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About Me
- Amanda
- My goal is to have all Children's Aid Societies held accountable for their actions when placing or removing a child. They are responsible for societies most innocent, vulnerable and important citizens and should not forget this when making decisions on children's behalf. They are playing god to these children with absolutely no one to question their actions or motives. It is past time that tax payers, parents, and citizens of Canadian society stand up against the 'Canadian Mofia' and say enough is enough. Thank you for visiting this blog! I welcome all comments, suggestions and news updates! jeffreys_law@hotmail.com
129 comments:
Unfortunately, this site keeps referring to the Dufferin fix CAS site - which I do not think is on point at all. This site is radically opposed to removing children from their parents to a degree that does not appear objective in the least. I think that Jeffrey's case and many other tragedies demonstrate the reality that children often should be removed but are not, not only from their parents but their extended families as well, who are poisoned by a history of generational abuse from which they cannot escape. Children born into such families must be protected by removal to a healthy environment, albeit not with their blood relatives.
As such, we must be critical of the CAS agencies because they have failed too often to protect children using best practices and standards, not because they have removed children from their parents per se.
I completely disagree with this poster. The CAS agencies had a massive scoop of babies in the 60's especially where innocent parents lost their babies to unfit strangers in many cases. What happened to Jeffrey is a huge tragedy and no doubt he should not have been in the custody of his grandparents. Not every abused child grows into another abuser, and that suggestion itself is CAS propoganda. I had a friend who was abused and she was trying to get help for her ADHD son. Instead of helping the CAS launched into the crap about the cycle of abuse, a and re-abused her emotionally for something that she endured as a small child. No one deserves to be labelled the way they label parents. Most children should remain with their parents unless it is a real danger. For Jeffrey it was, but that should not be an excuse for those ruthless agencies to orchestrate another scoop. Dufferin VOCA is an IMPORTANT site that informs the public about the madness of the CAS. Unless you have either been scooped by the CAS, or had your child stolen then I would reserve judgement. It is if anything long overdue for the real experts to be heard, and the experts are those who were in that Godforsaken system.
You know I wonder who posted the first message, as it sounds like something out of the CAS manual of lies. Why does society value and cherish destroying families? Removing children is a trauma for them that should be avoided. Being raised in foster care, or adopted by strangers is not what any child would want. For people in society to believe that this is a good thing is very scary. Why do we value strangers over the natural family? Because the CAS has made natural families the enemy in their hateful campaign to take children. Dufferin VOCA exposes them and they are to be credited. The public needs to hear the truth about what has happened with the CAS, and what is still going on. The only people that promote destroying families are social workers, the CAS, potential people that want other people's children and last but not least baby brokers. It is not okay to think that strangers are safer, as they are not. Read the stories on this site about dead children who were sent into care. The man that started Dufferin VOCA had his child ruthlessly taken for no good reason. If that was you, I would think you would be speaking out against CAS terrorizing your family as well. To the first poster, I would wonder if you have children which one you would like to see shipped to the system to be abused - while you have no rights to ever see them for years?
Thank you for posting these sites for everyone's benefit. There is no question that Dufferin VOCA does an amazing job.
If I may, I'd like to use this post to appeal to readers with computer skills to establish sites of their own. One of my huge regrets is that (try as I might) I can't seem to master any real computer skills beyond e-mail, and even that can be a challenge. My ability to contribute is limited to written content.
It would be wonderful if there were at least one website or blog for each of the 53 CAS agencies in Ontario - a very powerful statement. Everyone should look at the Kingston site. Although it deals with CAS abuse of only one family, it is very well done and give you a real sense of what's possible.
Imagine the effect of having over 50 Dufferin VOCA's in Ontario.
We live in a free country where one is entitled to their opinion.
I have read these many sites. I only regret that I am only able to read one side of the issue. Yes the parents posted a lot of info but I keep wondering what (if anything) is missing.
I do not feel free to judge anyone without the benefit of hearing both sides.
No I have had no issues with any CAS and nor do I have any friends who have. I do not consider myself tainted.
However many posts appear to be tainted by an experience with CAS. These same people condemn doctors, teachers, police and anyone else in authority.
Some members of society have problems with authority for whatever reason. Our jails are full of them.
Having different blogs for each CAS is a fantastic idea!! All are culprits in the madness going on. None are exempt, though some especially are horrendous. Toronto CCAS is one of the worst. One cannot imagine how many people have had difficult experiences with them.
I applaud the Mom for creating the Kingston site. It is a very sad state of affairs. Read the crap letter from the child abduction society to the Mom - they accuse a loving mother of writing an inappropriate letter. They are the one's being abusive, inappropriate and crazy - and they need to be stopped!!! It must be so hard for the boys in this case, and for the Mom as well. I think she has a lot of courage to share this painful story. The Kingston CAS and their vile workers should go to jail over this.
With all due respect to the last poster, it is well within the right of anyone to question those in authority - look at the Gomery mess for instance. I happen to have a wonderful doctor, but that does not mean that someone else does, or that doctors, teachers etc.. have not participated in horrible crimes to children. Abuse of power I think is the greater issue, and those who have abused their power to such a sweeping degree such as the CAS agencies have, must be held to account. And on that note it is stunning that even police have external review mechanisms yet the CAS agencies of Ontario have NONE. This is in fact why these agencies have gotten away with so much abuse for years, while failing real cases of children abuse. It is not wrong to cite abuse of power in any way, as let us not forget the scandals of the past where doctors, teachers etc.. participated - such as the residential schools, the Grandview Home for Girls in Ontario, the Butterbox babies and other horrors. Abuse of power from any profession must be changed in general. Not all are bad of course but really to suggest that we not even question one as they have a certain title is utterly ridiculous. Sadly in the prison system are far too many adopted, and far too many who were in foster care for years. Many were abused by the so called loving homes that the CAS sent them to. There is a real pattern. In addition many former wards of the crown are addicted to drugs, alcohol, and are homeless. I do not think it is as they questioned authority either, I think it is because idiot social workers failed to do their jobs, and these people are very traumatized. We don't hear of such people in the news though, they are the invisible victims of the CAS, but be assured they exist.
sorry my email was not to the last poster it was to the person questioning people questioning authority
No. We do not live in a free country. We live in a totalitarian socialist state where the public media is controlled and prevented from speaking the truth.
To imply that the posters on these sites are criminals who do not like authority figures is craziness. The poster who thinks this better look around.
The MPPs we elect serve the Premier, not us. The MPs serve the PMO, not us. The public servants are coerced into supporting the dictates of this legislation, for fear of fine, loss of license or prosecution. We live in a fascist society where everyone is spying and reporting on everyone else.
This same coercion goes on with the CAS, in schools and in hospitals.
This poster needs her own personal encounter with the problem.
Amanda thanks for posting the websites, they are very informative.
a good website
http://www.amfor.net/alternatives.html
Thank you to the poster that mentioned Gomery. Your words are very well-chosen and make all the sense in the world.
Quite frankly I think all of Canada should read Dufferin VOCA - many of these stories are buried in the media. It is time for the public to really know what is going on. It is time for the media to let the victims speak, time for the system to be changed, and time for real reform with the CAS. Jeffrey was one victim too many - Amanda you are doing a great job by having this site. Let this little boy be truly loved by changing the system in his name.
Thanks back to the poster that liked the Gomery reference. If under a legal inquiry one day and under real scrutiny a CAS investigation would make Gomery look like Little House on the Prarie in comparing the two.
Foster-home abuse victims to have claims heard
By ROBERT MATAS
Friday, January 6, 2006, Page S1
VANCOUVER -- The children were sexually assaulted in a foster home between 1963 and 1987. Alan Winter, a former Surrey school trustee who ran several group homes, was convicted of sex-related crimes in a high-profile court case in 1987.
SWEDEN TO PROBE YEARS OF ABUSE IN CHILDREN'S HOMES
On Sunday 27 November 2005 Swedish state television (SvT2) showed the documentary "Stolen Childhood" in which it was reported that about 100 000 Swedes have at some point in their lives lived in children's homes. Many of those people's lives today are still affected by their childhood experiences.
The TV-documentary has now resulted in the Swedish government promising an official inquiry into the serious allegations made against the child-care institutions.
"The State must make an unconditional apology to those former children's home children" said Social Services Minister Morgan Johansson.
The NCHR is pleased that the Swedish government is to launch an investigation into the conditions for the former children's home children, but as usual, Sweden is a late starter.
Other countries have already started investigating and coming to terms with the despicable conditions to which children taken into state care have been subjected. Australia seems to have been the first country to investigate the conditions under which children - Aboriginee children - who had been forcibly removed from their parents, lived. The investigations started in December 1995 and the report Bringing them home: The 'Stolen Children' report presented in 1996 - 1997 made echoes around the world. The United Nations called the system Genocide. The Australian government has failed to apologise to the victims of the past policies.
In England and Wales, the Waterhouse Commission (1996 - 1998) set up by former Tory leader, William Hague, presented its report, The Waterhouse Report, in 2000.
In 2001, former children's home children in Bergen, Norway demanded redress and compensation for the abuses that they had suffered while they were in state care. This gave rise to a land-wide investigation led by the Befring-Committee that found that there was systemic abuse in the foster homes and institutions. The victims have sued the Norwegian state for their demands and so far the government has made settlements with a few but the case is still pending.
In Ireland the government has set aside billions in order to give compensation to former children's home children. There have been several investigations made about what took place when the Catholic Church systematically exposed children to abuse. There is an enormous amount of reports and investigations and everyone who has been in certain institutions are eligible for damages. The sums vary between GB £ 3 600 and £ 214 000. On an average payments of GB £42 800 each have been made after application to the "Redress board" which ceases to exist after December 31, 2005. Survivors and their spouses and children are also granted economic support for education and leisure activities through the state agency NOVA.
*******
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has - on numerous occasions - found Sweden guilty of violating children's and their families' Human rights to private and family life. The first case was Olsson v. Sweden, 1982, which was a decisive victory for attorney-at-law and former medical practitioner, Mrs. Siv Westerberg, who has subsequently won several child care cases against Sweden in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Despite all those verdicts against Sweden we are experiencing a galloping number of cases where children are being unnecessarily taken from their parents and placed in public care.
The NCHR (Nordic Committee for Human Rights, For the Protection of Family Rights in the Nordic countries) was co-founded in 1996 by Mrs Siv Westerberg, in a desperate attempt to prevent a proliferation of cases like those presented in Stolen Childhood and the modern child care cases. See for eg The Edner Case and The Helena Lufuma Case.
In August 1998 Attorney-at-law Lennart Hane, a fierce opponent of the Swedish system, wrote a letter to the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Social Affairs demanding compensation to the victims of the social services. In November 1998, Siv Westerberg and I, Ruby Harrold-Claesson, had a meeting with the legal secretaries at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, in order to bring focus on the fact that not only the visiting rights issues but also the separation of children from their parents should be treated as violations of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
At this point the NCHR would like to remind our readers about the eugenics debate that raged in the 1990s concerning the ca 60,000 women who were forcibly sterilised between 1936 - 1976, after being deemed unfit for motherhood because they were handicapped, according to the then modern medical and social expertise. After the sterilisation law was abrogated in the middle of the 1970's Parliament passed new laws for the social services and the forcible taking of children into public care. They couldn't stop the adults from having children, they took the children and placed them in "suitable" foster homes. The new-swedish term "family home" was brought into existence.
Once again, the NCHR is pleased that the Swedish government is to launch an investigation into the conditions for the former children's home children, but it is of utmost urgency that the government should investigate the conditions of the tens of thousands of children and young people who are living in foster homes today.
14 year old Daniel Sigström died in his foster home in Härnosand on April 24, 1992. Since then several other children have died in their foster homes. The Sigström case was investigated by the Ombudsman of Justice but despite the fact that there were over 100 serious miscarriages of justice, the Ombudsman did not prosecute any of the civil servants involved. Also, several parents, for eg The Götene Case have had to take their children and flee from Sweden to protect their families from being destroyed by the social workers and the administrative courts.
Ruby Harrold-Claesson, attorney-at-law
President of the NCHR
December 11, 2005
From England - Ontario will do the same thing with Bill 210
DAILY MAIL - SATURDAY, 14TH MAY 2005
VICTIMS OF THE CHILD SNATCHERS
Last Saturday the Daily Mail told the horrific story of a family whose children were confiscated by social services because their loving parents were "too slow". The outcry it sparked has been astonishing - and reveals the true scale of this scandal....
They are a hidden population, 250,000 strong but without a proper voice or control over their futures.
Shockingly, they are 50 times more likely than their neighbours to have their children taken into care and run a "significantly" higher risk of losing those children permanently.
Their crime is to be "slow" intellectually, to have a low IQ or to be labelled as having a learning
disability.
Last Saturday, the Daily Mail revealed the scandalous case of a young couple whose family has been
destroyed because their IQ's did not satisfy Essex County Council.
Their two children, a girl of four and a one-year old boy were taken into care after social workers
judged that the mother did not have regular routines for her son and daughter, and that she left the girl
to play alone, could not cook simple meals and took too long brushing her teeth. The father was
bizarrely, said to have too many routines.
