a family court order.
After the removal, the social worker met with the mother to work out a strategy, known as a safety plan, for addressing the problems in the home. Less than a week later, the children were back at home. The report said that if this conversation had taken place before the children were taken, foster care would not have been necessary.
CFSA’s statistics show that even as the number of removals are on pace to be their lowest in years, the percentage of children who are being returned home within four months is at 35 percent, roughly the same rate as last year and a higher rate than in any of the previous three years.
Debra Porchia-Usher, the child welfare agency’s interim director, said how quickly children are removed from their families and how quickly they are returned is an issue the CFSA continues to monitor. “We all agree fewer removals are better,” she said. But she does not agree that the problem is as prevalent as the report suggests.
In an effort to make better decisions about removals, the agency recently launched a pilot program of a strategy known as differential response, which acknowledges that not every abuse or neglect report is an indicator of imminent danger.
Earlier this year, the agency also completed a policy manual on conducting investigations. All social workers, supervisors and program managers have been trained using this new resource, Porchia-Usher said.
Source http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-child-welfare-agency-often-acts-too-quickly-to-remove-children-study-says/2011/09/29/gIQAIGweOL_story.html
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Grandma: CPS removed grandbaby from home because I smoke
Looks like the executioners aren't the only busy state employees in Texas!
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Reseda family reunited after year of foster care
Blog author note:
It's interesting to note that this article comments that reunification of children with their family is a "recent" policy. Then why does CPS state that they always try to reunify and they have said that for years? Also, this article makes note that CPS knows that they are ripping families apart. Why would they do that? There are other ways to handle situations rather than add other issues to families by ripping them apart. And what is missing from this story is how false allegations and other strange situations can cause this ripping apart of families. They don't bother to note that many families have done nothing wrong, yet their children are removed. Futhermore, why isn't the number of children abused, neglected and killed in foster care noted? Such dirty secrets....
---
Pablo Nino smiled proudly while posing for pictures with his family on a patch of grass in downtown Los Angeles.
All but one of the Reseda construction worker's six children had spent about a year in foster care, and he was deeply grateful to have them back.
"I'm so happy," the father said in halting English.
Nino is a beneficiary of the county Department of Children and Family Services' relatively recent drive to reunite children with biological parents and relatives who have consistently shown desire and ability to once again safely care for them.
"I think it's important for families to be together," said Phillip Browning, who took over as interim director of the DCFS three weeks ago.
"So often, we've taken families and pulled them apart," he said. "Now, I think there's a renewed emphasis to make sure that we can provide the support that is needed to keep a family together."
Nino was among several parents and social workers honored by the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday for being "Family Reunification Heroes."
During the fiscal year that ended in June, DCFS reunited 9,730 children with their families, though 977 of them were in foster care again as of Tuesday.
DCFS had more than 35,000 open cases as of Aug. 31, including about 9,100 who are receiving family reunification services.
Another 15,500 are in out-of-home placement, such as foster homes and group homes. Five years ago, that number was around 50,000.
Sometimes returning children to families that harmed or neglected them in the past can lead again to tragic outcomes, acknowledged Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.
Still, he contends that returning them is less risky than keeping them in prolonged foster care, citing research from 2007 and 2008 that involved more than 15,000 children.
The studies found that children who were left in their own homes fared better in later life than comparably maltreated children placed in foster care.
"When you think about how traumatic it is to be completely uprooted from everyone you know, and bounced from one home to another, and then another, the findings should not surprise anyone," Wexler said.
"Some children really do have to be taken away, but foster care is an extremely toxic intervention that has to be used sparingly and in small doses," he added.
The DCFS was unable to provide statistics on the number of children who died from abuse or neglect after being returned to their families.
Wexler said when such tragedies do occur, they can be blamed on lack of sufficient staffing at the DCFS.
About 34,000 children entered its system during the last fiscal year.
"By and large, when you have the cases that go wrong, it's because workers don't have time to investigate carefully enough because they're so overloaded, they can't make that extra phone call or check with that extra source, or review the child's history carefully enough," Wexler said.
