No Child Left Behind by Ruth Peterson

Reproduced under the Fair Use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use.

Child protections laws sound like a good thing, but what does it really boil down to...protecting our children or creating corruption?

Wednesday, May 14, 2003 — When the Adoption and Safe Families Act was passed in 1997, it was meant to create loving homes for children who had been “languishing” in foster care over a long period of time, some children had been in foster care for years, others had been bouncing around from one foster home to another with no hope of the security that an established home with a permanent family could offer.

Another seemingly good idea at the time, was the creation of the adoption bonuses for the state child protective system's caseworkers, this idea was implemented for the sole purpose of creating a “get the job done” incentive for the case workers, to do something for the children, other than shuffling paper work and filing reports on these “shelved” children.

As these children were being adopted and began to leave the foster care system, the bonuses began to filter into the child protective systems around the nation. There were an overwhelming amount of couples, being enticed by the many different monetary conveniences of not having to support the children out of their own pocket, the foster care money would take care of that burden, on top of which there were offers from the government for tax credits and bonuses, to adopt these unwanted children. It wasn't long before the demand for adoptions outweighed the supply of children in foster care.

The waiting list for an adoption could be years, the majority of waiting couples were not favorably receptive to the thought of waiting for years to adopt a child, so they took the required training to become foster parents, because as sanctioned foster parents, they were guaranteed a child within weeks. They would have a child placed with them, then subsequently adopt the child within 15 -22 months, after which these “foster parents” would disappear from the system after their need for a child had been met.

In some cases the child is adopted within a year, because the permanency hearing is to be scheduled within one year of the foster care placement, leaving precious little time for the natural parents to raise funds for the hiring of attorneys, file motions, petitions and/or appeals. The majority of these parents are from the poor or middle working class, and cannot afford the attorney fees, which have become unreasonably high over the years. One very well known child custody attorney asked for $12,000 down payment to take a case! What would happen, I wonder, if all of these people were to go on strike in protest of their children being confiscated? This country would stand still.

Now the legislators are wondering why all the good foster parents are leaving the system? Because there are no such kind of people as “foster” parents, they are potential adopters, finding their incentive on the internet to adopt a child via foster care.

Foster care was meant to be temporary... not the foster parents. After these foster parents are gone, the need for more foster parents increases. With all their false allegations, DFS is slowly obliterating any people who would make good potential foster parents.

There are even those instances when DFS will file false allegations of abuse against the adoptive or foster parents themselves....when DFS can find no more children to take, they just “repossess” children which have been previously adopted or placed into foster care.

At this point in time, there are no foster parents, there are only adoptive parents in disguise... ”When in Rome” ...as the saying goes.

The case workers, in charge of these cases, became so intent on proving the unfitness of the biological parents, and creating false allegations to assure the termination of parental rights, that they lost all concern and common reason to prove the fitness of the adoptive parents, resulting in the problem that we now have...children being abused and murdered in foster care and adoption.

According to the federal mandates of the Social Security Act, which governs the placement of a child into foster care, a child had to be “languishing” in foster care prior to adoption, to guarantee that the state would receive the adoption bonus, when the child was finally adopted.

When the supply of children in foster care began to dwindle, there was a chance that the DFS agency would not get their bonus. That was when many rogue case workers and county DFS directors began to lodge false allegations of abuse against innocent parents, thereby creating an unlimited supply of children into foster care to meet the demand of adoptive couples who were disguised as “Foster Parents” and waiting in line for the children that were being taken into custody by DFS.

The children were, and still are, being taken into custody by DFS at an alarming rate, and immediately placed into foster care, sometimes within an hour, and with the sole intention to adopt. Adoption became the only option, in order to receive the cash bonuses. Most of the adoption petitions in Lawrence County, Missouri, are filed before the child is even available for adoption, prior to evidence being heard at the permanency hearing.

