You are viewing a single comment's thread from:

RE: Why are @familyprotection working so hard to collect stories about the Child Protection Service?

in #dlive6 years ago (edited)

of COURSE there are some times when children REALLY need to be removed and fostered.. the problem is that in a HUGE percentage of cases CPS are removing them for no good reason.. It is atrocious, the system is totally messed up and in the worst possible ways.. so what im saying is that there is MAJOR reform needed on CPS and how its funds are allocated .. courts need to be open and not secret .. and many more changes are needed to prevent 100,000s of children being messed up for life by improper removal..

Sort:  

I would argue that just as many are being messed up by not being removed. Too many people look the other way or don't want to get involved. Too many children slip through the cracks because CPS doesn't get involved. I am not saying that CPS doesn't make mistakes or is perfect. However, I know of many times they didn't remove the child from the parents when they actually should have. I work for a public school system so I am a mandatory reporter. I have to have faith that if I see something concerning CPS is going to do their due diligence to make sure the child is safe. I know CPS workers and I know what they have to deal with and go through every day. Too often parents view them as the enemy because they are the ones that are taking their kids away. CPS workers do so much more than that. Their goal is reunification. They are there to provide support to the parent to get their crap together so they can get their kid(s) back. Too frequently they want to just be the victim and not fix anything though. It is easier to paint CPS as the bad guy and play the victim than to get your life straightened out. Again, no one is perfect. I think we just need a little less hate and a little more understanding on both sides.

you said it my friend.. CPS miss the ones they should remove and KEEP removing up to 40% of the ones they shoudlnt.. it is an atrocity.. and ALL because they are run as a business.. CPS agents are pressured to removed children because that is how they are funded.. they do almost no due diligence.. and fail in their job WAY to often.

This 'service' is horrifying.. they need to totally clean it up and change the entire system.. they have NO incentive to reunify.. did you watch the video? that is not their goal because they have no incentive to do it..

they have also NO budget to help.. their ONLY power is to remove children and that is it!

Did you not read my reply? I know people that work for CPS. That is absolutely their goal. I am going to take the word over someone I know and trust who has been doing this for years over some random rant video on a social media platform.

u know someone in ONE small part of the world.. whereas i know people worldwide ... so yes perhaps you can listen up.. as i have heard and seen enough to know that the GLOBAL facts are indisputable.. you probably live in one of the better places..

My part of the world is small, but that doesn't diminish its impact. I really don't mind if you don't agree with me, I just wanted the other side of the story to be presented against this campaign of hate. Thanks for the healthy discussion.

i understand.. and for the record im not full of hate at ALL.. especially for people who i consider victims. which includes CPS workers in many cases.. as i say the system is absolutely messed up beyond anything i can bear to continue to witness.. bear in mind EVEN CPS admits that 75% of cases where children are removed are based on NO evidence.. that is insane.. too many thousands of children are messed up for life.. so im looking at that side of things rather than the occasions when they DO get it right..

thanks for your inputs.. i do appreciate them!

Haha, I just had to look at the comments, seeing how high the rewards were. More visibility = a wider range of point of views, and sure enough!

I haven't watched the video yet, but I will soon. :)

I'm confused why he mentions "worldwide" & "global" when we are talking about an American agency.
What do I know....moving on.

There are "Child Protective Services" in many, many countries. I am a co-founder of @familyprotection and live in Canada where my friends have gone through hell with our version of CPS. @markwhittam is the founder of @familyprotection and he had to flee from Sweden's version of CPS to protect his children.
This is much bigger than just an American problem.
The stories shared @familyprotection are from bloggers all over the globe.

I did focus on USA but these stories apply globally. You can read more stories from europe, africa, etc at @familprotection

You trust them? Probably in part because you're cut from the same cloth. My husband and I started being investigated about 1 1/2 months ago, and the social worker has already lied to me 3 times. Will there be any consequences? Of course not, they can do whatever they want.

You are right. My number 1 goal and responsibility is the health and safety of the children. I guess I am cut from the same cloth as the workers I know.

Have you read through the @familyprotection posts? The system needs a complete overhaul. Too many innocent families are ripped apart.

Yes I browsed them. Trust me, we are not going to agree.

Blindly defending a broken organization and taking critisisms of it personally are irrelevant to protecting children, as is insulting others as "hateful".

Oh god that is what I wanted to say, but I was hoping someone else said it first. Its a buiseniss, the interest is not on the child, but on the money. And its a state buiseniss so they can do whatever and nobody can do anything about it or you get police at your home faster than your ordered pizza.

im sorry but with over 30% of agents lying and falsifying information in court.. this is too far.. there is nothing to understand past the fact that they are unable to do their jobs as the system is fundamentally set up wrong.

to be clear i aim my arrow mostly at the system rather than agents.. who i see as victims in many instances

I think it has to be a regional thing because that just isn't happening where I live. I can imagine that in larger cities where departments are understaffed and caseloads are extremely high, things fall through the cracks. I still think it is wiser to rally for better funding and training of CPS than to just vilify them and paint them as horrible monsters. That isn't fair to the workers that are busting their butts to keep every child safe to the best of their ability. Just browsing through the familyprotection tag makes me sad to see that so many people feel more comfortable complaining than taking action. Thanks for the clarification. The people I know would be devastated to hear they are seen in this light.

