Or, more succinctly, Spice Weasel’s professor challenged the CPS Establishment, and they didn’t like that.
Right. Which made me like him. Because I think he was motivated by genuine concern for children and freaking out that nobody was looking at the data, and as someone who is huge into evidence-based approaches to mental health, I’ve encountered that same kind of resistance in the psychological field. I think my personal crusade against certain types of therapy is now a little more tempered than it was at the time, but I felt ideologically separate from my peers based on my evidence-based leanings alone. So here’s this guy fighting the same good fight, just on a different front, and I gravitated toward that. I didn’t really give a damn what his political leanings were because I’m really actually interested in policies that work regardless of where they come from.
I also loved that he hated that schmaltzy starfish story. I like starfish and all but his main point was essentially, ''Why keep throwing starfish back in the sea when you could figure out why they’re getting stranded in the first place?"
Now I fully recognize that it takes every sort of person in every sort of role to make any kind of system reform work, and that we need clinical people just as much as macro people. But I was/am a macro person and I enjoyed seeing that view getting some respect. Most people don’t even know that macro social work is a thing. In fact, at the last place I worked in New Jersey, some fresh-faced Americorps kid once asked me, the Development Associate of a $12m nonprofit, why I left social work. Ouch, kid.
I thought my Dean/professor was a great teacher in the way he presented material, but he wasn’t very tactful at all and often rude to students. I think people did have issues with him based solely on his political leanings, because social work is traditionally a very liberal profession, but his behavior didn’t help. He is no longer at that school and I’m not sure what if any drama led to him leaving.
I would very much be interested in that.
I totally think you should do this. My (three) experiences with CPS as a mandated reporter don’t give me a great insight into how it all works, but the stories you see circulated on the internet are always very extreme, to the point where people with some sort of routine contact with these agencies think they’ll either take away the kids or ignore serious danger to children as a rule.
A lot of what’s bandied about in stories about CPS is cherry-picking extreme cases or storytelling fictional cases, and I think a realistic thread from someone with above-average time in this system would be a great help.
That might be impression he gives, but it’s not entirely accurate. I worked for the same agency at around the same time and a bachelor’s degree was a requirement by the '80s. That doesn’t mean everyone had one by then - people don’t lose their jobs when education requirements increase, and there were people hired in the '50s who were still there in the '80s. And there were plenty of others with who had MSWs and were licensed social workers.
I have no problem believing that few reports from schools are substantiated, because in my experience, school personnel are the worst of the mandated reporters for a couple of reasons. In my state, mandated reporters are required to report when they have reasonable cause to suspect abuse or neglect. It does not mean they must report every bruise a child has. I received a lot of reports from schools where I couldn’t figure out why they reported a particular injury - there wasn’t anything suspicious about the injury itself and the explanation given made sense. When I asked the reporter why the report was made , I got some variation of “We didn’t know if they were telling the truth”. But that’s not the standard. * This never happened with doctors or nurses or cops or psychologists- only with schools and teachers.
Additionally, at the end of every school year reports would flood in alleging educational neglect. And lots of them were unsubstantiated not because they weren’t true but because they were literally called in on the last day the school was open. Which meant that I couldn’t contact the school personnel within the required timeframe to complete an investigation which meant that the allegation was unsubstantiated.
- if someone has a bruise on their leg and says they bumped into a piece of furniture, I don’t know that they are telling the truth, but I have no reason to be suspicious based only on that information.
doreen, I hope you’ll join that ‘‘ask the…’’ thread, too.
I know there are different classifications of cases but not really what the evidentiary standard is, practically speaking. But I know every state has its own standard, which I found kind of frustrating as someone who wanted to look at national data. One of the reasons it’s hard to generalize nationally is that every state has its own system, standards, and procedures.
I would put the well-being of my kids (and my legal rights) over those assholes, but maybe that’s just me. Such as: Hell no, some government agent would not be interviewing my young child without me. Fwiw, I’ve had 2 investigations and responded to a 3rd by telling people to fuck off and never heard back… all because my son was a victim of school bullying and the government can’t accept that kids are bullied and face threats outside of the home. If your kids have an issue, it must be the parents fault even if all evidence is to the contrary.
When my son broke his arm, and was in the emergency room, someone who had some kind of training in evaluating injured children for potential abuse was required to look at him (“clear” him)-- this is apparently something done for any child with a broken bone-- and there was a note in his chart “Normal bruising for a child his age.” He had a few coin-sized bruises on his shins, which he perpetually has, but none anywhere else, IIRC.
