I found this press release online today and decided to share it with you. I live in a town dominated by and divided by a tribe. I’ve had people who had to deal with the tribal child welfare agents complain to me about the way they were treated. It used to be that we believed the Indian Child Welfare Act could help some families, but now it seems to be just another way for tribes to make money. I can tell you, the tribe here has been applying for grant money for years; recently receiving over 2 million dollars in grants. It is a huge money-grab, and child welfare money is certainly part of it.

I checked out the site mentioned at the end of the following article and read some heart-breaking stories. One story mentioned that a certain tribe had only 5,000 members, but they held over 1,000 children in foster homes. – LJM

Children’s Lives Destroyed by ICWA, Says CAICW

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Across America, children that have never been near a reservation nor involved in tribal customs are routinely being removed from homes they love and placed with strangers chosen by tribes.

Though proponents of the ICWA argue that the act has safeguards to prevent misuse, scores of multi-racial children are being negativelyaffected by application of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).

Over decades, numerous tribal members have married non-members and moved off the reservations. Many chose to leave because they didn’t want their children raised amid the dangers rampant in Indian Country.

However, ICWA authorizes tribal jurisdiction over any child who is a member of a tribe, or eligible for membership and the biological child of a member. Tribal governments determine their own membership and most require only 1/4 blood quantum, The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma goes further and claims jurisdiction over any child with ancestry tracing back to the Dawes Rolls no matter how minute the blood quantum. Making matters worse, some states have recently passed laws barring courts from considering whether a child or his family have any real connection to the tribe. As a result, the following occurs:

“… it was discovered she (the birthmother) is 1/128th Cherokee. That makes my son 1/256 or .0039% Native American and 99.9961% not…. His mother…was very adamant about the Cherokee Nation NOT raising her child and the court records show this. In April of 2006, we were notified of the Cherokee Nation’s intent to take us to court and remove our son from our home…. Since then, we have been in a constant state of panic….”

Any emotionally healthy child, no matter their heritage, is devastated when taken from home and forced to live with strangers. Even children of 100% tribal heritage are devastated if they’re taken from non-tribal families they love and placed with strangers they know nothing about.

The Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare (CAICW) is the only national organization advocating for families who have lost or are at risk of losing children due to misapplied and sometimes illegal application of the ICWA. The CAICW will be at the National Press Club at 12 noon, Tuesday, September 4, 2007, with affected families sharing about this growing problem.

Letters from birth parents, grandparents, foster families, pre-adoptive families, and tribal members themselves can be read at http://www.caicw.org/familystories.html.

icwa indian child welfare act child welfare children

Received in email today:

Please post to all groups and to your address books:

The tentative dates for DC RALLY 2008 is August 15-16-17

We are writing proposals for sponsorship for DC Rally 2008. We need a letter of intent outlining a collaboration from every organization that will participate in next years Family Preservation Festival to include in this proposal. The letters should include the involvement of your organization to educate your constituency on, Family Preservation, the repair and reunification of children under state care, ongoing assistance to disabled parents, gender equity and the importance of the relationships of children from divorce and separation, at DC Rally 2008. Each organization should outline its willingness to bring at least one bus load to DC next year. The letters of intent are done so that we can request the money for the buses and rooming to go to the organizations who are collaborating. We need all organizations included but those with a 501(c)(3) will be stronger because this will allow us to include the organizations in the work statement for the proposal. Those without a 501(c)(3) will be included and the dollars allotted will be paid directly to vendors from Three Sides to Every Story, Inc and Children Need Both Parents, Inc. but we need your letters of intent so that we can judge how much money to request.

Please contact me so that all organizations nationwide will be included and we can ask corporate America for the funds to provide transportation. This will be presented as an educational event.

The deadline for collaborating letters of intent is September 30, 2007. These letters should be on your organization letterhead and signed by an officer of the organization. There are no exceptions to the deadline they must be received by the close of the business day on September 30, 2007. Please email all letters of intent to childrenneedbothparents@msn.com

Minister Ronald E. Smith, CEO
Children Need Both Parents, Inc.
www.cnbpinc.org

Children Need Both Parents Online Store
www.cnbpinc.ispeedway.com
Check out our catalog

Note: Fight CPS will not be participating in the DC Rally / Family Preservation Festival though I support this effort and any other efforts aimed at bringing an end to child welfare family destruction. The reasons I won’t be participating: (1) Fight CPS isn’t an organization; it is a website only. (2) I live in California and don’t travel that far from home. (3) It isn’t something I can afford to attend. I wish all the best for all who are able to participate, and hope the events turn out better than expected.