Browning said he intends to have more employees handle casework.
"We're looking at all the positions within the department that can be moved to do frontline work, move them from administrative role back to a case-carrying situation," he said.
He also intends to provide them with better technology so they can have as much data as possible to make an informed decision about cases.
In Nino's case, DCFS intervened to take custody over his children after his only daughter, then age 6, came to school with a bloody gash at the top of her head.
Nino had hit her with a belt buckle for telling a lie.
DCFS placed the five children in two separate foster homes. Nino's sixth child had not been born at the time.
"I felt bad, I was so sad," Nino said Tuesday while recalling the incident.
He spent about a year trying to win his children back, including attending parenting and anger management classes.
Finally, last November, DCFS deemed it safe to reunite the family.
Judge Michael Nash, presiding judge of the Los Angeles Juvenile Court, said parents should be given a chance to redeem themselves.
"A family that is unfit at a particular point in time may not be unfit forever," he said. "Families are the cornerstone, the foundation of our community in this country, and we should do everything possible to maintain families when we can safely do so."
Source http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_18941445
It's interesting to note that this article comments that reunification of children with their family is a "recent" policy. Then why does CPS state that they always try to reunify and they have said that for years? Also, this article makes note that CPS knows that they are ripping families apart. Why would they do that? There are other ways to handle situations rather than add other issues to families by ripping them apart. And what is missing from this story is how false allegations and other strange situations can cause this ripping apart of families. They don't bother to note that many families have done nothing wrong, yet their children are removed. Futhermore, why isn't the number of children abused, neglected and killed in foster care noted? Such dirty secrets....
---
Pablo Nino smiled proudly while posing for pictures with his family on a patch of grass in downtown Los Angeles.
All but one of the Reseda construction worker's six children had spent about a year in foster care, and he was deeply grateful to have them back.
"I'm so happy," the father said in halting English.
Nino is a beneficiary of the county Department of Children and Family Services' relatively recent drive to reunite children with biological parents and relatives who have consistently shown desire and ability to once again safely care for them.
"I think it's important for families to be together," said Phillip Browning, who took over as interim director of the DCFS three weeks ago.
"So often, we've taken families and pulled them apart," he said. "Now, I think there's a renewed emphasis to make sure that we can provide the support that is needed to keep a family together."
Nino was among several parents and social workers honored by the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday for being "Family Reunification Heroes."
During the fiscal year that ended in June, DCFS reunited 9,730 children with their families, though 977 of them were in foster care again as of Tuesday.
DCFS had more than 35,000 open cases as of Aug. 31, including about 9,100 who are receiving family reunification services.
Another 15,500 are in out-of-home placement, such as foster homes and group homes. Five years ago, that number was around 50,000.
Sometimes returning children to families that harmed or neglected them in the past can lead again to tragic outcomes, acknowledged Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.
Still, he contends that returning them is less risky than keeping them in prolonged foster care, citing research from 2007 and 2008 that involved more than 15,000 children.
The studies found that children who were left in their own homes fared better in later life than comparably maltreated children placed in foster care.
"When you think about how traumatic it is to be completely uprooted from everyone you know, and bounced from one home to another, and then another, the findings should not surprise anyone," Wexler said.
"Some children really do have to be taken away, but foster care is an extremely toxic intervention that has to be used sparingly and in small doses," he added.
The DCFS was unable to provide statistics on the number of children who died from abuse or neglect after being returned to their families.
Wexler said when such tragedies do occur, they can be blamed on lack of sufficient staffing at the DCFS.
About 34,000 children entered its system during the last fiscal year.
"By and large, when you have the cases that go wrong, it's because workers don't have time to investigate carefully enough because they're so overloaded, they can't make that extra phone call or check with that extra source, or review the child's history carefully enough," Wexler said.
Browning said he intends to have more employees handle casework.
