Monday, August 22, 2011

By Eric and Heather

On February 15th 2011 our family lost everything in a house fire. CPS stepped in and asked us to do "services." We denied their offer and attempted to rebuild our lives on our own. In May 2011 we received a court order to appear and CPS removed our children on the grounds of medical neglect due to our 10 year old losing her CPAP in a fire and on false allegations of wrongfully medicating our 7 yr old from a report made in September of 2010 that we never heard about until the day of court. We have seen our children once in 45 days. We have no contact with them by phone,letters, or any other means. We are now working services. We brought it to light in court that Eric is of a native american heritage and testing should be done and the tribe should be involved but the judge refused our request. We still have not been served the court order as to why exactly the children were removed and we have had our service plan in our hands for 2 days. It has been Since May 6th that our children were removed. We are paying out of pocket for services because the caseworker is not sending out referrals. She states we have to have 3 clean drug tests in a row before she will consider referrals. Mind you, neither of us have ever done drugs a day in our lives. We are lost and confused as to where to go from here. Our 4 children suffer from a wide range of disabilities and struggle daily without the involvement of this agency and now 3 out of 4 are in foster care and the 3 in care are seperated from each other. We struggle daily with the seperation from our children and we have each other but our children are alone and scared and confused. Our 16 yr old is with us but he is very angry at being seperated from his siblings. Our family has lost everything in a fire and now we have lost each other. We need help and do not know where to go.

Sincerely,

Eric and Heather

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:56 PM

    Have you tried filing a petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous2:57 PM

    Have you tried filing a petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous2:57 PM

    Have you tried filing a petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Is there any way the tribe could help fund private legal representation? Most cases that get resolved seem to have a real lawyer involved. Extended family can sometimes help; can the tribe?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Extended family might be able to help fund a lawyer. Could the tribe help? Most cases that get resolved have to bring in a real lawyer; no disrespect meant to honest public defenders, but usually in CPS cases they refrain from presenting any evidence that might help you. Be sure not to sign anything that waives a right to a trial.

    ReplyDelete