I had too many arrests to work in a prison — but not for ACS

The city’s troubled Administration for Children’s Services hired a man with 11 arrests and a “history of domestic violence” as a case worker — even though his rap sheet kept him from getting a job as a jail guard, a stunning new lawsuit reveals.

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DCYF responds to lawsuit over sexual abuse of 2 girls

The Division of Children, Youth and Families is asking a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed in October alleging that it was negligent when two little girls in its custody were sexually abused by their own parents.

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Tiahleigh Palmer: Trent Thorburn's bail hearing delayed

The foster brother accused of committing incest against allegedly murdered schoolgirl Tiahleigh Palmer will wait another week to hear if he will be out of jail for Christmas.

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State orders NYC to hire monitor for children’s services agency

New York State has ordered the de Blasio administration to hire an independent monitor to oversee its child-welfare agency after city caseworkers repeatedly failed to protect a 6-year-old boy from family beatings that eventually killed him, according to a state report.

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Alcoholic foster dad removed from foster list: GN

A self-declared alcoholic foster parent in Iqaluit who was recently nearly convicted of sexually abusing a child in his care in 2013 is no longer on the Department of Family Services’ list of approved foster parents.

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Child Protective Services Steps in After Homeless Woman Gives Birth in Golden Gate Park

A homeless woman who gave birth in Golden Gate Park says Child Protective Services is stepping in to take her baby.

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Lawsuit against state for alleged foster home abuse gets new trial

Five former Eatonville foster children who allege they were abused will have another chance to argue the state failed to protect them before they were adopted, an appellate court said Tuesday.

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Top Five Threats to Child Welfare from ACA Repeal

Proposals by the Congress and President-elect to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—including the Medicaid expansion—to turn Medicaid into a block grant, and to cut resources, all can sound very abstract to social workers and policymakers coping with the day-to-day tragedies and crises of child welfare. But should Congress make good on any of these threats—which could happen as early as January 2017—the dangers are very real to abused and neglected children, their birth, adoptive, and foster parents, as well as state agencies and providers.

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NYC child welfare workers fired over 6yearold”s death, mayor says

Three New York City Administration of Children and Family Services workers were fired Tuesday, and the city accepted a state order for an independent monitor after a scathing report on the agency’s handling of a 6-year-old Harlem boy who died, CBS New York reports.

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How can it be right to have targets for breaking up families?

Imagine you’re a mother arriving at court, fighting for the right to keep your baby who was removed from you just after birth. Your local authority now says your child should be adopted. Despite everything your barrister has told you about the rigour of adoption law, you will arrive in front of the judge today with even less trust than you had before.

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UNL awarded $15 million grant to study workforce problems facing child welfare agencies

Working for public child welfare agencies can be demanding and draining, and some employees don’t last long in the job.

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New Jersey judge orders Trentonian newspaper to stop reporting a story

The Trentonian newspaper says a judge has ordered it to stop publishing articles about a child custody case, a ruling that has sparked concerns about press freedom and violation of First Amendment rights.

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Seven adopted children removed by CPS placed in foster care home

Seven adopted children removed last month from their Richmond-area home amid allegations that they were abused and confined to a single filthy room have been placed together in a foster home, officials said Tuesday.

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Edmonton mother fighting to get her kids back after four years in foster care

'I'm a throwaway human being to children's services'.

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How not to win your case by exploiting your child to drum up sympathy for your cause

The following video was recently posted to Facebook.  I'm sure many of you have already seen it.

My heart goes out to this child.  It's disgusting what he has to go through, the poor little guy.

Under the original video, which has been shared to multiple groups, pages and walls on Facebook you will see lots of comments from CPS victims whose hearts are broken, or who couldn't watch it without crying.  You can see them being reminded of similar occurrences in their own cases.  You see them crying out that CPS needs to be stopped.  Their poor emotional hearts are being ripped out of their chests over this.  "Oh my God it's only a poor helpless CPS victim child!!!  How can they do this to him?  It is absolutely devastating!.

Now I'm not saying that CPS is right here, nor am I claiming to know any of the details of this case such as what happened 5 minutes before or after the video or why CPS was in her life in the first place, but I do know how CPS operates because I've been studying this mess for years.  Do you know what CPS will see when they view this?  CPS will see this mother exploiting her child to drum up sympathy for her cause.  I'm sorry but it's true.  This will not help her case.  Nor will it help to fix this problem of CPS abuse of power which will only be fixed through legislation and enforcement and improvement of current laws.  The video may win the hearts of one or two bleeding heart legislators but they will quickly be put in their place by the special interests or rather the System Suck constituents who want to protect their meal tickets.  Ultimately it will hurt her case.  It will lead to a poor little boy who needs his mother to spending a longer stint in foster care.

