This is another in my series of articles directed towards the reform of child abuse and neglect laws in this country. All statistics are taken from the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform's website, unless otherwise noted.

The issue of poverty is one of the most pressing problems with the "child protective services" system in America. The poor are unlikely to be able to afford representation, and, because CPS cases are considered "civil" cases (although the consequences of their outcomes are FAR more devastating than those in many criminal cases), the poor are not legally entitled to pro bono representation. There are lawyers who have made a practice of attacking the CPS system, but most such lawyers come at a price tag that the typical target of CPS actions cannot afford.

Social workers have repeatedly denied that they remove children "because of poverty alone". But the facts indicate otherwise. Because many in poverty cannot afford certain basic services, their everyday actions are, according to certain definitions, child "neglect" because they HAD NO OTHER CHOICE. Consider the following realistic, albeit hypothetical scenario presented on the home page of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform's homepage (www.nccpr.org):

Imagine that you are an impoverished single mother with an eight-year-old daughter and a four-year-old son. The four-year-old is ill with a fever and you need to get him medicine. But you have no car, it's very cold, pouring rain, and it will take at least an hour to get to and from the pharmacy. You don't know most of your neighbors and those you know you have good reason not to trust. What do you?

Go without the medicine? That's "medical neglect." The child savers can take away your children for medical neglect. Bundle up the feverish four-year-old in the only, threadbare coat he's got and take him out in the cold and rain? That's "physical neglect." The child savers can take away your children for physical neglect. Leave the eight-year-old to care for the four-year-old and try desperately to get back home as soon as you can? That's "lack of supervision." The child savers can take away your children for lack of supervision.

And in every one of those cases, the child savers would say, with a straight face, that they didn't take your children "because of poverty alone."

Not enough evidence for you? Well, here are some real life cases chronicled by the NCCPR:

• In Paterson New Jersey, parents lose their three children to foster care solely because they lack adequate housing.  When the children are returned, one of them shows obvious signs of abuse – bruises and new and old burn marks --  in foster care.  The parents are suing.  And so is their first caseworker.  He never wanted the children taken away.  He’d even found the family a better apartment.  But that’s not what his superiors wanted.  Indeed, the caseworker says that because he insisted on trying to help the family, and refused to alter his reports to make the parents look bad, he was fired. Why were his bosses so anxious to take away the children?  There was a rich, suburban couple ready and waiting to adopt them.  And according to the lawsuit filed by the caseworker, a supervisor told him that “children should be taken away from poor parents if they can be better off elsewhere.”

• In Los Angeles, the pipes in a grandmother's rented house burst, flooding the basement and making the home a health hazard. Instead of helping the family find another place to live, child protective workers take away the granddaughter and place her in foster care. She dies there, allegedly killed by her foster mother. The child welfare agency that would spend nothing to move the family offers $5,000 for the funeral.

• In Orange County, California, an impoverished single mother can't find someone to watch her children while she works at night, tending a ride at a theme park. So she leaves her eight-, six-, and four-year-old children alone in the motel room that is the only housing they can afford. Someone calls child protective services. Instead of helping her with babysitting or daycare, they take away the children on the spot

• In Akron, Ohio, a grandmother raises her 11-year-old granddaughter despite being confined to a wheelchair with a lung disease. Federal budget cuts cause her to lose housekeeping help. The house becomes filthy. Instead of helping with the housekeeping, child protective services takes the granddaughter away and throws her in foster care for a month. The child still talks about how lonely and terrified she was - and about the time her foster parent took her picture and put it in a photo album under the heading: "filthy conditions."

In my own experiences, I have seen similar actions. I worked with a family where there was a teenage mother at home. The mother was trying to finish schooling, and needed a babysitter. My wife went over there every day to care for the baby.

This family had no furniture. As we came to know them, we discovered that, when they had moved into this apartment, they had to move everything they could from their own apartment nearly a mile away, in a radio flyer wagon. They had no friends with vehicles to assist them. Two of the main conditions the case worker put on their retaining the child were to have childcare, and to obtain furniture for the house.

On the latter case, I helped as much as I could. I borrowed a truck and called up everyone I knew, asking for whatever castoff furniture they had. By the end of the day, we had the apartment reasonably furnished.  But because my wife had not taken certain state child care courses, the social worker did not consider them to have met the child care requirement (I must add, she was watching the baby free of charge). The baby was removed, and the mother never regained custody.

In another recent article, I chronicled the case of the family who had their children removed because they didn't have running water. They have yet to regain their children, despite meeting EVERY condition for the return of their children expressed by the court which removed them.

Add to this the fact that parents who have their children pulled for abuse or neglect are pretty much deemed guilty until proven innocent, and you have a whole class of people who have been guilty of nothing more than being poor. This needs to stop. And it needs to stop NOW.

For every story I DO know, I have to wonder about the stories I DON'T know. What are these families' stories? And who will speak for them?