By Katelynn Bodey
Period 2
February 28, 2013
Child Welfare Injustice is the lack of fairness or justice, and CPS is very injustice. Do know of a child who has been taken from his/her parents. If so then I’m guessing you have heard of CPS. If you don’t know what CPS is it’s the name of a governmental agency in many states of the United States that responds to reports of child abuse or neglect. Unless it’s an emergency, where a child is in imminent danger, Child Protective Services worker are supposed to request a hearing in front of a judge. Where the parents are accused of neglect or abuse can tell their side of the story before a child is removed from the home. When protective services take children from their parents, state law says a judge must first personally review the case and sign off. Well that isn’t happening in some states. In Wayne County they are using a rubber stamp with the judge’s signature. The court is now using an iPad for their on-call judge to review after-hours child removal orders electronically. . But we knew there was more to the story—how many children had been taken illegally? How long had rubber stamping been going on? Some court insiders tell us, it’s been happening for decades. But those are questions no one seems to want to answer. All found in "How Child Protection Services Buys and Sells Our Children." How Child Protection Services Buys and Sells Our Children. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2013. This next piece was found in "CPS Corruption Has to Be Stopped." CPS Corruption Has To Be Stopped. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2013. In 1974 Walter Mondale initiated CAPTA (the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act), the legislation that began feeding federal funding into the state’s child welfare agencies. With remarkable foresight Mondale expressed concerns that the legislation could lead to systemic abuse in that the state agencies might over-process children into the system unnecessarily to keep, and increase, the flow of federal dollars. Shortly after CAPTA was enacted there was a dramatic increase in the number of children in foster care, peaking at around 500,000 during the mid-70’s. George Miller, the Chairman of the federal Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families, initiated an intensive investigation of the nation’s foster care system after the effects of CAPTA started to become apparent by the soaring numbers of children who were being placed in foster care. An official at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare admitted to Miller that the government had no idea where many of the nation’s 500,000 foster children where living, what services they were receiving, if any, or if any efforts were being made to reunite them with their families. This is an actual case with CPS. Rasmussen’s letter, which calls for state intervention, includes a complaint from a doctor who said a baby became addicted to drugs after being placed on a morphine drip, despite his assurances that the child did not have methamphetamine in its system as state workers suspected. “It is really unfortunate that this child was put through this degree of trauma at such an early age and I believe it can only be laid at the feet of the (Child Protective Services) workers,” wrote Dr. Barry J. Bacon in a letter dated Nov. 18. Bacon said Friday that he stands by the