"A care setting is about procedure, it's no place for caring."
The fundamental philosophy governing the treatment of children residing in state care is also it's fundamental problem. The Child Protective Services provide services on behalf of the child that have nothing to do with the child.
It's quite funny. Child Protective Services seem to be a saint since they are dealing with abused and neglected and some of their services seem to be helpful. However, CPS does have a dark side.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm certainly not for abolishing the CPS, but as an agency of the state, they have more of a vested interested in maintaining statistics than they do making sure every child they take on is adequately cared for as a human being. So many kids just shuffled through and forgotten about, but because statistically they appear to be serving the public good, all criticism is rendered unfounded. When you try to bring up accusations against the profit motivation behind certain caseworkers who seemed to breech ethics (in some states, they get higher pay for bringing in the most kids, because more kids usually means more funding), when you try to criticize the horrible conditions some kids (not all) are then forced to live in (such as the famous cases in Florida and Kentucky)...etc., the response is always "it's okay, because it doesn't happen all the time. Add to this kids being "aged out," kids being put on cocktails of psychotropic medications for minor behavioral disturbances, the ignorance toward foster parent abuse (it happens all the time)... and we have a lot of problems.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but in my opinion, one case of mistreatment at the hands of the state is one case too many.
I don't see a solution, it's unreasonable to expect the state to never drop the ball seeing as many kids they are dealing with. All I ask is that they take responsibility for their screw ups as well.
Oh, I definitely agree that one screw-up is one too many and sadly, they made a lot of screw-ups. The problem is that the CPS are dealing with so many cases that they will be mistakes (we don't know how many but they are probably a lot of them) and each mistake will affect the child's life forever (most likely in a negative way due to putting them in foster homes).
ReplyDelete