Comments on: Texas: “The System Is Maxed”

By: Alicia

Alicia — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 10:47:52 +0000

MY babies r gone I don’t even know where they are right now. They were taken from their father a couple weeks ago because he relapsed. Relapse is a part of recovery btw. We both were great parents but they ripped them from both of us. Now it is a struggle to even live. There’s a giant hole in my heart that I can physically feel and it makes me sick!! They’re trying to terminate our rights! My babies were never neglected or abused in ANY way at all!! I don’t understand how they have the right to do this?!? My babies must be so terrified! I know they miss their mommy so much!! I just hope and pray that they don’t hurt as bad as I do. I love you Conner and Gavin.

By: Kayla

Kayla — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 00:57:24 +0000

I am very quick to judge CPS for the simply fact they tore my family apart. They have no evidence that i ever abused or neglected my daughter. My daughter has been crying for us for more than a week . She is currently with my older sister. They changed the reason why they removed her from my care three times. They closed the investigation in 2 weeks and they said they dont feel she is safe in my care and they dont give me a reason as to why. I’ve called and left messages and no one calls back. They even lied about transfering my case to BFSS for classes they want me to take. This is unjustice i am a good and loving mother and cps has no evidence to suggest other wise. All of my family has said im a good mother and a loving one at that. Im from Beeville, Texas and the system is not the way it should be.

By: tara

tara — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:13:19 +0000

I live in Morris County Tx and had family LIE on me and now my children are in the care of my mother. I did not get to present any evidence for my side on Sept 1, and am supposed to be able to do so Oct 6. I am grateful atleast that my children are at my mothers but the family that lied on me still has access to my children. They also stated that my children made outcries against myself and my husband who isn’t even in the picture anymore. yet my youngest is wetting the bed at nights, my oldest breaks down during class and cries. They ask at every visit why can’t they come home, they want to be home, when they can come home. My oldest clung to me at the last visit when the visit was over. I applaud those of you who foster children for the right reasons. I personally know 2 foster families who are wonderful parents/; foster parents. BUT the fact is that many see the children as a source of income. I had hoped to one day be able to foster children but now that hope has perished along with my faith in the justice system. People need to protest the state’s way of “protecting” children. It is nothing more than legalized kidnapping in most cases. My mother was actually called and asked if she wanted to foster kids that she would receive an initial payment of $1000. she told them no that the children she had were her grandchildren and that was the only reason she was fostering them. She was not interested in any monetary benefit.

By: Kristen

Kristen — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:22:51 +0000

LInda and Debbie, I am wanting to know if it is okay for my to put Debbie’s June 28 post on a blog I am constructing? I’ve recently had dealings with CPS due to forgetting my baby in my car. He was not injured, but I was frantic and dumb enough to think I could bring him in a public place and get help making sure he was okay even though I thought he was. Now I’m dealing with not only CPS but police as well. CPS did not take my boys and for that I am grateful. BUT my lawyer was concerned they would, not due to concern about abuse but due to concern that my house is small and that we had four beds for five boys which means not everyone had their own bed. He also instructed that our place be impecably clean. Now, our 3 and 4 year old boys aren’t hurt by sharing a bed and they don’t care that they do. My dad and two brothers transformed my boys’ bed to a triple bunk so they would have 1 bed per head and CPS showed the next day. Thank heaven it was fixed. This all happened while my husband was deployed with the ARMY so you can imagine the stress. What gets me is that it was clear my kids aren’t abused, but due to the fact that we are living in a small house and two kids happily share a bed my kids could have been taken away. Since when was being “poor” a crime. I put poor in quotes because my family isn’t truly poor. We have never missed a meal and we have everything we need. Our house is tiny, but other than that we are just fine and not lacking for anything. Due to my newfound realization that CPS preys on the poor and takes their kids because a house isn’t what they think it should be among other abuses of the system, I’m working on starting a blog about Texas CPS and may expand it later. I’ve heard from a close friend that she knows a lawyer who is strongly considering starting a watch dog organization to track CPS in Texas. I’m hoping to find him and see houw serious he is. It is rediculous that these folks have ZERO accountability and have turned into legalized kidnappers. My comment to John if he is able to read anything on this site anymore is this. Children are abused. This is true, but that doens’t mean CPS has a need to be involved. That is the place of Law Enforcement. Child abusers…TRUE child abusers need to go to jail and frankly, they need help. However, the abuser should be removed, not the child. If the abuser is the parent or parents, then the same protocol for what happens to orphaned children should be followed. They should be placed with another family member or god parent chosen by the parents. This promotes the most stability for the children and is truly a protective strategy in favor of the child. You may argue that the parent can still see the kid. This may be true in some cases, but the harm done in this respect is much less than harm done to children stolen from parents who didn’t abuse their kids. If Debbie’s solutions were applied and followed, the few abused children who don’t have family to go to could then be placed in foster care or in an orphanage.

