Our very own
Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2008 12:58:19 PM
Subject: Re: things are looking up - setting up visits for us with Skye
Dear Linda,
Thanks to all of the hard work from your organization, Lola, Betty and my persistance I am praying this will all finally work out . Will you be at court this Monday . I appreciate all of the help from Dave and all of you .
Betty is such a dear friend .. she never ceases to amaze me . Keep Skye in your prayers , please . I hope we can help Anne Marie and her little Alexis in Enumclaw .. another tragedy . Thanks again . Dodie
P.S. John Langler might be at court on monday, I got a message from him inquiring about it .
Date: Friday, September 12, 2008, 11:42 PM
Mark, I was very sad to hear today of the bashing of WFU. I know how much your support means to our family and we appreciate it more than words can express. I know one day, the efforts you give others will bless you in your life. I pray it will be with the reuniting of you and your daughter. I also shared with Katrina that the reason you and the others of WFU are supporting them is because you BELIEVE IN THEM as parents and want them to have their children returned as soon as possible. You would not support them if you felt otherwise or had evidence of otherwise!
Date: Monday, October 20, 2008, 6:15 PM
Mark, First I’d like to say “Thank You” to you and Denise for all your love and support. As you know, this birthday “family” visit was the first we’ve had since the children were taken into custody by CPS. We are all so excited and thankful to visit with all the children together! It is very heartbreaking that the evening ended the way it did and I’m so sad that my niece and Robert have to be on this roller-coaster ride that seems to be out of control and with no regard to the children’s “well being” or family reunification!
Child (or Agency) Protection?
Posted by Rich Rigney, Coos Bay, November 22, 2008 4:34PM
"You guys do more damage to kids than the parents!" Most Child Protective Services Supervisors and caseworkers would consider this malicious slander. As a Child Protective Services caseworker of eight years, however, I know it to be true. I'm not alone. The above observation uttered by a loving parent with borderline intelligence is echoed by many. Consider the following irony lamented by Duke Law Professor, Doriane Lambelet Coleman (2006): "...in the name of saving children from the harm that their parents and guardians are thought to pose, states ultimately cause more harm to many children than they ever help."
Few in the field argue that Child Protective Services ("CPS") nationally has myriad problems that are well documented in the form of media, research, congressional sub-committees and expert reports. Documentation supporting this fact is ubiquitous and readily available on-line.
However, the most grievous problem is that those who can most benefit from this knowledge, those who might use it pragmatically to improve the lives of children and families - the caseworkers and supervisors of CPS - appear either ignorant of or indifferent to the damage that removal of children perpetuates. That is: the most profound problem with "Child Welfare" is that it is not about the welfare of the child.
Rather, it is about the welfare of the agency itself. The internal paranoia that a "Cover-Your-Agency" (CYA) mentality creates has become so pervasive that most caseworkers and supervisors are determined not to make any decision that might jeopardize their career... and the children are afterthoughts. The agency hierarchy itself reinforces this CYA mentality due to its understandable desire to remain off the front page of newspapers. This "defensive social work" is helpful in preventing bureaucrat heads from rolling. The tragic wake of this status quo, however, is strewn with the lives of children and parents.
Estimates I've come across in my research reckon that between one-third and two-thirds of those children currently in foster care nationally should be living with their parents. Furthermore, it has become undeniable that despite many saintly foster parents the government makes a poor parent. The research shows unequivocally that CPS should be loathe to remove kids from their homes because, in most cases, there is nowhere better to put them. As a result, the state is stuck between a rock and a hard place: remove children from marginal parents, causing well documented, irrevocable emotional damage (not to mention the physical and sexual abuse that occurs more frequently in foster care), or leave these children with parents who, arguably, should never have had kids in the first place-- the "lesser of two evils" if you will. Enter the "Safety Model."
The state of Oregon has become one of the last ten percent of our nation's states to adopt a "Safety Model" guide to protecting our children, created by Wayne Holder, the man Oregon CPS has called the "foremost expert in child protection in the nation." (I encourage anyone interested to visit his website at www.actionchildprotection.org to understand Mr. Holder's credentials and the Safety Model as a whole.)
"What do I have to do to get my kids back?!" Those of us in CPS have all heard it. It is inevitably the first question our clients have and it is echoed frequently until the kids are returned. The Safety Model forces Child Welfare to quantify their answer to this question.