The parents had not hurt their children or let them go hungry. There was no sign of abuse or cruelty
and, sitting in secret, a family court judge told the couple they had done nothing wrong, but still ordered that the children be put up for adoption to give them "a better life".
The view of the social services and the court was that the couple could not meet their children's basic
needs. The father said "They said our little girl wouldn't reach her full potential if she stayed with us".
The mother, who has an IQ of 60 but can read and write, added: "The social workers think I am stupid
- but I am not. They have told us that the children are having a new forever mum and dad and that our
little girl doesn't like us any more. It really upsets me".
The outcry following this story has been astonishing. Experts, politicians, campaigners and parents have written, telephoned and e-mailed to express their outrage at what some believe is a sinister experiment in "social engineering".
And I have discovered the distressing fact that this is not an isolated case. This couple are by no means alone.
In fact, according to new research by an eminent expert, and astonishing 20 per cent of all local
authority care proceedings in this country involve parents with learning disabilities.
They are, according to Professor Tim Booth, a "disproportionate number" who are likely to have their
competence as parents judged against stricter criteria or harsher standards than other parents' and are disadvantaged in the child protection and court process by rules of evidence and procedure, their own limitations and inadequacies in services".
He is writing about people like the original couple, who are desperately exploring every legal avenue to challenge the court order that put their son and daughter up for adoption. The father says: "We have
got our MP involved...it is so hard for the children's mother to believe that she won't ever see them
again. This cannot be right".
And people like another Essex couple who have lost one of their three children to social services. The
father has a full time, responsible job. The mother has a mild learning disability and cannot read and
write but is devoted to her three sons, aged ten, four and two.
Their first child has a problem with controlling his bowels and at the age of eight, despite being
diagnosed by a specialist in London as having a medical condition. Essex Social Services called in a
psychologist and started legal proceedings to have him taken away from his parents.
The father, who to protect his son cannot be named says: "We were blamed for a medical condition. A consultant in London said it was a condition our son would grow out of , but social services said it was us. They said we were bad parents because we gave in to the children and don't keep boundaries.
"They blamed my wife's learning disability for her not having routines. But we are not bad parents. My
wife can't read or write, but she is a lovely mother. You should see her with our boys. This is a happy
home and we will do everything we can to get back our oldest son.
"We have been told he must remain in foster care until he is 18 and we can only see him once a fortnight for four hours".
Astonishingly, despite taking the first child away, Essex Social Services have neither removed the two
younger boys nor put them on an at-risk register.
"Social services have been involved throughout my wife's life because of her learning disability", the
father says, pacing up and down his small living room. "And when she had our first child, she had
postnatal depression and they always seemed to be here, picking holes in what we were doing.
"Our boy was a little bit behind at school and the psychologist's report said he would do better if he was taken away from the home environment. The solicitor told us we should co-operate with the social
services and they would ease our son back into our home. But we have found out they have no such
plans. Poor chap, he wants to be home with his mum and dad".
The couple, who live in a council house filled with toys and baby equipment, went with their son when
he was taken to his new home with foster parents. The father recalls: "We had to leave him there. He
was only eight and was crying for his mum,, holding onto her leg. Social services don't know the
damage they are doing ripping kids away from their parents.
"The reason given for taking him away was unintentional neglect. They are blaming my wife's learning
disability for hindering our son's development. They said he was too dependent on his mum, too
clinging.
"What we do not understand is that we are the same parents for the other two boys and they are not
being taken away. It doesn't make sense.
But there is a pattern to these cases. In both, the mothers have learning disabilities and social workers concentrated their criticism on their "lack of routines". The first mother claims she was "set up to fail" by ten professionals involved in her assessment.
The second mother says: "They kept watching and picking little holes in what I did. I still give my
littlest one a bottle sometimes and they say he is too old and must drink out of a cup. My friends don't
have someone telling them how to do everything and when to do it. I love my children and I take care
of them".
And in both cases, the fathers were accused of being aggressive and told to go on an anger management course. The first father was then told by his course tutor when he arrived that he didn't have a problem.
The second father has not yet got a date for his course and rolls his eyes at the thought: "Of course I am angry. They are taking my child away and destroying my family. I don't need to classes. I need my son back".
The second couple are starting a legal battle to discharge the care order and get their son home but,
according to Professor Tim Booth, the odds are stacked against them.
The recently retired academic, who held the chair in Sociological Studies at Sheffield University has just completed a two-year investigation into the treatment of parents with learning disabilities when they become embroiled in care proceedings. His findings are a damning indictment of the system.
In his report, Professor Booth raises the spectre of widespread discrimination against parents with
learning disabilities by social services and the family court system. He and his co-author, Wendy Booth looked at a total of 437 care proceedings in Sheffield and Leeds and the figures tell their own story:
Fifteen per cent of all local authority care applications involve a parent with learning difficulties.
Another five percent of applications involve a parent with with borderline learning difficulties.
Parents with learning difficulties and their children feature in care applications up to 50 times more
often than would be expected from their numbers in the population.
75 per cent of children with parents with learning difficulties were taken away from the family.
Two in every five of those children were put up for adoption.
The children of parents with learning difficulties were significantly more likely to be the subjects of
such adoption orders than children of other parents.
But, of course, the human cost behind these statistics is vast. Professor Booth says "A whirlpool of
distress lies hidden in these figures.
The reality beneath is of mothers, especially, battling agsinst the odds to create a family home, with little but their own impoverished childhood to fall back on by way of example, eventually coming under the surveillance of social workers who are more concerned with policing than supporting their parenting.
"The families end up ensnared in an inquiry, operated by rules and standards beyond their understanding, which finally leads to legal proceedings and the loss of a cherished child. Then, they may have another baby, to establish the ordinary family life they crave and hoping to shut the door on the professionals they no longer trust". But then the interference starts again.
And he gives a powerful insight into the long-term effects of enforced adoption from interviews with
affected parents. "For these parents the hurt has not eased nor will their grief abate. However long ago it was since their case was heard, the impact of the proceedings continued to ripple through their lives.
"A quarter of the parents we talked to voluntary mentioned that they had been, or were going to be,
sterilised as a result of having been through care proceedings. There may have been others. It is not
possible to tell how far these decisions were taken on health grounds, under the pressure of professional "advice" or from a consuming desire to avoid having to face the same trauma of loss with yet another child.
He is scathing about the lack of expertise among social workers, who make such fundamental
judgements. "The possibility cannot easily be dismissed that some social workers bring their attitudes to the job: that the "professional knows best", culture....is itself a product of the kind of people attracted into child protection work" - and about government policy which insists the number of adoptions should be increased and the process speeded up.
Arrangements for quicker adoption were introduced in the Adoption and Children Act 2002 in order to
get more children out of council care and into families.
However, according to members of the legal professional who were interviewed anonymously for the
report, the policy may be encouraging some local authorities to put children up for adoption rather than spend money on supporting parents with learning disabilities.
One solicitor says "Removing the child from the parent and placing them with someone who they can
just leave them to get on with rather than offering that support is the easier option - so it is
discriminatory in a sense".
Ominously. a judge admitted: "You know it's terribly easy to go along with the local authority I mean,
it's the easiest way through to go for adoption. It feels safe". Another judge said simply: "It depends
how people look at someone with learning difficulties: it's something from which you don't recover".
All of which makes alarming reading for parents caught in the care process and the campaigners who are fighting for their rights.
David Congdon, Men cap's Director of External Relations said: "This is most disconcerting. Cases like this show what a difficult situation parents with learning difficulties are placed in. Forty to sixty per cent of parents with a learning disability get their children taken away while the evidence is that with a little bit of support, many are quite capable of looking after their children.
"It is hard to believe that all of these parents were not able to bring up their children. Taking children
away should be the exception - not the norm. The assumption appears to be that these people can't be parents, which is wrong".
It is a view echoed by the Commissioner for Disability Rights, Phillippa Russell, who urges local
authorities to put more support systems in place. She says; "This is a very complicated area, but there are far more people with learning disabilities living in the community now, having ordinary relationships and having children.
"We don't want a situation where people with learning disabilities are assumed not to be able to be
parents. That would be social engineering gone mad. These people need non-intrusive, appropriate
support.
Meanwhile, the Government is being urged to to end the secrecy of family courts which sit without a
jury or public scrutiny in order to protect the confidentiality of the children. Anyone who tries to raise
issues in the public interest risks an injunction and imprisonment. The result is that miscarriages of
justice go unnoticed and unchallenged. The Constitutional Affairs select committee recommended
earlier this year that courts should be more open and publicly accountable, but the Government has yet to act.
Sarah Harman, a leading children's rights solicitor and sister of Harriet Harman, the newly appointed
Minister of State in the Department of Constitutional Affairs, has written to Beverley Hughes, the new
Children's Minister, demanding more transparency in care proceedings.
She says: "I am currently involved in a case where parents have children living at home and another
child placed in care. The bread winner parent has suffered serious depression and anxiety as a result of one of his children being placed away from home and has been less and less able to do his job".
As a result, his employers are taking disciplinary proceedings against him, yet he is forbidden by the
secret court from discussing the reason for his troubles. Yet again, the system seems to be riding
roughshod over some of the most vulnerable in society.
As Professor Booth sums it up: "The parents stories have a kind of inevitable momentum about them,
driven less by what was happening in their lives than by the dynamics of the process in which they had
become entrapped. It is this that accounts for the apparent gulf between the general ordinariness of the family's troubles and the pathos of the final outcome".
Meanwhile a spokesperson for Essex Social Services said: "We are aware of no occasion where a court in Essex has ever placed a child in the care of the County Council simply because one or both parents have learning difficulties.
"Ninety-nine per cent of children and young people referred to Essex County Council's Children's
Service remain with their families and we assess the needs of each and every child on the at-risk register before deciding the best possible support for that child".
For a series of articles about foster care that covers this issue internationally please visit this site. The crisis is widespread, and children are being murdered in foster care in many different countries.
http://www.nkmr.org/english/articles.htm
When any child is killed it is a tragedy. When those killed by adoptive parents, and foster parents come to light it is not just a tragedy it is more of a travesty. "In the best interests of the child"?? When children are removed by CAS agencies for a so called better life and they are tortured like Jeffrey Baldwin was, or murdered by strangers as in the cases of many stories on this site it is an outrage. It should be evidence enough to have the Ombudsman oversee the CAS agencies of Ontario, and it should make all of society question what the hell is going on with child welfare in general. How can agencies act like God on one hand, deem themselves experts yet when really measured completely steer away??? What type of system alleges to protect children that is caked in secrecy, sealed files, ancient laws, unaccountability, deception and lies? How can any of these agencies think they can protect children now when they refuse to be responsible for the past, and when they refuse to even look at the past? What type of system operates in a cloak and dagger fashion where scrutiny is not allowed, and where total power and control is bestowed like a red carpet of oppression?
Fixing the corrupt CAS system is not very complicated. First, scrap CAS. Then take children who wish to go home to their parents. Allow families that require assistance to access it through reputable government programs that help people. Watch incidents of so-called child-abuse dramatically drop overnight.
Finally, prohibit former CAS employees from having any further role in the system and hold CAS social workers criminally responsible for their actions.
Many of the posters on this site are doctors, a few social workers, and teachers. and more. Dufferin Voca reports for the most part the news, anything he cannot confrim as fact is stated. Actual court documents are on that web site as well as links from around the globe, the UK and USA, for the most part. Many of the people that started writing child protection laws, have now written books and how it has beentaken to far, Do you understand the UN rights of the child. It gives the rights to the child but removes parental rights, therefore your own child belongs to the state. The crown, not us who bare them, we only have responsibilitys, no rights at all. Good reading The Fight for the rights of the Candain Child, by Katherine Covell. The CAS does abuse its power, it is removing children for reasons other then abuse and even neglegt. What if you had breast Cancer, and the nurse saw a 4 year old visiting you in hospital. Perhaps I will leave that for the docotr that post on this site to answer that for you. Have you read the BILLS the last one and the one to be passed. Its also very telling, the governemnt undertands its not working, but has gone to far, and no way back.
We say solgans pychologist make up, so often we dont even think about it.
But who really should jugde who should parent and who should not?
Should all children that have been crown wards not be allowed to have children, because for the most part they were abused in care. Did you watch the Crwon Wards, terreable mutilgenertaional abuse by the CAS. Its been going on for far to long.
News papers are very aware of there liabilty when they print a story, so when you run across one you can be sure its factual. They dont do CAS storys with out legal advice. After all the CAS legal funds are unlimited, they come from our own purse the taxpayers. Many of the homeless are children that the CAS took, they will be the next generation of huge homeless members on are city streets, many are young offenders, the government was responsible for there care. Many have died in care, more then in the general population, I don't spew this out for the joy of it, I am trying to promote change, its needed.
who ever posted the 1st post need a good kick in the ass. Wake up read the news, THINK.
In his Society essay, Lykken writes, I will testify in support of a parental licensure bill to be introduced at the next session of the Minnesota State Legislature. The only sanction proposed in this bill for unlicensed parents who produce a child is periodic visits by child-protection caseworkers who will do an annual audit of each child's physical, social, and educational progress. However, Lykken asserts, Minnesotans and their legislative representatives will [eventually] recognize the need to take one further step. That step, I suggest, should be to take custody of babies born to unlicensed mothers, before bonding occurs, and to place them for adoption or permanent care by professionally trained and supervised foster parents.