The government funds for reunification and family preservation, has been used for other services to speed up the termination of parental rights. Therefore, the state stands guilty of adoption and foster care fraud; they obtained the money by violating the federal mandates.

Most parents are unaware of the fact that they are protected by these mandates, and can actually retrieve their children if an honest, intelligent attorney were on the case. The key word here for their protection is “languishing” in foster care. The “languishing” pertains to the 15-22 month period following the day that Social Services places the child into foster care, but a hearing is available within 30 days...so forget the term “languishing.”

The termination of parental rights cannot be filed until 15 months and 60 days from the date that the child has been taken from the home. In some cases the Guardian Ad Litem's do not wait for the allotted time to pass, and will file prematurely to terminate parental rights.

The governor of each state is compelled to sign an oath when he/she takes office, to uphold and protect those mandates, otherwise the governor can be held accountable for failing the child and the federal government, whenever those mandates are violated for the purpose of receiving the federal grants being paid for foster care. Social Services must obey those federal mandates to the letter, in order to receive the grants.

Before placing a child into foster care, the case worker handling the case, must prove that every reasonable effort has been made to seek out and locate a fit and willing relative placement. An adult relative takes precedence and first consideration over an outside care giver, in the interest of family preservation and reunification of the family, which is in the best interest of the child.

This mandate is being ignored by poorly trained social workers who take children on “probable cause,” and yet this agency will never file criminal charges against the parents to prove guilt. Why?

Kinship care is never considered a reasonable option by Social Services. Kinship care does not allow the state to collect federal monies for foster care/adoptions, so when the case worker takes the child, the paper work will be marked “NO RELATIVES” even though there are grandparents and other relatives [especially the children's father] available to take the child. Missouri DFS never seeks out those relatives.

This would save the state an exorbitant amount of money, and as of now Missouri is going bankrupt, due to the unnecessary overspending of DFS for foster care, adoption bonuses, attorney's fees, Guardian ad Litems, contracted therapists, and medicaid.

In many cases the children are said to have been sexually molested, but the parent or perpetrator is rarely, if ever, formally charged and brought into a court of law, because in most of these cases, DFS hasn't one shred of proof against the accused parent other than their own allegations on paper.

But innocent parents are still losing their parental rights in the end, due to ineffective judges who do little more than warm the bench, and do nothing to make the Department of Social Services provide proof of the allegations and their reasonable efforts to place the child with relatives.

It seems to be a “hate crime” and discrimination against parents who are poor. They are easy marks for DFS and cannot fight a system with a money tree such as the one backing the Department of Social Services. Martha Stewart and Mario Lanza both came from underprivileged households. They went very far in the world.

When it is said that a child has been sexually abused, it would become Medicaid fraud if these sexual abuse assessments and treatments are charged to Medicaid, which is quite often the case. This type of assessment and treatment is to be paid by the Children's Treatment Fund (CTF), but there is documentation that Medicaid is picking up the tab.

The CTF investigates each case quite thoroughly to determine if sexual abuse has actually occurred, and DFS does not want these investigations to bring the truth to the surface. So they send the bills to Medicaid for payment (I have one of those billings, and the assessment signed by a Missouri state-contracted therapist.)

After the placement of the child into the foster care system, Missouri DFS then applies for the foster care grants, while at the same time forcing the parents to also pay for the foster care, under the term “Current Child Support.” This is also illegal on the part of DSS, who never uses the parent locator system to find a missing or absent parent.

If they actually find the absent or missing parent, there is a chance the child will be placed into the custody of that parent and not be available for adoption at a later date. Therefore. they allow a child support bill to accrue into the thousands of dollars, until it becomes felony non-support, damaging any chance of custody being won by that missing or absent parent.

The parents are also to provide medical insurance for the children. But ...the premiums on this health insurance are unreasonably high. The father of a child in foster care, called one of the country's leading insurance companies, and asked the representative why the premium was so expensive....the representative's answer was, “A child in foster care is considered to be very high risk!”

