Comment by dahfizz
2 years ago
My first inclination is to blame DCF workers.
> These people are working in the shadows, in darkness," Lamanna said. "They can show up at your house in the middle of the night with no paperwork, no court order whatsoever, and say we’re removing under the B, we’ve decided an emergency exists."
> According to DCF’s 2022 quarterly report, about 60% of parents are reunited with their kids within a year after being removed by DCF.
Anyone who feels justified in stealing kids from parents in the middle of the night, without any due process, WITH A 60% MISS RATE, is completely and truly evil.
Seriously, more often than not DCF realizes they made a mistake and the kid goes back home. Insane.
Reuniting within a year is not intrinsically evidence that it was a bad removal - a parent can change a lot in less than a year. Most obviously, one abusive parent can be jailed or kicked out and the children go home to live with the remaining parent, who may have been abused themselves. Rehab, counseling, parenting classes, diagnosis and treatment for mental illness, moving out of an unsafe hoarding home, etc, can all be done in that time.
The ones you want to really examine are the kids who go home in less than a week. At one point I think I read that New Mexico had about 25% of children who entered care returning home within days. Those are very likely to be children who were not at risk of harm in the first place.
Who gave DCF the power to take away kids in the middle of the night without due process?
Until we vote out of office the elected representatives who passed the laws that give government agencies such draconian powers, and insist on those laws being changed, we won't fix this problem.
>we won't fix this problem.
I agree.