@bozz, I understand your feelings about this. And I am sure that the people you know that work for CPS are good people. However, you are sure that they always tell the truth and the people who are affected by CPS workers (not saying the ones you know) are making up excuses and complaining. You mention larger areas and it not happening where you are. So I take it you live in a small community? Well, I live in rural Ireland. The thing here is that in the larger cities, like Dublin, they have so much going on, there are places they won't even touch. There are two well known areas of Dublin where police won't even go, let alone social workers. Places where you can see 5 year old children outside smoking...In those places, you won't see CPS show up, because they're afraid. In other bigger cities, they have too many 'big' cases, like drug addiction, they won't even go to 'lesser' cases, like people living in a messy house etc. As I said, I live in rural Ireland. Here, it's totally different. Of course, they will have cases of real neglect and abuse, but a lot less. The problem here is that they somehow need to keep themselves in a job. And that's the problem. I've met a social worker here who used to work with problem youth. She has more experience than some others and will not nick-pick and try to make a case if it isn't there. She is one of the good ones. Unfortunately, I have been the target of one that isn't one of the good ones. My sister in law, who teaches child protection law at university and deals with lots of these cases, met her too and she will tell anyone that I am not lying about this. About 8 months ago, this case worker came to my house after we just moved here. Yes, the house was a mess, since everything was still in boxes and we only just handed in the key to the old house the day before. They came because my daughter (almost 16 at the time) had been staying elsewhere after she told me she was with her best friend. The case worker thought what I told her about just moving here and therefore not having things settled in was an excuse. But it was the honest truth. From the beginning, she worked at making a case against me, never to work with me. Our family is 'different' you see. My kids are home-schooled. That was an issue, because in her opinion, kids needed to be in school or they would be socially isolated. The fact that all of my children are involved in a few sports and other clubs and that I drive around the place 6 days a week to bring them to places, wasn't enough for her. My youngest had to go to creche, even though he was just 3 years old, and it's not mandatory to send him anywhere. There are many, many things she came up with that were either unrealistic (she said for instance that our animals, 2 dogs, 3 cats and 1 pony could cause my kids to get sick...even though the neighbours cows are closer to our house than the pony is and my dogs never soil around the house) or complete lies. Everything I told her, she twisted into her own fictitious stories and she even made stuff up. Now, last Thursday I had a hearing about this. Before that, I filed a complaint about her. I was lucky. The chairman saw right through her games and wouldn't have any of it, since there was no evidence that my kids were in any way mistreated. So he threw the case out. I am sure, that others aren't so lucky. If the man would have not seen through it all, I could have lost my children, for no good reason other than the case workers own opinions. So I was lucky he saw the case for what it was, but at the same time I have been tormented by this woman for more than 8 months! I hardly slept in that time. I was so stressed that people around me were worried I would end up getting seriously ill or end up in hospital. Something that can never be in the kids' best interest. The stress rubbed off on them too of course, because their mother had them change their clothes 3 times a day just in case the case worker would come in and see a stain on their shirt. It was absolute HELL. So even though I don't doubt that the people you know are good people, I am about as sure that this woman will tell her friends our story, and these friends will probably nod and agree that I must be the most horrible mother they have ever heard about. They only hear her story. Not mine. So they can never be a judge of what really goes on in her world. The only hope I have that people will realize that she , in fact, should not be working in the job, is when the complaint is taken seriously and they talk to other families who she has been working with. Maybe they have been lucky too. Maybe not...

In the small town where I live, I have a few friends who have had HORRENDOUS experiences with CPS.

I have had a lawyer tell me that his cases defending families from my small town are the very worst cases of misjustice that he has ever seen. (He has clients from several communities.)

So yes, some places are worse than others. Just because it may not be bad where you live doesn't mean you can assume the same for anywhere else. I had first-hand experience helping 2 of these families and I saw the atrocities with my own eyes.

That may not be your experience and maybe your friends are some of the better SS workers. But believe me that atrocities happen to innocent famlies all the time.
Please look at this post that I made listing all the stories that have already been shared here on Steemit by bloggers just like yourself. I have published true stories on my blog too.

https://steemit.com/familyprotection/@canadian-coconut/cps-and-foster-care-abuses-index-of-published-stories-now-on-the-steemit-blockchain

PLEASE reconsider thinking of people like me speaking out about these injustices as spreading hate.
Eco-Alex and I are spreading LOVE. Love for children and love for families and love and support to the countless victims out there. I am also doing my best to prevent this from happening to any further innocent families.

Oh, and the other part of what we speak about @familyprotection, is the abuses that often happen to Foster Children. @markwhittam who founded @familyprotection with me was a foster child himself and saw many atrocites from that angle as well.
So even when the child's own parents are terrible parents and the child really needs a better situation, they are very often put into situations that were much worse than they ever were with their own parents.

Thank-you for listening.

bozz. im sorry your friends who im sure are VERY GOOD PEOPLE get caught up in this net.. but the system is inherently wrong and has incentives in all the worst places.. with huge pressures to remove children regardless of the circumstances... they should NOT be run as a business.. that is ridiculous.. the system NEEds to change!

Not happening here either.
We had to deal with them not that long ago....my wifes ex called them in hopes of getting custody of his son to dodge child support. They came, did their due diligence and went about their way.
Yes, there are flaws in any system....but this is a bunch of nonsense.
Sounds like a hit piece to me....and there are always underlying reasons for a hit piece.
Moving on....

Im very happy you were treated well. There are of course cases where it works out well. But thisnis anything but a hit story! CPS themselves have admitted 75% of removals happen without any evidence at all! So you are part of the lucky ones my friend! This video does explain and show these facts and these facts are real and accepted figures!