CPS to mother: Do not let your children play outside.

Aside from the general fuckery of both the linked story and yours - where the hell did that nitwit think one would put a litterbox? Top of the fridge? I don't even... I don't think I've ever seen a litterbox not on the floor. Sometimes in a decorative cabinet or whatever, just because, but not up high. Cats don't generally poo in trees.

I realize that's a minor point in the whole slew of stupidity, but I'm kind of stuck on it, heh.

And that's why you don't let CPS enter your house without a warrant, even if you've done nothing wrong. Having an officer on hand not only protects the CPS agent from potential harm, but s/he is also an official voice who can back up a parent with insane calls like the one above.

It's sad, but I've heard more than one former CPS agent say that they aren't trained to find nothing wrong; they're trained to locate problems, and that's what most will do.

Monkey said:

http://reason.com/blog/2014/09/15/child-services-to-mom-who-did-nothing-wr

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Jesus. This sort of thing pisses me off no end.

I have second-hand experience with CPS in the Austin area. CPS was called on some long-time family friends of ours because a neighbor felt their house was "too messy." The worker that showed found quite a lot to nitpick over; among other things:

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My house frequently looks like squatters are having a party. But that's what happens when you have kids, pets and you work from home.

* the cat box was at floor level, meaning that children could theoretically access cat poo

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Where else would it be?

* the cat food was not locked away, meaning the children could theoretically eat cat food

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Which is all fit for human consumption. I know, because I used to have to test animal feed to make sure of it. So what, kids get a handful of cat food. It's not gonna kill them. And let's be honest, most of our kids have eaten worse at some stage. So have we - I mean, how many coins have we each swallowed over the years?

* cats could scratch children, and the worker admitted that she, personally, just had a real issue with cats, and suggested the family get rid of theirs in order to make the home "safer" and "more fit"

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Our cat, and our dog, both sleep on my 7 year old daughter's bed at night. They are with her pretty much 24/7 - the cat in particular has been a real support for her since her dad and I broke up when she was younger and the dog freaks out and barks when she's sick or has a nightmare, waking me up to come and help - my daughter has some long term health issues. I'd certainly not be worried about either animal making my home unsafe. In fact I'd feel it was less safe, especially without the dog.

* there was a decorative sword high on the wall. The worker imagined that if a child jumped off the back of the couch while wielding a broomstick or some such, it was theoretically possible that the sword could be dislodged, and thereby become accessible

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As I mentioned in another post today, I let my daughter use all the knives in the kitchen. And prepare food. And conduct experiments with raw meat. She's supervised and has been taught the dangers and how to do things properly. Surely that's the way to handle things?

There were more, but these are the ones that stood out to me, because they were so damned arbitrary. Still, these were officially just suggestions; my friends, like the woman in the article above, were found to have done nothing wrong.

The issue is, they had intended to foster and possibly adopt children later on in life. They were in the process of getting this CPS call expunged from their record when they found out that foster and adoption agencies, in their paperwork, require you to inform them of ANY past visits by CPS, including those expunged from your record. They were left quite shaken and disheartened, and with no desire to have the state come anywhere near their household again. They have not fostered or adopted.

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And this is the thing that really, really bothers me about these sort of instances.

In recent years here there have been campaings from local childrens charities urging people to call the moment they think they should. Which is fine, when there IS something wrong.

I had a bit of a run-in last year with the education board because of my daughter's attendance at school - she had fallen below the 80% level and I got a threatening letter talking about medical records and court and all sort. It upset me for all of about 3 minutes before I got angry - I wasn't keeping my kid of school for shits and giggles or minor things or because I couldn't be bothered getting her up and out. Every single time she was off school was because she was admitted to hospital. There was a lot of shouting that day and I made someone cry. Plus side, I made my point and I don't think I will be getting any of those letters again.

This is related, IMO, to past threads we've had on CPS, such as the child who was taken by CPS for being allowed to play at the park, and our current thread on "punishing bad parenting." I feel like CPS is a force for good, but that in our current climate, it has a tendency to go overboard. I also feel like there should be a written set of standards that are easily accessible and not so open to interpretation as those we currently have.

