Social Worker Training

1. Social Worker Training "Here's a REAL CHALLENGE"

2. This training is called “Baby Blues” • Let’s start off by asking you a question; • How many times have you accused a parent of touching a baby inappropriately? • How many times have you heard a teacher tell her classroom students that it is OK to say no, to someone who touches them inappropriately?

3. This training is called “Baby Blues” • Did you ever think about what the word inappropriately mean to a six year old child? • Now lets do a little experiment, ready? • Go to the next slide. Short and sweet.

4. This training is called “Baby Blues” Your assignment Ms. Social Worker is to change this Baby, who has just messed his diaper WITHOUT TOUCHING HIM INAPPROPRIATELY ! Remember, these are your words, not ours.

5. This training is called “Baby Blues” • Now I ask you again. How many parents lives have you ruined because you have said they have touched their babies or their child inappropriately? If you changed this baby, YOU ARE NOW GUILTY OF THE SAME CRIME. • You are a “CHILD ABUSER” You can be put on the Child Abuse Registry, just like us. You don’t even get a trial.

6. This training is called “Baby Blues” • IF you have ever given your child a bath, you are guilty of “child abuse”, according to State of Missouri Division of Family Service Child Protection Agency by their own definition. • Should I come and take your children away from YOU? Yes, I should and I could ! • That is, if I was of the GESTAPO force called Child Protective Services. Still want to be part of this thing call CPS. Think about it. • What does this mean for parents, that simple acts of love, caring, nurturing are considered abuse. • All on the part of CPS it is for the FEDERAL FUNDING, and for Greed.

7. Parent’s Handbook To Child Protective Services The State as A Parent

8. A Parenting Lesson by the State:What is considered abuse? • Cleaning an infants bottom after a soiled diaper. • Undiagnosed medical problems. • Bathing a child if you are of the opposite sex parent. • Helping a child learn to wipe after toileting. • Helping special needs children dress due to age, toilet, bath, or after change after soiling him/herself. • A scared child sleeping with you at night or sneaking in bed with an older sibling. • Any form of discipline whether it is physical or not. • Past childhood trauma’s for foster/adoptive parents

9. Have you ever thought to yourself.. • What is with today’s kids? • Why are they so disrespectful? • Why do they act wild? • Why don’t their parents correct them? • Why are they out of control? • Where are their morals?

10. Child Protective Services Says: • Parents that are: 1.uneducated, 2. poor, 3. to stupid to marry & have children or are 4. unemployed are grounds to deny them their rights to be parents. • The Constitution Says: • The rights of parents to the care, custody and nurture of their children is of such character that it cannot be denied without violating those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions, and such right is a fundamental right protected by this amendment (First) and Amendments 5, 9, and 14.

11. Child Protective Services • Does this child look happy to be pulled away from their loving parents? • Notice the arm bent behind the child’s back and arm around the child’s neck to lead them away from their parents.

12. In Today’s World We Have…. • more single parent households • father’s that cannot be a father due to working several jobs to meet unrealistic child support guidelines • CPS as a parent, so parents can work to pay the state for raising their child • the adoption and family safe acts that promote the state to place children into foster care • BONUSES and INCENTIVES to sever parental rights, and split siblings into different homes.

13. Good People that Foster and Adopt are not immune to CPS • It is only a matter of time “when you will be hotlined” and not if you will be hotlined…. • Why? Due to all the emotional damage done to children in foster care. • Foster children are not able to bond in their new families. Due to reactive attachment disorder (RAD) from having their first natural bond from their parents severed. • Foster/adoptive parents who love these children are the first people that are attacked by these children due to their own emotional pain and anguish. • Many CHILDREN fall prey to the “whatever” syndrome because they have no choice in life anyways. CPS is their parent.

14. RAD arises from a failure to form normal attachments to primary caregivers in early childhood. Such a failure could result from severe early experiences of neglect, abuse, abrupt separation from caregivers between the ages of six months and three years, frequent change of caregivers, or a lack of caregiver responsiveness to a child's communicative efforts. Reactive Attachment Disorder

15. Symptoms of RAD • Superficially charming and engaging, particularly around strangers or those who they feel they can manipulate . • Indiscriminate affection, often to strangers; but not affectionate on parent’s terms. • Problems making eye contact, except when angry or lying. • A severe need to control everything and everyone; worsens as the child gets older. • Hypervigilant . • Hyperactive, yet lazy in performing tasks. • Argumentative, often over silly or insignificant things. • Frequent tantrums or rage, often over trivial issues.