It’s a good thing we weren’t asked to account for them. I have no idea where he picks up bruises, and mostly he doesn’t either. Once he had a big one on his arm, and I asked him where he’d gotten it, and he looked at it in surprise. He didn’t even know he had it.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to give the impression with my example that bruises are suspicious if there is no specific explanation. If I had thought of your example, I would have used that instead - my point was really that the hospital in your case saw the bruises, didn’t find them suspicious because kids get bruises and there was nothing about these ones to make them suspicious and presumably didn’t report them to CPS but schools/teachers are more likely than hospitals or doctors to report injuries that they don’t actually find suspicious because “We don’t really know”.
Oh, I was trying to back you up by pointing out that people who know what they are doing know that not all bruises are a reason for suspicion. Even in a kid with a broken arm.
I think there’s a little paranoia operating in teachers though. None of them wants to be the teacher who overlooked a bruise this week, just to have the kid beaten to death the next week.
However, few schools give teachers any kind of practical training in what kind of bruises are suspicious, and what aren’t. I had to go to a training once, and was shown several pictures of what bruises made by a open hand, a fist, or a hand grabbing someone looked like, and had it explained why bruises on the back and stomach were more suspicious than bruises on the legs and arms. We learned things like what a set of bruises at the same stage of healing, but different degrees of severity, vs. bruises at different stages of healing looked like, so that a story like “I fell off my bike” could be plausible in one case and not the other.
Someone said something about how much teachers had to know besides the 3 Rs, and we were told that few teachers got this kind of training. We were shocked. We couldn’t believe anyone who was a mandatory reporter didn’t get this training.
My niece broke her leg around the time she was beginning to walk. This was briefly investigated, but she was (and still is) a fearless sort of person and at that age was climbing up and falling off of a lot of stuff (even with one leg in a cast). So… accident, family cleared.
Ironically, her mother had also had a somewhat similar situation many years ago - she acquired a lot of bruises even for a toddler, but, again, it was basically down to her being both active and a klutz (no broken bones, but at one point she sported two black eyes at the same time).
So… kids get hurt. Having someone ask “is this situation reasonable?” isn’t totally out of line, really.
For that matter, when my late spouse was very ill and debilitated at one point they separated the two of us and asked him if he felt safe in the home, had anyone hurt/neglected him, etc. Wasn’t really happy about it myself, and he was actually pissed off about it (viewing it as a slam against me - he was always a bit defensive/protective of me) but I understand why it was done. Vulnerable people - children, the elderly, the disabled - are just that, vulnerable, and caregivers aren’t always what we would want them to be.
I hope it all works out OK for the OP. I understand it’s stressful and even frightening, but most of the time it works out OK. We hear about the disasters in the news, we don’t hear about the 999 times it works out fine for every 1 that’s horrific.
Five days later (including two business days) do you have any updates or good news?
This is correct. I work for a public elementary school, and we are not required to have parent permission, presence, or anything else for a student to be interviewed by CPS on school property during school hours. If CPS shows up asking to speak with a child, we will immediately fetch the child, end of story. I think a teacher or other staff member preferred by the student would be allowed to sit in with them if the student wanted, but I’m not 100% sure. A call from a parent demanding that CPS not be allowed to talk to their child would be ignored and definitely send up big honking red flags.
We didn’t demand anything. We asked them to let them know that we wanted to discuss our legal right with a lawyer first. and what red flags? Our son is a happy kid with a penchant for being a bit loud and very active.
This is the issue we have right now, some jackass without kids can bring this painful, embarrassing, episode that is a huge waste of time to a great, close, loving family, and all everyone can talk about is “Red flags” and assumptions about how we must be bad parents.
As mentioned above it turns out the VAST MAJORITY of these allegations are unfounded, there’s got to be a better way of handling this than allowing people to use CPS as a weapon for neighbors or people they don’t like.
As an update for us, we passed the drug test, not surprise there, but now we are being asked to submit to a 45 minute meeting about drug use. Can you imagine this, we have to take time from our responsibilities to sit and talk about drug use for a combined hour and a half even though we passed the damn drug test!
My wife is constantly in tears as this has affected her deeply, and I’m stressed because of my change in work, I’m freelancing and I need to work in order to get paid, I can’t be taking time off anymore,e at least until I find a salaried position.
What else are these people going to judge us on, what other hoops are we going to have to jump through?
We’re angry mostly at the power some random stranger has over us in this manner. There NEEDS to be a better process.
That will be seen as a negative by the social services - if you’re innocent why do you need a lawyer, right?
I might have missed it - you know who made the accusation? Because otherwise your assumption that the accuser doesn’t have kids of their own is a bit… prejudicial on your part.