By: bILL mEDVECKY

bILL mEDVECKY — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:09:30 +0000

So just 7 months later Texas kidnaps 465 children and abuses and neglects them in foster care for 8 weeks until we could get the childrens cases before a real court and get them all back home where they belonged from day one.

We are not going to get these ghouls from taking our children until the State and Federal bucks stop flowing.

If foster families are so committed, then do it for free. It is true that the foster parent receives the least, but each child is worth $ 26,000.00 to the State if they can shove some pills down the kids throat and claim he or she is “Special Needs”.

Foster care and adoptions are a business.
They have NOTHING to do with the best interest of children, they are $$$$$$$$$$$$$, pure and simple.

Bill Medvecky
flds.ws

By: michael

michael — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 23:33:19 +0000

If the system is so over-crowded, then how is it that they manage to continue to kidnap child after child from loving homes. Yet, make a report on someone you know that needs them to get involved, (and we all know people that mistreat their children) and CPS does nothing. We have lost 4 children to the state of Texas over the last 6 years. Nobody ever said we couldn’t have children. Yet since they took our 3 year old in 2003. We can’t get them out of our lives… 3 day old daughter from the hospital in August 2005…3 week old son in October 2006… And now our 2 week old son this past October 30…Who they refuse to let us see because some CPS caseworker lied, wrote a statement, and had my wife thrown in jail for retaliation. So they say that it’s due to the aggravated circumstances…The only reason we kept the last 2 so long is because we had them at home…The system is corrupt and CPS must be stopped.
Children are our future, yet it appears they
are being alienated, used, abused,
discarded, maimed, exploited and even
murdered all in the name of power and
money! I will do whatever I can to stop the
abuse of innocent children, including my
babies, that are being emotionally and
possibly physically abused, thanks to our
wonderful system!
This time I will NOT stand by and watch it happen…Please don’t forget to check out my petition…
http://www.rallycongress.com/fight-cps/1448/cps/

By: Susan

Susan — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 05:43:03 +0000

I am a foster parent and I am very sad that there is so many people out there that say we do it just for the money. Well let me ask you would $329.00 be enough for you to take care of your child on every month? If you say yes than you are being neglectful of your child. I come from a lower middle class community, we have the highest test scores in NC from our local Elementratry school but over 50% of our community is living under the poverty level. We have 2 children ourselves. My husband works 60 hours a week and I homeschool my children and my foster childen. We by no means are rich but every cent is put back into the future of the children we foster. We have many a child go back to the parents with a savings account set up in the childs name with funds, only for the child to come back into care weeks later yet again abused and there is no money in there account. The system may be failing but it can’t be all because of the state. At some point parents need to take responsability for there lives and there childrens lives admit they have a problem deal with it and move on WITH THERE CHILDREN. Our county in NC does have a high rate of foster care and adoption, go to adoptuskids.org and look at all the children awaiting adoption in NC. Pray hard that if your child has to be taken away it will go to a home commited to love and respect your child, and be there to help reunify your family when you both are ready. All foster homes are not bad, my husband I had to be fingerprinted and fbi check done. We had to go through a very rigerous home inspection and even had to do a small remodel to be licensed. My children had to meet with a DSS worker to find out if they were ok with having other children share there mom and dad (both said yes and they were just 3 and 6 at the time). In all it took between 6-8 months to take all the classes (MAPP, CPR, and first aid) and to do all the paperwork to be approved. So if we truly do it for the money I’m being snookeled because I’m not getting any richer. I currently have a sibling group of 4 who wished to stay together ooooh a total of $1320.00 a month====$150.00 per child for food for home=$600.00 new clothes because they came with rags $100.00 each=$400.00 up to a $1000.00 so far $50.00 per child for karate lessons=$200.00 first month so far $1200.00 then we also pay children for the small chores around the house which is put into a account. So agian I say i am being snookeled because I’m not getting rich. Not every foster parent is after your child, just like not every parent is guilty of abuse, so please stop badgering the people who do take very good care of your children while they are in our care until you can you oin them again to become the parent you need to be and not the angry at the world person CPS has made you.

