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GUEST COLUMN
(9/9/2006)
Paper Orphans Part 2 of 2 (see Part 1)
By gwen caldwell
After huge class action lawsuits were brought against 32 states, 30 of them reformed their child protection policies with great success in focusing on family preservation and in-home family services to include a few of the measures successfully taken to protect children and stabilize the family unit. I have no doubt that more and more of these costly lawsuits are going to start being filed and successfully won, again at a huge cost to the taxpayers. I know that most of you are thinking to yourself, “These parents have abused their children and are in denial, blaming the system.” So, it is my suggestion that you consider the following facts. (I use South Dakota as my example, because it is where I reside and have focused much of my research and work on this issue.) According to the statistics filed with the Child Welfare League of America (www. cwla.org) prior to ASFA in 1998 there were 55 adoptions in South Dakota and no children waiting to be adopted, yet 5 years later after ASFA there were 144 adoptions and a staggering 464 children waiting to be adopted. The state last year received an adoption bonus of $56,000.00 for adoptions over their baseline number. There were deaths of three children in both 1998 and 2004, so lowering the risk of child death has not been achieved. Residential foster care in 2000 cost taxpayers $4,498,452.00. Two years later in 2002 that amount had increased to $17,212,505.00! Folks, this is about the money, not about protecting children! From 1996 to 2004 the federal budget increased in SD by 128.6% and the state budget increased by 53.0%! Did all the parents in SD just start going nuts on their children over that six-year period? I think not! I think money and economic development in the newly subsidized child abuse industry moved these numbers. South Dakota has a 9% total Native American population, according to the Governor’s Commission on the Indian Child Welfare Act. Yet more than 65% of the children removed from the home are Native American. I believe this number, is also motivated by funding. South Dakota has a statue that allows the Secretary of Social Services to collect funding from the Department of Interior for the cost of their care. Thus, Indian children are worth double the money to the state. Even though this has been denied by DSS at Appropriations and Government Operation and Audit Committee meetings, I find it hard to believe that they would go to the trouble of having legislation drafted for such an action and not utilize it. In a recent Rapid City Journal article it stated that 81% of the children were taken for reasons of neglect. What the Social Workers view as neglect is arbitrary. Virtually anything can be used against parents to justify the interrogation of your children at schools by police officers, social workers and counselors to intimidate children, ask leading and open ended questions that are used to ultimately destroy the family. These children then are removed from the school without the knowledge of the parents and placed in foster care. Poverty and the effects of that poverty are often used as an excuse for determining neglect. Instead of the state or social and community organizations helping these parents overcome the financial struggles they suffer the children they love are ripped from their homes and lives. Again, I remind you that if these children had been truly abused or neglected these parents would be charged under criminal statues and would have the right to an open jury trial and the burden of proof would be on the state. The parents would then be given the opportunity for due process pursuant to Public Law. This is not happening! Also, in visiting the above website, (or others like it) you may want to check out the funding lists to see how many financial resources are being made available to fund this child abuse industry atrocity. Then check the funding and incentives for adoptive parents, foster parents, CASA, Youth and Family Services, Lutheran Social Services, etc. You might also want to check the grossly high number of expanded or new residential care and treatment centers there are being built to warehouse our children. I assure you, families are not entitled to the same benefits. In fact, after the every State and Federal financial resource has been tapped on behalf of your “neglected and abused” children both parents will be expected to pay child support to the State for your child’s foster care. It is my feeling that when children are in the custody of their parents they are financially responsible for them and generally get no help supporting them, why then should parents pay the state to support the professional parents? If the state wants to assume the role of guardianship of the state’s children then I submit they, like the parents, should be prepared to support them! The next point I’d like to make about this issue is the violation of LAW. The Government does not exist for any other reason than to protect the interests of the individual. The Government has no rights, only powers and duties. Most of this behavior goes on in violation of civil rights of both parents and children.. It is done by statue that is internal to the state as an Administrative action and not public law that basically has criminal consequences. There is no provision for this non-governmental action in our Constitution. In fact the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled at least fifteen times on the right of parents to raise own their children. The state of South Dakota has statues that forbid the State, it’s officers or agent to violate the Constitution or US Supreme Court rulings. See SDCL 1-1A-1 and 1-1A-2. In Lehr vs. Robertson, 463 US 248, 257-258 (1983) The linkage between parental duty and parental right was stressed again in Prince v. Massachusetts ... The Court declared it a cardinal principle “that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder.” In these cases, the Court has found that the relationship of love and duty in a recognized family unit is an interest in liberty entitled to Constitutional protection ... “State intervention to terminate such a relationship ... must be accomplished by procedures meeting the requisites of the Due Process Clause” Santosky v. Kramer . My final point takes us to natural law. We, as women were created to bear offspring. It is our birthright and our responsibility to care for our children. We are the generation keepers. The Constitution has acknowledged this “fundamental right” over and over. The government did not give birth to, did not father and in most cases did not support these children. However, the State and Federal governments have colluded giving birth AND subsidies to the growing field of professional parenting (and their agents) at the expense of the biological families. There is something clearly wrong with this picture! In these uncertain times we live in, let’s give our children at least the security and hope of a loving and ongoing relationship with their parents and family. America’s children are not safer. Families are not being honored as the first and most primary social structure of our culture. The very foundation of a child’s normal development is being disassembled by states. The States create the problem and then they are the solution. The States create orphans and then they are the adoption agency. Wake up America! Gwen Caldwell
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