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From the legislative desk of
Senator Nancy Schaefer 50th District of Georgia
November 16, 2007
Updated: September 25, 2008
To contact Senator Schaefer, email :
jody@senatornancyschaefer.com
THE CORRUPT
BUSINESS OF CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES
BY: Nancy Schaefer
Senator, 50th District
My introduction into Child Protective Service cases was
due to a grandmother in an adjoining state who called me
with her tragic story. Her two granddaughters had been
taken from her daughter who lived in my district. Her
daughter was told wrongly that if she wanted to see her
children again she should sign a paper and give up her
children. Frightened and young, the daughter did. I have
since discovered that parents are often threatened into
cooperation of permanent separation of their children.
The children were taken to another county and placed in
foster care. The foster parents were told wrongly that
they could adopt the children. The grandmother then
jumped through every hoop known to man in order to get
her granddaughters. When the case finally came to court
it was made evident by one of the foster parent’s
children that the foster parents had, at any given time,
18 foster children and that the foster mother had an
inappropriate relationship with a caseworker.
In the courtroom, the juvenile judge, acted as though
she was shocked and said the two girls would be removed
quickly. They were not removed. Finally, after much
pressure being applied to the Department of Family and
Children Services of Georgia (DFCS), the children were
driven to South Georgia to meet their grandmother who
gladly drove to meet them.
After being with their grandmother two or three days,
the judge, quite out of the blue, wrote up a new order
to send the girls to their father, who previously had no
interest in the case and who lived on the West Coast.
The father was in “adult entertainment”. His girlfriend
worked as an “escort” and his brother, who also worked
in the business, had a sexual charge brought against
him.
Within a couple of days the father was knocking on the
grandmother’s door and took the girls kicking and
screaming to California.
The father developed an unusual relationship with the
former foster parents and soon moved to the southeast.
The foster parents began driving to the father’s
residence and picking up the little girls for visits.
The oldest child had told her mother and grandmother on
two different occasions that the foster father molested
her.
To this day after five years, this loving, caring blood
relative grandmother does not even have visitation
privileges with the children. The little girls are, in
my opinion, permanently traumatized and the young mother
of the girls was so traumatized with shock when the
girls were first removed from her that she has never
completely recovered. The mother has rights but the
father still has custody of the children.
Throughout this case and through the process of dealing
with multiple other mismanaged cases of the Department
of Family and Children Services (DFCS), I have worked
with other desperate parents across the state of Georgia
and in many other States because their children were
taken for no cause and they have no one with whom to
turn. I have witnessed ruthless behavior from many
caseworkers, social workers, investigators, lawyers,
judges, therapists, and others such as those who “pick
up” the children. I have been stunned by what I have
seen and heard from victims all across this land.
In this report, I have focused mainly on the Georgia
Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS).
However, I believe Child Protective Services nationwide
has become corrupt and that the entire system is broken
beyond repair. I am convinced parents and families
should be warned of the dangers.
The Department of Child Protective Services, known as
the Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS) in
Georgia and other titles in other states, has become a
“protected empire” built on taking children and
separating families. This is not to say that there are
not those children who do need to be removed from
wretched situations and need protection. However, this
report is concerned with the children and parents caught
up in “legal kidnapping,” ineffective policies, and an
agency that on certain occasions would not remove a
child (or children) when the child was enduring torment
and abuse.
In one county in my District, I arranged a meeting for
thirty-seven families to speak freely and without fear.
These poor parents and grandparents spoke of their
painful, heart wrenching encounters with DFCS. Their
suffering was overwhelming. They wept and cried. Some
did not know where their children were and had not seen
them in years. I had witnessed the “Gestapo” at work and
I witnessed the deceitful conditions under which
children were taken in the middle of the night, out of
hospitals, off of school buses, and out of homes. In one
county a private drug testing business was operating
within the agency’s department that required many, many
drug tests from parents and individuals for profit.
It has already made over $100,000.
Due to being exposed, several employees in this
particular office were fired. However, they have now
been rehired either in neighboring counties or in the
same county again. According to the calls I am now
receiving, the conditions in that county are returning
to the same practices that they had before the light was
shown on their evil deeds.
Having worked with probably 300 cases statewide, and now
hundreds and hundreds across this nation and in nearly
every state, I am convinced there is no responsibility
and no accountability in Child Protective Services
system.