These children are not “languishing” in foster care.....they are placed into foster care, usually on the same day that they are taken into custody, and placed into foster care sometimes within an hour, for the express purpose of adoption, so that DFS can collect the adoption bonuses that each state will receive for getting the children adopted and out of the foster care system.

When a child resists bonding with the foster or adoptive parents, they are immediately admitted into therapy for psychological problems. And, at times, if the child becomes violent or combative, or prone to tantrums due to their anger at being the focal point of all the family destruction, they are placed into a mental health facility and subsequently started on medication known as “psychotropic” medication, or mind-altering drugs to make them more docile, and easier to manage and control.

This is quite common in nursing homes for the elderly, if the patient is labeled as “combatant” or “combative.” I have seen the results of those types of “psychotropic” drugs and it is horrible. They rob the patient of any and all humane feelings.

Any child, who has been deprived of what belongs to them by birth and nature, will invariably become combative at some stage during the transition of losing their own past lives, no matter how good or bad it may have been. One child bit the finger off a school nurse as she was administering medication to him.

My own granddaughter, who was in foster care for 35 days, said it best, “They can't bond with a stranger because they want their own parents, their own grandparents, their own r oom and their own stuff.” That is the key word... own! As in: that is mine. I own that. It belongs to me. It is mine.

The obliteration of those personal things can destroy the child's sense of belonging. How can one expect the child to accept anything new, if the feeling of belonging is deprived by the destruction of what had belonged to him/her to begin with? That destruction of familiarity will eventually bring about compulsive disorders, such as the need to clean or rearrange things, in an attempt to exercise control in their lives.

We are becoming a nation that will lose the sanctity of home and family if we do not take a stand at the voting polls. Watch the reports of how your congressman and senators vote on bills. Then decide what you consider to be vitally important in a child's life.

So think very hard and use common sense the next time you hear the term Leave No Child Behind. This phrase has become quite unpopular with the common person and has a more sinister meaning behind it than one can imagine.

Stephen King has nothing on the creator of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. It has been used to create a perpetual living nightmare for innocent parents, falsely accused by a system in which greed has outgrown common decency, freedom, and democracy.

It has been used to create a living hell for the helpless children condemned to live within its dark boundaries, with no way out and no hope of rescue, and no one asking them what their version of the truth is.

These children are the true victims...and yet they are never asked about their own opinions and desires, by their Guardian Ad Litem, nor by their state-contracted therapists, who are all being paid by the federal foster-care grants. The foster parents are not going to relay what the child truly wants. The foster parent's true goal is to adopt a tax dividend, at $10,000 a head!

The children in foster care are not being protected by foster care...they are being silenced!

Just try to get one of these children aside to speak with them, and you will have a dozen guns pointed at your head, that is the whole purpose behind “supervised visitation.”

But on the other side of the coin, there were seven children who testified against a Lawrence County commissioner charged with sexual abuse. The charges were later reduced. Eventually, in court those charges were dropped because one child recanted. In every other case where a child recants due to a false allegation being extracted from the child there is no exoneration for the parent.

There are too many children in the world today that truly are suffering from abuse and neglect but are being left to die. Why? Because the truly abused child is not a marketable commodity, they are damaged goods. But if left to die at the hands of an abuser these children are worth their weight in gold, and worth more dead than alive...so they are left behind, with their abusers, to do their part in the scheme of things. They are not considered children; they are pawns, to be used for the benefit of DFS.

When a child dies of abuse, what are the first things that one hears in the news media from Child Protective Services?

1. “We need more money to hire more workers; we are understaffed and under funded.”

2. “We need more power to take the children without warrants and having to prove abuse.”

3. “We need absolute immunity for anything that we do illegally.”

Far too many parents have been “railroaded” by the child protection system but that train is slowly being derailed.

Think about it!

You, the people, gave them that power by believing their manipulatory lies.

Rev. Ruth F. Peterson

Kansas City, Missouri

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