Recently I introduced two site features: one, a place for people to post referrals to good CPS-fighting attorneys, and the other, a place for people to make a request for an attorney. Both posts have had good responses, yet I know without a doubt that most of the people asking for legal help will not find it by posting on this website. I’m sorry to say that, but it is true. There are few attorneys who are so hard-up for work to do that they’ll come here to pick and choose clients who are probably broke and looking for someone to work pro-bono (for free).

Get over the idea that you might find a good pro-bono attorney. It rarely happens. In the seven-plus years since I started this site I’ve seen it happen only once. An attorney represented a very high-profile case in Oregon AFTER the couple became so desperate they kidnapped their own children from state custody. That attorney lost the case and the couple has been imprisoned ever since.

The alternative to finding the dream-attorney is to take that court-appointed freebie do-nothing attorney the county provides, and make that person WORK for YOU.

The main problem with these court-appointed attorneys is that they are paid by the county; that same county that is your adversary in juvenile court. So how motivated can they be to go against the county and help you?

Turn the tables. Take charge of your case.

A way to control how your attorney handles your case is to decide, yourself, how you want it handled. Then sit down and write your attorney a comprehensive letter detailing exactly what you want to have done with your case.

A keyword to remember is proactive. YOU take the lead. Rather than REacting to what others are doing to you, start thinking ahead to what your next move should be. Keep your attorney informed with a series of letters.

Remind this person, your attorney, that you are the client and you need and demand request the attention your case deserves. If your attorney doesn’t do the things you request, that person is setting himself/herself up for a legal malpractice lawsuit. But if you don’t set forth your requests in writing, there’s no proof you asked for anything in particular to be done.

Let’s face it. These court-appointed attorneys are known for what they don’t do. They often meet a client at the door on the way into the courtroom. They look through the case file as if it were the first time they’ve seen it, trying to orient themselves to what’s going on. Of course there’s no time for them to do any type of adequate defense of the case. They don’t know you, your children, or your situation. They don’t know the truth and don’t know who’s lying. And it seems they just don’t care.

My apologies to all court-appointed attorneys who don’t fit this description, but I’m sure you know that these are the facts about many if not most court-appointed attorneys in juvenile law cases.

You have to do something to get a dead-beat court-appointed attorney’s attention. Writing letters is the way to go. It puts them on notice that (1) you have some legal knowledge, (2) you want your children back, (3) you want a better quality of representation than they are giving to most clients.

If I were to write a letter to an attorney in a new CPS case, it might go something like this:

You have been appointed to represent me as an attorney in the county juvenile court. Be on my side; I need your help. I am fighting for the release of my three children from state custody. I am innocent of any wrongdoing. The caseworker made assumptions about me that are false. My children need to be at home with me, for their well-being – mentally, emotionally, and physically.

While you are my attorney, please keep in mind that you are working for me, not for the county that pays you. As my attorney I expect you to give me the best legal representation available. I therefore request face-to-face meetings with you at least once monthly to make sure you are actively working on my case, and not letting it slide between the cracks.

I understand that many court-appointed attorneys tend to simply guide parents through the juvenile court system, advising them to plead guilty to charges to make things easier for everyone else in the courtroom. This is not the kind of representation I’m requesting. I’m asking you to be actively involved in proving my innocence.

I’m hereby asking that you take my case to trial and make the caseworker prove all charges. Since they are false charges, I think it would be in my best interest, and the best interest of my children, if I were to fight to prove my innocence with a full trial. Do not under any circumstances ask me to plead guilty to false charges against me.

As you know, parents involved in CPS cases have to complete a ’service plan’ yet many do so and still do not get their children returned. I would like to avoid doing any kind of ’services’ and request that you refuse all services, and/or force the caseworkers to prove the need for any services requested. I do not want to be in the position of many parents in these cases forced to have psychological evaluations when there is no evidence of mental illness, or forced to do drug testing when there’s no evidence of drug abuse. Please honor my request, protect my best interests, and see that my time is not wasted by unnecessary court-ordered ’services’. Of course they would also be a waste of taxpayer money. Do everything you can to resist these services in my case. As you are my attorney I’m trusting you to fight these issues individually and fiercely.

I expect you to be 100% aware of what is happening with my case at all times, and to inform me immediately of any changes.

I expect you to obtain and share with me a complete copy of the case file including all case narratives.

I expect you to help me compile substantial evidence to prove my innocence in this case by preponderance of the evidence.

