One of the biggest crimes of child welfare is that federal funding starts when children are ripped out of their homes and placed in foster homes. Counties want that federal funding - apparently enough to destroy childhoods. Far from being child protection agencies, they run child exploitation agencies - a cash cow for financially ailing counties.

When a simple fix would work, why destroy the entire family?

I’m always reminded of a family that posted their caseworker report to the alt.support.child-protective-services newsgroup a few years back. Four children were ripped from their parents and placed in foster homes for a year, maybe more, because the parents needed to buy a new fan and a child safety gate for their indoor stairway. These items would have cost less than one hundred dollars, but social workers devastated that family and placed the children in foster homes costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

LEGISLATORS: How can you let this happen? I mention one isolated case, yet this needless family destruction is happening to thousands of families. Millions of dollars are being wasted in this country on foster care and so-called child welfare “services”.

Connecticut has come up with a partial solution - to provide what they call “flex funds” which social workers can apply for to help families with various needs such as rental payments and transportation.

More of this type of social work is needed.

SOCIAL WORKERS: Focus on helping families by providing what they need. Tearing families apart over trivial needs is cruel and inhumane, and will scar the children forever. It is not child protection to traumatize them needlessly. Be reasonable!

Source: Study: Problems Follow Foster Care - MIT Professor Says Those Taken From Families Are At Risk For Lives Of Crime, Unemployment, Teen Pregnancies By Charles Proctor for the Courant, published July 29, 2007.

Received in email:

Monday, July 30, 2007, WJR 760 AM Radio between 10 and 11 a.m. will, for the first time in Michigan (perhaps the nation) will allow the public to know what happens to parents and children with their tax dollars.

800-859-0957
Monday, July 30, 2007
10:00 to 11:00 a.m.

If you, or anyone you know (preferably in Michigan, but it does not have to be) has a story, now is the first opportunity for the public to know what goes on behind the scenes of Child Protective Services.

You do not have to provide you name, but try to keep your stories to a condensed 6 sentences, under 60 seconds. WJR is providing you with the freedom of speech and has opened the window of opportunity to redress governance.

Share your pain with the public and elected officials.

Even if you do not have a personal story, or do not know anyone who has had involvement with the state, call in and share your wisdom with the citizens of Michigan who deserve to be educated in the functioning of government.

Let’s let the general media know that we, as citizens, can no longer be silenced. The power of government is at the behest of us.

800-859-0957
Monday, July 30, 2007
10:00 to 11:00 a.m.

Note from Linda: Michigan is one of the states I’ve received complaints about most. I encourage all Fight CPS readers to consider sharing your story with this radio show. Remember to keep it brief, as they said. Only sixty seconds - one minute - about six short sentences. Think first about what you can say that will make the most impact, then make your call.

Howard Hendrick, head of the Oklahoma DHS state agency, is under investigation for child neglect. His 13-year-old son was injured while they were burning brush at a lake house earlier this month.

According to an article on the Tulsa World website, an anonymous caller complained that the director didn’t act quickly enough to get medical help for his child. The director said the nearest hospital was 45 miles away, so they waited until the next morning.

Hendrick says he phoned a doctor immediately when the injury occurred. If the doctor recommended waiting, then that should end the case. Hendrick wouldn’t comment on how badly his son was injured but did say he is doing well. He also said, “I think he will fully recover.” To me that sounds like there’s some possibility he won’t. They have my sympathy … especially the injured child.

A comment on the Tulsa World article says, “I hope things turn out fairly for this family but I also hope the director sees how innocent families are treated poorly and lied to during the investigation process.” Honestly, I doubt that he’ll learn how DHS or CPS social workers treat poor folks. This case work will be under intense scrutiny and anyone working on it will be unwilling to lie and frame the man using false accusations. (Just my opinion on what will happen with the case.) I think it will be dismissed almost immediately. Yes, they got a report (probably anonymous) and he’s being investigated, but that doesn’t mean there were be an open DHS case against this man.

Source: DHS Director investigated after child injured - an Associated Press article published on the Tulsa World website.

P.S. - Speaking as someone who lives 75 miles from the nearest hospital - if my children were injured and the local clinic was closed, I could phone our local ambulance service. They check out injuries and provide transportation if needed, the entire way to the hospital. 45 miles is nothing - when a child is badly injured, he should be seen as quickly as possible. I’m sure the director of Oklahoma DHS had a good car and could have easily made the drive to town. This is not meant as a criticism of the parents’ judgment in this matter. I don’t know all the circumstances and have no intention to condemn anyone.

I really don’t like to read stories like this.

Last Friday a couple felt compelled to leave a hospital in Michigan with their newborn infant because CPS social workers in Saginaw asked Lucas County CPS social workers to interview them.

If I remember right, CPS in Michigan is called FIA - the Family Independence Agency - or have they changed their name again?

My feelings are always so divided when I read about things like this. I scanned the article for clues to what led this couple to make this life-changing decision.

The results so far: The couple and baby are on the run. CPS now has legal custody of the baby according to a Toledo police sergeant, William Wauford, though before they left CPS had tried to get a court order and failed. And there are warrants out for the arrest of Fredrick and Margaret Badenhoop.