Nor is this the last step that Lykken would take toward the abolition of parental authority by the state. The December 17, 1994 Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported, Under Lykken's system, if children were born to unlicensed parents, the state would intervene immediately. Licenses would be checked in hospital maternity wards. Unlicensed parents would lose their children permanently. Adoptions would be final and irreversible. Furthermore, according to Lykken, Repeat offenders might be required to submit to an implant of Norplant [a surgical contraceptive] as a way to keep them from having another baby for five years.
We are, of course, appalled and outraged at the sheer audacity of the suggestion that parents need to be approved by some elitists who will decide our worthiness to raise our own children. But what we are objecting to is simply the logical outworking of a principle that most Christians take for granted today.
Very few of us even question the notion that the state can regulate education, and we sheepishly submit to compulsory education statutes, even those reaching inside the home to mandate the shape of homeschooling.
But in doing so we grant the premise that the state has authority over our children and their upbringing. Licensing parents would be just a more exacting application of a principle most of us already accept.
Think about it.
In his Society essay, Lykken writes, I will testify in support of a parental licensure bill to be introduced at the next session of the Minnesota State Legislature. The only sanction proposed in this bill for unlicensed parents who produce a child is periodic visits by child-protection caseworkers who will do an annual audit of each child's physical, social, and educational progress. However, Lykken asserts, Minnesotans and their legislative representatives will [eventually] recognize the need to take one further step. That step, I suggest, should be to take custody of babies born to unlicensed mothers, before bonding occurs, and to place them for adoption or permanent care by professionally trained and supervised foster parents.
Nor is this the last step that Lykken would take toward the abolition of parental authority by the state. The December 17, 1994 Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported, Under Lykken's system, if children were born to unlicensed parents, the state would intervene immediately. Licenses would be checked in hospital maternity wards. Unlicensed parents would lose their children permanently. Adoptions would be final and irreversible. Furthermore, according to Lykken, Repeat offenders might be required to submit to an implant of Norplant [a surgical contraceptive] as a way to keep them from having another baby for five years.
We are, of course, appalled and outraged at the sheer audacity of the suggestion that parents need to be approved by some elitists who will decide our worthiness to raise our own children. But what we are objecting to is simply the logical outworking of a principle that most Christians take for granted today.
Very few of us even question the notion that the state can regulate education, and we sheepishly submit to compulsory education statutes, even those reaching inside the home to mandate the shape of homeschooling.
But in doing so we grant the premise that the state has authority over our children and their upbringing. Licensing parents would be just a more exacting application of a principle most of us already accept.
Think about it.
A License to Parent?
The other day I contacted the Toronto Harbourfront Commission to inquire about a boating license for some friends. It struck me as odd that operating a boat, something humans have done since time immemorial, required permission from a higher authority. But today it seems everything from driving a car to going fishing to teaching children does. Now some people are suggesting that an activity arguably more important and with wider-ranging consequences than the above-mentioned ones also be subject to licensing: bringing up another human being. In other words, a license to parent.
The most vocal Canadian proponent of such a license is Katherine Covell, a psychology professor at the University College of Cape Breton in the province of Nova Scotia. According to Covell, any individual who wishes to have a child should first possess at least a high school diploma and complete a course in infant development. Then he or she could apply for permission to actually become a parent.
Covell’s proposal sparked a torrential reaction. Martha Friendly of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care described it as a “hare-brained idea.” Others went even further, calling Covell a fascist.
Dr. Covell was my first-year psych professor at the University of Toronto, and I know for a fact she’s not a fascist. Her proposal is motivated not by a desire to stop the “wrong” people from reproducing (after all, she’s not advocating that only individuals with Einsteinesque IQs and Brad Pitt/Jennifer Aniston looks be allowed to procreate) but by concern for children. And many of her statements make sense. For example, it’s generally preferable both for the prospective parents’ and their offspring’s sake that childbearing be embarked upon after the mother and/or father have at least completed high school. If my sixteen-year-old cousin told me he wanted to drop out of school to father a child, I’d strongly discourage him from doing so. The idea of a parenting license looks even more tempting in light of the deaths of children like those of Andrea Yates at the hands of their caregivers.
Yet for all its merits, I have to say no to state-mandated permission for parenthood. First of all, how would it be enforced? If a woman became pregnant despite failing to obtain a license to do so, would she be forced to have an abortion? Such a scenario would be repugnant to pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike.
It also might be hard to decide who is and is not fit for parenthood. One person’s Mother of the Year may be another’s Medea. I was once told by a former boyfriend, for instance, I had no business bringing a child into the world because I didn’t have enough money to raise one, even though I have a steady job and lead a fairly conservative lifestyle. On the other hand, a Mexican man I dated said I would make a wonderful mother to his children because I was so different from the girls he knew who drank, smoked and took drugs.
Try as we might, we can’t ensure every child is born into a perfect environment. Numerous studies have shown, for example, that witnessing parents argue constantly is bad for children. Yet few would suggest legally forbidding two quarrelsome people from getting married and reproducing in order to spare their future offspring psychological damage. That would truly be a case of the government putting its nose in the bedrooms of the nation. And in a democratic society, the state can (and should) only have a limited role in dictating citizens’ private lives.
I’m furthermore sceptical of some individuals’ endorsement of the parenting license. While I have no doubt Katherine Covell genuinely cares about the welfare of children, I’m not so sure of some others. One advocate of parenting licenses is Jerry Steinberg, self-described “founding non-father” of No Kidding!, a social club for people without children, and a major spokesperson of the childfree lifestyle. Steinberg is also a proponent of China’s one-child policy, a prog
CAS is already in the bedroom, bathroom and every other room or outside room you may be looking for a reason to take a child.
Whenever I hear the word psychology, alarm bells start to ring - something to do with Pavlov I think. Seriously though, is there any branch of junk science that has descredited itself more thoroughly than psychology?
Nonetheless, a License to Parent raises some interesting points. First, fascism has little interest in raising Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston clones or people with Einsteinesque intelligence. It's more concerned with the state trumping individual rights to create a highly regimented society. Whatever her intent, that's the direction Katherine Covell is heading.
Lately, the Ontario government is claiming over thirty percent of students do not complete high school. Although these numbers are highly suspect (first create a crisis) the government is now forcing students to remain in high school two extra years. In my mind, that dovetails rather nicely with Covell's position.
It's tempting to assume that having children after high school will somehow improve life for children. The deeper question is whether children's lives need improved and what effect a license would have in doing so. Even if you believe the parent as monster hype and ignore the societal influences that parents try to protect their kids from daily (including schools) there are still difficulties with the license to parent thing. Besides the high rate of kids that drop out of school(and there are many valid reasons for this) who would ultimately have their children scooped by CAS, consider the fact that high school and universities graduates are often unemployed or work in menial jobs. In other words, families face strong economic pressures regardless of a diploma. The last time I looked, the average family income of Canadians - graduates and non graduates - was not very high. The greatest area of concern is whether the kids have enough to eat - families with little extra can be the greatest environment a kid could have while affluent licensed families could be comparatively lacking environments.
So, who is to say that lower income families do not provide equal or superior conditions for children than a wealthy CEO or even middle management type that seldom sees his kids? And what's the magic number financially - we've all heard two income executive families remark how tough it is to make ends meet on over $200,000 a year.
Most of the poster's comments are interesting and fair, but I think throwing Andrea Yates in this mix is a red herring. I doubt any amount of education or training would have applied in her case as it involved severe mental illness - a condition that is not unknown in the upper echelons of society. Nor is constant arguing restricted to low income parents that have not completed high school. An interesting side bar to this is that CAS scoops kids for anything that resembles a one-time disagreement, let alone violent and repetitive arguing.
The writer offers some excellent points on perception of parental suitability based on her own life experience and is well aware of the perils of CAS.
Unfortunately, the license to parent issue places the state squarely in the bedrooms of the nation and like most social welfare initiatives is based on little more than the unsupported prejudices of those advocating the legislation, including academics like Covell.
The onerous burden of taxes and families stretched to the limit with mortgages and credit cards trying to provide a postive environment for their children are other examples of real pressures we all face. In that sense, the license to parent idea seems rather simplistic.
If I'm correct, the average age for first time moms is somewhere in the mid-twenties. Does this license to parent mean that a twenty-five year old woman without a high school education will have her child removed at birth unless she has a license?
I am always amazed the vast majority of politicians, lawyers, bureaucrats and other fields populated by crooks are all university educated. The professor might be better advised to argue for making it mandatory for youth to drop out in high school before they become so corrupt. That may produce far better role models for children.
11:55pm poster...
Excellent suggestions! I, too know there is a simple solution. In other parts of Canada there are places called 'Crisis Nursery's' where parents who need help can go and have a break from their children while they access social programs, counselling, parenting courses, CPR, etc., etc. wjithout the fear that CAS will be called immediately. I believe people are instinctively, for the most part good and want to do what's right for their kids. I bring up Yvonne Kidman. Maybe she thought her mother's house was a better environment for her children than what she could provide. She, as we know now, should have chosen a different route, but is it possible that's why she relenquished her parental rights? I absolutely do not support her in any way, however, sometimes things are different than what we percieve. If parents had the opportunity to go somewhere for help... (and who doesn't need help every once in awhile??) maybe there would be far less child deaths and abuse. I also think that sometimes parents realize they can not 'handle' (or do not want to have) having a child(ren), but they should be allowed to make that decision without CAS ripping the family apart. Unless, OF COURSE, the parents are abusive and neglectful! Then kids should be taken right away if only for their immediate protection until a decision can be made. I don't agree with sending kids back to their parents repeatedly after abuse... that's usually how kids get killed- they told the secret.
I'm on a rant, sorry. I promise all of you that if I ever made or won big money, I would open an independant Crisis Nursery immediately... maybe I will anyways in the next few years. I am going to school for house building! Google 'crisis nursery' in Canada and see what they do, it's a very good idea!
Amanda
http://www.sbcc.ca/cn.htm
http://www.kidskottage.org/
The two Canadian crisis nurseries... seriously, very, very interesting!
Amanda, I love the idea of a crisis nursery, I think it is brilliant. Try and remove and address the crisis first with real help. Help the families, and most times they will benefit and be able to keep their child. People who are in crisis need real help, not a draconian system where they just snatch and grab the child. In Australia more attention is being given to this issue, and they are spending more time and money in helping people in a crisis. Family preservation should be a goal of our society. As one poster said they take huge numbers of children to help one, and they both overreact and underreact. I think a crisis nursery is a very formidable goal in the future for actual intelligent solutions.
In actual cases of abuse, I don't agree with returning a child to a really abusive parent either, nor would I think anyone. However, if the child should try and remain in the family. Not all in one family is abusive though in Jeffrey's case his grandparents were awful. If the child cannot remain in the family then give them a loving guardian, give the child support, give the guardian support and help them - no adoption falsifying their identity, no lies, no fiction - real help. And monitored long-term as well as long as the guardian has the child.
Having a license for parents is a ridiculous idea, it assumes guilt before one has the chance to be a parent. It would become an elitist boom of baby brokering - where the rich and elite have babies and anyone else does not. Ever read the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - this is what a license would do. I do think that parenting courses and child development courses for our young people in high schools would be good though, and in fact it should be a mandatory part of the curriculum. If our young can train to be engineers, doctors, teachers etc.. based on their education then why not teach them about children. As one poster said we have a culture of meanness as written by Barbara Collorosa, how true - can't we change this and talk about how beautiful and wonderful children are, can't we encourage our young to have confidence that they can be great parents - I think we can!!
To the person that said this
.......Fixing the corrupt CAS system is not very complicated. First, scrap CAS. Then take children who wish to go home to their parents. Allow families that require assistance to access it through reputable government programs that help people. Watch incidents of so-called child-abuse dramatically drop overnight.
Finally, prohibit former CAS employees from having any further role in the system and hold CAS social workers criminally responsible for their actions.
Thursday, March 16, 2006 11:55:01 PM
BRAVO, and well said, give them real help, return their children in many cases, and stop the hatred of natural families.
For some who are real child protection cases, get other people to actually help the child and get rid of CAS!
H! Amanda. I am glad that you missed hearing from me.
You seems to not like anyone connected to the Toronto CCAS. Bruce and I are having a great time in the great city.
Did you ever meet Jeffrey? I don't think so. Why are you so focused on him? Is there a reason? I would like to know so that Bruce and I can help you.
You know child abusers are transgenerational. If one's parents abused their child, their child is likely to abuse their own children. This is the transgenerational garbage that you believe in. Of course, it does not apply to you.
Cheers.
Children abused and neglected in CAS custody grow up to be falsely accused of abuse and negligence by CAS. That's the reality of transgenerational abuse.
If CAS custody is the oasis of love it claims to be and if CAS "services" are so helpful and effective, why are their "clients" involved with them for generation after generation?
There is a very good article in the latest edition of Vancouver magazine.
