LK Daily Report for 7/28/17 - Systematic Failures

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A former social worker from Crawfordsville was arrested and charged with three counts of sexual misconduct with a minor Thursday. Amy Walls, 46, Crawfordsville was taken into custody on a warrant out of Allen County. According to court documents, the charges were filed Wednesday in Allen County Superior Court.

More >> C’ville woman charged with sex crimes

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Investigators inside the Florida Department of Children and families say Florida is putting children at risk.

More >> DCF Workers: State Is Failing Kids
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The publisher of the Mail Online will pay out damages to Madonna over a “serious invasion of privacy” after the website published details of the singer’s four-year-old twin daughters in January.

More >> Mail Online forced to pay damages for revealing details of Madonna’s adoption
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SALT LAKE CITY — When a child is sick, parents go to doctors looking for a diagnosis, prescription or treatment plan. Sometimes they find conflict.

More >> What rights do parents have when they disagree with doctors?
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The head of the state’s child welfare agency, hired seven months ago to revive a mission that critics say had been sacrificed in recent years to save money, faced plenty of questions from lawmakers Thursday.

More >> DCYF director on the hot seat over department training, investigations
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Following reports of high caseloads, high turnover and little experience among Child Protective Investigators in Palm Beach County, The Post and WPTV decided to investigate.

More >> DCF casework by the numbers: An inside look
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An Ankeny couple who adopted nine children with disabilities from foster care has been charged with child endangerment for allegations of physical abuse.

More >> EXCLUSIVE: After 68 police reports, Ankeny couple who adopted 9 kids charged with abuse
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Orphanages seem like the easy route, but what we don't realise is that they stunt the physical, mental and emotional development of a child.

More >> Orphanages Are Not Conducive To Child Development

LK Daily Report for 7/27/17 - Take the child and run...

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The body of the good Samaritan who was killed Friday while helping a stranded motorist won't be laid to rest until a judge can determine who has the right to bury him.

More >> Parents, CPS battle for burial rights to former foster child killed in Garland crash
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Rhode Island’s child welfare agency will be the subject of a House Oversight Committee hearing later Thursday. The state Department of Children, Youth and Families is under scrutiny for its handling of cases involving vulnerable children.

More >> Oversight Committee To Address DCYF’s Progress In Handling Of Children’s Cases
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The first people the state dispatches to the homes of potentially abused and neglected children in Palm Beach County are overworked and in some cases cutting corners, data show.

More >> Florida’s first responders to child abuse overwhelmed, inexperienced
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When the United Nations was deliberating on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities my friend, disability rights activist Robert Martin, proudly spoke of his own intellectual disability.

More >> Paul Gibson: We should be saying sorry to our Stolen Generations
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The B.C. government is being sued over allegations that a girl was wrongfully apprehended from her parents and then abused after being placed in foster care.

More >> Agency sues B.C. gov't after girl allegedly wrongfully apprehended, then abused in foster care
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Five words in Ohio law may force a Tennessee couple to give back a Butler County boy they legally adopted as a newborn two years ago to the boy's presumed biological father.

More >> Ohio Supreme court ruling puts adoption of toddler in limbo
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Ideally, in America, people would not be punished simply because they are poor. And yet we know the reality is that many systems and structures in society are designed so that people with money and influence can navigate life in ways that allows them to escape certain forms of punishment. This has been well documented in many instances like bail reform, punishment of the Wall Street bankers who helped create the 2008 economic crisis, and our current president, his son, and son-in-law who have clearly colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election—despite their claims to the contrary.

More >> The new 'Jane Crow' in the foster care system separates children from their poor mothers

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A FOSTER brother of slain Brisbane schoolgirl Tiahleigh Palmer has admitted lying to police and a corruption watchdog during the investigation into the 12-year-old’s death.

More >> Murdered schoolgirl Tiahleigh Palmer’s foster brother admits lying during investigation

• Tiah's mother upset with Thorburn sentence

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Edinburgh, Scotland - Citizens Commission on Human Rights UK (CCHR UK) protested the Royal College of Psychiatry Annual Convention in Edinburgh carrying signs reading, "Stop Psychiatry Drugging Kids" and "Childhood is NOT a Mental Disorder."

More >> Psychiatry Drugs Children for Profit, Protestors Say

LK Daily Report for 7/26/17 - Share this post so we can enlighten the sheep about the CPS mess...