"We're looking at all the positions within the department that can be moved to do frontline work, move them from administrative role back to a case-carrying situation," he said.
He also intends to provide them with better technology so they can have as much data as possible to make an informed decision about cases.
In Nino's case, DCFS intervened to take custody over his children after his only daughter, then age 6, came to school with a bloody gash at the top of her head.
Nino had hit her with a belt buckle for telling a lie.
DCFS placed the five children in two separate foster homes. Nino's sixth child had not been born at the time.
"I felt bad, I was so sad," Nino said Tuesday while recalling the incident.
He spent about a year trying to win his children back, including attending parenting and anger management classes.
Finally, last November, DCFS deemed it safe to reunite the family.
Judge Michael Nash, presiding judge of the Los Angeles Juvenile Court, said parents should be given a chance to redeem themselves.
"A family that is unfit at a particular point in time may not be unfit forever," he said. "Families are the cornerstone, the foundation of our community in this country, and we should do everything possible to maintain families when we can safely do so."
Source http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_18941445
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Testimony agrees that child welfare system needs reform
Note from blog author:
This article shows that CPS is mostly about removal and money. It is obvious from our experience with CPS that they are not truly worried about the best interest of the child and they do not support families. CPS does it's best to rip families apart. Why? The almighty buck!!
---
By: MAUNETTE LOEKS, Staff Reporter
Published: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 10:08 PM CDT
The child welfare system needs fixed.
That was the overwhelming message during testimony Tuesday at a hearing as a legislative committee examines the Department of Health and Human Services.
From a Department of Health and Human Services standpoint, few issues were identified as problems within the department itself in local operations.
Nathan Busch, western service area administrator, highlighted the successes of the Department of Health and Human Services in the western service area, which includes the 11 counties of the Panhandle. Since Busch was appointed as western service administrator in October 2007, he said, he believes the area has seen improvements.
Over a four-year-period, the number of children identified as state wards has decreased by 245 children, he said. Busch said the western service area serves 605 state wards, with 73 percent of those children placed out of their home. Seventy-three percent of those children are placed out of their home. Of those children, 41 percent are placed with a relative or someone known to the area. The service area also provides services to 172 children outside the formal court via a non-court involved process.
“Though children aren’t a commodity to be counted, I believe this means children are achieving permanency in an expedient matter,” Busch said.
He said the western service area has also improved in meeting federal benchmarks put into place to measure outcomes to assure protection and safety of children in the child welfare or juvenile services system. In October 2007, he said, the western service area had been meeting only one of the six federal outcomes. However, the western service area is now meeting three of the six guidelines, with strengths in absence of maltreatment in foster care, timeliness of adoption and permanency for children in foster care. He said areas needing improvement include absence of maltreatment recurrence, timeliness and permanency of reunification and placement stability.
The western service agency has put into place efforts to try to improve in those areas, including the formation of a permanency planning committee.
“The challenge is to take an area where good things are happening and make an area where great things are happening,” he said.
However, for all the successes touted by the Health and Human Services, there were also issues presented during testimony. Just some of the issues touched on were:
-- In citing challenges faced by the western service area, Busch cited that there are not enough resources to provide services to children close to their home communities.
As of October 2009, he said, the western service area had 317 foster homes, which has grown slightly to 348 foster homes. Busch said there is a gap in the number of foster homes willing or able to provide for children with severe behaviors, such as mental health issues, infants or teenagers.
Over the last two years, the number of group homes in the district have decreased. Non-payment of services by the Boys and Girls Home had been cited as a problem by some of the providers, though Busch simply said that the reduction “is the result of terminations of contract or (the providers) choosing not to renew contracts.”
The western service area has only one youth shelter within its district, with 12 beds in Scottsbluff.
Some of the reduction in providers is a direct result of strained relations after the Boys and Girls Home had been contracted to provide services. Non-payment of services, a reduction in payment or non-referral of services to specific providers resulted in a loss of providers within the district. One provider said that the Boys and Girls Home situation has presented a distrust between providers and DHHS.