It focuses on a boy who was born to a crystal-meth addicted mother. He was taken away and handed to his aunt and her husband who rluctantly took him in. They had no children and didnt want any. While in their care the mom made all kinds of commitments to the court to commit to attend parenting classes, drug-addiction counselling etc. She attended nothing. The aunt could not walk away as she now loved this boy and realized what his mom had done to him. He was grade 6 age but was working at a grade 2 level. He finally got through elementary school but high school became a bigger challenge. The aunt located a private boarding school in Alberta which is where he now attends. He seems to be doing well---one on one turoring and loads of physical exercise. He likes it there.Every school break his aunt flies him home (to her place) where she keeps a room for him with all of his stuff in tact. He phones her every day. In the summer he cuts her neighbors grass for money and most of her neighbors ask when he is coming "home" again. He has finally fit in somewhere.
Last christmas he visited his mom. He has said he will never do that again. His aunt (his moms sister) wonders how her sister has lived till 50 years of age.
It is a very good story--but most importantly true. It delvs into their lives and their many struggles in an effort to try to help him. They were not being dictated to nor paid by CAS.
Anyone who believes for one minute children should stay with their birth mom while she is getting help ought to read this story.
This case is not rare. Addicts put drugs first. There are many cases like this out there.
Read it....it might enlighten you. Perhaps you could then take off your blinders.
The last poster needs to take their blinders off. Most of the people complaining about CAS are not alcoholics or drug addicts. They include normal parents, foster parents, social workers, teachers, doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and MPPs etc. Everyone sees that there is a problem.
No one is talking about addicts.
I do not think anyone here has blinders on except for the person who posted the article about the mother who was struggling with drugs. The CAS is a total mess. They have no accountability period, yet they have more power then the police. And as well the person that posted the message referred to the mother as a "birth Mom"? That is a term used by baby brokers to obliterate the bonds of nature, and to promote the power of those who adopt.
I am glad to know that various professions are reading this website. I am glad that Amanda posted Dufferin VOCA and other sites. The only people that have blinders on, are those that defend the CAS, and those who wish to work with them to exploit more child state kidnappings.
To anyone that wants to license parents give me a break. That license will be used by the army of infertile couples, and anyone else that wants to hunt down other people's children. It would be heaven for Canada's baby brokers.
Your blinders must be glued on!! You are a hopeless case that refuses to believe babies are not born to addicts.
Everybody that does not agree with you is not involved with the placement of children, CAS, etc. Many of your "claims" cannot even be justified.!
I refuse to debate with the paranoid segment of society.
No one here is refusing to believe babies are born to drug addicted mothers. This blog is about making the CAS ACCOUNTABLE - and if you do not have that real interest then why are you on this site?
Incidentally the CAS has given children to thousands of alcoholics, child beaters and everything else under the sun.
No one is talking about crack babies except you.
We are talking about accountability and oversight by the Ombudsman in Bill C210. Our hard earned tax dollars being spent to fund a business venture which is out of control. We, the taxpayers, have a right to demand accountability.
Maybe you are worried about your continued income? Maybe you are worried that I will tell the world what you are doing under the guise of protecting children?
I think that you should listen to the tape of Matthew Reid's grandmother on the Dufferin Voca site. She talks about how he was molested in this group home shortly before he was murdered by an another crown ward. He was 3 years old. The tape made me physically ill.
The grandmother talks about how she tried to get Mary Ann Chambers to do something about it. Ms. Chambers chose not to return her calls. She left this child there to be murdered.
Now! Who is failing to protect children?
Babies for the highest bidders
Private adoption rewards wealth, not fitness, and abuses abound.
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By Dawn MacKeen
Jan. 19, 2001 | They are only 6 months old, but already the twin girls from Missouri have had at least two names each -- Kimberly and Belinda; Kiara and Keyara -- and at least as many homes. Now the infants are at the center of an international fight over who will raise them, an ugly tug of war that demonstrates what can go wrong in the private adoption business, where any person, with any type of background, can broker the placement of a child.
The Missouri twins' case is under investigation by the FBI, which is looking into whether fraud was committed by the adoption facilitator, Tina Johnson, who ran the Caring Heart adoption agency out of her San Diego home. Johnson reportedly brokered the twins' adoption to two couples, accepting $6,000 from Richard and Vickie Allen of California, and about $12,000 from Alan and Judith Kilshaw, a couple from Wales. (The couples found out about Johnson's services through her Web site, which has reportedly been since taken down.)
The babies lived with the Allens for two months, then returned to the birth mother, ostensibly for a few days to say goodbye. They were then handed over to the Kilshaws. And now the children's birth mother, Tranda Wecker, says she wants her babies back.
"This just highlights some of the horrors that go on," says Jane Nast, director of the American Adoption Congress, an organization that represents adoptees, birth parents and adoptive parents. "And it happens all the time. That's the thing that's most disturbing ... When there's money involved in an adoption, you can be sure there's corruption."
There are no numbers on how often incidents like this occur, but Nast and others in the field say it's become all too common -- the fallout of a business that has grown exponentially over the years with little oversight. In 1966, for example, when Nast adopted her child, she says private adoption accounted for only 10 percent of the placements. Now, public adoptions -- which are handled by agencies licensed by different states -- make up only about 20 percent of the total, according to Nast.
While the amount paid by the two sets of prospective parents in the twins' adoption is not unusual, there are no regulations stating how much a broker can charge for the adoption services, which leaves a lot of room for many adoptive parents to be bilked of their life savings, say critics. Sometimes prices can get into the six-digit range.
Adoption agencies licensed by the states have to show all of their paperwork and justify the costs to the judges overseeing the adoption cases. But private adoptions represent the wild, wild West: a field ripe for those trying to make fast cash since the parties involved -- the adoptive parents and the birth mothers -- are oftentimes highly emotional and desperate.
"There are big, huge bucks being made on the exchange of babies," says Karen Vedder, president of Concerned United Birth Parents, a national support group for birth parents, adoptive parents and adoptees. "It's like a black market. It's gotten totally out of hand and I'm just so glad that this has come up in the newspaper because this situation has been going on for too long and everybody has been turning their heads the other way."
Those who monitor private adoption say there is no shortage of stories of abuses and heartbreak. It is not unusual to hear a litany of nightmarish scenarios in which lawyers show up at women's bedsides right after they give birth, after being tipped off by a nurse that the mother was unsure whether she wanted the child; or half a dozen people pay the same broker for the same baby, or numerous couples pay all of the expenses of a women leading up to the birth of a child they never receive.
There are cases where adoptive parents aren't told that the birth parents are institutionalized or that the birth mother hasn't really relinquished custody of her baby in a court of law. Birth mothers are promised that they will be able to see a baby after it's adopted, only to find the broker's number is disconnected after all the papers are signed. And, of course, there are the children who get stuck in the middle of the custody wrangling. Adoption organizations say that the babies are the biggest pawns, and most vulnerable victims, of all.
"When I look at the pictures of those babies, and I see them in the arms of one couple in one picture and in the arms of the other in another picture, I am appalled at the confusion they are going through," Vedder says. "Once a baby is born, they are familiar with the mom's smell and heartbeat. Even though they can't verbalize what they're going through, they know they are being tossed around from one foreign surrounding to another. And it's an incredible toll on them."
In a private adoption, there is no guarantee that facilitators will take the usual steps that agencies take to safeguard the adoptive process. Although adoption rules vary from state to state, agencies usually take fingerprints of the prospective parents to see if there's a criminal record, and weed out those considered unfit. "Home studies" are conducted, in which agencies look at the prospective parents' salaries, education and goals in life as part of an assessment of their suitability as parents. The birth mother is counseled to make sure she completely understands the life-altering decision she is about to make; and an attempt to contact the birth father must be made.
With private adoptions, in many cases, all that is required is the fee involved, an attorney to handle it and the judge to finalize it.
"Either private adoptions should not be allowed anywhere or they should be regulated in all of the states," suggests Gloria Hochman, spokeswoman for the National Adoption Center, which specializes in the placement of minority and special-needs children. "Make attorneys that are doing this work go through an accreditation process and require adoptive parents to go through a training process and learn about what it's like to adopt a child."
Suggestions for adoption reform range from making it illegal to exchange money in an adoption and putting a cap on the amount a broker can earn, to having the states collect adoption fees and making sure all of the expenses involved are justified.
Some critics of private adoption, like Jane Nast, believe that they should be banned completely. In Britain, where the twins are now, private adoptions are not allowed. "It is illegal, completely illegal, in this country, for people to buy and sell babies or children, and that is entirely as it should be, because it is frankly a revolting idea," said Britain's Home Secretary Jack Straw in response to the twins' case.
Only accredited agencies can facilitate an adoption in Britain. In the United States there are a few states, like Delaware, where private adoptions are similarly not allowed. Tara Miller, district supervisor for the Delaware office of Adoptions From the Heart, says that the agency has to make sure everything is in order for each adoption, or else it risks losing its state license. "We have to work under certain guidelines that the state prescribes," Miller says. "It's a very emotion-packed situation and people are vulnerable, on both sides. Both adopting a child that a family desperately wants and relinquishing a child are very emotional acts. And that's why it's important for someone to be there to handle it in an ethical way."
It's also difficult to determine how often unethical practices occur in private adoptions because many adoptive parents don't come forward to report it, say adoption agencies. "It happens daily and if the deal works out and the couple gets the child, they will keep their mouth shut because they got what they want, which is the baby," says Robert Emmons, chief of the criminal fraud bureau at the Nassau County, N.Y., District Attorney's office. "It's only in the cases where the deals go bad that the law enforcement ever hears about it." Often the prospective parents have been trying for years to conceive a child and their attempts at in vitro fertilization have repeatedly failed. Some parents are pushed to a point where they'll do anything or pay anything -- and shut up about it -- in order to add a baby to their family.
And couples worry that if they do come forward, they will lose their chance at ever getting a child -- which is almost what happened to Lauren and Bill Schneider of Stillwater, Minn. After years of trying to conceive a child, they finally gave up, decided to adopt privately and registered with an online adoption service. A lawyer named Tamas Kovacs finally got in touch with them and told them about a baby named Nikolett from Hungary. The only hitch: It would cost $60,000.
The couple contacted law enforcement and participated in a sting operation, in which Kovacs was arrested. He later pled guilty and is serving his three-year sentence in an upstate New York prison. (He had also contacted several other couples about the baby.) But since New York law gives preference to residents who live in the state to adopt the child, the Schneiders faced a year and a half battle to keep Nikolett. In August of last year, they finally prevailed.
"The problem with this is that there isn't really a screening process to see who would be the best parent: It's simply the contest of who will pay the most money," says Emmons, who oversaw the bureau that prosecuted Kovacs. "Unlike the regulated adoption process, which is centered on the best parent, money becomes the sole issue in private adoption. Someone could be wealthy and not a good human being, but because they are wealthy, they win the lottery and get the child."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Who is Chambers working with people - a group that has the SOLE interest of recruiting babies for adoption, which has NOTHING to do with child protection period.
No big surprise that Chambers ignored the grandmother of Matthew Reid - no because she is too busy working with an organization that wants to provide other people's children to gay people, infertile people and anyone else who "wants" a child.
Bill 210 is NOT about child protection it is about recruiting children for total strangers under the guise of child protection. But even worse it removes all responsibility from the CAS - if that is not a plan for a massive wave of baby snatching then what else would it be?
I listened to the tape of Matthew Reid's grandmother and it made me cry thinking of what this child went through. He was molested and killed in foster care, he was taken from a family that loved him. Minister Chambers should BE FIRED IMMEDIATELY.
The very first day Bill 210 was introduced note who supports it - the OACAS director - the same organization that DOES NOT support the Ombudsman, and a private practitioner that arranges adoptions? Paranoid - I don't think so!
Hon. Mary Anne V. Chambers (Minister of Children and Youth Services): I would like to start by acknowledging the presence of supporters of the proposed bill, Bill 210: Jeanette Lewis, executive director of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies; Pat Fenton, executive director of the Adoption Council of Ontario; Kenn Richard, executive director of Native Child and Family Services of Toronto.
Tuesday, 16 January, 2001, 17:12 GMT
Shopping for a baby
Private adoptions are illegal in the UK
Like Judith and Alan Kilshaw, many couples have invested huge amounts of time, money and effort in bringing infants from overseas to the UK for a better life.
Most are motivated by a desperate need to be a parent and say Britain's stringent adoption rules are the reason why they go abroad to "buy" a child.
Adoption is illegal in this country unless done through a local authority or authorised agency.
If the advertisement is a way of procuring profit and money for someone then that is obviously moving away from the needs of the child
Gill Howarth, Overseas Adoption Helpline
But in all but three American states, adoptions are allowed to be conducted privately, with the biological parents choosing who should adopt their child.
With no restriction on adoption from overseas in UK, many British people look to the US to adopt a child and use the internet to find one.
To prevent a trade in "black-market babies", almost every state bans agencies and individuals from taking fees for finding or placing a child.
However, in most cases a sum is usually paid to the natural mother for medical expenses.
In the case of celebrity adoptions, including Sharon Stone, Calista Flockhart and Nicole Kidman, the sum has been substantial.
The internet has allowed the trade in private adoptions to become big business.