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One of the foster brothers of slain Queensland schoolgirl Tiahleigh Palmer is to be sentenced in a Logan court.

Joshua Thorburn, 21, pleaded guilty in November 2016 to charges of perjury and perverting the course of justice following the death of Tiahleigh in October 2015.

More >> Sentencing for Tiahleigh's foster brother

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The state Children, Youth and Families Department has agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to settle a lawsuit brought by a Washington state family who alleged the state agency failed to properly screen a Clovis-area foster couple accused of raping some of the children in their care, including a boy the couple later adopted.

More >> CYFD settles suit over sexually abused adopted child

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Just under 2,100 Pennsylvania newborns whose mothers had Medicaid were diagnosed with narcotics withdrawal syndrome last year, but only 972 infants were reported to county child welfare authorities as having been exposed to drugs in the womb. 

More >> Pennsylvania law keeps some drug-exposed infants off child welfare radar, advocates say

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In a previous column about the harm done to battered women and their children by child protective services agencies, I told the story of Sharwline Nicholson, lead plaintiff in a successful class-action lawsuit to stop the child protective services agency in New York City from taking children just because their mothers had been beaten. 

More >> Domestic Violence Survivors Say Mandatory Reporting Laws Made Their Lives Worse

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Maisha Joefield thought she was getting by pretty well as a young single mother in Brooklyn, splurging on her daughter, Deja, even though money was tight. When Deja was a baby, she bought her Luvs instead of generic diapers when she could. When her daughter got a little older, Ms. Joefield outfitted the bedroom in their apartment with a princess bed for Deja, while she slept on a pullout couch.

More >> In Case You Missed It: NY Times and DPA: Foster Care as Punishment: The New Reality of ‘Jane Crow’

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The details in the more than a thousand pages of documents the Department of Children and Families began releasing Monday are heart wrenching.

More >> Reports show Nubia Barahona abused since birth

LK Daily Report for 7/25/17 - Don't Kill Your Foster Parents...

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Parents have expressed anger after President Donald Trump delivered a highly politicised speech to tens of thousands of boy scouts.

More >> Trump boy scout Jamboree speech angers parents

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Even after children are placed in foster care due to abuse or neglect, their fathers often express interest in maintaining a relationship, a new study suggests. Researchers found that social workers and policymakers tend to assume that a ward of the state needs to be protected from his or her father, even when this is not the case. They conclude that policy reforms are necessary to identify when involving fathers is safe, rather than stereotyping every man involved in child protections.

More >> Not All Dads Who Lose Their Kids To The State Are Bad Guys
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An Edmonton lawyer has launched a class action lawsuit against the province of Alberta because he says authorities have no legal right to take so many children away from their families.

More >> Edmonton lawyer sues province for illegally taking children away from families
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Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) is being sued by The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) for trying to deprive a Military Veteran of his 2nd Amendment Right.

More >> Second Amendment Foundation Sues Michigan DHHS
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A government initiative aims to encourage more local authorities to send vulnerable young people to boarding schools. What’s the thinking behind it?

More >> The drive to get children out of foster care and into boarding school
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The local sessions court today sentenced a youth to life imprisonment, who had allegedly killed his foster parents in March 2016. The deceased were identified as Sawinderpal Singh (64) and Balbir Kaur (62).

More >> Foster son gets lifer for killing parents
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George Sheldon is already in Miami heading up the private adoption and child services agency, Our Kids. But his departure from Illinois doesn't mean an end to the investigation into the mess the former Illinois Department of Children and Family Services director left behind. It goes on apace.

More >> He's Gone, But Illinois Still Steamed over Sheldon's Mismanagement of DCFS

LK Daily Report for 7/24/17 - Paying for Other Peoples Kids and more...

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He was a father figure, one who gave a young girl an escape route out of a group home she wanted to leave and sexually abused her in the process. Now, in a case that has prompted a judge to remark on the "apparent never-ending cycle" of the abused becoming abusers, the 41-year-old man has been sentenced to five years in prison.

More >> 'Never-ending cycle' of abuse: Manitoba man sentenced after sexually abusing CFS ward

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Taylor Moseley, a 20-year-old East Carolina University student is looking at spending decades behind bars after she was busted having sex with a 14-year-old. And keep in mind that Moseley once revealed that she hoped to become a child psychologist one day.

