[Archive]

I took children to visits for years at the CPS office. I would sit back in the CPS offices for hours sometimes reading a book and just listening to the conversations going on around me. People tend to forget you are there if you are there often enough. You would be shocked at how CPS is actually ran. Not just for the adoptive parents, but for the children, the bio parents, and foster parents. Truth? Well maybe there is truth but ALWAYS as interpreted by the worker, which can be very far from reality. When people are given the amount of power that CPS has without checks and balances, and trust me there are none.... what follows is not pretty.

One example: I took some children for a visit. Bio mom had children removed for failure to protect. She has some psychological issues and below average intelligence. She is following her case plan to the letter, loves her children and is really trying. She is also terrified of doing something wrong at the visit.

She is placed in an extremely small visiting room, steaming hot, with 4 very active children, no outlet covers, glass top table in room, and of all things has brought them chocolate and when they ask for a coke she buys them one. This is a recipe for disaster from the beginning. The children of course start climbing the walls, wanting out of the room because it is steaming hot. They get cranky from the heat, hyperactive from the caffeine, upset because they are separated from Mom and don't understand why they can't leave with her. Mom opens the door to let the cool hallway air in and the one and two year old take turns trying to run outside into the cool air where I am. (I went in room, it was UNBEARABLY hot as opposed to very cool outside) Caseworker comes in and tells mom she must keep children in room. Mom asks for advice on best way to keep children in room. Caseworker tells her to just shut the door. Children get hot again and start to really act up, climbing on table etc. Caseworker comes back in, Mom asks for advice on how best to deal with daughter tantruming because she wants the door opened. Mom is asking for advice because she is terrified of doing the wrong thing with children at a visit thus never getting them returned.

Same scenario but CW version. Mom was unable to control children at visit. Children kept trying to get away from mom by running out of room and did not want to spend time with her. Children endangered by getting on glass table and with an electrical outlet. Mom had to ask for assistance from CW with children on more than one occasion, unable to control on own.

From my point of view and remember I lived with these children, Mom was doing a great job considering the circumstances she was placed in. Mom had to be burning up, worried sick about her children, and upset that the children were asking her to take them home. These children were extremely hard to control with even a small break in their routine, much less being put in a steaming hot unchild-proofed small room with heat relief just feet away. Mom did not know where all outlets in room were either, the one the child tried to poke a toy into was behind a chair that the child crawled behind. Mom pointed out to CW that they were not child proofed and kept children away after that.

I will also say I didn't want these children to go home any more than the CW did because I still didn't think Mom would protect them. But that still doesn't justify misrepresenting what actually was going on. When you start down the path of half truths and deceit, with the attitude of the end justifies the means, it spreads throughout the entire system and becomes easier each time. It doesn't take long for it to spread to include cases like Yrand's, Pam's, and the many others that have posted their stories here as these CW get promoted to the adoption units. The place to start fixing the system is by demanding mandatory video taping in every state of all interactions between CW and children, foster parents, bio parents, and adoptive parents. To have some type of true checks and balances for cases like Yrand's, where it could be appealed to someone outside of the "system".