Internet adoption began in America in late 1994, when a housewife in Waco, Texas, created a computerised photo listing of children up for adoption.
Legal fight
There are now hundreds of agencies across the world offering their services and websites display hundreds of thousands of children each month.
While private adoptions work out for many, British adoption agencies say the Kilshaw's case highlights how the system could throw up problems.
They are reported to have paid £8,200 for six-month-old twin girls.
But a US family claim they had already paid £4,000 to an internet adoption broker for the girls.
The couple from north Wales now face a legal fight to keep the babies.
'Highest bidder'
The adoption broker who organised the deal and the children's natural mother have both disappeared.
While British adoption agencies do not object to advertising for prospective parents on a website, they say the needs of the child must be put first in all private adoptions - by everyone involved.
Gill Howarth of the Overseas Adoption Helpline said UK agencies have been advertising for families to adopt for years.
"It is not the advertising that is the issue, " she said.
"Many adoption agencies in the UK have for 20 years or more used different media to raise awareness about the need for adoptive families. That is the reason why the internet is used.
Children have a right to live in secure, loving families. Adults do not have an automatic right to adopt
British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering
"But the child must be at the centre of all adoption services and plans. If the advertisement is a way of procuring profit and money for someone then that is obviously moving away from the needs of the child."
British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) said the Kilshaw's case demonstrates why private adoption is illegal in the UK.
A spokesman said: "Children have a right to live in secure, loving families. Adults do not have an automatic right to adopt.
"It is totally unacceptable to the BAAF that children are sold to the highest bidder.
"It is vital that those who wish to adopt from overseas take proper advice before they enter such a minefield."
It added that while advertising on the internet was a legitimate way of attracting prospective parents, they all had to be properly vetted before they adopted a child.
Bill 210 also wants to put children on the Internet to match them up with strangers that "want" a child. Before Matthew Reid was brokered he was murdered - what a system they have proposed. Instead of really helping families let's broker innocent children on the Internet to total strangers, allow private brokers to complete the deal, remove a section dealing with complaints about the CAS, and sell it to the public as dealing with child protection? The CAS advertised children like pieces of meat in a column called "Today's Child" for years. In the good old days children were brokered in the newspaper. Now it will be the Internet. Oh, and the same lies about child protection were well at hand back then to, the problem is those who were brokered by the CAS in many cases have found their parents and the truth making the CAS more then nervous right now.
Some children were sent to foreign countries without home studies even being done in the past by the CAS.
Such lovely homes they sent people to - wife beaters, child rapists, addicts, pedophiles, thieves, criminals and all else. No checks done after the dirty deed of taking the child, and all done in a secret system where the victims cannot see their own files at the CAS to this very day. What type of system operates in this manner.
In Jeffrey's case the rotten CCAS actually said the files were "lost" - how convenient. But that is an old trick by the CAS, lose the file, lose the evidence, prevent the lawsuit.
And why is the CAS in so many areas so much in debt? Is it because they are using the money to help children? No, or might it be the lawsuits that they are under. See their donation messages, and their babble crap campaigns. Yes, give money to the CAS so that they can defend themselves.
I just had a few comments and questions regarding the latest string of posts.
First, I would like to ask the individual who portrayed CAS as rescuing children from crack addicted mothers whether he/she is aware that CAS agencies are intricately involved in admininstered psychotropic drugs to youth in their custody as well as involving them for clinic drug tests.
Second, I'd ask the same individual if he/she is aware of Canadian statistics for mothers that use crack cocaine. For starters, very few use this drug and the vast majority do so only on an occassional basis. Few are hopeless addicts.
The first question I had is whether CAS plans to advertise children for adoption over the Internet does not contravene its own privacy guidelines.
Finally an observation and question. Have you ever noticed that in cases like Matthew Reid and Jeffrey Baldwin, not one social worker in Ontario has filed a complaint with the Ontario College of Social Workers? To me, that perfectly illustrates that their claims to "advocate for society's most vulnerable" is a complete sham. Nor has this College taken any independent action to deal with the gross negligence in these cases. Ironically, the College is supposed to uphold standards for social work in Ontario and has a disciplinary mechanism for those who disgrace their profession.
I wonder if any reader has considered filing complaints against CAS employees with the College in either of these cases? I've pondered doing so myself, but previously brought four complaints before the College and fear that it would attempt to discount my actions for that reason. Does anyone wish to pick up the ball?
When they advertise they do not use the real identity of the child, they fabricate it. This was the same as the Today's Child columns - they lied about the background of the child.
A fake name is used, and they lie overtly.
Thanks. How do they get away with an identifying photo?
There is no doubt CAS uses huge sums of money on legal fees. If you are a CAS victim and want to help bankrupt them, file a long and detailed complaint with the Ontario College of Social Workers. CAS will retain a high priced Toronto law firm to protect the social worker - no matter how dishonest or negligent their actions are. You don't need a lawyer and it won't cost you a thing.
Any donation to CAS will be consumed by administrative costs disguised as program fees - little if anything will go to the kids and that is true of many well-known charities. If anyone you know intends to support CAS, be sure to set them straight.
Anonymous said...
Thanks. How do they get away with an identifying photo?
- thanks for the question, for the same reason that they get away with anything - they have no accountability. As well parents may not have known that their child was featured in the column. They have gotten away with everything from telling children their babies were dead and adopting them out, to shipping babies to foreign countries without homes studies, to using children as pawns for their operations, to trumping up fake child abuse charges against innocent parents, and to doing everything else under the sun. What happened to Jeffrey Baldwin is an outrage but considering the ineptitude of these agencies one is not surprised, albeit most are outraged.
Anonymous said...
Thanks. How do they get away with an identifying photo?
- thanks for the question, for the same reason that they get away with anything - they have no accountability. As well parents may not have known that their child was featured in the column. They have gotten away with everything from telling children their babies were dead and adopting them out, to shipping babies to foreign countries without homes studies, to using children as pawns for their operations, to trumping up fake child abuse charges against innocent parents, and to doing everything else under the sun. What happened to Jeffrey Baldwin is an outrage but considering the ineptitude of these agencies one is not surprised, albeit most are outraged.
correction, sorry they told parents their children were dead, not children.......oops
Anonymous said "CAS will retain a high priced Toronto law firm to protect the social worker - no matter how dishonest or negligent their actions are. You don't need a lawyer and it won't cost you a thing."
Exactly this is totally true. And of note is that the former chief legal defense for the CCAS of Toronto wrote a submission to actually curb responsibility from the CAS - guess what the government did with that - they "adopted" the whole thing and created section 68 of Bill 210 making all of those agencies totally unaccountable. I wonder if voters know that their laws are being made by CCAS defense attorneys instead of the politicians that people innocently voted for. I don't recall this man's name on a ballot slip.
One day there will be a full legal inquiry into the CAS agencies of Ontario - Origins Canada is asking for one, and I personally think that all of us should as well.
My heart goes out to the grandmother of Matthew Reid, her sorrow must be unimaginable. And to the family of Jeffrey there have been some who have posted here, how sad that this happened. Not all families are abusers even if some are. Guilt by association is not fair. But then the CAS considers all members of a natural family to be the enemy - anyone with the same blood tainted. But strangers, and social workers are totally safe?
It was in the late 1800's that the CAS was formed. For over 100 years they have NEVER had accountability, they have orchestrated the needless destruction of thousands of families, and they have done so in an ancient system based on secrecy, hatred and myths. Jeffrey is the tip of the iceberg. I love that Amanda said his name will be known for changing the system. Good let's all work together to do that. His life was a horror that few can imagine. That certainly should not mean that it gives those ruthless agencies more power to do what they want at their own whims with no responsible oversight. Like one poster said we should not be taking 999 children to save one.
Long ago the so called child protection system moved away from that to hunting down children for strangers under the guise of "child protection". The crimes of the CAS must be heard in a court of law. New South Wales had a full and public legal inquiry. Origins was formed, the same should happen here.
To the first poster of this blog, what is truly infortunate is that people are still defending the CAS, that they wish to silence the victims, and that tax payers are buying the crap and lies of those agencies. Peter Kormos had a good suggestion in Hansard, and really he is right - dismantle those godforsaken agencies, make them public and not private, and change the system.
Not only should we bankrupt them, but we should DEMAND the release of files to all that have been involved with them. We should dismantle all 53 agencies in Ontario and start totally new in real child cases of abuse. To the poster that said that so much of things in our society can be construed as "risk", how true. The CAS is George Orwell's Big Brother.
My feeling is the government wants to remove accountability and speed children into adoption because the system cannot be financially sustained. People often peg CAS' budget at 1.3 billion in Ontario without realizing these are direct costs only. They do not include indirect costs for family court, the bureaucratic infrastucture, departments of social work at universities, research and program grants, staffing boards of education with psychologists, additional police spending, etc. In other words, the true costs have gone through the roof.
CAS likes the adoption idea because they think there will be less accountability and more money in it for them. However, if CAS escalates scooping children (no accountability) and adoptions don't take off, the system will bottleneck even more. That's already happened out west, with CAS being politically threatened (leaked memo) to get more kids in adoption. There, opponents arguethat rushing kids into adoption only places them at risk. What's being overlooked is that the whole thing is morally repugnant from the get go - the vast majority of kids that will be offered for adoption should not even be in the system.
It is music to hear that someone else sees children being taken from their families and sent to foster care as being repugnant, as it is. You are quite right many of these children should not be in the system. It is a cost saving mechanism by the government.
In true cases of child abuse we must protect children like Jeffrey, but what they do is they take a case like this and start a massive witch hunt. They want children out of the system to not pay for them. I feel that if the CAS had actual oversight most would not be in the system to start with. Matthew Reid is another victim as well. The whole thing is a disaster. The CAS made parents the enemy decades ago, and it will take a long time to undue the damage. Yes and farming them into adoption in a speedy manner will put them at risk. Many people who were in foster care and adopted have been abused - we rarely hear of this though as the CAS, the brokers etc.. do not want it covered. The media is changing though which is good. The true voices that have lived in the system must be heard above the culprits who stole them.
Bill 210 is suppose to reduce the huge amounts of money we are spending on this crap. Its so unethical is unreal, anyone would even try it. It may cut young moms off welfare, may also send them to hospital with stress related illness for many years to come, cost effective, I don't think so. We the people of this Province need to take a stand and defend those that cannot defend themselves, class action the government, and School of social work, Hospitals that use CAS to cover there tracks, and anyone caught twisting and writing false statements. ( the norm as we all hear far to often)need to be held accountable.No one is safe, tape every social worker you speak with, any school meetings, every doctors visit,document everything. Traders do it. Its a good idea. Let you MPP and MPs know this is enough and don't stop, write the PM and senators, family court judges, and ministers.
Young unwed mothers should be supported, not have their babies stolen, Today I read low birth weight will now be added to the list of child abuse, many factors cause low birth weight, this is another bunch of crap.But will be used against moms, watch the normal bath weight of an infant jump to 11 pounds in the social workers check box , so called tools, the non thinking approach to life.We are dumbing down everyone, true or false questions in med school , even a moron could pass today. Look at the math are children are bring home from school PLEASE. the environment is killing us all, and if we keep spending all this money on the loons that run around looking for abused and neglected child at varying levels of risk, it wont matter, more and more children have birth defects, interesting the most polluted cities, not even do we have the most cancers, and illness cases of autism, and ADHD Windsor and Hamilton are very scores on those list, but we also have the worst CAS agencies.Is it because there is more child abuse? I don't think so, I think more people are however toxic, including the workers. Wendy Mesleys program on cancer and toxins was a bit of an eye opener,I hope people paid attention.
We need to spend that money on cleaning up the province enforced emission laws and great lakes projects, then perhaps, we will se a decline in many things. In the mean time write and go to Human Rights and the UN, and tell the truth.
CAS and CCAS is not about children protection. If my child was at risk of living under a bridge, being murdered or abused in care,and they all are, and except for a very few cases should not even be there. You cannot call a CAS and ask for advice or help, they will take your children. You can not ask a social worker for anything today, they have one goal, putting your child at great risk, anyone that calls this agency thinking they are helping a child is naive. Find another solution.
Yes I am angry, and I am most angry that this has been going on for so long. from Butter Box babies, the Dionne babies, the christen brothers,
the natives, on and on. In the best interest of the child, please.
IF people listen to and believe what we tell them, they must totally change their perception of doctors, hospitals, local and provencial agents of government and more. In the end, it is easier to think that we must be exaggerating or too emotional. I keep an imagine of dead bodies piled high during the Holocaust to remember that even something that awful did not persuade people there was something very, very wrong with "government" in Germany. I do not know how many child deaths, or wrongful takings, or deaths even of adults afraid to trust doctors or any hospital it will take, or when people will believe what many must see in our "family" courts--ones in which decent attorneys no longer practice because their clients always lose no matter what they do--before they will stand up against the sadness we call family justice or "child protection." It surely is not what people want and need to believe it is.
To the poster that wants to support young unwed mothers - BRAVO!!! In the past these mothers were forced under deceitful acts of fraud and coercion to surrender their babies to the CAS, and it was a disaster. Please read Origins, and the many other sites where these Mom's are speaking out, and the one's brokered are as well.
What was done in the past by the CAS was a true horror.
