If you’ve found yourself at this blog, the chances are that you are involved in allegations against you from CPS or another like entity in your location. As a parent, you may not experience anything more heart-wrenching than to have your children taken from you without due process. You’d be surprised about how much that these types of cases have in common. There are typically three types of CPS reports, and knowing your situation could help you understand what courses of action to take in order to improve the outcome.
Child Neglect or Abuse
Not all CPS reports are unfounded. There are people out there who abuse unlawful substances and/or intentionally hurt, abuse, or molest their children. Child Protective Services is called because of bruises beyond what normal children naturally occur or because of evidence of malnutrition. These instances are what CPS should be trying to stop. However, if you’re doing your research on this specific topic, it’s unlikely that you abuse your children and are probably finding an overwhelming amount of corruption in the system because of money and greed. It’s more pertinent to the topic at hand to discuss the other two types of situations.
Being Victimized by a Personal Vendetta
It’s not uncommon for individuals to use children in order to get back at someone for real or perceived injustices against them. CPS is then used as a weapon in order to exact their own personal brand of revenge. Why a parent would exploit their kids in this way is beyond me, but I have witnessed it first-hand.
Imagine an ex-spouse is only granted custody of their child on weekends because they’re unemployed and the other parent is more well-equipped to be a provider. Let’s also say that on one such weekend, that individual takes their child and promptly files a restraining order against the custodial parent, claiming that they’re physically abusive. In this particular case, the court granted the restraining order, did not send the child back to the custodial parent, and began a lengthy court case based on zero evidence, costing the first parent an exorbitant amount of lawyer fees, etc. This all happened out of the spite of the first individual. Lengthy court battles can be costly, and for families that can’t afford legal fees, such circumstances can be simply detrimental, especially to the well-being of the child.
Flat-Out Corruption in the System
Because of the loopholes in the “Adoption and Safe Families Act” (1974), it’s not uncommon for some social workers to be motivated by financial incentives to make allegations against families. They, along with the corrupt judges on their side, receive financial kickbacks for every child that is adopted out of foster care, so the more children that are put into the system, the more money they receive. This flaw in the system is what Nancy Schaefer spent her political career trying to fight, and it’s what unjustly victimizes many families across the country.
With this type of case, you may find that a social worker is being overzealous about normal parenting struggles and blowing circumstances out of proportion in order to make you look bad. Last year, CPS in Florida took an eleven-year-old from his parents because he was playing outside, waiting for his parents to come home since he had forgotten his house key. He was alone for only 90 minutes, but the parents were arrested for negligence despite there being no minimum age for supervision to be required and had to be subjected to parenting classes, forced to pay for day care, and to admit they were wrong for letting their child play outside. Let’s also note that the boy was in the yard within view of the home.
Battling corruption in the system is even more difficult than proving that you’re being victimized by someone’s personal vendetta. That’s why it’s important to continue to raise awareness about the problems in the system.