16. Reactive Attachment Disorder • Demanding or clingy, often at inappropriate times • Trouble understanding cause and effect • Poor impulse control • Lacks morals, values, and spiritual faith • Little or no empathy; often have not developed a conscience • Cruelty to animals • Lying for no apparent reason • False allegations of abuse • Destructive to property or self • Stealing

17. At the heart of the criticism of family preservation is one overriding assumption: If you remove a child from the home, the child will be safe. If you leave a child at home the child is at risk. In fact, there is risk in either direction, but real family preservation programs have a better record for safety than foster care. And even when families don’t get special help. Two major new studies have found that children left in their own homes typically do better than comparably maltreated children placed in foster care. FOSTER CARE VS. FAMILY PRESERVATION

18. Child Protective Services are NOT Safe for Children. • To understand why, one must first understand one fundamental fact about foster care: It's not safe. Here's how we know: • National data on child abuse fatalities show that a child is nearly twice as likely to die of abuse in foster care as in the general population. • A study of reported abuse in Baltimore, found the rate of "substantiated" cases of sexual abuse in foster care more than four times higher than the rate in the general population. • Using the same methodology, an Indiana study found three times more physical abuse and twice the rate of sexual abuse in foster homes than in the general population. • In group homes there was more than ten times the rate of physical abuse and more than 28 times the rate of sexual abuse as in the general population, in part because so many children in the homes abused each other.

19. The Truth is: Children Do Better in their own homes. • Confronted with the fact that, for most children, family preservation is, in fact, the safer option, child savers sometimes seek to change the subject to children’s overall well-being. Maybe children are seriously safe, but they couldn’t really be doing better in life when left with birth parents, could they? • They could, and they do. • The largest study ever to try to measure well-being compared outcomes for more than 15,000 children who came to the attention of child protective services from 1990 through mid-2003. The study looked at teen pregnancy, juvenile arrests, and youth unemployment.

20. The Outcome of the Study • On every measure, children left with their own homes did better than comparably maltreated children placed in foster care. And that was true even though birth families generally got only the conventional “help” offered by child welfare agencies, not the exemplary interventions supported by NCCPR • When University of Minnesota researchers compared children left in their own homes with comparably maltreated children placed in foster care, they too found that the children left in their own homes did better, even when the birth families got little or no help at all.[17]

21. Three Primary Reasons This Works • 1. Proven programs to keep families together: When child welfare systems take family preservation seriously, foster care populations stabilize or decline.. • 2. Family preservation workers see families in many different settings for many hours at a time and are better trained then any conventional child protective service worker. • 3. As for the better well-being for children left in their own homes, that is no testament to typical services for families. Rather it is evidence of just how toxic an intervention it really is to tear a child from everyone she or he knows and loves. • Anything that toxic should be used sparingly and in very small doses. • http://www.nccpr.org/newissues/1.html

22. What Happens When CPS Knocks Children are taken….

23. When Allegations Are Made…. • In my case the allegations always occurred after my adopted (not biological) children were disciplined at home for inappropriate behavior. • In other’s cases foster/adoptive children make allegations when they feel they are going to teach the foster/adoptive parent a lesson. The children in foster care do this when they feel out of control of any situation. • Other allegations stem from school counselors and their questionnaires that the children are asked to fill out. • Teachers and other mandated reporters who are not in the home often make hotline calls, regardless if they know the situation or not. • This means that the family will have contact with a Child Protection Worker, whether they give consent or not.

24. Social Workers Are Dispatched To the Child for an informal interview • Once an allegation is made CPS responds to the hotline. • The safest place for CPS to conduct an interview without parental consent or knowledge is on the PUBLIC (Federally Funding) School Property • Missouri Child Welfare Manual States: • 4.1.4.1 Interviewing the Child(ren) Alone • Interview the alleged victim separately or alone. • Other times after hours CPS will visit your home, and if you deny them access to your children or to interview your children without your presence. You will be told that they will call the police and will take your child into custody. • It is the scare tactic that they use under the color of law. Although we have as parents constitutional rights.

