I just finished reading "Protecting Children from Child Protective Services" by Alan L. Schwartz. This is not the ravings of some anti-government conspiracy theorist against CPS, but of a worker who has seen the system from the inside and has several strong solutions. While Mr. Schwartz and I disagree on many issues, mainly the fundamental one of whether CPS should even exist in a perfect world, we have a common goal of the best interests of the children and families.

One of the things that struck me about the book was the consistent lack of common sense that seems to drive the CPS system. Now, mind you, this is not an indictment of the social workers who work for CPS; I am of the firm belief that, while there are many social workers out there who are mentally unstable because they were abused as a child and see every incident as an abusive situation, there are just as many, if not more, who are in the system because they want to make a difference for both the child AND the family. While the question needs to be asked about whether their philosophy of making a difference according to THEIR values and objectives is valid, it is nonetheless unfair to ascribe motives to their behaviour that are simply not there. This is, rather, an indictment of the system of CPS as a government regulated and administered agency whose goals of self preservation conflict with the very real, very valid goals of reducing instances of abuse and neglect of children.

Where the lack of common sense strikes me most is when a child is removed for neglect simply due to the poverty of the parents. While it is reasonable to remove a child if the parents drug or alcohol dependency is powerful enough to present a clear and imminent danger to the child (although a finding of such should not be based on the subjective analysis of a case worker, but on objective evaluation of the evidence by a jury of one's peers, consistent with the US Constitution), the fact is, far too many removals have nothing to do with drug or alcohol use by the parent. When the child is removed to foster care, the foster family is given a stipend (and the stipend is enough that many foster care providers have made a business out of it). While I am not in favor of government handouts at all, I think it stands to reason that if there isn't enough food in a family's cupboard, it makes a whole lot more sense to give the family money for food than it does to remove the children and pay a surrogate provider a stipend that incurs a substantially greater cost to the taxpayer. In our community, a family had their three children removed because they didn't have utilities at their house. Wouldn't it have been cheaper to have paid the electric, gas, and water bills outright for these two years than to have paid the continuing costs of care for these children in foster care?

Although he does not ask these questions directly, these are the sorts of questions Mr. Schwartz asks in his book. He gives illustration after illustration of cases where CPS involvement tears families apart, rather than reunifying them, and where simpler solutions might have resolved the issues at hand with far less pain to all involved. In other words, address the problems, don't create them.

What he observes is not unique to CPS; it crosses the spectrum of the human services field. When I managed group homes for DD adults, for instance, we dealt with the behavior of one of the residents, who would steal the remote control to the television set and it would disappear. Because three of the six residents were autistic, this was a problem, as the TV had to be bolted down and behind plexiglass in order to avoid its being used as a projectile against staff or other residents. Her case workers and the workers in the home had tried a number of behavior modification programs to get her to stop removing the remotes, all with zero effectiveness. The solution was found quite accidentally when we got a box of assorted electronics that contained several universal remotes. We took one out and programmed it to the TV in her room and gave it to her...and the remotes stopped disappearing. We had, in other words, spent literally dozens of hours of manpower and other resources to modify her behavior when the answer was as simple as a six dollar remote. I have often referred to this as "thinking back INSIDE the box", and I think it's something that eludes most bureaucrats.

You won't find me arguing that there are some cases where a child should be removed from a parent for its own safety. But I WILL argue that those cases are definitely in the minority, and that removal should ONLY occur if the parent is shown to be criminally abusive or neglectful, and if there is an unwillingness or an inability to correct the problem. And it's refreshing to find a voice from the inside that agrees.