Foster families have also seen a decrease in payment and services, including the loss of respite and clothing payments for children. Foster parents and providers have said they have had to fight for services that were needed for children. In some cases, parents or providers give up. In other cases, they continue lobbying for the services or children have had to be placed into emergency protective custody situations for lengthy periods of times.
-- With a lack of services, children are being placed out of state. In one instance, cited by Busch, a child has been placed in Ohio because he said adequate services were unable to be obtained. Judge James Worden, who testified regarding observations seen in the juvenile justice system, said he has had to have at least three children placed outside of state because placement for the children had not been found within a 60-90 day time frame. He said he knew that placement for two children, placed in Colorado, and is in excess of $1,200 a month. Services could be provided within communities, if funded, he said.
Both Busch and Worden, as well as other people testifying throughout the hearing, said that reunification with parents is made more difficult when children have to be placed in other areas of the state or out-of-state. Access to familiar services, schools and visitation with parents becomes problematic.
-- Testimony cited needs for improvement in transparency and communication. Busch testified that local officials were notified by e-mail, at 5 p.m., on a Friday, that the Boys and Girls Home would be discontinuing services and had to rush to make placements. Other agencies cited that parents, workers and other officials partnering with DHHS initially didn’t have questions answered about the Boys and Girls Home coming into the community. This also resulted in questions and then problems. Problems have continued with other companies that functions have been outsourced since the Boys and Girls Home ended its contract.
While DHHS represents itself as transparent – “It does not benefit the children, the families, to play hide the ball” — families with cases involved in the system, foster families and other cooperating agencies named a need to improve transparency most often when commenting on improvements that needed to be made within the system.
-- Though the DHHS is tasked by law with focusing on reunification, some of the people testifying stated that they believed that the system focuses on foster services and adoption. Often, comments were made that the DHHS had failed to focus on children and families in providing services. Suggestions were made to help families by establishing early intervention programs, such as parenting classes, and continuing to provide support to families after children have been re-united with parents or adopted.
-- Current policies and procedures do not allow for flexibility within the system. Repeatedly, testifiers cited a difference in being able to provide services in rural areas. Some regulations do not allow multiple providers. Some regulations do not allow for flexible options, such as a proposal by Worden to have day treatment or reporting centers where children could receive services during the day, but return to home in the evenings. Routinely, the need to allow innovative programs was identified as a need of child welfare reform services.
-- Some problems were identified with the people working within the system. In three incidents cited during the hearing, prosecutors made decisions to remove children and at least one person cited that it was felt that the removal of children had been done as punishment to a parent for not testifying in a case. All three individuals testified that they believed more than one individual should be responsible for determining if a child is removed from a home to avoid conflicts.
One of those individuals testified about being involved in a case in Keith County, called the “collaboration” between agencies “collusion,” saying that officials within different agencies conspired to create falsehoods to remove children from home and keep them from homes. Two of those individuals testified that caseworkers had committed perjury in court hearings and that they had evidence from law enforcement and school officials proving such.
Cases where guardian ad litems or caseworkers had little knowledge of cases, having not met with children or families, were noted. Visitation issues were cited by Worden, CASA workers and families with cases in the court system were cited as problems because providers were not showing up or were canceling pre-scheduled appointments. Meetings designed to discuss and examine cases also had similar complaints, with case workers or others canceling appointments and not notifying parents or other persons working on the cases in a timely fashion.
-- Lack of training and low wages.
Everyone from foster parents to persons within agencies that partner with DHHS testified that training for caseworkers to foster parents is needed. People also testified that low wages to people working with children, such as visitation aids, were low and resulted in unqualified individuals supervising children and cases.
Caseworkers were also cited as being overworked, with too few caseworkers and too many cases assigned to workers.
Support services for families, and for foster children and children returned to homes, were also cited as needs.
-- More oversight, both fiscal and in operations. Waste and redundancy within the system where identified throughout the hearing. One testifier noted that she and her daughter had received 12 letters regarding a reduction in services. Other examples of waste and redundancy were also cited.