25. The Constitution Says; • It’s our Fourth Amendment Right to be: • The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

26. Calabretta v. Floyd 4th Amendment • Yolo County, CA—Social workers are bound to obey the U.S. Constitution when investigating child abuse cases, said a unanimous three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in an opinion handed down Thursday, August 26, 1999. • "This opinion will have a nationwide impact. With respect to the Fourth Amendment, the Ninth Circuit settled the social worker question once and for all. No longer can social workers enter a home without either a warrant or probable cause of an emergency," said Michael Farris, lead attorney for the plaintiffs with HSLD.

27. 4th Amendment Rights and Escondido CPS • CPS with the help of local police seized two children from a home in the middle of the night and without a warrant. Three days later, CPS had the children examined at a hospital without their parents present, and despite finding no evidence of abuse, kept the children for a total of 2 1/2 months. • With this decision, the Ninth Circuit opened the way for the family to sue for "damages on the allegations of civil rights violations, abduction of the children and infliction of emotional distress.” • In My Case: CPS and the local police department opened my front door and began searching my home without a warrant while I was in the shower.

28. The Public School System • The Social Workers use a phrase called “loco parentis” this is the perfect STORM. • CPS has unlimited access to any child(ren) that attends public “federally funded” schools. • School under this doctrine can act in place of the legal parent or guardian and consent to any such interview even against the parent’s wishes. MIRANDA and HATCH AGREEMENTS are necessary to protect the rights of children that attend public school and their parents • Missouri Child Welfare Manual States: • When the victim(s) is enrolled in school, the school liaison must be contacted. The liaison is a valuable source of information and an active member of the multidisciplinary team. Communication between CD and the liaison should be ongoing, when appropriate, to enhance services to the child and family

29. Once an Interview has Occurred • CPS can take your child from school and can prevent you from having any other contact with your child until they see fit. Although you have rights under the Constitution. • CPS and the Juvenile Office file a petition and submit it to to the judge in your county. The Judge (RUBBER STAMPS IT) to take the child into custody with no proof of any wrong doing. • The Judge’s Bench Book Says, “Better to Erroronthesideof caution, safety and the best interest ofthechild.” • It doesn’t say anything about sympathy for innocent parents dragged through this court system.

30. After the Initial Petition is Filed. • After the allegation, the petition has been filed, the CPS worker along side of the juvenile officer and the judge has RUBBER stamped the petition. • The Forensic Interview is the next step. • The CPS worker can arrange without your consent: 1. Forensic taped interviews of your child, 2. Medical, physical, psychological testing, or examinations 3. Or any other testing • This occurs routinely under the authority of CPS. • No parental consent is needed, nor are you allowed to attend, have knowledge of, or attend these appointments. • You may also not have the physician name address or telephone number.

31. CPS versus Constitution • Constitutional Rights - Applied to both parents and children. Parents have the constitutional right to rear their children as they see fit provided the child's general welfare is protected. • Right to Counsel - The parent's right to counsel may vary from state to state. • Under Missouri laws an indigent parent is entitled to have an attorney appointed in actions for termination of parental rights. In cases of child abuse or neglect, where the parent is a minor, mentally ill, or incompetent, the parent is entitled to appointment of a 'GAL'. • Right to an Impartial Hearing - Before children can be removed from a home, parents and children have the right to a hearing before an impartial judge.Right of family integrity - Before removal of a child, attempts should be made to strengthen and rehabilitate the family. (This is currently a Federal regulation as well; i.e., Efforts to Prevent Placement.) Therefore, courts will generally support a preference for the child to remain in the natural home.

32. Child Protective Services Policy • Protective custody hearings- the Juvenile Office has twenty-four hours to get an order from the judge continuing the protective custody. The parent can request a protective custody hearing. If they do request a protective custody hearing, it must be held within 72 hours (excluding weekends and holidays) of the request, unless continued for good cause. These are held to determine if the court has grounds to hold the child until the adjudicatory hearing. The detention hearing must be held within 72 hours excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays. • What happened to Impartial hearing in front of the judge before the child is removed? Never happened in my case. The hearing was held over a week later, in a different county even though policy and procedure dictated otherwise.