I have come to the conclusion:
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that poor parents very often
are targeted to lose their children because they do
not have the where-with-all to hire lawyers and
fight the system. Being poor does not mean you are
not a good parent or that you do not love your
child, or that your child should be removed and
placed with strangers;
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that all parents are capable
of making mistakes and that making a mistake does
not mean your children are to be removed from the
home. Even if the home is not perfect, it is home;
and that’s where a child is the safest and where he
or she wants to be, with family;
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that parenting classes, anger
management classes, counseling referrals, therapy
classes and on and on are demanded of parents with
no compassion by the system even while the parents
are at work and while their children are separated
from them. (some times parents are required to pay
for the programs) This can take months or even years
and it emotionally devastates both children and
parents. Parents are victimized by “the system” that
makes a profit for holding children longer and
“bonuses” for not returning children to their
parents;
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that caseworkers and social
workers are very often guilty of fraud. They
withhold and destroy evidence. They fabricate
evidence and they seek to terminate parental rights
unnecessarily. However, when charges are made
against Child Protective Services, the charges are
ignored;
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that the separation of
families and the “snatching of children” is growing
as a business because local governments have grown
accustomed to having these taxpayer dollars to
balance their ever-expanding budgets;
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that Child Protective
Services and Juvenile Court can always hide behind a
confidentiality clause in order to protect their
decisions and keep the funds flowing. There should
be open records and “court watches”! Look who is
being paid!
There are state
employees, lawyers, court investigators,
guardian ad litems, court personnel, and judges.
There are psychologists, and psychiatrists,
counselors, caseworkers, therapists, foster
parents, adoptive parents, and on and on. All
are looking to the children in state custody to
provide job security. Parents do not realize
that the social workers are the glue that hold
“the system” together that funds the court,
funds the court appointed attorneys, and the
multiple other jobs including the “system’s”
psychiatrists, therapists, their own attorneys
and others.
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that
The Adoption and the
Safe Families Act, set in motion first in 1974
by Walter Mondale and later in 1997 by President
Bill Clinton, offered cash “bonuses” to the states
for every child they adopted out of foster care. In
order to receive the “adoption incentive bonuses”
local child protective services need more children.
They must have merchandise (children) that sells and
you must have plenty so the buyer can choose. Some
counties are known to give a $4,000 to $6,000 bonus
for each child adopted out to strangers and an
additional $2,000 for a “special needs” child.
Employees work to keep the federal dollars flowing;
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State Departments of Human
Resources (DHR) and affiliates are given a baseline
number of expected adoptions based on population.
For every child DHR and CPS can get adopted, there
is the bonus of $4,000 or maybe $6,000. But that is
only the beginning figure in the formula in which
each bonus is multiplied by the percentage that the
State has managed to exceed its baseline adoption
number. Therefore States and local communities work
hard to reach their goals for increased numbers of
adoptions for children in foster care.
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that there is double dipping.
The funding continues as long as the child is out of
the home. There is funding for foster care then when
a child is placed with a new family, then “adoption
bonus funds” are available. When a child is placed
in a mental health facility and is on 16 drugs per
day, like two children of a constituent of mine,
more funds are involved and so is Medicaid;
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As you can see this program
is ordered from the very top and run by Health and
Human Resources. This is why victims of CPS get no
help from their legislators. It explains why my
bill, SB 415 suffered such defeat in the Judicial
Committee, why I was cut off at every juncture.
Legislators and Governors must remember who funds
their paychecks.
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that there are no financial
resources and no real drive to unite a family and
help keep them together or provide effective care;
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that the incentive for social
workers to return children to their parents quickly
after taking them has disappeared and who in
protective services will step up to the plate and
say, “This must end! No one, because they are all in
the system together and a system with no leader and
no clear policies will always fail the children.
Just look at the waste in government that is forced
upon the tax payer;
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that the “Policy Manual” is
considered “the last word” for CPS/DFCS. However, it
is too long, too confusing, poorly written and does
not take the law into consideration;
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that if the lives of children
were improved by removing them from their homes,
there might be a greater need for protective
services, but today children are not safer.
Children, of whom I am aware, have been raped and
impregnated in foster care;
It is a known fact
that children are in much more danger in foster
care than they are in their own home even though
home may not be perfect.
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that some parents are even
told if they want to see their children or
grandchildren, they must divorce their spouse. Many,
who are under-privileged, feeling they have no
option, will divorce and then just continue to live
together. This is an anti-family policy, but parents
will do anything to get their children home with
them. However, when the parents cooperate with Child
Protective Services, their behavior is interpreted
as guilt when nothing could be further from the
truth.
