If your CPS social workers are lying, violating court orders, or just being unreasonable, you might get some relief from their tyranny by contacting your state legislator. I’ve done this many times when dealing with unscrupulous agencies, and each time had a pleasant resolution to my situation.

Let’s go back to how I discovered how effective this could be. Back in the 80’s I was a welfare eligibility worker for the Department of Social Services. Occasionally unhappy clients would contact their legislators, and whenever that happened we’d see the supervisor scrambling to get the case file to take it into the program manager’s office. We knew that these people hated to have anyone call their legislators because then the head of the entire Department of Social Services would get a call from Sacramento where our State Department of Social Services is. In other words, a lot of pressure was applied from the top management because they didn’t like getting these calls! What was even more frustrating to the supervisor was that every time there was a call to a legislator, the client got what she wanted.

A few years back a local Department of Social Services caseworker was harassing me after learning about this site. He came out here four or five times with totally facetious or trivial complaints, such as the accusation that I was homeschooling - something that is legal in all fifty states. After the last time, I decided to take action before he got the bright idea of detaining my children on the basis of the number of complaints he’d either manufactured or followed up on. What I did was to write a letter to this caseworker detailing each of his visits to my family, telling what his reasons were each time and what my response was. I sent him a copy of the letter, and sent a copy to his Program Manager, my county supervisor, a few legislators, and a few newspapers. Maybe a few other people, but I honestly don’t remember who at this point. There was a list of these people at the bottom of the letter, so he knew who was getting it. The state legislator wrote to me telling me he had contacted the head of the Department of Social Services for California. Talk about applying pressure from the top! Then the pressure no doubt reached the local office and I didn’t hear from the guy again for years.

I’ve done similar things regarding other agencies. My experiences with writing to state legislators for help have all been good, and so I’m telling you about it in case anyone wants to try it. If you do, here’s some pointers.

1) Write the legislator a formal letter. Handwriting is OK - it looks authentic. Second best is a typed letter. Worst, and probably useless, is email. I’ve heard that legislators in Washington DC have to delete a lot of email unread because they have no way of processing it. I don’t know if a state legislator would do that, but I wouldn’t trust email. In this case, paper is better.

2) Be sure you use proper spelling and grammar. I know that’s a problem for many people who use this site, but if you know you have a problem then you can ask the local high school English teacher or some other expert for help making the letter look good.

3) Tell the legislator in the first line that you are his constituent. And by the way, you should be sure you’re writing only to legislators that preside over your section of the state. As a constituent you are a person who can vote or not vote for him next time he runs for office.

4) Keep it short! One page is sufficient. Three paragraphs, better. When I wrote the letter I mentioned above, I sent the entire three page letter I’d sent to the social worker, but the cover letter to the legislator was only three very short paragraphs. The letter will probably be read by a staff member who doesn’t have a lot of time to wade through many pages of case information. They want to know your specific complaint and needs, and will be able to process it and act on it quickly. It wouldn’t hurt to attach any evidence you may have on hand.

You will probably get a letter back from the legislator’s office telling you whether or not they took action on your complaint. They are there to watch out for their constituents, so in most cases they’ll try to do something to help. They need to know when the laws they make aren’t being followed properly. They can’t change a court order, but if a CPS social worker is violating a court order or in any way breaking social service regulations, they can probably do something to create change. After getting your letter, you might want to write back and thank them for helping.

We have two months before the next election. Do you know who’s running for public office in your state?

The only way to get bad child welfare laws changed is to get better legislators in Washington DC. We need to know how our legislators voted on child welfare issues in the past, and to either contact them for clarification of their opinions on our issues, or use their voting record to show that they’re either for or against families.

After we verify their stance on child welfare issues, we need to take this information to the public. There are thousands of people in your area who have been harmed by CPS agencies, who would like to know who not to vote for. It is up to us, each individually, to campaign for or against the people we want in office.

Find out who is running for office, and tell them what you need as a commitment for family preservation in order to vote for them. Attend meetings, town halls, and campaign functions where you can speak out about the dangers of child welfare. Write letters to editors of papers in your state telling people who to vote for if they are tired of worrying about CPS showing up at their doors and snatching their children.