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Oh, for sure. My ex- brother in law is a social worker and some of the stories he can tell......wow!

Personally I think a lot comes down to the parents - is your individual child educated enough and clued in enough to be trusted to play outside? Do they know about roads and stranger danger? Do they have enough common sense to be outside? Are they with other kids?

I understand that we have to look after our kids, but we also can't wrap them in cotton wool forever. Part of our job as parents is to teach them how to deal with things safely.

Cyia said:

It's sad, but I've heard more than one former CPS agent say that they aren't trained to find nothing wrong; they're trained to locate problems, and that's what most will do.

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And this is what it comes down to really - if you are looking for faults then you are always going to find them.



As a complete side note that may or may not be relevant - when discussing what she wanted for Christmas my 7 year old informed me she wanted a COSHH certificate so she could do 'that thing with the liver'. I'm either the world's best or worst parent. I'm not sure yet.

Edit: I'm seriously accident prone, like insanely so. When I was a kid I had a couple of accidents in a row, which were genuine accidents - I fell of a fence (forty stitches and an awesome scar), had a fight with my brother (8 stitches) and tripped in the house and hit my head on the edge of my brothers pram (10 stitiches) - they were all to my head. Guess who's parents got a visit from social services? Fortunately for her my dad wasn't at home. But my granddad was there with my mum for a visit and to this day the scene that followed is unpleasant to say the least.

I had a graduate level internship with CPS and was also a foster parent. They do have a list they go by and everything is cleared with a supervisor as well. Also, please keep in mind that (1) If CPS gets even an anonymous call, they have to go check it out. Just being questioned is not an indication of guilt. And (2) People who get in trouble with CPS are often angry, fearful, and also feel very shamed. So often what they will tell family, friends, and the press, is not actually the truth. CPS can't tell their side in the news, they have to wait for court. But the parents can say anything they want to anybody.

I'm not saying CPS is perfect but they really don't have much motivation to go about yanking children from their homes even if they could. It's a ton of extra work for them and they're usually chronically overworked as it is. Another stop-gap, even if they children were deemed needing to be removed, within two or three days it all goes before a judge and the judge decides, not CPS. Of course the child would have been removed from the home for a couple of days by then but as I said, that's far from simply up to the whims of the caseworker anyway.

We all have our own experiences of course but mine leads me to not believe that the parent's side is the only side, not by a long shot. Also, if you want to foster and adopt, oh yes, they will want to go over your background with a fine tooth comb, the same as you probably would if you were leaving your charges with someone you didn't personally know. Again, they ask and consider and realize people aren't perfect. I know because I've been through it. Just asking about something is not anything more than that. I'm glad they check potential foster and adoptive parents out so carefully, those kids have been put through enough already.

I, personally, would considered an unsupervised 6 year old a situation that may or may not be appropriate depending on the specifics of the situation. A person finding a 6 year old 150 yards from home on the sidewalk might reasonably wonder if they were lost and in need of help.

The whole rest of the over-reaction aside, I think there is a range of opinion about how far any/every 6 year old should go alone.

I was smart enough as a child to not eat kitty poo... but I still clearly recall the taste of Meow Mix.

When I was growing up, one of my best friends really had a thing for dog biscuits. He compared it to a dry cereal bar with a 'somewhat meaty' flavor.

I did not indulge, myself.

The inspectors check list is not a list of charges. It is a list of observations used to build an overall assessment of the household which includes items that are not uncommon as well as items that are more severe and items that are actually positive/protective.

Something questionable was observed, someone made a complaint, it was investigated and she was cleared. Disturbing and upsetting to any good parent, but I don't know how you could have a system where only guilty people were investigated.

The record is maintained because a pattern of behavior is how some offenders are detected. The same could be said if my dog was found wandering or my lawn got too long and became a fire hazard. That would stay in my file. No one disputes that the contents are accurate, and the people with access to them know about nuisance complaints.

I do not deny it is bad for the person investigated as the result of a nuisance complaint. But I do not think the answer is to expunge investigations that can become very important in developing a profile of families entering at risk status. A clear check before a life event and a decline after some event (change of custody etc) is info that does help protect those children and the non-guilty guardians. And you never know when that info might become relevant.