The comments about supporting unwed mothers reminded me of the early years of my marriage (before and after having our first child) when my spouse and I would look for coins in the couch and coat pockets or charge food on our credit card just to meet whatever expenses we faced. These were actually very good times although the following years have gotten increasingly better. The point is, many challenges in life are transitory. Yet CAS pounces on such moments (that are really just snapshots in life) to cause permanent and irreversable damage to families. I marvel at how stupid these people are and how stupid this system is. It is difficult to imagine any young mom bouncing back after CAS abuse - much more likely she'll develop symptoms that create a further burden on society. The future will be even worse for her child.
By all means, help any young mom that needs it. If the money wasted on CAS were devoted to this purpose, their futures and their children's futures would improve (ultimately benefiting the economy) and there would be money left over for other socially useful purposes. The alternative course is the CAS money pit with its unbroken history of social destruction.
To the person who said:
I do think that parenting courses and child development courses for our young people in high schools would be good though, and in fact it should be a mandatory part of the curriculum.
From time to time I've read of high school students engaging in parenting simulation units where they care for a doll as if it were their own baby. Overall, this seems to be a good idea. The kids come away with a greater appreciation of the commitment involved in parenting a newborn.
However, when you talk of parenting courses in school, you have to be careful about the agenda behind the program. One program, for example, brings babies into elementary classrooms on the premise that older children need to develop empathy for younger kids at any early age. Who could argue with that. At the same time, those promoting the program do so on the conceit there's a significant problem that only they can address.
Overlooked is the fact that children have a natural affinity with infants and regularly interact with them in their own families as well as those of relatives, neighbours, schoolmates and friends.
If that weren't enough, children involved in the program are closely monitored. You can be sure their answers are used to demonstrate the remarkable success the program. Grants depend on identifying a need and measuring outcomes. If you look at this organization's website you'd see more ludicrous claims along with the program's real premise - to "break the cycle of abuse."
Another program embraced by Ontario schools named DARE had been discredited in the US for actually encouraging drug use. I won't even get into some of the negative outcomes of sex education programs that are out there.
The bottom line is there's no guarantee parenting courses will be any less political, misguided or counter-effective than others that are currently schools. If there was a program that was straight ahead and devoid of political agendas, like you, I'd say go for it.
There's another one in my community sponsored by Kids Can Fly (known locally as Kids Can Die) which involves parents and pre-school children and is administered by (you guessed it)CAS. Before getting into any kids program, people are advised to check whose involved and what their relation to CAS is.
Here's one from the looney files. My wife and another lady are in line at the craft shop. Both are purchasing scrapbook supplies - the other lady has two large baskets full. While waiting for her purchase to be rung in, the lady tells my wife that she and her church group are making Life Albums for all the kids in CAS' custody because their parents burn their pictures.
Who has filled this lady's head with such nonsense? How many others like her are out there? I've heard several other stories where CAS makes up negative stories about parents for their kids consumption. Has anyone else had this experience?
My sixteen year old's short experience in the group home and the foster home.
He was dropped off at the local group home (CAS run) without his meds. He was told not to go into the basement because there were drug and solvent use going on down there. My child has special needs. Upstairs the other children where throwing chairs through windows and blaring the stereo. The staff then game him his meds all at once.
They then took him by ambulance to the hospital where the worker was told that this was the wrong placement for him. She replied "Oh well, we have nothing else." The child could not tolerate the noise and chaos in this house.
He then went to the foster home. The foster mother (70 year old with a live in boyfriend- 3 previous marriages) announced to him that she was his new mother and that he now had some new brothers. My child rolled his eyes.
He wanted out of this dank basement full of cigarette smoke. The foster man smoked 6 packs of cigarettes a day. He kept a shot gun in the back room just in case of a home intrusion.
All the foster children were kept in the basement.
My child lost 20 kg there. He was fed spam, canned hot dogs and canned potatoes. Everything was deep fried.
The house was in the worse part of town. He had to negotiate the drug addicts to get there. My child could not open his windows for fear of a flood. I had to wash his clothes with oxyclean to rid them of the cigarette smoke. I left them outside for a day to get of the roaches.
The foster mother left him on the street on New Years Eve while she went clubbing. The cab driver called me and I told him to bring him back home. The foster mother called me 3 hours later to ask where he was. She let him stay for fear that I would report her.
The CAS worker offered my child a free apartment with a food and clothing allowance to sign on as a crown ward. He said "You want to put me up in one of your motels. No thanks.
He screamed at them on the phone daily, sometimes 3 times a day for 2 weeks that they were imprisoning him in their little glass prison. He wanted out.
He fired his child's lawyer for failing to represent his true wished. The new one did better. He came home. Their high priced lawyer was still trying to pursue crown wardship a year after the judge rewrote the temporary order returning him to my full care pending a trial that would never happen. She finally threw the case out. He was 17.5 years old. They had to let him go because they could not keep him. He had adult rights.
I have calculated that this little charade cost the taxpayers over $2 million.
Why did it happened to me? I was physically ill and temporarily could not care for my adoptive child who had special needs.
The local service providers advised me to go to this agency for help until I was sufficiently recovered to resume care of him.
Here's one from the looney files. My wife and another lady are in line at the craft shop. Both are purchasing scrapbook supplies - the other lady has two large baskets full. While waiting for her purchase to be rung in, the lady tells my wife that she and her church group are making Life Albums for all the kids in CAS' custody because their parents burn their pictures.
Who has filled this lady's head with such nonsense? How many others like her are out there? I've heard several other stories where CAS makes up negative stories about parents for their kids consumption. Has anyone else had this experience?
Thanks to the poster that mentioned this and yes I have. Those adopted into the system and fostered have been taught that our parents are the enemy, they are horrid abusive monsters, unfit and any other lie that they can come up with. I do not believe this crap for a second in that parents burn their pictures, but I do believe this was taught to them by the CAS. The system is based on HATRED for natural and real families. Telling children horror stories about their parents to this degree is itself child abuse, yet foster parents and the CAS get away with this daily.
And another thing look at Matthew Reid - why are 3 year olds being forced to call virtual strangers "mommy and daddy", how screwed up is that? How dishonest that is, and how stupid. The CAS is a fraud, it is a lie, and it is a dismal failure. I hope once again that anyone reading this blog protests against Bill 210 vehemently, and that they URGE THE OMBUDSMAN TO HAVE POWER.
To the poster about the adoptive child in foster care it sounds like a nightmare, but I am curious to know where are this child's natural parents, how did you adopt him, and are they aware of what happened to their son? It sounds like you really care about him, and it sounds as though he has been very abused by the CAS. I hope that you continue to speak out about this.
Thanks to the people that posted about parenting courses, you have good points. If the CAS was NOT INVOLVED and if it was not a political stunt I do think it would be good. You are also right in that children have a NATURAL affinity for others. Very good point. They are not the problem, adults are - especially those in power situations with no controls what so ever like the CAS.
The CAS was orchestrated in the late 1800's as what some believe to be a formidable goal in helping children. But it was allowed to hunt down other people's children for total strangers. It has abused it's power beyond anything I can think of other then totalitarian dictators. It has robbed, stolen, cheaten and lied. And it's time is over. PLEASE TO ANYONE THAT IS READING THIS STOP THE HATRED OF MEN AND WOMEN, BABIES AND CHILDREN. Support people, stop the hate we can do this. Natural families ARE NOT THE ENEMY!!!!!!!!!
To the poster that said CAS basically attacks one when they are down, this is DEAD on. This is precisely how they managed to steal thousands of babies from perfectly fit parents, and broker them out to anyone not related. To the poster that put the Origins site up thank you. IT IS HIGH TIME THAT THE TRUTH WAS TOLD. The Mom's that were robbed of their babies under deceitful acts of fraud and coercion are speaking out, please let them be heard, they have suffered for decades and their children have as well.
To the scrapbook poster:
On the CCAS and CAS websites, they are ASKING for people to volunteer their time (and I assume own money) to make these 'Life Books'. Before I got involved with this whole corrupt mess, I was going to volunteer to do that! I can't imagine the CCAS's actually asking people to spend their time and money to make false life albums for children! If anyone else has every scrapbooked, you'll know how time consuming and crazy expensive it is, but of course people will do it if they think it will help children. I'd make 20 million quilts for children if I knew they would get them and like them! Just another way these agencies are fooling us to get something for free and make themselves look good!
To the previous poster, my child was adopted through a church agency, not CAS. He was voluntarily placed for adoption. He turned out to have special needs.
sorry, no people do not willingly place their babies for adoption, and that it was a church group is all the more suspect? do not come here and attempt to make those who have benefited from adoption to be the victims.
To tne person with the special needs adopted child, you may well love him, but he is not your child to start with. His parents created him, and unless or until that young man knows who they are then please do not assume that they "chose" adoption. Could it be that his parents were depicted as evil heathens by the church at hand as they were perhaps; young, unmarried or living in poverty? Do NORMAL bonds of nature end? What type of person willingly surrenders a child to strangers, CAS agencies and churches?
My child is in his twenties. He was born before all happened here. He does not come from here. I know that his parents picked me because their personal situation was impossible.
They went through the church because they did not want him lost in the foster care system. They loved him enough that they wanted him adopted to a caring family. They cared that the child should be safe, out of the clutches of the government.
Not all adoptions are done for the right reasons.
My child harbors no ill will to anyone except the CAS and this is for what they did to him.
with all due respect people do not choose adoption if the boy that you adopted had a problem with the CAS I think it is good that you support him, and he should speak out. Did this so called "church" help the parents involved, and what might be so impossible as to select strangers to raise one's child? this does not sound genuine to me.
Love is not surrendering a child to a stranger. Those who arranged this are suspect at the very least. What "help" did this church do? And that is another thing - churches are very involved with adoptions as they too consider those poor, unmarried etc. to be heathens needing to be rescued, their children saved by strangers? churches are totally involved in this total mess and have been in the works of the CAS for years, in all fact they started these agencies to start with. Churches have hugely abused their power as well look at the history that has happened.
The whole system is insain. Before the child abduction society started we had normal families, now we have a mess beyond repair.
help is not encouraging people to surrender their babies, real help is actually helping those involved with keeping their child.
what help was given to this child's parents - help is not arranging the permanent seperation of a family?
the irony here is that it was under the vision translate hatred of churches that started this disaster.
glad that you support him, glad that you love him, but really if support and love was really given to his parents would this adoption happen?
I hope that you help him to file formal complaints against the CAS, and that his story will be featured in the media. it is a crime that he was sent away from you this way, but I still have grave reservations as to how this started to begin with. I would as well think that he would want to see his parents and know them as well. That is normal for those adopted and fostered, children do not wish to be removed from their parents to never see them again, and if you believe that is true please read some books on this to help him. really love him and let him be his own person.
anonymous said
There's another one in my community sponsored by Kids Can Fly (known locally as Kids Can Die) which involves parents and pre-school children and is administered by (you guessed it)CAS. Before getting into any kids program, people are advised to check whose involved and what their relation to CAS is.
I never knew that, it is chilling to know that they have devised this - I will be advised about this and glad that you mentioned it.
I think it is a good idea to have information and pictures for the child to have as they are older if they are in the system, however, it is better to avoid the child being in the system to start with.
Former foster children have nothing - no pictures, stories etc.. nothing, in this sense it is good that they are at least doing that.
If you've ever seen a CAS website or newsletter, the child exists only within the purview of the agency - no sight of parents anywhere. I'd be very surprised if these albums contained anything but reflections of a child's life in the system. This is not my area of expertise, but I believe that foster children have immense trouble getting any information about their lives from CAS. Perhaps other readers have more insight.
To the gentleman with the adopted special needs child:
If I am reading your post correctly, it appears your adopted son is now out of danger. In one sense, you are fortunate this ordeal lasted less than two years as many people are abused by CAS for considerably longer periods.
I have little doubt you've suffered greatly and hope you will remain on this site and continue to press for justice.
My observation is at the time you adopted your son, the world was a different place - there was no Internet and no effective way to expose the child-welfare system for what it is. Also, the personal awareness we all had 17 years ago is considerably different than what we each have now.
When you adopted your son, I'm sure you acted with the best intentions, but without the knowledge of those who have been effected by this travesty. - those who have had children unfairly removed and adopted. The posters are right in suggesting to never accept what you're told by a third party in an adoption matter. Hopefully, you have direct knowledge of each of your beliefs about the parents.
On this site, there is a strong commitment to providing support to parents rather than removing their children and there are very good reasons for it. Obviously, this cannot apply to your situation now, but it may colour your perception of this issue in future. For example, if your adopted son has not seen his parents, it may be time to consider it.
It's also fair to question the actions of the church, given that helping the family would seem more in line with religious principles, as because of the possibility that the church benefitted financially.
The CAS part of your story is horrendous. As one poster suggested, I hope you'll take every opportunity to spread the word about CAS to everone you know, including members of your church if you are still active.
