CPS Stalking, Orders 4 Babies, Forced Adoption Confirmed by Investigation

Social worker whistle blower, others speak out Confirm forced adoptions, Orders for babies, Harassment, Threats, Retaliation. Driven by federal bonus $$ AFSA, SSA Titles IV, XIX.The "Other" Kentucky Lottery: Child Protection and Permanency for Abused and Neglected Children in Kentucky in 2005 January 2006, The National Institute on Children, Youth & Families, Inc. & Kentucky Youth Advocates.
http://www.kyyouth.org/Publications/06pub_ChildProtectionPermanency.pdf.pdf

WLKY. November 14, 2007. LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Social workers are alleging abuses in Kentucky's Child Protective Services.
In a follow-up to a 3-year investigation of CPS, NewsChannel 32 interviewed a group of Kentucky social workers who alleged families are harassed and workers are pressured in efforts to boost adoption numbers.
Pat Moore said she was a state social worker until she was fired for not ignoring half a dozen allegations of abuse in a foster home.
"I did what I felt like I had to do," Moore said. "It was the right thing to do and I stand by the complaint."
When Moore found that two foster parents had criminal records, a son living with them had multiple felonies, and a convicted sex offender visited and, sometimes, cared for the children, she refused to arrange an adoption.Her supervisors responded to her complaint with a memo suggesting the adoption proceed quickly.
"Our theory is that the basis for this is the tie to the federal money," Moore's attorney, Tom Beiting said. "That every time a child is not placed in the home comma the state of Kentucky through its Cabinet is losing money"After she was fired, Moore filed suit and last month, the Commonwealth paid $380,000 to settle it.
The high-adoption trend apparently began in 2004, when adoptions in Kentucky ballooned to 724 while the federal bonus money more than doubled from $452,000 the previous year to more than $1 million.
"The Cabinet puts pressure on stats because federal and state money come from statistics," said another social worker who wants her identity concealed for fear of retaliation against her family. "You get praised. The Cabinet praises you for terminating rights and adopting kids out immediately."
She said the concerted effort to take children away and put them up for adoption was so brazen, she actually saw someone successfully place an order for children.
"Someone could not have a child and wanted a child so within the community," the social worker said. "This person saw a family in distress, having a hard time, relayed to workers that they would like those children, and that's exactly what has happened."And a former CPS supervisor, who also wants anonymity for fear of retaliation, said if an order for a child was delayed or denied, her supervisors would overturn local decisions.
"This one family was promised a child, and when it happened that this child was going to be reunified with the parent, they called our regional office, and our regional office came in our county and they harassed the birth parents and that kind of thing because they didn't agree with our decision," the former supervisor said.
Vanessa Shanks had her kids taken away and, when she fought back, her relatives had their children taken away. Then, after she won in court, her attorney's child was taken away.
The former CPS workers said that kind of retaliatory power is common and, in the secretive, one-sided system, they can take anyone's kids away on a moment's notice - and get away with it.
According to data just released, there's a huge disparity between counties on adoption rates. Some counties reunify 100 percent of children taken with their families. Other counties adopted out as many as 82 percent of children taken from their homes. http://www.wlky.com/news/14596226/detail.html

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Big Brother Takes Children, Again

Reposted from: http://www.pji.org/content/big-brother-takes-children-again

Big Brother Takes Children, Again

Concerned because her baby could not hold down milk, a mother takes her newly born baby to a pediatrician. Because of the pediatrician's inability to diagnose the problem, Child Protection Services is called and takes away the baby...indefinitely.
Absurd? Unthinkable? Well, according to Roberta this story is a horrifying reality.
Just a few days after giving birth to her daughter, Roberta noticed that her baby had difficulty holding down milk. She took her baby to a pediatrician who was unable to diagnose the baby's gastric condition. Instead, the pediatrician reported the mother to Child Protection Services, who took the baby away. (Doctors are required by state law to report all "reasonable suspicions of child abuse or neglect".) Shortly thereafter, her two older boys were taken away as well.
Three months have passed, and Roberta still has yet to be reunited with her children. This is despite the fact that:
--the mother has completed all of her parental counseling classes required by CPS,
--the baby has since been re-examined by another pediatrician who diagnosed the baby's problem as a medical condition (Gastroesophageal Re flux), common to babies,
--the baby continues to have the same digestive problems under the care of the foster parents which had occurred while with the mother, and
--the CPS worker in charge of this case recommends that all three of the children be given back.
So why haven't the children, after three months, been reunited with their loving mother? First, while CPS is very quick to remove children, the present CPS bureaucracy is extremely slow to reunite them, irrespective of the traumatic harm to children resulting from such continued separation from their parent(s). Writing reports to justify their actions is a higher priority to CPS than spending time to reunite families.
Second, the present system of federal reimbursement essentially rewards counties financially the longer children are kept in the foster care system. This observation is the cornerstone of a major class action lawsuit filed last year against Contra Costa County CPS.
Third, CPS workers, with only a few exceptions, are immune from liability from harm caused by their actions dealing with families and children. Hence, CPS has another incentive to take first, and think later.
Fourth, those taxpayer funded "child advocacy" legal groups, often chosen by the judge to represent the children, overstep their roles as legal defenders and instead take on a role as social engineers via their own vision of a "good" parent. For example, in Roberta's case, after her court appointed attorney approached the "child's advocate" with the above facts, the child's attorney arrogantly replied that she simply did not "feel" that the children should be given back...at least yet. "Feel"? Since when does the judicial process justify its continued disruption of the family unit based upon mere feelings, rather than the clearly presented, undisputed facts?
However, probably the most powerful explanation for the continuation of this horrific injustice lies in the intimidating practices of a juvenile system which prevents victimized parents, and children, from exposing these injustices to the public. For example, after Roberta was recently notified that the court would continue to delay in reuniting her with her children, she decided to contact the media in order to expose this travesty, without mentioning her children's names or the court's closed-door proceedings. Nonetheless, just before she was about to be interviewed by a reporter, she was informed by her attorney that she would not get back her children if she told her story to the press. Roberta, like almost all parents in her situation, felt little choice but to cancel the interview.
In other words, the juvenile court system's seemingly unbridled discretion creates a wall of intimidation, a wall preventing the kind of public accountability necessary to expose the need for judicial reform.
Unfortunately, Roberta's case is by no means isolated. We at Pacific Justice Institute continue to receive more and more phone calls from non-abusive parents suffering from very similar injustices. That is why we try to work through a network of CPS specialist attorneys willing to represent parents, just like Roberta, who have suffered from a juvenile legal system and CPS system that are in tremendous need of reform.
Pacific Justice will also continue to be available to give constructive counsel to legislators interested in facilitating such reform. Some states, such as Oklahoma, have already engaged in model reform, which includes the ability for parents to have a jury of their peers before being permanently separated from their children.
If you would like to be informed of similar cases Pacific Justice Institute is handling, please feel free to contact us at (916) 857-6900.

http://www.pji.org/