It is really up to us to do this. I’m hoping that people with other ideas along these lines will brainstorm with me in the comment area. What can we do to get the right people into public office?

I went through it and I’m sure most of you have been through it too. When you’re down and out, your children taken by social service workers, depressed, frightened, traumatized, lonely, and in need of support - do your friends and family turn on you, saying hurtful and accusing things to make you feel ten times worse?

That’s apparently what happened in Bremerton, Washington a few days ago. A traumatized father looking for much-needed support from a friend admitted his children were taken by CPS social workers. His friend responded by saying the line Americans have been brainwashed to believe: “Most people deserve to have their children taken away.”

Most people don’t want to admit to themselves that a government agency, CPS, could be wrong. They still have blinders on, believing (as brainwashed in government schools by forced daily reciting of the Pledge) that America provides “liberty and justice for all” and that government agents can do no wrong.

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Source: Friends Get in Fight Over Child Protective Services by Kitsap Sun staff, published August 30, 2007.
(You can use this link to leave your opinion at the Kitsap Sun website.)

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Has this happened to you? Did you get support and understanding from family members and friends, or were you given the cold shoulder like I was? Did your closest family members refuse to listen to your side of they story? Did they say, “CPS doesn’t make mistakes?” If so - what did you do about it?

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

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.)

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.

CPS caseworkers in Washington apparently failed to follow up on fifteen reports of child abuse, but when a neighbor told police a teenage foster child was locked in the closet, the girl was finally rescued from what appears to be a horrific foster care abuse situation. Detectives said the first fifteen complaints weren’t acted on because the foster parent moved from apartment to apartment, and they couldn’t find her, yet at the same time this woman collected foster parent benefits for housing the young girl.

My theory is different. I believe that cases of child abuse in foster homes are ignored because CPS doesn’t get any money for taking children from one foster home and putting them in another. They only get an increase in funding when they take a child from their natural families, then place them in a foster home. Therefore foster child abuse isn’t a priority for busy CPS caseworkers.

Fight CPS hopes to shed light on the problem of abuse in foster homes. Statistics have shown that child abuse of all types is about ten times more likely to happen in a foster home than in a natural family home.

The child, who is now sixteen, lived with foster parent Chornice Lewis, 33, for ten years. Acquaintances said Lewis was very polite and made a good impression on them.

Police allege that if the foster child caused any problems, Lewis put the child’s hand on a hot stove. And if she didn’t listen she had to stand next to her foster parent’s bed all night long. If she slept, a 10-lb weight was dropped on her feet. And once, when she wasn’t packing properly, an insulin needle was plunged into her eye, so the girl is now blind in one eye.

According to a KOMOTV.Com article, Cheryl Stephani, an employee of the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, DSHS, said “We missed it. . . . As a child welfare system. It’s all of us, the courts, the department, the children’s administration. We should hold each other accountable; we need to hold each other accountable.”

Holding CPS caseworkers accountable = Good Idea. When?

Source: Mother accused of abusing foster daughter for years by Bryan Johnson, for KOMOTV.Com, published June 26, 2007.

Spokane City Councilman Bob Apple launched an outspoken attack on a CPS social worker he claimed submitted false court documents in a child welfare case involving a former employee and campaign volunteer, Daniel Morgan. The City Councilman stated that CPS kidnapped a 2-year-old child, and that the assistant attorney general should be jailed.

From the article:

“It’s a sham… If this is how the court system operates, then it’s broken.” - Bob Apple

Of course CPS said that the charges were “ridiculous” because they go to court and state that the child is “at risk of imminent harm”.

In this case the ex-husband of Morgan’s wife has made accusations against Morgan in a custody dispute.

From the article:

Since 2002, the state agency has received a “number of referrals related to parental neglect of the children and alleged physical abuse of the children by Mr. Morgan,” according to the court documents. A state spokeswoman said she could not disclose how many of the complaints were made by Allen…..The Morgans said Allen has used the referrals “as payback” and to gain custody of the two children he had with Robin Morgan.