And yes, some things many people don’t even think about can be seen as red flags, even if nothing bad is going on at all. Earlier someone talked about barefoot kids and “dirt slippers” - when I was a young child I was always taking my shoes off and running barefoot, and had staining on the soles of my feet because of that, and it wasn’t for lack of my parents providing shoes or my parents trying to get me to wear them. I still walk around barefoot when I can, and I still occasionally sport “dirt slippers”.
One of my sisters as a child was told to draw a picture of the family. Much hullababoo over the “noose” she drew around dad’s neck - OMG! What horrors are occurring?!?! Turns out it was a six year old’s attempt to draw a neck tie.
And all that was 40+ years ago when things were far more lax than today. Heck, as young as 7 I was sometimes left alone in the house while mom ran out for a quick errand, and home alone after school from about 10 or 11 onward. Oh, heavens, I’d walk my self to school as young as 7 as well, nearly a whole mile! These days that could certainly warrant a visit from CPS.
A lot of things routinely done back then are considered abuse or neglect these days, and frankly, it seems that people with kids are the more anal about all this than the people without.
This is because people have consistently voted into office “tough” politicians and people have consistently demanded that social services not “coddle” people, that people be given “incentives” to improve up to an including prosecution and the assumption that those accused are guilty until proven innocent. Not to mention cutting and cutting and cutting social services so everyone involved is overworked and stressed.
The American people have generated this morass. And no one cares until they’re caught in the net. This sort of thing is instituted to “do something” whether they’re effective or not, and as long as those affected are a minority (or, better yet, are minorities) no one else gives a damn, or even heartily approves.
Yes, you have to take time from your responsibilities for this meeting you don’t think you need. That’s the requirement born of the war on drugs and war on this or that substance. It comes from the belief that people with a drug problem are bad people and bad parents. It comes from a Puritan source that demands people be impeccable at all times and in all things, that are anti social/causal use of things like alcohol. It comes from a demand that parents be absolutely perfect at all times and never, ever make a mistake or be less than perfect.
The. System. Does. Not. Care.
The social services do not care if complying with their demands will cost you your livelihood. There is a notion in society that “good parents” will do whatever they have to for their kids, including losing a job because a social service agency demands their presence.
They can judge you on anything and everything. They can judge you on whether your kids are skinny (not feeding them enough?) or overweight (bad parents providing a bad diet); whether each kid has his or her own room or has to share a room; on whether or not dress them properly by someone else’s standards; whether or not their clean enough; the babysitters or daycare you use or don’t use; and a thousand other picky details.
You are expected to comply promptly and happily with any and all demands - any sign of resistance or even hesitation can be seen in a negative light.
Yes. There does.
So vote for people in favor of increasing funding to social services so the caseworkers aren’t themselves overworked, over stressed, and can make real investigations instead of ticking off checkboxes before careening to the next case. Vote for people who are kinder and less judgmental that who is currently in office. Vote for people concerned more with genuine solutions than merely punishing people.
I can’t believe they didn’t come after me when my kids were young. In grade school, when my kids were being taught “DRUGS ARE BAD!”, I educated them about insulin, antibiotics, chemo, etc that are all drugs that kept people healthy. My kids told their friends that not all drugs were “bad”, so the school spoke to me about my attitude but I held fast.
I wouldn’t have passed a drug test, nor would I have spoken to CYS without an attorney present. What a mess.
Excellent Post
This is why CPS have to Err on the side of caution. 4 LA CPS workers basically allowed an 8 year old to be abused until he was finally murdered. Now they will likely go to prison.
This is what it’s felt like. We’re guilty until proven innocent.
We have a good idea. From the details of the allegation, how we were referred to, etc, we know it’s a neighbor. And no one in the building has kids. The fact that the allegations must surely stem from our son crying because he doesn’t want to go to school or just being a regular loud 3 year old (we live in an old apartment building so we hear the neighbors and they hear us pretty well), we reasoned it’s someone that doesn’t have a clue what a 3 year old is like and assumes he must be being abused… or, it’s just a neighbor that doesn’t like us for whatever reason.
I’m ashamed of not having voted the past few elections, of course you’re right.
This seems like absolute incompetence on the part of the case investigators and nothing to do with reasons as to why they need to err on the side of caution.
But, good news, we spoke to our case worker, it looks like they are moving to close our case after thanksgiving. I hope we don’t have to deal with this ever again. Thank you guys for your advice, comments and support 
I love having this forum board as a lifeline for, well, life.
Looking closer at other articles on the case of the social workers involved with that poor little boy, it looks like it was a combination of missing several “red flags” (in this case being previous involvement with CPS and beatings, and several teachers expressing concern) and being stretched too thin. Again, lack of funding playing a role, but I guess the politicians who underfunded these programs won’t be held accountable.
What good news. I hope the nightmare is over for your family.