A new “partnership” between social services and public schools in New York will see one Child Protective Services (CPS) employee installed in schools several days per week.
The idea behind the scheme is to give school staff a fast track route to child welfare “expertise”, but many are worried that the move will see children being snatched from their parents at even greater rates than before.
Activistpost.com reports:
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This partnership is unnecessary and detrimental to children and parents. Teachers already can and do report suspicions of child abuse which are dealt with swiftly by CPS with the aid of law enforcement. By installing CPS workers in school offices, it is inviting a steady stream of on-the-spot inspections without a parent’s knowledge. This is a removal of due process when an accusation of abuse is arbitrarily leveled at a parent.
Buffalo Public Schools may already have a similar partnership, and 22 school districts in Erie County have signed on with Social Services.
People who object to this move are aware of the corrupt, past actions of CPS often taking children from good homes and placing them with people who should not be anywhere near children. Both CPS workers are foster parents are paid by the State for this action while parents who are found later to have done nothing detrimental are helpless and barely represented. Worse yet, children become lost in the cracks, and often wind up abused and unnecessarily drugged.
People often ask – what do we do, there are children being abused by parents. This is true, and those parents need to be held accountable by their peers, but the government is currently doing more tragic harm to such children who will later be exploited in the criminal justice system, possibly filling cells and coffers for the private-corporate prison industry. Given that the prison and CPS/foster sectors are subsidized by you, the parents, you have every right to demand an overhaul. At the very least, demands to leave CPS out of schools until their act is cleaned up. A demand to stop incentivising the removal of children from stable homes. Demands for third party, unbiased investigations that inspect CPS practices, truly represent the child and opt for less traumatic solutions such as allowing a child in question to remain with siblings and stay with a beloved and reputable family member. These are just a few ways to address legitimate problems without running over innocent people and revoking their rights for profit.
But, as the news report said: this is just “streamlining.” They just don’t tell you what process is being streamlined, but rather call the often unnecessary removal of kids from their homes “child welfare.” Even though I know good-hearted social workers and foster parents who live to serve children and families – the checkered past actions of the system at large should warrant change – not the ability to have more power. It should be a privilege to help children, but the unaddressed, systemic abuse of them should signal that these new changes have nothing to do with “the children.” No matter what – parents have rights and the utmost responsibility to their children – are we just going to wave goodbye to them all?
Sean Adl-Tabatabai
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