In my experience, most families don't care how long CPS monitors (or micromanages) their family as long as their kids can live with them in the process. Mr. Holder would probably site this as THE driving force behind the creation of the Safety Model.
In quantifying their answer to parents' most pressing question, CPS must delineate for all parties and the court, the necessary "behaviors, conditions or circumstances" in the home required to "manage"- not eliminate- the safety threats that necessitated the removal of the children. The agency's answers must be "specific" (i.e. quantifiable). They must be "well articulated." They must be "least intrusive." They must be "well defined." They must provide a "benchmark" (i.e. they must be measurable). They represent the "official record and expectation" for parent-child reunification.
The parents themselves need not change at all prior to the children being returned to the home.
The Safety Model, in addition to its dictates that CPS be as "least intrusive" as possible in intervening to control threats to child safety, requires that these threats be "observable and specific," "out of control," "imminent" and expected to cause "severe" harm to a "vulnerable" child.
No doubt for many of you this is a hard pill to swallow. These are unreasonably low standards for our most precious resource. You, like me, think children deserve more. The fact remains, it is irresponsible at best and abusive at worst to remove and/or withhold a child from his or her home upon the speculation that a "threat" of danger exists, when we know from the research that removal and placement of children in foster care is always detrimental.
I'm not talking here about severe neglect or physical/sexual abuse. In five years with Oregon CPS (I worked for three in California previously) I have had only one case with such abuse (and the research puts this type of abuse at about 15 percent combined).
The Safety Model is merely a tool, an attempt to minimize the trauma to children inflicted by their own government. There is no tool or legislation that will ever completely expunge child maltreatment or child deaths so long as the only requirement for parenthood is a capacity for coitus. I believe that if the state institutes a model, a tool envisioned by the "foremost expert in child protection in the nation," the state should actually use it. That is, if CPS is making the rules, they should follow them. Currently CPS (at least in Coos County, Oregon) is not, or not consistently.
The sad yet necessary truth is that it is not the job of Child Protective Services to pick the best available situation for kids and place them there permanently. That would literally be kidnapping. Rather, it is the job of CPS to work with marginal parents and make them "safe" or capable of providing a "minimum standard of adequate care." It is CPS's job to make parents "safe," not "good." Again, it is also our job to be "least intrusive" in our intervention.
In America we must accept freedom's costs with its benefits. As Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said, "There is nothing new in the realization that the Fourth Amendment [illegal search and seizure] protections come with a price." This is true of many other "protections," such as the right to procreate and parent.
Unfortunately, Child Welfare is not held accountable for the unattributable damage to children caused by removal from their families and foster care. However, it is well-documented damage. Shouldn't we, like doctors, use our professional judgment to "first, do no harm," rather than using it to forecast the future? It is the children who pay the ultimate price for this unqualified prophesying.
The Safety Model provides a useful tool that, if used correctly, can save many children from the fate of CPS being their only perpetrator.
Rich Rigney
Child Protective Services
Coos Bay, Oregon
THANK YOU WFU
THANK YOU ITS LOOKS REALLY GOOD 4 MY CASE YOU WERE THERE AND STILL ARE THERE PUTTING UP WITH ME ..I WANT TO HELP OTHERS AS WELL
SO IF ANY OF YOU IN SEATAC AND SURROUNDING AREAS NEEDS RESOURCES PLEASE EMAIL ME I WILL DO MY BEST TO HELP
CATHERINE
YOU ARE A BLESSING WFU
THANK YOU FROM LIAM MY SON AND I
HUGS TO YOU AND EVERY ONE ON THIS GROUP
YOU ALL ARE IN MY PRAYERS FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILIES
GOD BLESS
January 5, 2009
You and Linda are perfect spokeswomen for the issue, you will do great, and keep me posted.
I want to see you get the desired results that are so critical and don't like to see other's egos present an obstacle, my observation as you know.
Keep me posted,
Susan
January, 8th 2009
Well, as far as I know the current case was closed.
I recieved a letter (5 weeks after asking for it) stating that the
allegations are unfounded but that this does not mean that I am not
guilty.
What it does mean is that they don't have enough information to
remove my children from our home ( says so in the letter )
I have to say another Thank You! To Linda Harris & Bob Apple.
