I received a message today that was at the same time encouraging and disheartening. A mother who has been fighting to have her children returned received notice that the children would be returned at the end of the school year.

Excuse me? How can this be justified?

These children BELONG with their biological family. They were taken through UnConstitutional actions of the state to begin with, and they were taken without regard to the emotional well being of the family and the children. The children were forced to go to a new family with different values, different routines, and often different beliefs systems, with NO time to adjust, NO time to come to terms with what was happening to them. Suddenly the state cares about them and about their feelings?

That a family is often denied the daily love, nurture, and care of their children is itself appalling and unconscionable. The fact that they could be found to be a proper home for the children only to have the return delayed by two or three months only compounds the problem. When a mother has to spend every night crying herself to sleep and holding pictures of her beloved children, a removal of even one day more than necessqary constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. While I am a man and don't know directly the circumstances related to childbirth, I think I can fairly say that the process itself forms a bond between mother and child that cannot be broken in most cases. Even as a father who has assisted in the delivery of all five of my children and held them as soon as they emerged into the world, I have a bond with my children that cannot be broken. Nor, in fact, SHOULD that bond be broken, except on VERY strong evidence, and even then, only long enough to satisfy that the child is being well cared for.

The ironically named "family court" that makes these decisions pays no attention to the Constitution, no attention to the laws of the state or the nation that govern it, but only attention to the "policies and procedures" of Child Protective Services, policies that came about not through any democratic process, but through the whim of program administrators, officials we DID NOT elect to make these decisions, and who are, as unelected officials, unimpeachable. The decisions are made behind closed doors and without any sort of accountability, except to a "kangaroo court" review board that will not even CONSIDER critics of CPS for selection to the board (I know; I have been trying to discover the process for selection in vain).

If I were to be given ONE reasonable policy change I could make right now, no questions asked, it would be that children in a CPS case should be brought to the courthouse for the hearings, and IMMEDIATELY after the judge orders them returned, should be returned to the family. Their personal belongings should be returned within 24 hours.

This again points out the difference between the "civil" proceedings of CPS and the criminal proceedings where this should take place. If you are found "not guilty" of a crime, you are ordered released immediately. If a parent is found "not guilty" of abuse or neglect in family court, their children are ordered returned at a time convenient to CPS. This needs to change.