Why my feelings are divided:

I never advise parents to run with their children because I know, over the years, that in most cases where this happened, the parents were apprehended and the children ended up in foster homes anyhow. Plus I have a policy of never advising a parent to do something illegal, or something that would get them in worse trouble with the law. I believe that staying firm and fighting CPS in a court of law is a better choice. But this may be one of those cases where it wouldn’t have worked to do so. At the end of the article it says, “Child Protective Services had taken at least one other child from Margaret Badenhoop.”

According to a law passed in 1996, the Adoptions and Safe Families Act (ASFA), if anyone has had their rights to another child terminated, CPS can take future babies without benefits of any kind of service plan or visitations. This can lead to incredibly cruel and heartrending scenes in hospitals where CPS worker have walked in and pulled infants from the arms of loving mothers, for no reason except that another child was already taken.

I swear I cannot help but hate social workers who allow themselves to be the agents of such cruelty. Why on earth would anyone want the bad karma associated with someone who would do such a deed?

I don’t know what the issues are with the Badenhoops, or what their motivation was, but I do know that their problems are severe and they need all the prayers we can give them and their child.

I really, really don’t like it when things like this happen. My heart hurts so much for the people involved.

Source: Parents take their baby, flee hospital, face charges by Lania Coleman for The Saginaw News published on July 23, 2007.

Today I worked on improving the new Fight CPS Squidoo Lens. I wrote more text and added a place where you can add links to your favorite family rights site, your MySpace, family rights Yahoo groups, or whatever else you have going on here on the web.

Fight CPS is also at MySpace.

If you need help with a CPS case, the best way to get feedback is to log onto the message board here at Fight CPS.

At Fern’s request, this section is here for you to tell us what you believe the acronym “CPS” really means.

Feel free to use your creativity, powers of intuition, and sense of humor (or outrage) to tell us what “CPS” stands for.

Fern’s contribution was: CPS= Creating Permanent Sinecures.

(Thanks Fern, for requesting this.)

A nineteen-year-old soldier, Michael Vick, was arrested at the airport in Texas upon arriving home fom Iraq. His father, James Vick, 44, was arrested in May and is still in custody. Apparently two girls who used to live with the Vick family as foster children say the men sexually assaulted them, and law enforcement authorities believe them.

The sexual assaults allegedly took place at various times in 2003 and 2004. The girls were only eight and nine years old at that time.

This family must have been heavily invested in the foster care industry, as the authorities say they’re now interviewing more than fifty other foster children who lived with the family since the mid 1990’s.

Source: East Texas Soldier & Father Arrested For Alleged Sexual Assault Of Foster Children, published July 19, 2007, Palestine, Texas.

Carole Deleon is getting off easy after pleading guilty to criminal mistreatment of a little boy she adopted out of foster care, then starved to death. She also mistreated at least one other foster child.

Tyler was starved, bruised, had teeth knocked out, drugged with various medications, and denied water. He died on his seventh birthday.

Deleon was originally charged with murder, but a plea bargain has reduced her sentence to what will probably be only six years.

Florence Moyle’s nephew, Steven, also lived with Deleon. They believe Deleon should have been tried for murder, and Steven was willing to testify. Moyle is planning protests outside the Stevens County Courthouse and a Seattle law firm is preparing a lawsuit against the state of Washington.

Six months before Tyler’s death there was a CPS report stating that “the children in the Deleon home were at high risk for future abuse and neglect” yet the caseworkers left Tyler and four other children there, and placed a three-month-old baby in her home. This is another case of CPS choosing to ignore evidence of abuse in a foster home.

Source: DeLeon faces sentencing Friday, published July 20, 2007.

A foster child confided in her teenage cousins about sexual abuse she endured. The abuser was a man paid by the government to take care of her: foster parent Ronald Lee Pence, 49, of Prunedale, California.

Child abusers, especially sexual predators, have an open invitation to get close to children by becoming foster parents. As foster parents, they have daily round-the-clock access to the children of others, and can victimize them at will. To add to this sick situation, many CPS workers seem to ignore reports of foster parent abuse of foster children, as it will not increase county funding when a child is removed from a foster home. The county gets more federal funding only when they remove children from natural family homes and place them in foster care.

In this case the foster parent also pleaded guilty to dissuading a witness as when the girl said she wanted to tell her mother and the police about the abuse, he tried to talk her out of it. Pence will be sentenced on August 29. In the meantime, they’ve let this predator go free. He’s out on bail.

Source: Guilty plea in Prunedale molestation

It always astounds me when people come onto this site, say I’m not doing the right thing, and suggest some other thing I should be doing to help change the CPS system.

For example, today I checked the comments for this site and found a comment from Darrin who thinks I should be tracking down a man I’ve never met, whose name I don’t know, to get more information before posting something about a news article.

Sorry, Darrin. I don’t have time. Do it yourself if you think it needs to be done.

Then I came across Carla’s message about creating a new child protection system. Great idea, but again, I don’t have time. I think Carla should do it because after all, it is her idea.