More >> COLLEGE STUDENT ARRESTED FOR HAVING SEX WITH 14-YEAR-OLD KID

Note: My heart goes out to this young man, it must have been a horrible experience.

Not!

I'm sorry but it's gotta be said.  I'm sure that kid loved every minute of it and is still bragging to his friends about it.
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"This isn’t just a series of lapses," said Michael McDowell SC, representing Sgt McCabe. "This is a deliberate decision not to inquire as to how this had gone so catastrophically wrong."

More >> Charleton Tribunal: Senior Tusla executive denies cover-up over false abuse allegation

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Katie-Anne Warman, now 21, finally turned in vile Michael Newson after watching a controversial rape scene on EastEnders

More >> MOLESTED AT DISNEYLANDMum first abused at 12 by her foster dad on a trip to Disneyland recalls how he used to rape her while his partner was on the school run

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The state of Michigan discovered a clever way to circumvent Second Amendment rights – use children as leverage against armed citizens. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) told fifty-four-year-old retired Marine veteran, William Johnson, that if he didn’t forfeit his Second Amendment right to a self-defense firearm, they would take his grandson from him and place him in a foster home. And the Gogebic County Judge backed them up.

More >> THE STATE WILL TAKE YOUR CHILDREN OR YOUR GUNS
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Three Oaks, Michigan (WNDU) -- An elementary school employee in Three Oaks will be back in court on Monday.

She is accused of failing to help a boy who was starved and abused at home. Sherrie bender is one of four school leaders at Three Oaks Elementary facing misdemeanor charges. They're accused of breaking Michigan's child protection law.

More >> School leader accused of not reporting child abuse due in court
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According to a recent audit of 150 cases by the State Comptroller, the Office of Children and Family Services could not show that caseworkers contacted 33 children in foster care within the first month of placement as required by the agency.


More >> Audit finds oversight issues with foster care in New York

• Kids at increased risk due to critical gaps in foster home records, audit finds
• Following ACS deaths, Savino looks to improve flawed child welfare system

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Houston, Texas —  A Houston man is on the hook for $65,000 in child support for a child that's not his.  Gabriel Cornejo, 45, took a DNA test proving a child his ex-girlfriend had 16 years ago was not his.

More >> Man ordered to pay $65,000 in child support for kid that's not his

LK Daily Report for 7/23/17 - The CPS BS continues

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Shelly Foster always knew she had been adopted. However, it wasn’t until she saw a birth certificate in an Air Force recruitment office in New Jersey that she saw a name she didn’t recognize — Ruth Mary Anthes — and thought of searching for her biological family.

More >> Siblings meet for first time — in their 70s

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GRAND FORKS, N.D. (Valley News Live) An anonymous whistleblower tipped off the Valley News Lives investigators to a mass exodus on the second floor of the Grand Forks County office building. In the Child Protective Services Department there have been a lot of turnover.

More >> Whistleblower claims problems within Grand Forks Child Protective Services are hurting kids

LK Daily Report for 7/22/17 - CPS is doing a bad job and more...

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Juvenile courts in California can supervise children whose parents are no longer able to protect or control them, even if the parents have done nothing wrong, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

More >> Children can be taken if parents can’t control them, court rules
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Police investigated 10,000 children in a year for abusing their parents or other adults in their homes.

The shocking figures obtained exclusively by the Sunday People reveal kids as young as six were probed for terrifying crimes of domestic violence against adults.

More >> Police probe 10,000 children for 'abusing' parents as mums and dads become domestic violence victims
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Awwww

Ankita Majumder and her husband Richard Henderson rattle around their beautiful suburban home. They have good jobs, loving friends and family but feel empty.

More >> Would-be parents left in limbo as number of children for adoption drops to all time low
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A former social worker at a Nottingham children’s home has been acquitted of historical child sex offences.

More >> Former Nottingham social worker cleared of historical child sex offences
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ALBANY — The state’s top child welfare agency is doing a poor job overseeing foster care providers in New York, according to an audit made public Friday.

More >> State's top child welfare agency is doing bad job overseeing foster care providers, DiNapoli study says
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Julia Shaw uses science to prove that some memories are false. Now she's tackling criminal-justice failures.

More >> False memories and false confessions: the psychology of imagined crimes