Arnold, if I heard the kids crying out in the street at 2:00 am that mommy left at midnight and didn’t come back, I am calling the cops first thing. Those poor kids. 
And fuck that teenager- those kids could have been hurt or gone, and she probably wouldn’t have even noticed in the morning that they were missing… :mad:
You did the right thing. There are some good cops in CM.
There have been many cases of CPS misconduct and there are currently few protections for parents against CPS charges. Someone can bring out an unfounded accusation and the parents will need to defend themselves against it because officials will have to take it seriously. Yes, your kids could be taken away even if you have done nothing illegal, immoral, or even slightly wrong to them.
If you don’t see the kind of emotional trauma that a 4 or 6 year old kid would have in being separated from their parents and siblings for at least a day or two while they go through the system, and possibly not even being informed about what’s going on, then I don’t know what to tell you. It’s not a fun thing. Kids sometimes blame themselves for being taken away from their parents. And like I said, even problem kids are traumatized by simple separation. I think that you should do it only when absolutely necessary.
Kids have also been sexually and physically assaulted by other kids while in CPS custody, which is something else you should take into consideration. Kids who were taken away from parents for relatively minor problems at home have ben put with foster parents who were abusive, making their new living situation much worse than when they were with their own parents.
I’m not seeing any abuse at all here, just some kids doing something dumb, and a teenager not even realizing how serious the situation could have become. None of us have any idea how the kids got out, but I’d be willing to bet that the door was locked, and they unlocked it and went out on their own. I don’t see how anyone, parent, teenager, or otherwise, could have taken more stringent protections against such an odd occurrence. Frankly I find it very disturbing that so many people in this thread are clamoring for the kids to be taken away.
I’m sorry, I missed that part of the thread. “Clamoring”? Really? Or mentioning that if intervention becomes warranted in the future, the police now have a clear understanding and written documentation of this incident? World of difference. Wouldn’t you be happier if more CPS cases had clear, long-standing documentation? Wouldn’t that make it less likely for mistakes? Didn’t the police officer in the OP basically agree with everything you’re saying by working very hard to make sure the kids didn’t end up with child services that night?
I think it’s a big stretch to make that kind of statement about CPS agencies everywhere. I was a child/family mental health clinician and worked closely with CPS here in Massachusetts and there were plenty of times when the kids I worked with would have been well-served to be taken out of their homes but the system here favors family unification and didn’t/wouldn’t do so. IME, **that **was the true misconduct. None of the kids I worked with who were eventually moved to foster care ended up harmed in foster care. Usually they didn’t want to go back to their parents. I’m not saying it’s always like that, but that’s a pretty broad brush you were painting with.
I usually don’t pay too much attention to user names, so I didn’t realize that the same person, Magiver, posted a couple of times about having the kids taken away. Cat Fight’s comment, “And the cop – he must see that, and worse, all the time, knowing that it’s ‘best’ to keep kids with their parents whenever possible,” implies that she thinks the kids should have been taken away too. Clamoring was an overstatement.
However, I think most of you have been ridiculously critical of the girl and her mother. It’s hardly neglect when, as I and a few other people pointed out, everyone should have been asleep, and there’s no indication that the older sister did anything really stupid like leave the front door hanging open. Maybe I’m an unusual kid, but I remember several times when I woke up in the middle of the night and wandered around the house, went out into the back yard, or messed around in the garage. We lived out in the country when I was really little, so it was black and scary out there, and I knew that there were dangerous animals, so I wouldn’t have gone out.
When we lived in the city I was older and, though we lived in the “good” part of town, it had a high crime rate. My dad drilled into our heads the idea that you never leave windows or doors unlocked, and you never go out at night by yourself. Someone who wasn’t quite so hardcore as my dad might not go that far. And I can easily see a 4 year old not getting it anyway, or letting the distress at not finding mom in bed when he woke up overriding any admonitions not to go out of the house.
I still disagree with most of the people who said that getting the police and CPS involved was the best thing to do. The first thing should have been to find out if anyone was home and let them know that there was a problem. It’s not like the kids were starved, beaten, or abused in any other way. I mean, really, how are you going to guard against something like this without knowing in advance that your kid would so something so weird?
Documenting a history of problems is all well and good, but if you are a normally responsible parent who had a freak occurrence like this happen, how would you feel if the kids had actually been taken away? How victimized would you feel by the system? How upset would your kids be? How paranoid would you be in the future, knowing that this isolated incident was part of your case file? If you ever had an argument with your teenager about anything, that kid could just call CPS and probably have the younger ones taken away. If you had an argument with your SO and the neighbors call, there’s another mark on your “permanent record” as it were.
Yes, I’m very glad that the police officer didn’t have the kids taken away. By the way, the way his question was phrased, I doubt any of you would have had a very good answer if you were in the girl’s position. Would she know what kind of answer would satisfy him? Would she know what calling CPS entailed? Would she know how serious of an issue this was? I wouldn’t be particularly articulate in that situation, and I doubt my composure would be helped by the fact that he’s a cop asking me question like that in a demanding way. Maybe you guys would be assertive and concise, but a 17 year old me in that situation would definitely not have been.
lorene, I acknowledge that any child care program is a challenging responsibility, and that you can’t make sweeping statements about all of them, but there have been documented abuses, and the general procedures and policies themselves lend themselves to injustices. Just because it didn’t happen in your area doesn’t mean that CPS is always trustworthy. For the record, I lived in San Diego when I worked with that program around 1998. I dare say the Alicia Wade case was still pretty fresh in people’s minds, so if anything they were erring on the other side of things when I was there.
I didn’t say that the kids would definitely be abused, or that there weren’t cases where the kids are much better off not being at home, I said, “You should be damn sure that the living conditions of the home are absolutely fucked up before making a decision to get the kids out.” In other words, taking the kids into CPS custody should not be a first step, it should be considered when the benefits outweigh the harm.
On the other hand, you were far more closely involved with the system than I was. Of course, in your position you’d be seeing the kids who actually did need to be out of their homes, because if they were getting counseling then that’s a pretty good indication that there was a documented need for them to be removed from parental custody.
I absolutely agree with your last statement, and FTR, I don’t think there was a need to get CPS involved in this particular case.
There’s been a lot of questioning about why this girl didn’t feel more responsibility for her (half) siblings, but it doesn’t sound like she was living with them and may not have even known them all that well. It also sounds like the mother could conceivably have left the girl without explaining anything about their tendency to wander, etc. Sure, it would be nice if the girl had been better prepared and more willing to take responsibility, but responsibility doesn’t appear (from what little I know) to be something that the mom is putting a high priority on and teaching her kids.
I’m a teacher and we are warned to avoid being alone with pupils without clearing it first.
Consider your worst-case possibility:
…and what do you do now?