By: Dawn

Dawn — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:20:22 +0000

I too dealt with CPS. I had a woman break into my home and fall off my porch as she was trying to rush out my door. This woman harrassed me for month over giving her money. When I told her it would be settled by our home owners insurance she got angry and called cps no less than 13 times in two months. Caseworker after caseworker came to my home. I had one tell me I was neglecting my kids because I had one dirty knife in the sink from making the kids sandwiches and cutting off the crust.
Then a few years later i got called on because my children has MRSA. It is an antibiotic resistant staph infection that lives on the body. Some people are more prone to it than others. Even though the kids were under their pediatrians care, I was accused of neglect. The case was dropped.
The most recent was neglect again. All because I was doing as the kids doctor and therapist told me to do. Simply make them clean their own rooms. Amazes me that your not even allowed to discipline your child or try to make them into productive happy people.
I was told if I didn’t get their rooms clean I would lose my kids.
My oldest has gotten so bad because we are unable to discipline him we had to put him in a mental hospital for behavior problems.
I do not like physical discipline but with some children grounding, taking away priviledges and honor system do not work. I do not understand why we can’t teach our children consequences.

I know fo a young woman who had no family to support her who has a preterm infant. She wasn’t offered welfare or housing. She wasn’t offered parenting classes. She wasn’t offered any support. This child was in the hospital in a neonatal intensive care unit. She was barely allowed to hold the baby due to the issues it had. CPS was called on her because of the way she was dressed. Nothing more. They stated she was an unfit parent and never even talked to her. Before she knew it she was told they were doing a TPR. She ended up finding an adoptive home of her choice, not in anyway related to her or her family. A family with similiar religious beliefs. This family had already adopted two other children. But CPS fought that. So tell me why if they didn’t think the child was safe with the mother and though the adopted home was qualified and had already given a loving home to two happy heathly kids, did they fight the adoption? Could it be because they weren’t going to make money off it? Doesn’t make sense to me.

By: robbie

robbie — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 16:16:42 +0000

I have been dealing with cps since oct 2006 when my autistic daughter was taken from my ex- husband while i was sick and in the hospital. although she was not taken from me, i had to fight for her to get her back. every other month cps tells me that they are giving me all of my rights back but then when we go into the courtroom they just put more objectives on me. Now I am completly exhausted and they just added 13 more. What gets me is that my ex-husband doesn’t have to do anything and he regains all of his rights back in oct. cps says “its the way the system works and i get to deal with it.” I have pretty much decided to expect that the more I do for them the more they will continue to put on me. “expect the worst and hope for the best.” I hope that God is with anyone else who is going through the same.

By: Debbie

Debbie — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:12:36 +0000

I loved reading the comments to this post! Very interesting 2 sided view of the system. It pointed out things wrong with the system and some good things. First let me say the government funding is well backwards. The cps system should receive money based on not how many children they take out of a home but how many homes they keep together. This way the focus would be on keeping families together not ripping them apart. I believe social workers who have success with a family by keeping them together and working with them on completion of a case should themselves receive a small bonus which would encourage them to work with the families better just like in some jobs the employee will receive a bonus at the end of a year for completing the most projects or selling the most product. As the system is now they are encouraged to rip apart families to receive funding.

Also they need to weed out the bad social workers there are far too many who are closed minded and ignorant and who don’t follow through or flat out lie. I have a friend who for a while worked at a facility. They pretty much warehoused children who were taken away from their families because of abuse or neglect. She told me that you can tell within an hour of the child arriving weather or not that child was abused. You see it in how they act. Like if the child has good manners, is polite, etc. or if the child flinches often, is a behavioral issue, doesn’t know right from wrong. She said she saw many children who clearly weren’t abused in that place and more often than not the kids there weren’t abused which ticked her off because she worked there to help abused kids and there were times she felt like she was abusing kids by keeping them from their parents. She felt awful and quit.

There are good and bad workers in every field of employment be it social work, teachers, doctors, lawyers, any job/career. There are people who clearly should not be social workers and their record should prove that and they should be fired. There are also good and bad foster families. Some people go into fostering because down the line they would like to adopt a child, some go into it to help families be reunited somewhere down the line, some well a lot go into it for the money, they don’t see a child they see a paycheck. I know a woman who did foster care and she had special training to take in sexually abused children. These children were actually sexually abused and their abusers were in jail. She had a job and so did her husband, she didn’t need the money. She kept clear records of where that money was spent – clothing food toys etc, and she spent the whole check every month on that child and their needs. She also took all money left over at the end of the month and put it in savings accounts in that child’s name and when they left her depending on how long she had them for they had a healthy nest egg to start off life with. Many of those children still visit with her call her mom and their kids call her grandma. So see there is an upside that is how it is suppose to be unfortunately not all foster kids get that lucky.

As for the system being packed with kids to the point they can’t take anymore well if they worked harder to keep families together that wouldn’t be an issue now would it? There is a commercial here that keeps running here advertising the foster care system and adoption that says “you don’t have to be perfect to raise a child”. That is only true if your fostering/adopting – the standards are lowered for you but if you are the biological parent, well you do have to be perfect. That is where the problem comes in.