I also have an adopted child, and many people today are to ashamed to even say that. However, there are some cases where children have been place for adoption by there willing natural parents. My child not only has pictures of her ultrasounds, natural mother, but sees her, can call her and e-mails her since she was 4 years old and learnt how to use the e-mail. Her natural mother placed her for adoption, EVEN though we would have supported her and help her in any way possible to raise her child. It was her choice, she does not want children, she still does not want children and is in her late twenties. Yet it is me who feels they must keep the bond that happened even before her birth. I absolutely know its there before the baby is born. I have been blessed to see it, anyone that doubts that is a fool, her natural mothers voice after her birth she recognized, I am sure it was comforting. A bond that no one has the right to remove. I would not dream of removing it because I love our child. Open adoptions, if they adoption is the choice of the natural parent are more them necessary, OPEN means NOT a picture a year, as the government will do with this crazy new bill,
Open adoption when done for the right reason, is just that OPEN, no lies, no pretending, and must be respected by both the natural family and adopting family, because only then can you be truly be raising a child that understands they were wanted, loved, not given away, and the gifts for all involved are a child with great self esteem, and a knowing that natural and adoptive parents love and respect each other.
And knowing they were not given away or in more cases stolen from a natural mother that also loved them.
This is a kinship adoption, and we have all been blessed by it.
I would not be able to have made this choice, and I did not WANT this young women to make it either, I hoped she would keep her child, NOT because we would have not been willing to adopted the child, BUT I had concerns that is would leave unhealed life time wounds for her.
Its been over a decade, she is in a long term relationship, with step children,and told us,she was glad she did not choice to abort, but she is very glad she placed her with us.
The lines of communication are open, and as I try and talk her out of having her tubes tied in her late twenties, I cannot this women does not want to parent, she knows herself well,and not all women want to. My long point is not all adopted children are stolen, not all adopted children are searching, but far to many are. And its high time the government and CAS understood it is not IN anyone's interest to break that bond, nor do they have the right to do it.
I have read origins, and it breaks my heart. I have cried many tears over E Klein's situation, one I cannot understand for the life of me, her baby was stolen as it was a crime. my concern with this bill is many more will be before they are even born. So lets demand oversight and scrap this system, Placing a child for adoption in 12 months, is criminal.The ministry needs to answer to the people not the CAS, but its part of it. And should be taken down. A CAS lawyer writing parts of the bill, most of it against human rights, I can see the class actions, now.
The damage that has been done to people in the system is off the scale and beyond description. Bill 210 is being drafted by legal defense attorneys, and private baby brokers. God help anyone with children in the future in the Province of Ontario another scoop will happen, there will be more Erika's then ever. The CAS even wants to remove the ability for a parent to complain to the courts. And who will be on their child and family services board? baby brokers, those who benefit from the oppression of someone else and defense attorneys the way things are going.
My adopted child has a communications disorder. He had a hard time understanding the work "mother." It applies to only one particular person. Calling everyone
"mother" depersonalizes the word. It makes it meaningless. Everyone loses. The photo albums are only about the foster parents. The children are not allowed photos of their real relatives. My child did not want his picture taken with them.
Some people DO willingly and voluntarily place their children for adoption! It's ridiculous to say all children are stolen or deceitfully taken from their parents! Give me a break! Adoption is a great thing in some circumstances, it is not evil! Nor is fostering children by people with good intentions- the intentions to nurture and give children security in a very unsecure time! Don't throw blanket statements over eveything here people! It makes you look closed minded. If I adopted a child, I would absolutely love it like it was my own, I think family ties are important, but DO NOT make a family! Any man or woman can make a baby, it takes a mom and dad to raise that child. These comments are so redundant and small!
Ideally, adoption should be restricted to children who are orphaned. In reality, parents are coerced into giving up their children. If a child were truly not wanted, it would likely have been aborted. If a mother follows through for ethical or religious reasons, or the parents' financial situation becomes desperate, it does not mean they wish to give up their child but that they see no other alternative.
Legally, anyone who signs a paper surrendering a child for adoption is considered to have done so willingly. As you know, CAS targets infants before they are born and often removes them at birth. In the past, these agencies told mothers their children were dead. They employ the same charade to demonstrate to courts that an individual has accepted their "services" when they've really been threatened with punitive action if they resist.
Very few people walk away from a child because they can't be bothered. This comes back to helping parents who face situations of instability - crisis nurseries (without CAS) and similar programs sound good. Placing a child in a more stable family may or may not provide a material advantage, but there's no guarantee the child will have a more positive life experience. It may grow up to become President of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies.
Despite the high incidence of real abuse in adoptive and fostering situations, individuals that consider those roles may act with the best intentions. The same cannot be said of those behind the adoption industry. There is a very good chance the adopted child is desperately wanted and unfairly removed from its family. Another troubling aspect of this question concerns infertile couples that use adoption to deliver what nature has denied - a huge ethical question to be sure.
Bill 210 is a good indication where all this is headed - rushing children (who should not even be in the system) into adoption while denying parents any opportunity to oppose is terrifying.
After Bill 210 passes, the Ontario government's should change its motto to:
"Any man or woman can make a baby, it takes the state to raise that child."
If anyone were to consider adoption, how could they possibly trust CAS or a commercial adoption agency?
Apparently, any man and woman cannot make a baby - that's one reason the adoption industry is so lucrative. Also, study after study shows the best place for a child is with its own mother.
Thanks to Amanda for your most recent post in this section (from the first poster). The blog is filling up with unreasonable extremist commentary that has nothing to do with positive reform that I think we are aiming for. That is why I posted the first post to bring this back on topic, which is protection of vulnerable children, not for venting personal gripes of certain factions who have an extremist agenda against removal of children from their biological parents or relatives. Adoption is not evil. Further, open adoption, which is being proposed in recent legislative amendments may be a fair thing in certain circumstances to satisfy all sides concerned. Lets keep our eye on the ball here, which is child protection and the best interests of the child.
Bill 210 is a good indication where all this is headed - rushing children (who should not even be in the system) into adoption while denying parents any opportunity to oppose is terrifying.
Monday, March 20, 2006 11:48:38 AM
Exactly and adoption the way it is practiced is indeed evil - that being said the example of the loving person with the open adoption is great to hear. And this issue has everything to do with this discussion. The CAS has abused it's power for decades, and they removed children to provide them to strangers. It is a dark chapter in it's history and it is still going on today. Please wake up and see the connection. Child protection is not what the bill is about.
Would the person that posted the first comment please provide examples of:
The blog filling up with unreasonable extremist commentary that has nothing to do with positive reform"
Personal gripes of certain factions who have an extremist agenda against removal of children from their biological parents or relatives.
To the woman that adopted in a kinship care, you sound like a caring person, willing to listen. That you have read a site like Origins really says a lot. Those in the system know about the CAS in depth as those in the system before live with what was done to them on a daily basis.
To anyone that wants to bury the past think again, we do not need to bury the past, we need to expose it to protect children in cases of abuse including the power of abuse from the CAS to start with. This is a blog to make the CAS accountable and to anyone saying that adoption is wonderful considering what the CAS has did is very mistaken.
That these agencies have been able to orchestrate a disaster "in the best interests of the child" must be addresssed. The first poster on this blog appears to despise natural families - why is that?
They said "Children born into such families must be protected by removal to a healthy environment, albeit not with their blood relatives." AND THAT IS A CAS MANTRA, that is the CAS crap that has been spewed for decades. I think the poster is a CAS worker.
To the poster that said remove 999 children to save one this is the heart of the problem. Did the CCAS help Jeffrey Baldwin the very reason why this blog exists - NO and it did not help thousands of other children in the past either. Don't sweep it under the carpet as if it is not relevant as it is totally relevant.
Frankly, I'd be a bit worried to find the person that dissed Dufferin VOCA agreeing with me.
Anonymous said...
Apparently, any man and woman cannot make a baby - that's one reason the adoption industry is so lucrative. Also, study after study shows the best place for a child is with its own mother.
Monday, March 20, 2006 12:25:33 PM
Yes exactly and this is why this bill is so scary, there is an army of people waiting to adopt - and adoption IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT HUNTING DOWN THOSE IN POVERTY, IN CRISIS ETC.. IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT FINDING HOMES FOR CHILDREN. It is not a billion dollar industry that is corrupt, putrid and totally immoral.
And for those that wish to think of anyone saying the truth to be silent, think again. The CAS has been out right ruthless in the past, it has breached every law that there is, and it needs to be totally dismantled. Making an agency accoutable is NOT SWEEPING IT'S HORROR under the carpet, and it is not ignoring the many relevant articles regarding this issue.
To the people wishing to silence the truth why even be on this blog? The CAS has been a nightmare from the beginning. Jeffrey is dead because of them. Why in the hell would anyone think that simply as one fosters or adopted that they are safer -it was the same agency the Toronto CCAS that orchestrated adoptions and foster care for decades, and those that they were involved with did not benefit period.
Jeffrey is a glimpse into what has been going on. Neglect, abuse of power, and sheer stupidity.
Why would anyone not want to cite Dufferin VOCA? A website specifically designed to overhaul the CAS? Read the intention of this blog. We cannot change a system without delving into it's sordid past. Dufferin VOCA is a VERY IMPORTANT SITE. Why not expose the system - unless the poster is a CAS worker afraid of discerning the truth?
What is extreme" Setting up a system based on organized religion in a hatred towards natural parents, removing children unlawfully for decades, sending children to foreign countries for money, obliterating the right's of natural families, falsifying birth certificates, sending those in foster care and those adopted to child abusers -
removing them continually like John Dunn, barring the people involved from ever seeing their families, lying to the victims repeatedly, telling women their children were dead and brokering them out,and having a system caked in secrecy, lies and illusions with no accountability for over 100 years and all sold to tax payers as being in the "best interest of the child".
Now that my dear is extreme, it is corrupt, it is immoral it is exactly what the CCAS of Toronto has done for years, and it is the total truth!!!! And they are by far not alone, all of them are guilty and they must be exposed. Is it extreme to expose them - I don't think so, but it would be indeed extreme to deny that this happened as it did!
The photo albums are only about the foster parents. The children are not allowed photos of their real relatives. My child did not want his picture taken with them.
Thank you for posting that, and it is sad and it is a sham. It is the very crux of this issue the system has nothing to do with the child. Children should have pictures of themselves and all information pertaining to them period, but the CAS DENYS this totally.
Ask those that were in foster care or adopted if they have access to their files, pictures or their families?
Some people DO willingly and voluntarily place their children for adoption! It's ridiculous to say all children are stolen or deceitfully taken from their parents! Give me a break! Adoption is a great thing in some circumstances, it is not evil! Nor is fostering children by people with good intentions- the intentions to nurture and give children security in a very unsecure time! Don't throw blanket statements over eveything here people! It makes you look closed minded. If I adopted a child, I would absolutely love it like it was my own, I think family ties are important, but DO NOT make a family! Any man or woman can make a baby, it takes a mom and dad to raise that child. These comments are so redundant and small!
I disagree. Loving a child is one thing, but it is NOT THE SAME as having your own child - children do not come from nowhere they have genetic ties to nature and they will be different from your own. The lie that they will be the same as your own is again the very heart of this problem. Furthermore, those adopted have a fake birth certificate where you would be officially listed as you giving "birth" to the child. It is a lie, and it is indeed evil.
Should children like Jeffrey have been protected - of course but adoption is not a protector it is not about children. New South Wales has really changed the system to be about children while protecting those like Jeffrey that needed it. Read Origins Australia Amanda, as it is the same here as well.
Anonymous said...
Apparently, any man and woman cannot make a baby - that's one reason the adoption industry is so lucrative. Also, study after study shows the best place for a child is with its own mother.
Monday, March 20, 2006 12:25:33 PM
Yes, and study after study does show this - and most intelligent people see this but the CAS does not, the CAS does not help families they destroy them under secrecy - you want them to be accountable really? Then DEMAND A FULL LEGAL INQUIRY not just into Jeffrey but the whole ball of wax!!!
And father's and their families have rights as well. People related to Jeffrey his blood kin have posted here. Instead of judging all of them as they are NOT RESPONSIBLE for his murder re-read what they have to say. They are humans, and they do not the whole clan of them need to be on trial for a murder that they did not enact. They could not even see this child. Why could they not getting back to this blog AS THE CCAS of Toronto denied them access to Jeffrey period. And foster care and adoption does the same thing. To the people that think either are good give me a break. Are there good people that foster and adopt in reality yes, but that does not excuse what these agencies have got away with. Jeffrey's siblings are not together, they are with total strangers, and they have been seperated. In the best interest of the child is a crock.
Anonymous said...
Ideally, adoption should be restricted to children who are orphaned. In reality, parents are coerced into giving up their children. If a child were truly not wanted, it would likely have been aborted. If a mother follows through for ethical or religious reasons, or the parents' financial situation becomes desperate, it does not mean they wish to give up their child but that they see no other alternative.
Legally, anyone who signs a paper surrendering a child for adoption is considered to have done so willingly. As you know, CAS targets infants before they are born and often removes them at birth. In the past, these agencies told mothers their children were dead. They employ the same charade to demonstrate to courts that an individual has accepted their "services" when they've really been threatened with punitive action if they resist.
Very few people walk away from a child because they can't be bothered. This comes back to helping parents who face situations of instability - crisis nurseries (without CAS) and similar programs sound good. Placing a child in a more stable family may or may not provide a material advantage, but there's no guarantee the child will have a more positive life experience. It may grow up to become President of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies.