Now, this next part hits home with me:

“Unfortunately, in this field, when the custody of children is involved, everyone involved is willing to lie,” said Dave Wood, a lobbyist for Washington Families United, a nonprofit group seeking reforms to the child-welfare system. “You don’t know what the truth is. Something has to change.”

I find that so true - that too many people are willing to lie to get custody. That includes social workers, ex-spouses, girlfriends of ex-spouses, etc. And I plead with each one of you that if you’re in this situation, stay with the truth. Lies lead only to confusion. If you tell the truth, at least when it is all over, you still have your integrity.

City Councilman Bob Apple will advocate for any citizen that contacts him. Perhaps you might want to print out this article and take it to your city councilman (or woman) to see if that person is willing to go to bat for you. I’ve contacted my county supervisor several times, including for an issue involving CPS, and every time she’s been a great help and everything turned out perfectly.

Source: Apple puts spotlight on CPS by Benjamin Shors for the Spokane Spokesman Review, published June 23, 2007

Arizona CPS social workers are now using a “new” risk assessment tool that the state spent a lot of money to develop. Apparently the goal of the risk assessment is for investigations to be more thorough and comprehensive.

A sample risk assessment distributed to employees had 81 pages, which astounded CPS social workers who are expected to complete this process each time they do an investigation. It could be that caseworkers will spend more time doing paperwork and less time detaining children.

According to one child welfare expert, the risk assessment tool is based on 20-year-old standards and will do nothing to make children safer. However state officials say the assessment is used in other states and that Arizona CPS staff contributed feedback for development of the project.

From the June 4, 2007 article in the Arizona Daily Star:

Without the changes, “we weren’t able to see how they (investigators) made their decisions,” said Janice Mickens, an administrator with CPS. “We need to have something that guides us throughout this process.”

Risk assessment tools have been used by CPS agencies for years. The “new” Arizona risk assessment is based on a Washington risk assessment developed in 1986, and some experts consider it antiquated. The state of Washington also considers it out of date and is working on developing new methods.

From the article:

The general philosophy behind it and the Arizona model is what is known as a “consensus-based” approach, meaning the case manager assesses risk from a number of areas like the child’s behavior and development, severity of abuse and the qualities of the caretaker, among others.

Such an approach has been criticized in social work academic journals for being subjective, overly broad and using the same variables to predict different types of abuse and neglect.

Using a risk assessment, CPS social workers can detain children based on what might happen, even when nothing has happened. Questions on the risk assessment may include questions such as “are the parents legally married?” and “how many children are in the home?”.

Rep. Jonathan Paton of Tucson said “81 pages seems excessive. I can envision a lot of frustration from workers who have too many cases as it is.” But Mickens, the CPS administrator, said she didn’t think the risk assessment will add much time to the investigation process because social workers are already filling out some of the same forms.

The agency didn’t study the time factor so they don’t know how long it will take Arizona CPS social workers to fill out the form, but they feel this risk assessment is a “critical tool” as it will force CPS caseworkers to “ask the right questions”.

Arizona CPS has been responsible for several recent high-profile deaths of children who had open CPS cases: Tyler Payne, 5; his sister Ariana, 4; and Brandon Williams, 5.

Source: CPS assessment tool raises criticism
Long paperwork said to be thorough, but system is based on 1986 model by Josh Brodesky of the Arizona Daily Star

Here’s more proof that some CPS social workers don’t care at all about the children they pretend to protect.

According to the lawsuit:

Three girls were placed with a man known to CPS social workers as a cocaine addict. He was allowed to adopt one of the three girls. For ten years there were complaints of abuse. The girls say he hit and/or raped them, and gave them drugs.

After the two foster children were transfered out of his home it took CPS another year and a half to rescue the adopted daughter. It looks like they just didn’t care.

According to the article by Susannah Frame:

This is what finally got Monica to safety: Redmond police confiscated hundreds of photos and videos of child pornography, and obscene images of Fabregas posing in women’s lingerie, some with guns. Police identified him having sex with two of his daughters in the evidence.

CPS, it looks like your true colors are shining through. If you cared about kids, you would leave them with family members who cared enough to try to protect them from this kind of abuse. I hope the kids win their lawsuit. Nobody deserves to be treated that way.

Source: Multi-million-dollar lawsuit filed by three foster children