This reminds me that not long ago John told me I should focus my efforts on getting more funding for foster children. Yeah, right… like I would ever do that! Foster parents already get lots more than welfare recipients, and they keep complaining. Don’t get me started on that one! If John thinks that’s the answer to all CPS problems, then John should do something about it.

We all are led by our hearts, to do what we think is right.

Back in October 2000, my heart told me to start this site. I’ve been struggling with this site for almost seven years now, and with trying to help people going through one of the most emotionally devastating events of their lives. And every time I hear about CPS injustice tearing a family apart, it takes a toll on me. I’m constantly upset by things I read on this site - for example what RJ just wrote about his infant being taken by a CPS agent at the hospital because his fiancé mentioned that she’d been depressed when she was 13 or 14. What teenager hasn’t? Why does that mean a firstborn child should be taken from its loving mother? This stuff really haunts me and grabs at my heart.

Many times it isn’t easy for me to bear - which is why I’ve left the message board here in the loving hands of other advocates and activists who want to help counsel people going through CPS hell. That is what their hearts tell them to do, and I’m so grateful for anyone doing anything to help change this inhumane system of cruelty to families. I don’t need or want to be the center of attention here. I’m only doing what my heart led me to do seven years ago, and I know it isn’t right to stop doing it yet. So here I am, still, after all these years.

Which brings me to the point of this article, which is that we all should listen to our hearts and our consciences, and take whatever actions we feel appropriate for the highest good of all involved. If your heart tells you to advocate for families one-on-one, then do it. Don’t expect me to - as that’s not what my heart tells me to do. You do your thing and I’ll do my thing. And hopefully if we all work on doing our heart-inspired tasks, together we can make huge changes in the world.

One person can’t do it all. Don’t even try… this problem is way too big for that. But do your own small part, just as I’m doing my own small part. And don’t think that this site is the ultimate family rights site. If your heart is telling you to create another one, there’s a reason for that! Maybe it is the right thing to do! Don’t hold back. Everyone has talents and capacities that can be drawn upon to help fight CPS and make this world a safer, healthier place for families. Do your own small part and don’t worry about what others are doing, and don’t be like Darrin, Carla and John, and try to tell others what they should be doing. That’s not helpful at all.

If you’ve read this far, I thank you. And I want to tell you what I’ve been doing lately.

It may surprise some people like the three I just mentioned, but I don’t spend all my time working on this website. I hold down a part-time job in my community, and I own two small businesses that are barely profitable… but they keep me busy. I live in an extremely low-budget cabin in the Klamath National Forest, which I rent. I’m not a lawyer and currently don’t work in the legal profession at all. I have a boyfriend I dearly love who expects me to spend a huge part of my time with him. I’m a 55-year-old woman (boyfriend is 56) and I still have one child at home, plus four adult children. My youngest is almost 18 and so soon, for the first time in 35 years, I’ll have no minor children to take care of. Also I have no grandchildren which considering the work I do on this site, could be a divine blessing and protection.

For the last few days my home has been threatened by a forest fire. I live in far-northern California, in a small town called Happy Camp. I came home from my birthday trip to the coast on Saturday night to find that there was a forest fire blazing on the hill next to the forested hill I live on. One of my part-time small businesses is the Happy Camp News site which I’m grateful to say, is in the process of being sold so I won’t have to keep working on it. But this week I’ve been posting articles about the fire, doing interviews, etc. plus I had to remove all my valuables from my home and pack everything, because it seemed that evacuation was imminent. At this point the fire is less intense, however that could change again. So all this stuff is going on, plus I’m still going to work where our workload tripled because of the huge numbers of fire fighters present in our town at this time.

Then I came in here and saw messages from Darrin and Carla, and well, this article is the end result. I don’t need anyone telling me what to do with my time, or saying I’m not doing enough by providing this site, some simple legal information, and a message board for people to connect on. This is what my heart leads me to do, and I’m doing it.

I know that most of the people who come to this site appreciate what I’ve done here. I’m sorry I’m not able to do one-on-one counseling and legal help, but I really don’t have the time or stamina, and like I said, hearing the sad stories affects my heart, and it is nearly more than I can bear at times. I’m a very sensitive person and I love you all.

I don’t want you to stop writing about your heartaches here - because I want the people that matter to come here and read these things. I want CPS workers to stop by and read what we think of their tactics for destroying families. I want foster parents to know that many of the children they are hostage-holding for the government are taken unfairly from innocent parents. I want legislators to come here and realize the CPS system is horrible, unjust, and inhumane. I want them to know that they must be the ones to take the lead, by writing laws to end this system of cruelty in our country. I want lawyers to know that if they aren’t defending their CPS clients actively and aggressively, they are doing a disservice, and are (in my opinion) frauds to be taking on clients they can’t or won’t defend properly. I want them to have the heart to do what must be done in court to safeguard family rights.

Enough said. Thanks for reading, and I’ll post more sometime when I’ve got more time on my hands for publicizing the details of all the injustice CPS does to harm children and families. That seems to be my lifework, which my heart draws me to. I’m here for you as much as I can be, and wherever else I am, you know I’m totally on your side, hoping for all good things to happen in your lives.