Despite the high incidence of real abuse in adoptive and fostering situations, individuals that consider those roles may act with the best intentions. The same cannot be said of those behind the adoption industry. There is a very good chance the adopted child is desperately wanted and unfairly removed from its family. Another troubling aspect of this question concerns infertile couples that use adoption to deliver what nature has denied - a huge ethical question to be sure.
Bill 210 is a good indication where all this is headed - rushing children (who should not even be in the system) into adoption while denying parents any opportunity to oppose is terrifying.
Monday, March 20, 2006 11:48:38 AM
Whoever posted this thank you so much, thank you for really understanding this, and for sharing your thoughts.
Anonymous said...
Thanks to Amanda for your most recent post in this section (from the first poster). The blog is filling up with unreasonable extremist commentary that has nothing to do with positive reform that I think we are aiming for. That is why I posted the first post to bring this back on topic, which is protection of vulnerable children, not for venting personal gripes of certain factions who have an extremist agenda against removal of children from their biological parents or relatives. Adoption is not evil. Further, open adoption, which is being proposed in recent legislative amendments may be a fair thing in certain circumstances to satisfy all sides concerned. Lets keep our eye on the ball here, which is child protection and the best interests of the child.
Monday, March 20, 2006 2:33:50 PM
I would bet that a baby broker wrote this - the best interest of the child IS NOT BEING RAISED WITH STRANGERS. All should be done to prevent this, as they are more abusive then blood relatives. Do the research, and stop the lies.
IT IS NOT IRRELEVANT THAT MINISTER CHAMBERS IS WORKING WITH PRIVATE BABY BROKERS IN ONTARIO. This is a comment about the Internet baby broker in the UK, but our government is in BED with the very same people that orchestrate this in Ontario. Different names and people, but the same thing.
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
I have never been so outraged and horrified about an adoption-related matter as I am with the Kilshaw/Wecker Internet adoption fiasco now before the world media. (If you have not yet seen the news stories on this scenario, here are two links: BBC (1), BBC (2).)
That this sort of Internet adoption may actually be legal in the US is unacceptable. That this could happen through efforts of conspirators from my home-town, San Diego is, for me, simply unbearable.
The matter is front page news on this side of the pond, and the Kilshaws are not being treated gently by the print and TV media. UK Home Secretary Jack Straw just announced that he will, as a matter of urgency, initiate a comprehensive policy review of adoptions from the US. He was just quoted on BBC saying, "I find the idea of children being bought and sold throughadoption quite revolting. It's illegal in this country." Politicians, officials and national NGOs are publicly calling for the UK to review,suspend or even tear up the adoption compact with the US. As described in the media, the compact currently allows adoptions by British citizens in the US to have the force of law here, when those adoptions are deemed legal under US law. Thus, if the Kilshaw adoption is found to be legal in the US, there may be little the British authorities can do to stop them from becoming parents.
Revealingly, Eugene Kelley, the Arkansas adoption attorney, who was just in US national press last week denouncing open records and extolling the desire of birthmothers for anonymity, was interviewed by on the BBC today, arguing for Arkansas' state rights to facilitate interstate and intercountry baby selling of exactly this nature, and implicitly denouncing the English for criticising American institutions that facilitate "positive" adoptions (by which he apparently means secret, commercial adoptions).
I am very concerned that the public may draw the wrong lessons from this whole episode, allowing the media to portray either the Allens or the Kilshaws as innocent victims of fraud, perpetrated by the adoption facilitator against one couple or the other, with the commodity, two human infants, in dispute like any other type of commercial merchandise. This is emphaticallynot the issue here. The real issue is the ethics of legalised baby selling and the commercialisation of adoption. In the court of conscience, neither the Allens of California nor the Kilshaws of North Wales are in the leastadmirable. Tina Johnson, the San Diego-based adoption "facilitator" who sold the children to the highest bidder, and the Arkansas judge whosanctioned the adoption despite the fact that neither the birthmother nor the agency nor the adoptive parents have anything to do with Arkansas, really do have a lot to answer for to the American and British people.
US adoption practice must be brought into line with internationally accepted standards of practice. If you are in the US, please ask your legislators to move to stop people like Tina Johnson from profiting from commercial adoptions and to raise the bar on the ethical standards of practitioners to being with. If you are in the UK, please contact your MPs and ask them touse this opportunity to take a strong stance against intercountry commercial adoption and to reassess the UK's adoption compact with the US. On both sides of the Atlantic, we should call on our legislators to take urgent measures to stop all intercountry adoptions that do not cohere with the letter or spirit of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, and possibly to enact emergency measures to regulate or outlaw privateintercountry adoption facilitation services until the US can implement the Convention, a process that may take years. If you are in Arkansas, please ask your legislators to change the law to impose residency requirements on either birthparents or adoptive parents or, at a minimum, adoption practitioners seeking to finalise adoptions in your state. If you are inCalifornia, please use this opportunity to focus the media's attention on commercial adoption facilitators, like the San Diego-based TinaJohnson's "Caring Heart Adoptions". I also believe that hearings should be sought at both the state and Congressional levels about the issues raised by this unwinding scenario.
The proliferation of inter-state and intercountry commercial adoptions, driven by for-profit US practitioners, is a global disgrace and an affront to any conceivable standard of human decency. And it has to stop.
Thank you taking the time to read this.
Kind regards,
Albert S. Wei
London, England
Once again the government made Bill 210 based on the chief legal defense of the Toronto CCAS, the very agency that is responsible for Jeffrey, and they are working with baby brokers to promote adoption for wealthy and infertile people.
Thank goodness Amanda has come forward and stated the obvious.
Some people choose to put their children up for adoption and it is not evil. These many blanket statements from the narrow-minded tainted minds is sickening.
To take one brush and paint all foster and adoptive homes as evil is disgusting to say the least. Many give it their all to help a child.
This blog has become far too negative. It accomplishes NOTHING.
For those who believe it is "informative" (the ramblings) ask yourself this....."How much of these ramblings have I verified to be true?"
Some people posting have obviously had personal issues with CAS...were they justified? We will never know.
Ok I agree with your statement, anonymous, that adoption of unwanted children can be beneficial..
I however, disagree with your comments about people rambling on the forum. If you cannot deal with it, please understand that a forum is for all comments.
And as for the statement as to how much can we verify, well unfortunately I have seen way too much.
I know from personal experience as a front line worker what the criteria as to reporting incidents are.
I can tell you the messages our children are being fed. They place a very dangerous gun in the hands of a children who cannot comprehend what they are doing.
These children are told to report any situation in which they feel a negative result from. Yes, some children use this to get revenge on the family members.
Unfortunately often this results in the family being torn apart.
I have also seen simple rites of passage destroy families. I know of 2 seperate families whom have been decimated.
In both the situations, the teenage males had no history of violence, drug use, or any hint of criminal tendencies. They were the atypical next door neighbours. Then bam! the next day the boys are removed...
Why? it astonished me to find out.. It was simply due to an average teenage male phase of life.. wrestling.. yes they were wrestling with there siblings..
It was not a frequent situation, nor was it excessively violent. However, in our " no hands on" policy world this was not acceptable.
How many of you had siblings that wrestled? Did you think that your family was excessivly violent? That you father should be cited as encouraging aggressively dangerous behaviour in the home. Let alone your mother be labeled as negligent? That she be brought to tears as a CAS worker told her she was bad parent, that her home was unsafe, and she failed to meet the emotional needs of her children..
Is this right? Should that have happened?
What most people don't know is that CAS is designed to protect the children. Therefore, the direct goal of the agency is to view all situations as a posssible child protection issue..
When viewing any situation with a slanted pespective, can we honestly say we do it in a honest unbiased opinion?
Did the Salem witch trials not show us a glimpse of humanity?
Anonymous, try to be open minded when reading these post.. and yes often somethings have to be taken with a grain of salt. ( due to the bias nature of them )
But I truely believe that most of the posts here are trying to provide insight into the processes of the legislation regarding child welfare.
Anyone who dares to disagree with some of these tainted opinionated bloggers needs "a quick in the ass"? I would reserve the kick for the "know it alls" on this site.
Once again it shows their mindset--agree or you are stupid, a SW, Child-broker, or on and on.
According to some of the fools on this site you couldnt possibly be rational.
I could post what I know personally to be true but what is the point????? I would be knocked down and criticized.
This still does not alter what I KNOW is facts.
Well put Thomas. The person with the dissenting opinion does not understand the validity of readers' comments is strengthened (not tainted) by contact with CAS - families that have had to give up special needs children are only one example. Trying to discredit people because they have had interaction with CAS is lame to say the least.
I suspect this person also objects to the newspaper article. They come from independent sources, making it harder to demean their credibility. It's not so easy to say the newspapers are making it up.
While the objector has no problem hurling insults, he/she does not seem able to distinguish between personal biases and fact. If his/her posts have been "shot down" its because they have been ludicrous - not because others consider themselves know-it-alls. I don't get that sense from this site at all.
What I do see here is a lot of people that realize the system creates havoc. Many have offered excellent insights. The common threat is it's hard to imagine a more misguided, malicious or destructive system.
That some posts are critical of foster homes and adoption seems intolerable to this individual - whether they are well-researched or not.
It's obvious this person is not about to change their opinion or anyone elses - particularly if they refuse to post information they claim is true for fear it will be scrutinized. If that's the case, it would probably be better if this person just moved on.
I hope Thomas will expand his statement about children being taught to report situations where they feel denied (I hope I'm not putting words in your mouth) as abuse.
My children have told me they have been subject to this type of priming in school and personally know one case where a youth, supported by her peer group, used CAS to prevent her parents from dealing with illicit behaviour. Apparently, this tactic is not unknown to youth that wish to get what they want. I'd welcome anything more you (or others) could add on this subject.
I think the person that is denying reality on this site is likely a CAS worker as no one would defend the CAS at this time other then those who benefit from them.
To the poster that said "What I do see here is a lot of people that realize the system creates havoc. Many have offered excellent insights. The common threat is it's hard to imagine a more misguided, malicious or destructive system."
Absolutely well said, and this is the very reason for this site to make the CAS accountable.
The latest article on this website does not even touch the horror of the CAS system, though it is a tragic case. I hope the media explores it in depth as it is time for the victims of the CAS to be heard loudly and in great numbers!
Ok you wanted to know about how denial is being reported as abuse..
During my time as a front line worker, you see all manner of informative seminars done by CAS.(or similar agencies)
There's the Sexual Abuse Awareness one (usually includes puppets )
The "Don't go with stangers one..."
And my favorite the Personal Rights One..
(usually includes physical and emotional abuse.)
The end result is to get the children to report..
However, what most people fail to realize is that it encourages the children to report any (and I do mean any)
of the criteria presented by the agency as key issues in the presentation..
With that in mind.. Let me tell you a story about Jeff and his family.
Low to mid fuctioning,grade 4 student with concentration problem and self esteem issues.
CAS agency came and did a skit about the various forms of abuse.. One which happened to be neglect..
Poor little Jeff thought that they were talking to him, and after seeing the skit felt that it was good to help his family out, and at worst felt that someone would get him some attention...
Apparently in the skit the main character got to go to a special meeting, which was all about him.
So Jeff returned home with his head a bust with new knowledge.. All is fine and good, right? (I mean it is good to inform children as to there rights.)
However, that was fine and good till Jeff asked his mother for something. His mother didn't see why he needed it.
So off went Jeff to tell the teacher. The following conversation lead to Jeff disclosing to CAS that he felt his parents could spend more time and money on him if they stopped going out.
According to lil' Jeff, they only spent there money on food, liquor, and other people. Well CAS flew off into a tizzy. How dare these drunken, destititue parents deny lovely little Jeff's needs...
Well apparently after Jeff being apprehended it all came out..
They never bothered to find out the precursor to the scenario, nor the fact that the parents had donated $150.00 their church fund to help an orphan.
All they heard was alcohol, no money, and poor little denied Jeff.
Thanks Thomas. I really appreciate your insights and hope you'll keep posting them. Your story is a real eye opener for me.
OK, for those whom do not have insight as to the guidlines that form a CAS investigation, go to this sight and plug in a scenario and see if you would get a visit from CAS..
While reading the criteria.. Imaging your self in an everyday situation with a tired or cranky little one in tow.. and see if you would get a special visit...
For example: I was once out with a young boy whom stole money from his parent, we were out getting a haircut.
I confronted him verbally as to what he did, and how it effected his relationship with his family members, trust issue, etc..
Unbenounced to myself a kindly old soul thought that my conversation was a little inappropriate.. and Voila!
Criteria Infraction #3 Emotinal Abuse..
The kindly old soul, whilst I was in the bathroom got his number, adress and all his information.. Which he gladly gave because she manipulated him ino doing it..
So, just a FYI.. I know we all know there numerous situation, but I wasn't sure if people knew the ambiguity of the Child Protection Laws..It's kinda an obtuse, amorphous law isn't it.. Gotta love legalese..
I just wanted to shed some light on it..
Ok,here is the address...
My apologies as to not posting the address, in the earlier one..
http://www.purpleribbon.org/whatisabuse.htm
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