If it wasn't for the help and information I recieved ( in the nick of
time ) from Mr. Apple who then directed me to Linda I would probably
be writing a very different letter today.
In short this is what happend.
I refused to continue being a housekeeper to my mother and after
explaining this to her she informed me that " You have no idea the
damage I'll do to you "
Well... I did, I knew exactly what she was going to do and I was
right.
She called C.P.S. and contacted the socail worker that stole my
children in 2003 telling her that I smoke pot with my son, no food in
the house, didn't get my son medical attention for an extended period
of time after he accidently severed the median nerve in his arm
requiring 22 stitches and an operation ( he was brought to the
hospital by aid car since I was at my mothers when it happend and
because it was late she refused to take me to the hospital)and that I
was abusing my prescription drugs, and refusing to take medication
for Bi polar disorder LOL.
A different socail worker showed up at my house the day my son was
released from the hospital, she said that she came because the other
S.W. said I had threatend her.
( reality~ her husband threatend me with a gun outside a drug and
alcohol clinic)
I explained that my son was at his girlfriends and the doctor said
activity was okay as tolerated, my daughter was at a birthday party.
S.W. said I had until 4:30 that afternoon to present my children to
her at her office.
I panicked and made it.
I brought a witness with me who wrote a statement regarding my
parenting, I explained ( in tears) that the last time C.P.S. took my
children I was forced to admit to and say things that were untrue
because I was threatend with never seeing my kids again if I did not,
later finding out that her husband was running around with my ex
husband cheating on her at the time she took my kids.
The new S.W. spoke with my 17 yr old. son and listend as he told her
about reporting abuse by his grandmother to the other S.W. and then
the S.W. made him tell his grandmother what he said about her and he
told her of many other horrors he and his sister had endured a few
years earlier.
After cooperating with them for 2 months I called to find out what
was going to happen ( after many attempts to contact s.w.).
I was told that I had to do two things: 1. take a u.a. that day 2.
sign a release of information so they can get my medical records.
I had already provided them with a letter from my doctor stating what
meds I was taking and why and also that I had on a few occasions
brought unfilled ( narcotic) prescriptions back to his office along
with left over pain pills beacause they made me sick and that
addicts/ drug abusers do not do these things.
I immediatley left to take the U.A. but the paperwork wasn't signed
by the s.w. so after waiting for 2.5 hours I went to the C.P.S.
office and asked for the R.O.I. ( release of info ) it was not there.
I left a note with the date and time.
I did this for a week.
(I took the U.A. the following morning)
Finally the S.W. called me and was irritated that I had not asked for
the R.O.I. when I went to the office, I explained who I spoke with
and when and that I had done exactly as I was told.
She said she would be by my home in the morning at 10 a.m. w/ the
R.O.I.
She didn't show, in the meantime I was on the phone with Bob Apple
who directed me to Linda Harris who I sent an e-mail to.
I called the S.W. and she said she had court and wouldn't be able to
make it until after 4 p.m.
I checked my e-mail and Linda had responded leaving me her phone
number.
I called her and that's when it all turned around!
The information she gave me not only prevented them from getting a
hold of my personal medical records and continuing to harass my Dr.
but she empowered me.
When the S.W. showed up at 5:30 that night I had my notebook with all
my records and a tape recorder ready.
I apologized for wasting her time and then explained to her why I was
done cooperating, now it was up to them to make a decision.
It took another month and a half to be free of the feeling of
impending doom but it happend.
I have taken steps to ensure the safety of my daughter ( son is now
18) from C.P.S. by writing the letter Linda suggested and leaving it
with the school, staying away from my dear ol mom, educating my
children on what to do 'just in case' and taking my children and my
self to a psychiatrist for an evaluation(on record)proving I am not
now nor have I ever been bi polar and that my children are both
suffering from P.T.S.D. due to the actions of C.P.S. and their
grandmother.
I have recently applied for and been acceptted as a studen at a local
college, I am recieving grants to help pay for the education.
I have chosen Journalism and Business Management.
I am going to be another POWERFUL voice against the corruption!
Thank You Linda Harris and Bob Apple
The Culp Family ( a whole family )
Forever Grateful!
I want to thank CC for her friendship and hardwork to get my natalie home. Finally, she is coming home. I would love to volunteer and help other families that have been violated by the cps gestapo.
stephanie sunderland
