This thread is for you to post your favorite websites about families victimized by CPS. You can also post your websites, blogs, MySpace pages, Facebook pages, or anything like that, so that others can connect with you.

Lots of links to other sites… that’s what I’m hoping for here. I’ll start off with a few. See the comments section!

I’m grateful that I’ve spent twenty years as an activist exposing America’s sick child welfare system to the light of day.

I’m grateful for the emails and comments I received telling me how much this site has helped. Those testimonials mean a lot to me and always will.

Twenty years ago this month, my fourth child was born in Central California. Before I could leave the hospital a social worker visited my room to talk to me about my history of being battered by my child’s father. Later I learned that while I was there I nearly died, and during that time my child’s father threatened the doctor, so he decided to report us to CPS. I had to leave my baby in the hospital because she was premature, and on the day she was released a social worker picked her up and left a slip of paper on my front porch.

Only a few days later I learned what it was like to go into Juvenile Court to be given a social worker’s report filled with lies. That was the day I realized that our justice system was broken, that social workers could lie and nobody cared - and that they could get away with perjury. That was the day I started learning that our Constitution doesn’t apply in Juvenile Court and that I couldn’t have a jury trial. That was the day I started realizing how ineffective public defenders are for child welfare victims.

Okay - it has been twenty years. I am one of the very lucky ones who fought back, found an activist to help me, and who succeeded in getting my child home again (after eight months of separation.) Lucky me. But I was traumatized to an extreme - not only by my shock at the injustice of the child welfare system, but also by my family’s non-support, my need to cope with being a battered woman, and the end of my relationship with the man who battered me.

Trauma takes a long time to wear off, and twenty years later — honestly, I’m still dealing with it!

When this happened to me I was working as a welfare worker in the same Department of Social Services that contained the CPS agency that attacked and lied about me. I was sickened to learn that my employer allowed these vile social workers in the CPS unit to perjure themselves, violate regulations, and be rude to young, traumatized, suffering parents. My thought was that if they were doing this to me (another DSS employee) WHAT WERE THEY DOING TO ALL THE YOUNG PARENTS WITH LESS EDUCATION AND MONEY THAN ME? I was appalled. Shocked. Disgusted. I wanted to do something to help other parents going through this wretched system of injustice, and from the time my case closed in 1990 until now, I’ve been doing what I could when I could.

My main goal at first was to expose, expose, expose. I wanted the public to know what was going on in the social services department. I was fortunately led to a local weekly paper with a similar goal - to expose local government corruption. I wrote some articles. I contacted some child welfare victims and helped a few of them to file for State Administrative Hearings. I burnt out - and needed to turn my attention to raising my two youngest children - both preschoolers at that time.

Next I started a computer bulletin board service (BBS) via the FidoNet network. Anyone here know about FidoNet? I did that for five years and during that time contacted a few child welfare victims including the woman who wrote Don’ts and Do’s When Falsely Accused… she lived nearby and we got together quite a few times. When her case closed she moved out of state.

The internet got my attention next. I was handicapped by my finances - I was unable to afford a worthy computer for quite a few years. I learned to do some webdesign, and in 2000 started the Child Protection Reform Yahoo Group (which I’ve since given away) and next I created Fight CPS And Win - now simply called FightCPS. I’ve been developing this site since October 2000 - almost nine years.

Here’s the bad news (or maybe it is good news) . . . I’m ready to do something else with my life. I feel my most important goal here has been fulfilled. That goal was to expose the system to the American public. I feel that has been done, and that we’ve reached CRITICAL MASS in that now many people are speaking out about the injustice including wonderful state legislators in Georgia and Washington. Also the news media, especially television news, is speaking out to expose the system. That didn’t happen back when I started my activism, twenty years ago. Back then even child murders in the foster system were not carried in the news media, so I’m excited when I see television news commentators exposing CPS injustice. There are also multiple developing websites to cover this issue on the internet now, many more than when I started, and I see the seeds of greatness in some of them. Very exciting stuff! So I know that when I leave, there will be others to take my place and fill in the gaps. My mission here is complete.

