When the State Takes Kids Away From Parents: Three Perspectives

A former child protective services worker who took kids from parents, a woman who was abused as a child, and a wrongly accused father tell their stories.

A. Strakey/Flickr

In the reader correspondence that follows, a former child protective services worker shares her perspective on the system, the difficulty of working within it, and its paternalistic excesses. A woman who says the system saved her from an abusive father doubts the narrative that CPS is overaggressive at protecting kids. And a father investigated for child abuse says that the experienceradicalized him.

First, the experiences of a woman whose job included taking kids away from their parents:

Opinions usually fell into one of two predictable camps: as a CPS worker you were either accused of doing too little to protect the children involved, or of being too invasive, at best another mindless bureaucrat and at worst a power-happy sadist that got off on telling others how to raise their kids. In truth, both are often correct. Ive seen them personally. And its a problem. Most workers, however, fall somewhere along the wide spectrum in between, and where they fall will be influenced more by their local inter-and-intra-agency culture than any statute.

Thinking of the mother of the 9-year-old, I realize I am not privy to the details of the case. I understand there is a lot I dont know. Things like, does this mom have a history of abusing or neglecting this child or other children? Did the child have any special needs that made her especially vulnerable to being unsupervised? Did the child have any other signs of abuse like severe bruising or physical injuries, or of neglect such as obvious malnutrition or chronic head lice, or any other incalculable number of things? These would no doubt make a huge impact on my opinion of the situation, but as it stands what I read is this: a 9-year-old girl was left with a cellular phone at a playground near her mothers workplace with adequate shade and access to water. Upon learning that her mother was not present, an adult called the police. So far, I vilify neither the caller for calling nor the police for responding. It is what happens next that I strongly question.

Apparently, the best answer to this case was to remove the child from her mothers custody, put her in foster care, and arrest the mother. Ill be blunt: this is insane.

I agree that an investigation to ensure the child is being cared for adequately isnt an entirely bad idea, and I would even agree that other arrangements for the daughters care while mom is at work would be better. This, however, can be accomplished without removing the child from her home and certainly without arresting the mother (which, honestly, just seems asinine to me). In fact, depending on whether any other signs of abuse or neglect were present, it might not be strictly necessary to carry out a full investigation. CPS (dependent on that specific states statutes) may have been able to warn the mother and offer her help in finding affordable or even subsidized childcare. CPS workers generally have some latitude. Depending on the state, however, this is not always an option.

Yet even when an investigation is opened, if a parent says that they have no access to childcare while they are at work, guess who can help? Childrens Services. Or did we forget that they are, in fact, services? That workers are Social Service Workers, not mini-cops or pseudo-judges. Its a lot of power, to be able to remove a child from their home and family, to prohibit or require supervision of contact between family members,tolegally terminate a parents right to their child.

CPS workers and their supervisors have a staggering breadth of power, power that must be wielded with the utmost care, judiciousness, and perhaps most importantly, humility. My old boss, a man wiser than his chronological mid-thirties, laid it out for me the first week on the job. He told me that removing a child from their home is the juvenile justice systems equivalent of the death penalty, the most extreme thing a worker can do. Its true. There is no higher sanction in family law.

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When the State Takes Kids Away From Parents: Three Perspectives