Not everything that is unnecessarily distressing in some cases is without value as a whole, so changes should be made with a complete risk/benefit analysis--not just to deal with one distressing incident regardless of the other situations that would become more dangerous as a result.

The man who recently killed his five children was being monitored in this way and one could argue that in that case what seemed minor (leaving tools near kids etc) should on fact have been taken more seriously. With 20/20 hindsight of course.

Actually, the checklist should be required to be served along with the warrant. Then the homeowner can be sure that what's being said and done has nothing to do with them personally, and everything to do with procedure. Again, it would protect both sides.

@Monkey- I think that is a reasonable question for someone who wants to take in children who the state is responsible for, "Have you ever been investigated by CPS?" It would be followed up by "What for?" and "What were the findings?" and a chance to explain her side of it. Not trying to be sarcastic but honestly, so what? If anyone was even babysitting my children for an evening and I had the capability of asking that question, you can bet I'd ask it in a New York minute.

If your friend dropped her application to foster/adopt over merely being asked the question, then I don't really see why she has cause to cry foul. Nothing happened to her as a result of it. She chose to quit the process over it. Right? Or did I miss something? Now if it was an obvious bullshit call and they held that against her, that would be different. But if she is the one who cut the process off before that even had a remote chance of happening, then she can't really act as if it did happen, yes? That is a far cry from not being allowed to foster/adopt over a CPS call that she was cleared from.

Even with all the safeguards, abusers do sometimes manage to slip through the cracks and foster/adopt kids. Then people yell about that, right? So it can't go both ways, barring a crystal ball...

veinglory said:

I, personally, would considered an unsupervised 6 year old a situation that may or may not be appropriate depending on the specifics of the situation. A person finding a 6 year old 150 yards from home on the sidewalk might reasonably wonder if they were lost and in need of help.

The whole rest of the over-reaction aside, I think there is a range of opinion about how far any/every 6 year old should go alone.

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Agree. I have a seven-year old. She's pretty cautious by nature, so I don't really have to worry about stuff like this. But she has friends who are not and essentially have the attention span of gnats. If I saw one of them alone and on the street--and not right by his/her house--I'd certainly check on them, make sure they were okay, and probably let their parents know where they were (and take them home if their parents asked me to).

But as you note, specifics matter here. For instance, there are gated communities near me where young children play on the streets/sidewalks with much more frequency than in the non-gated communities.

Yeah, I feel like there's some spin on this one. 150 yards is, what a block and a half, maybe? One and a half football fields long?

To me, that's a bit far for a 6 year old to be unsupervised. It's not like the kid was playing in his front yard. And, yeah, the mom COULD see the bench from her front porch, but she clearly wasn't watching the kid at the time, or she wouldn't have been so surprised when the woman arrived on her doorstep.

If I saw a neighbour's six-year-old that far from home, I think I'd walk him home, too. And if I got there and the mom made it sound like it was no big deal, and she let the kid roam that far on his own all the time? Honestly, I might call CAS. Not to convict, just to investigate.

Maybe I'm overly uptight. But I'd rather call CAS for no reason than not call and then find out I should have.

I find this quote from an article on policing perfectly applicable to what we're seeing with CPS as well. Just substitute CPS for police.

We know that state monopolies invariably provide worse and worse services for more and more money. Police services are no exception. When it comes to your local police, there is no shopping around, there is no customer service, and there is no choice. Without market competition, market price signals, and market discipline, government has no ability or incentive to provide what people really want, which is peaceful and effective security for themselves, their families, their homes, and their property. As with everything government purports to provide, the public wants Andy Griffith but ends up with the Terminator.

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People want an Aunt Bea to keep an eye on the neighborhood kids, but what they're getting is starting to look like the Family Terminator.

Oh, well, Hillary warned us it takes a village. I wonder if this is what she has in mind?