I expect you to produce legal paperwork including a complete response to all caseworker reports, declarations supporting my side of the case, and other documents as needed, and to present those documents to the judge or juvenile court referee who hears our case.

I expect you to do everything you can to prevent my name from being included on the central index, blacklisting people from working with children. I am innocent and my name should not be included on that list.

Please respond to my requests in writing within ten days; I will need your written response for my records in this case.

Sincerely,

Name of Client

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NOTE: Some of these suggestions are for people with NEW cases; if your case has gone beyond the initial phases your needs will be different. Don’t just copy what I wrote; put these ideas into your own words. TYPE your letters. MAKE COPIES FOR YOUR RECORDS and keep them in a safe place.

…

Comments? I would like to get other ideas from the people reading this on what could be included in letters to attorneys. What do you want from your attorney? Let’s brainstorm this and come up with some great ideas that people who come here in the future will be able to benefit from. Are there any phrases all letters should contain? Anything you think we shouldn’t ask the attorney?

Update: 4/2010 – Read about what the ABA is trying to get CPS attorneys do do for you:
National Project to Improve Representation for Parents Involved in the Child Welfare System.
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This is an important message from Charlie Wittman of Advocates For Children and Families:

All:

I am talking to an attorney who may be interested in filing a class action suit re: pre-jurisdictional psychological evaluations and cps ordered psychological evaluations. In CA it is illegal to do a psy eval before the court obtains jurisdiction and the psy evals are to be used only to determine services for the family.

In most all cases in which i have talked to parents in CA and nationwide, the psy evals have been used as a evil tool to say that parents are incapable of parenting due to a mental disorder and then they lose their children. In most cases, the psychologists are from a court appointed pool of psychologists who are totally influenced by social services and are by no means impartial or scientific. Even when the “psychologists???” do their evaluations after jurisdiction, their reports are rarely true as they are filled with lies from social workers.

I am looking for persons who have had pre-jurisdictional psy evals, psy evals and psy evals which have been used to take your children. I need your name, address, email and a very very brief description of what happened in your case. I will keep these confidential and when and if the class action moves forward, I will contact you. We are going to start in CA and then move nationwide in a federal court action.

Send to theacf – at – hotmail.com and make sure in the title you put “My Psy Eval Problem”. Thanks much and I hope this stops this illegal activity and saves our children.

Charlie Wittman, Director, Advocates for Children and Families, TheACF, on
BOD of AFRA, CCHR Board of Advisors, theacf – at – hotmail.com ,
PO Box 10, Los Gatos, CA 95031, 408 395 6999 ACF Hotline
Main ACF WWW site: http://www.theacf.org
CRIN: http://www.crin.org/organisations/viewOrg.asp?ID=1774
AFRA: http://familyrightsassociation.com/
CCHR: www.cchr.org

(Posted with permission from Mr. Wittman.)

I’ve often found things I’ve written on this site posted on other websites and blogs. It bothers me when this is done without giving a link back or any mention of who the author is – and many would consider that plagiarism. As the author of these postings, I have a copyright on everything I write, and if I find my words reposted elsewhere, and it doesn’t say “Written by Linda Martin of Fight CPS“, I get upset.

Usually I wouldn’t be upset by that if the person copying things at least mentioned that I’m the author and gave a link to this site, but most people apparently don’t bother to do this, which is why I’m writing this now.

God knows I want this message to be spread far and wide. However there are some limits.

Limits on what can be copied:

Please do NOT under any circumstances copy/paste any of the comments left by people on this site. These comments are all copyright to the authors, and since you can’t email them for permission (I don’t post the email addresses) you cannot get their permission to move their personal information to another place. So don’t do it.

Please do NOT under any circumstances copy/paste anything found on the message board. The only exception is if you get the permission of the person who wrote what you want to copy. Generally this is possible because you can private-mail people on the message board. I will stay out of that issue, unless someone tells me things are being copied without permission. If this happens, the person copying postings will lose access to the forum permanently. No exceptions. This is a very important privacy issue.

Please do NOT copy anything from this site without my written permission. You can easily email me using the webmaster link at the foot of every page. (On the message board, the webmaster link is at the top.) Anything copied MUST have my name as author (if I’m the author, and I am author of almost everything here) and MUST have a link back to the page of this site where you found the information. If I indicate in a post that I’m not the author, you would need to contact the author to get permission to repost something elsewhere.

Printing: You are welcome to print one copy of anything I write, for your own use. If you want to print more than one copy, email me for permission. Use the webmaster email link at the bottom of this page.

Thank you for your cooperation with these rules. If you follow these rules, you’ll be making me very happy.