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Fathers, (non-custodial
parents) I must add, are oftentimes treated as
criminals without access to visit or even see their
own children and have child support payments
strangling the very life out of them;
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that the
Foster Parents
Bill of Rights does not stress that a foster
parent is there temporarily to care for a child
until the child can be returned home. Many foster
parents today use the Foster Parent Bill of Rights
as a means to hire a lawyer and seek to adopt the
child placed in their care from the real parents,
who are desperately trying to get their child home
and out of the system.
Recently in Atlanta,
a young couple learning to be new parents and
loving it, were told that because of an
anonymous complaint, their daughter would be
taken into custody by the State DFCS. The couple
was devastated and then was required by DFCS to
take parenting classes, alcohol counseling and
psychological evaluations if they wanted to get
their child back. All of the courses cost money
for which most parents are required to pay.
While in their anxiety and turmoil to get their
child home, the baby was left for hours in a car
to die in the heat in her car seat by a foster
parent who forgot about the child. This should
never have happened. It is tragic. In many cases
after the parents have jumped through all the
hoops, they still do not get their child. As
long as the child is not returned, there is
money for the agency, for foster parents, for
adoptive parents, and for the State.
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that tax dollars are being
used to keep this gigantic system afloat, yet the
victims, parents, grandparents, guardians and
especially the children, are charged for the
system’s services.
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that grandparents have called
from all over the State of Georgia and from other
states trying to get custody of their grandchildren.
CPS claims relatives are contacted, but there are
many many cases that prove differently. Grandparents
who lose their grandchildren to strangers have lost
their own flesh and blood. The children lose their
family heritage and grandparents, and parents too,
lose all connections to their heirs.
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that
The National Center
on Child Abuse and Neglect in 1998 reported that
six times as many children died in foster care than
in the general public and that once removed to
official “safety”, these children are far more
likely to suffer abuse, including sexual molestation
than in the general population. Think what that
number is today ten years later!
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That according to the
California Little Hoover Commission Report in
2003, 30% to 70% of the children in California group
homes do not belong there and should not have been
removed from their homes.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Call for an independent audit of all State Child
Protective Services (CPS) and for a Federal
Congressional hearing on Child Protective Services
nationwide.
2. Activate immediate change. Every day that passes
means more families and children are subject to being
held hostage and their lives destroyed.
3. Abolish the Federal and State financial incentives
that have turned Child Protective Services into a
business that separate families for money.
4. Grant to parents their rights verbally and in
writing.
5. Mandate a search for family members to be given the
opportunity to adopt their own relatives if children
need to be removed permanently.
6. Mandate a jury trial where every piece of evidence is
presented before permanently removing a child from his
or her parents. Open family court. Remove the secrecy.
Allow the press and family members access. Give parents
the opportunity in court to speak and be a part of their
children’s future.
7. Require a warrant or a positive emergency
circumstance before removing children from their
parents. (Judge Arthur G. Christean, Utah Bar Journal,
January, 1997 reported that “except in emergency
circumstances, including the need for immediate medical
care, require warrants upon affidavits of probable cause
before entry upon private property is permitted for the
forcible removal of children from their parents.”)
8. Uphold the laws when someone fabricates or presents
false evidence. If a parent alleges fraud, hold a
hearing with the right to discovery of all evidence made
available to parents.
FINAL REMARKS
On my desk are scores of cases of exhausted families and
terrified children. It has been beyond me to turn my
back on these suffering, crying, and beaten down
individuals.
We are mistreating the most
innocent. Child Protective Services have become an adult
centered business to the detriment of children. No
longer is judgment based on what the child needs or who
the child wants to be or with whom, or what is really
best for the whole family; it is some adult or
bureaucrat who makes the decisions, based often on just
hearsay, without ever consulting a family member, or
just what is convenient, profitable, or less troublesome
for the social workers.
I have witnessed such injustice
and harm brought to so many families that I am not sure
if I even believe reform of the system is possible! The
system cannot be trusted. It does not serve the people.
It obliterates families and children simply because it
has the power to do so.
Children deserve better. Families deserve better. It’s
time to pull back the curtain and set our children and
families free.
“Speak up for those who cannot speak for
themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.
Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor
and the needy” Proverbs 31:8-9
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