I will always feel as I do about the crazy, unjust, and cruel child welfare system. I have not changed but I have other things to do now. I have no more children under age eighteen. I need to focus on other things in my life now.

I don’t know what will become of FightCPS.Com — and am considering all the options at this point. I won’t leave this month or next, but I’m sure by the end of 2009 I’ll no longer be doing this. Therefore I’m ready to hear from other activists or advocates who feel able to own and maintain this website. This will require someone to move the entire site to another server, so I’m looking for someone with confidence and competency in the web skills arena. It also requires someone with outstanding writing skills.

This site has thousands of links pointing to it. It ranks well in the search engines. For that reason, I don’t want to just dump it. I worked hard to make it rank well so that people in need of help could easily find us. I think it is a valuable site for that reason, and that it would be a shame to just close it down. I really want someone else to take it over, love it, develop it, and leave it on the web as a beacon of hope to whoever goes to Google and types in “child protective services”. It is the only anti-CPS site that shows up in the first page of search results.

Anyhow, if you’re someone who could take on this project and make it work, please contact me. I’m interested in hearing from you. My webmaster email link is at the bottom of this page. Please note that if I don’t know who you are, that’s a problem. I don’t want some government-paid disinformation agent to take over this site and subvert its purpose. Getting the right person for site ownership is more important than any other consideration at this point.

Recently a grandparent contacted me and recommended this Yahoo group: Virginia Grands. I know there are other groups and websites I’ve seen over the years, intended for grandparents of children in CPS cases. You’re welcome to post links to them in the comment section of this post.

Virginia Grands seems to be getting several hundred messages per month and has over fifty members. I wonder if they allow members from other states to participate. (They probably do.)

This week I received email with links to a series of news articles written by Barbara Hollingsworth about CPS injustice. She’s looking for cases in and around Washington DC, to profile them in future news articles.

Here are her article links:

Victims claim CPS officials guilty of ‘ruthless behavior - examples of CPS injustice from around the USA.

Is it child protection or legal kidnapping? - how CPS works, and how innocent parents can be accused of wrongdoing.

Bureaucrats running down the clock against parents - this is about ASFA, the Orwellian law passed in 1996 that allows CPS to terminate parental rights after keeping a child in foster care for only 15 months. This has encouraged the CPS tactic of delaying reunifications until the time limit is reached so they can adopt out children even if the parents are adequate and have done everything required. This law also gives states bonus money for each child adopted out.

ASFA = “The Adoptions and Safe Families Act” - ostensibly written to keep children from having to live in long term foster care, by encouraging adoptions. In practice it has encouraged states to rip apart young families to get the babies because they are most easily adopted out. Older “hard to adopt” children are featured on meat-market type websites where people can look through to see if they want any featured children. The states get thousands of dollars for each adoption, from the federal treasury. “Child collectors”… aka Adopters… get thousands of dollars in adoption subsidy payments. Social workers get jobs since they are the front-line in taking children from their families. It is a win-win situation for everyone except parents and children who are used, abused, and traumatized for life by this pathetic rush for money by greedy systemites.

If you’re a single parent, you must see this site. This is a fairly new website advocating for single parents. Site owner Tiffani Howard has applied for non-profit status for One Out of Many, and is actively working to improve the lives of single parents and their children. She has a lot to say about CPS injustice and parental alienation.

I’m particularly encouraged to see this promising site because for years now I’ve been saying that my site is not enough. I am one dedicated person, but this problem of CPS injustice is huge, and victims of false accusations by CPS social workers need lots of help - more than just one person can provide. I want to see as many new websites about CPS as people can make. I want this issue to be prominent all over the internet.

Thanks, Tiffani, for making such a beautiful site, and for working to help single parents who are victimized by CPS.

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…
Written by Linda Martin for Fight CPS.

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.