Testimony during Tuesday’s hearings came during open and closed sessions.
“We came out here to get your stories and what you would like to convey,” Sen. Kathy Campbell told the crowd attending the hearing. She regularly encouraged people testifying or attending the hearings to contact local representative Sen. John Harms with follow up testimony or information or to contact members of the committees overseeing the legislative study process
Source http://www.starherald.com/articles/2011/09/14/news/doc4e701a0aa84d9420064313.txt
This article shows that CPS is mostly about removal and money. It is obvious from our experience with CPS that they are not truly worried about the best interest of the child and they do not support families. CPS does it's best to rip families apart. Why? The almighty buck!!
---
By: MAUNETTE LOEKS, Staff Reporter
Published: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 10:08 PM CDT
The child welfare system needs fixed.
That was the overwhelming message during testimony Tuesday at a hearing as a legislative committee examines the Department of Health and Human Services.
From a Department of Health and Human Services standpoint, few issues were identified as problems within the department itself in local operations.
Nathan Busch, western service area administrator, highlighted the successes of the Department of Health and Human Services in the western service area, which includes the 11 counties of the Panhandle. Since Busch was appointed as western service administrator in October 2007, he said, he believes the area has seen improvements.
Over a four-year-period, the number of children identified as state wards has decreased by 245 children, he said. Busch said the western service area serves 605 state wards, with 73 percent of those children placed out of their home. Seventy-three percent of those children are placed out of their home. Of those children, 41 percent are placed with a relative or someone known to the area. The service area also provides services to 172 children outside the formal court via a non-court involved process.
“Though children aren’t a commodity to be counted, I believe this means children are achieving permanency in an expedient matter,” Busch said.
He said the western service area has also improved in meeting federal benchmarks put into place to measure outcomes to assure protection and safety of children in the child welfare or juvenile services system. In October 2007, he said, the western service area had been meeting only one of the six federal outcomes. However, the western service area is now meeting three of the six guidelines, with strengths in absence of maltreatment in foster care, timeliness of adoption and permanency for children in foster care. He said areas needing improvement include absence of maltreatment recurrence, timeliness and permanency of reunification and placement stability.
The western service agency has put into place efforts to try to improve in those areas, including the formation of a permanency planning committee.
“The challenge is to take an area where good things are happening and make an area where great things are happening,” he said.
However, for all the successes touted by the Health and Human Services, there were also issues presented during testimony. Just some of the issues touched on were:
-- In citing challenges faced by the western service area, Busch cited that there are not enough resources to provide services to children close to their home communities.
As of October 2009, he said, the western service area had 317 foster homes, which has grown slightly to 348 foster homes. Busch said there is a gap in the number of foster homes willing or able to provide for children with severe behaviors, such as mental health issues, infants or teenagers.
Over the last two years, the number of group homes in the district have decreased. Non-payment of services by the Boys and Girls Home had been cited as a problem by some of the providers, though Busch simply said that the reduction “is the result of terminations of contract or (the providers) choosing not to renew contracts.”
The western service area has only one youth shelter within its district, with 12 beds in Scottsbluff.
Some of the reduction in providers is a direct result of strained relations after the Boys and Girls Home had been contracted to provide services. Non-payment of services, a reduction in payment or non-referral of services to specific providers resulted in a loss of providers within the district. One provider said that the Boys and Girls Home situation has presented a distrust between providers and DHHS.
Foster families have also seen a decrease in payment and services, including the loss of respite and clothing payments for children. Foster parents and providers have said they have had to fight for services that were needed for children. In some cases, parents or providers give up. In other cases, they continue lobbying for the services or children have had to be placed into emergency protective custody situations for lengthy periods of times.
