This is Rob and Kathey Raskin of Las Vegas, and today we’d like to bring you the backstory behind the funds that are available to help families. “Norman money” is what some people call the family preservation funds that are provided for families who are in danger of losing their children to legal kidnapping at the hands of the foster care system. These funds were made available after a class-action lawsuit that was filed after one Mr. James Norman died while forcibly separated from his children by the state simply because he was impoverished. Sadly, some families years later became too afraid to take advantage of these funds later when Chicago’s Foster Care Panic resulted in the removal of unprecedented numbers of children from homes.

A Death Sentence

James Norman was a 37-year-old man who had a serious heart condition. He was also a recent widower and now-single father of three who was struggling to make ends meet after quitting his job to care for his cancer-stricken wife. Rather than intervene to help the struggling, grief-stricken family, child protective services removed the children from the home after a visit in which the family was found to be without electricity and living in a dirty house.

On top of losing his wife and his children, whom he doted on, Norman lost his car because he was too sick to return to work. Child protective services made no effort to help the man to get his children back or even to see them. A lack of access to public transportation meant the sick man would need to take three buses and walk a mile each way every time he wanted to see his children. By the time lawyers intervened to get Norman financial assistance, it was too late. James Norman died at age 38, and his children were left orphaned by a system that literally walked their father to death as punishment for falling on hard times. We, Rob and Kathey Raskin, think this is unconscionable, and it is time for us all to take a stand to put a stop to these flagrant abuses of the system.