I disappeared for a whole afternoon. Repeatedly. I spent my kindergarten with my grandmother, living 30 feet from railroad tracks. Even as a five year old, I could walk a straight line for twenty minutes or so, and I was over a ridge from the whole damned south Texas town where Granny lived. All tumbleweeds and cactus.

I'd probably have asked the kid where he lives. If he could show me, done.

Is this a cause for concern? Yeah, that's fair. For calling protective services? Take back your neighborhoods, people. If my child has to go through life *this* afraid, that ain't even living.

Maybe we need a Let Kids Be Kids movement. Just sayin.

emax100 said:

Maybe we need a Let Kids Be Kids movement. Just sayin.

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There is. It's called Free Range Kids.

A Free-Range Kid is a kid who gets treated as a smart, young, capable individual, not an invalid who needs constant attention and help.

For instance, in the suburbs, many school PTAs have figured out a new way to raise money (God bless ‘em): They auction off the prime drop-off spot right in front of the school — the shortest distance between car and door.

But at the mall, or movie theater or dentist’s office, that would be considered the handicapped parking spot — the one you need if you are really disabled. So somehow, in our understandable desire to do the very best for our kids, we have started treating them as if they’re handicapped! As if they couldn’t possibly walk a couple of blocks, or make their own lunch or climb a tree without hurting themselves, or struggling too much.

Free-Range Kids are sort of old-fashioned. They’re kids who are expected to WANT to grow up and do things on their own. And then, when they show us they’re ready, we allow ‘em to.

I was a Free-Range Kid because we all were back when I was growing up, before cable TV started showing abductions 24/7 and finding the weirdest, saddest stories from around the world to make parents think that no child is safe doing anything on his own anymore.

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The founder of Free Range Kids was called "The World's Worst Mom" because she let her nine-year-old ride the subway. By. Himself. Her story's on the FAQ page at the website above.

And here's an article from WebMD about Free Range Kids.

Don said:

There is. It's called Free Range Kids.

The founder of Free Range Kids was called "The World's Worst Mom" because she let her nine-year-old ride the subway. By. Himself. Her story's on the FAQ page at the website above.

And here's an article from WebMD about Free Range Kids.

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Ah son of a bitch, I should have known someone already beat me to the punch on it

Letting your child play down the street unsupervised has a lot to do with what street you are on and the number of responsible adults present nearby. We don't live on the Andy Griffith show anymore.

At one of my previous neighborhoods, btw, there was a registered sex offender living a block away.

Fruitbat said:

Also, please keep in mind that (1) If CPS gets even an anonymous call, they have to go check it out, by law.

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Not if you're a minor. At least, that's what they told me when I was 17.

C.bronco said:

Letting your child play down the street unsupervised has a lot to do with what street you are on and the number of responsible adults present nearby. We don't live on the Andy Griffith show anymore.

At one of my previous neighborhoods, btw, there was a registered sex offender living a block away.

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From the WebMD article:

In fact, crime rates in this country were on the rise during the 1970s and '80s and peaked in 1993. Since then, crime has declined by 50% or more, Skenazy writes in her book. That means if you were a kid in the '70s or '80s, your children are actually safer today than you were when your parents allowed you to walk to school on your own.

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And an elaboration from Free Range Kids:

“Times have changed.”

They’re right of course — nothing stays the same. Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, crime was on the rise. It went up and up until it peaked around 1990. The strange thing, though, is that since then, it’s been going back down. Dramatically. Today we are back to the crime level of 1970, according to Dept. of Justice statistics. So — unbelievable as it seems — if you were playing outside as a kid in the ’70s or ’80s, your kids are actually SAFER outside than you were!

It doesn’t feel that way (at ALL), because when our parents were raising us, there was no CSI. Law & Order was something you believed in, not something on the air 8 nights a week, made to look depressingly real.

The other day I got a letter from a guy in an old Brooklyn neighborhood where they shoot a lot of Law & Order scenes. On TV, it’s always the backdrop for a rape or murder. In real life, he said, it’s a safe, quiet neighborhood — and therein lies the tale:

There’s a big disconnect between the horrors on TV and the reality we live in — the safest time for children (in America, that is) in the history of this disease-plagued, famine-prone, war-wracked world.

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