33. CPS The Perfect “STORM” • Happens when the child that you love, nurture, and have raised is taken for no apparent reason. • The parents feel like they did not protect their child from being kidnapped. • The child was taken without proper execution of a court order or search warrant. • To add to the CHAOS, CPS does not follow their own policy and procedures in their Child Welfare Manual. • Often parents do not even know what has happened

34. Revised MO Statute Sec. 210.565 • Section 210.565, RSMo, requires the Division to give preference and first consideration for foster care placement to a grandparent of a child during the first three hours after custody. • If grandparents are not available or are not interested in caring for their grandchild, • other relatives should be given first preference and first consideration over non-related kinship placement providers, if the court has determined that relative placement is not contrary to the best interests of the child. • The Court of jurisdiction must make specific findings on the record detailing why placement with a relative is not in the best interests of the child. If a child is not placed with a grandparent or a relative, staff must document in the case narrative and on the child’s CS-1 why placement with relatives was not in the best interest of the child.

35. Child Protective Services Placement • CPS sometimes follows the recommendation to find kinship care, but more often then not they just check mark that box that says: • NO EFFORT MADE

36. Notification of FST Meetings • No notice of family service team meeting arrives at your home, or if you have retained an attorney no proper notification is made on the part of CPS. • WHY? • Because “CPS” is then able to label the parents as refusing to comply with the family service team meeting. • In my own case they did not have my address. Yet, “They mailed me a check each mother for adoption subsidy.”

37. Interviews Conducted by CPS • The other siblings are interviewed in secret at the school, the counselors are trying to convince the siblings it’s safe to tell of the abuse, and even try to put words in their mouths. • In this case, “my own children were baffled, due to nothing my child claimed happened, did happen at our home.” • That did not stop CPS, and the school counselor to try and coax them to say it…. • One child even said, “If we were being abused I would of left on my own accord I am 17.”

38. The Initial Hearing • When the first hearing is held, CPS is still deciding a date, the official abuse that occurred, and is trying to get the child into counseling to twist their words. • If it’s sexual abuse “which is the most popular among teens.” they move the offending parent out of the home, and put in place a safety plan.” Why?? Due to there is not proof of any occurrence yet the child can fabricate a story and be believed. • This safety plan dictates who your child/children can be around and if you don’t sign it.. It’s grounds for them to steal the rest of your children, and place them in care.. WHY???? • MOTHER FAILS to PROTECT THE CHILD/DREN from FUTURE HARM. • The first hearing is about generating enough evidence to believe that the child should stay in care.

39. The Truth Behind the Lie • As with all of human behavior, there are numerous reasons why a person would lie about being raped. In the study of false rape allegations in the midwestern town and state universities, over half of the accusers fabricated the rape to serve as a "cover story" or alibi. This included 56% of the non-student and 53% of the student false accusers. • The most frequent context and motive for the fabricated rape was consensual sex with an acquaintance that led to some sort of problem for the accuser. The perceived problem was typically something that caused feelings of shame and guilt in the accuser (such as contracting a sexually transmitted disease or becoming pregnant), which was bound to be discovered and received negatively by family or friends.

40. Revenge, Rage, or Retribution • Approximately half of the accusers who were motivated by a need for an alibi identified the alleged rapist. Their goal was not to harm or cause problems for the acquaintance, but to protect themselves in what they perceived to be a desperate situation. As with most lies, the false rape accusation allowed the accuser to deny responsibility by creating an alternate reality into which to escape. • The next most common reason for lying about being a victim of rape was revenge, rage, or retribution. In the Midwest study, this included 27% of the non-student and 44% of the student accusers. In these cases, the false victim had suffered some real or perceived wrong, rejection, or betrayal by the alleged rapist. As the purpose of making the accusation was to obtain some measure of revenge, the "suspect" was always identified. • http://www.theforensicexaminer.com/archive/spring09/15/

41. An Assault on Justice • As with certain false allegations of child sexual abuse, false allegations of rape may be the unfortunate byproduct of "recovered memory therapy." False allegations (of child abuse and domestic violence, as well as rape) are also known to arise in the context of divorce and disputed child custody. Within the context of the military, false reports of rape may be filed in order to avoid deployment to war zones.