-- With a lack of services, children are being placed out of state. In one instance, cited by Busch, a child has been placed in Ohio because he said adequate services were unable to be obtained. Judge James Worden, who testified regarding observations seen in the juvenile justice system, said he has had to have at least three children placed outside of state because placement for the children had not been found within a 60-90 day time frame. He said he knew that placement for two children, placed in Colorado, and is in excess of $1,200 a month. Services could be provided within communities, if funded, he said.
Both Busch and Worden, as well as other people testifying throughout the hearing, said that reunification with parents is made more difficult when children have to be placed in other areas of the state or out-of-state. Access to familiar services, schools and visitation with parents becomes problematic.
-- Testimony cited needs for improvement in transparency and communication. Busch testified that local officials were notified by e-mail, at 5 p.m., on a Friday, that the Boys and Girls Home would be discontinuing services and had to rush to make placements. Other agencies cited that parents, workers and other officials partnering with DHHS initially didn’t have questions answered about the Boys and Girls Home coming into the community. This also resulted in questions and then problems. Problems have continued with other companies that functions have been outsourced since the Boys and Girls Home ended its contract.
While DHHS represents itself as transparent – “It does not benefit the children, the families, to play hide the ball” — families with cases involved in the system, foster families and other cooperating agencies named a need to improve transparency most often when commenting on improvements that needed to be made within the system.
-- Though the DHHS is tasked by law with focusing on reunification, some of the people testifying stated that they believed that the system focuses on foster services and adoption. Often, comments were made that the DHHS had failed to focus on children and families in providing services. Suggestions were made to help families by establishing early intervention programs, such as parenting classes, and continuing to provide support to families after children have been re-united with parents or adopted.
-- Current policies and procedures do not allow for flexibility within the system. Repeatedly, testifiers cited a difference in being able to provide services in rural areas. Some regulations do not allow multiple providers. Some regulations do not allow for flexible options, such as a proposal by Worden to have day treatment or reporting centers where children could receive services during the day, but return to home in the evenings. Routinely, the need to allow innovative programs was identified as a need of child welfare reform services.
-- Some problems were identified with the people working within the system. In three incidents cited during the hearing, prosecutors made decisions to remove children and at least one person cited that it was felt that the removal of children had been done as punishment to a parent for not testifying in a case. All three individuals testified that they believed more than one individual should be responsible for determining if a child is removed from a home to avoid conflicts.
One of those individuals testified about being involved in a case in Keith County, called the “collaboration” between agencies “collusion,” saying that officials within different agencies conspired to create falsehoods to remove children from home and keep them from homes. Two of those individuals testified that caseworkers had committed perjury in court hearings and that they had evidence from law enforcement and school officials proving such.
Cases where guardian ad litems or caseworkers had little knowledge of cases, having not met with children or families, were noted. Visitation issues were cited by Worden, CASA workers and families with cases in the court system were cited as problems because providers were not showing up or were canceling pre-scheduled appointments. Meetings designed to discuss and examine cases also had similar complaints, with case workers or others canceling appointments and not notifying parents or other persons working on the cases in a timely fashion.
-- Lack of training and low wages.
Everyone from foster parents to persons within agencies that partner with DHHS testified that training for caseworkers to foster parents is needed. People also testified that low wages to people working with children, such as visitation aids, were low and resulted in unqualified individuals supervising children and cases.
Caseworkers were also cited as being overworked, with too few caseworkers and too many cases assigned to workers.
Support services for families, and for foster children and children returned to homes, were also cited as needs.
-- More oversight, both fiscal and in operations. Waste and redundancy within the system where identified throughout the hearing. One testifier noted that she and her daughter had received 12 letters regarding a reduction in services. Other examples of waste and redundancy were also cited.
Testimony during Tuesday’s hearings came during open and closed sessions.
“We came out here to get your stories and what you would like to convey,” Sen. Kathy Campbell told the crowd attending the hearing. She regularly encouraged people testifying or attending the hearings to contact local representative Sen. John Harms with follow up testimony or information or to contact members of the committees overseeing the legislative study process
Source http://www.starherald.com/articles/2011/09/14/news/doc4e701a0aa84d9420064313.txt
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