I'm sorry but I'm calling bullshit on this one and will strongly suggest that if you have CPS up your ass that you DO NOT make video's like this.  Why?  Because I know how CPS thinks.  I can totally see how CPS will use this video against the mother who, BTW, could have handled it much better. She could have added a line like, "but I love you and will see you real soon," or "everything will be okay."  She could have have done something... anything to comfort this child who SHE was CLEARLY upsetting.  She could have given him a hug, for example, but no.  Instead The mother is leading him on while trying to capture the drama on camera. She's upsetting him by telling him that they're going to take him away again and filming it when she should be enjoying the little time she has with him and reassuring him that it will all work out. She could have offered him some strength, some reassurance, some love.  She offers him no comfort at all and instead continues playing into it, "they're going to come whether I want them to or not.  You know this."  It's like she knew how he was going to react so she staged the whole thing and for nothing but the dramatic effect.

What I would much rather see is a video of the child kicking and screaming and grasping onto the mothers leg while the caseworker dragged him away while the mother offers him some love and support.  There will be plenty of time to let it all out after.

Now I know why this video was posted and I can sympathize with that.  It was put there to tug on your heart strings.  It was created to piss you off, to make you cry, to somehow motivate you to take some action against CPS because how could they do this to poor helpless children?  Of course what this video will lead to is a lot of pissing and moaning on Facebook, perhaps the cutting off of the mothers visits, who knows.  Maybe you could all get together, stand on the steps of your state capital and have a good cry.  Then when you're done, maybe you can learn some facts and numbers and actually offer some solutions to the problem which don't include traumatizing children.  You could, for example, demand that your US Senators support and pass the Family First Act which would free up federal funding that is specifically designated for foster care so that CPS can help keep families together by providing needed services in the home rather than removing the child and creating whole new sets of problems all the way up to an adoption bonus.  That is just one simple thing that we can all do that takes nothing more than a phone call.  Then when you learn what's in it and learn what it's all about perhaps you can come up with solutions and legislation to put forth in your own state.

Come on people, you all need to be smarter about this.  Stop the drama because emotional people can't come up with good solutions.  And crying about it isn't going to do a damn thing.

Authorities: Man Freed 2 Years After Wife's False Accusation

The report says Polk's incarceration cost state taxpayers more than $54,000 and he also lost his job doing electrical work and was separated from his children. He's seeking work through staffing agencies.

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Racist abuse derails Facebook campaign to foster child refugees

A social media campaign to recruit foster parents for child asylum seekers was derailed after it attracted racist abuse and extreme anti-immigrant comments.

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Embattled Head of City's Child Welfare Agency Quits

The embattled head of the city's child welfare agency, Gladys Carrión, resigned Monday in the face of withering criticism over her leadership.

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CPS is a grease fire, yet Texas pols splash it with money

From 2008 to 2015, confirmed cases of physical child abuse in Texas fell by 27 percent.

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Baptist Children’s Homes ‘resolves concerns’ over foster care reform

The Baptist Children’s Homes of North Carolina (BCH) said it has ‘resolved concerns’ with lawmakers over foster care reform legislation that could defund most congregate care programs.

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Questions raised over ability of courts to deal with complex cases of children in care

A judge has raised concerns about the ability of the Irish court system to deal with complex child care cases.

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Substance Abuse Not Only Factor in Growing Foster Care Numbers

The number of children in foster care increased for the third straight year in fiscal 2015, according to data released in October by the Administration on Children and Families (ACF) and covered in The Chronicle. The number of children in state care increased from 401,213 on September 30, 2013 to 427,910 on September 30, 2015.

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Child Protective Services after NYC homeschooler

After recently withdrawing her son from public school because of safety and education concerns, a New York City mom went through all the required procedures to homeschool her son, but soon found Child Protective Services (CPS) coming after her.

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Are Obama’s Immigration Prisons for Families Legitimate ‘Child Care Facilities’? Judge Says No

Nearly 500 mothers incarcerated with their children at euphemistically-termed immigrant family detention centers in Texas were released over the weekend following a judge’s ruling that such prisons cannot operate as childcare facilities.

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Child advocates seeing an 'alarming' increase in children entering foster care, urge overhaul of system

There has been an “alarming” increase in the number of children going into foster care, Brian Maness, the president and chief executive of the Children’s Home Society of North Carolina, said last week.

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