42. Your Constitutional Rights • If you submit to a polygraph, they can say you are guilty, to pressure you to say it happened, even when it did not. • This exam is conducted by contracted employees of CPS (it’s the same theory of letting the fox guard the hen house) • If you do not submit to it because it will not stand up in a court of law, then you are GUILTY. • If you get an attorney to protect your right’s you are GUILTY. • If you do not cooperate you are GUILTY. • If your attorney tells you not to submit to any CPS interviews, or police interrogations...Then you are GUILTY.

43. No Parental Visitation is Allowed • When you do not submit to what CPS wants, polygraph, interviews, safety plans… • THEN • YOU are NOT allowed CONTACT with your child. • The term they use is, your child chooses not to have contact with you. • This is often told to you by the GAL, that has not even contacted you and will not contact you. Why, although it’s an important part of the case and his duty, they only need CPS story.

44. Parents Become: • scared to answer the front door (post traumatic stress) leave the shades closed, are paranoid of being arrested. • get depressed, can’t sleep, can’t eat, become withdrawn. • are emotionally upset with fret, worry, depression and cannot function. • are unable to care for children left in the home, loss of wages due to court hearings, and suffer intentional infliction of emotional distress. • lose their home, children, significant relationships, or CPS tells them if they want their children to file for divorce.

45. The Social Workers, Judges, Caseworkers, Therapists, and Gal's • ARE IMMUNED TO PROSECUTION. • Even if the child was taken and no cause was given, or any truth to it…and the emotional trauma that has been inflicted to both the child, parents and siblings there is no legal recourse… • NO ACCOUNTABILITY • The system is flawed terribly…..

46. The Adjudication • Although the policy manual states adjudication should happen within 30 days, and in special cases no longer then 120. • Research shows that the child rarely is reunified in the family home by that date and is in care much longer. • The longer the child is in care, the more the State earns in Federal FUNDING and that means $$$$ for the State Budget.For CPS it means bonuses, and incentives to place. • That is why CPS needs to continue placing children into foster care and find placements in adoptive homes. To continue to meet the guidelines for Federal Funding. It’s all about the CA$H.

47. Isn’t Due Process A Constitutional Right? • When parents are accused but has CPS has NO proof of misconduct ...CPS offers an alternative pleading they offer what’s being door number 1, or 2, or 3. • They bargain with the parents to admit to guilt of lesser wrong doing. • Many parents are uneducated, have no legal representation, or have court appointed legal aid. • Most legal aid attorneys have no experience with CPS and Juvenile Court and parents who are trusting error on the side of their inexperienced attorney. • Which causes more upheaval agreeing to something you have not done in order to just get it over with.

48. How Due Process is Violated.. • CPS offers a lesser of the first evil, • To convince the innocent and unsuspecting parent to sign an order of guilt. • Then CPS substantiated the alleged incident • The possibilities are endless: you can be placed on the child abuse/neglect registry, sex offender list, child made a ward of the state, the child is placed in group home, or adoptive home. • You can be arrested, and convicted of a crime you did not commit. • Contributing factors are: The inexperience of the attorney, and the pressure of CPS.

49. CPS was designed to help families • CPS has to follow Federal Funding Guidelines they cannot collect the money unless the parents agrees to in-home services or the child remains in out of home care. • Either way you can sign and admit guilt, or the judge can rubber stamp it. • Social Security ACT Title IV-E and IV-B are financial incentives for the State to keep your child in care and bonuses are given to the CPS worker. • Why, didn’t CPS help the family? I mean that is what they are about, right? • WRONG

50. Administrative Court…AKA Kangaroo Court • Juvenile court does not follow any guidelines of evidence or standard of evidence. • The words that get you: Preponderance of Evidence. • Hence the knick name that many attorney’s, judges, therapists, parents, etc call this court do to anything goes there are no REAL rules. • Why because no parent, or child, has any type of Constitutional Rights in this court and no one can monitor this court due to it’s CLOSED hearings policy. Which aids in these injustices being committed. Open court is monitored, and unjust are rectified due to being in the public eye.