As many of you will have noticed, I posted a video that I made about CPS and some of the serious problems that are happening as a result of this 'service'. If you haven't yet seen it, I have embedded it at the end of this post. This video was heavily promoted on Steemit and even reached the top of the trending page, which is amazing. I was very happy to see so many comments that were both supportive but also questioning my motives or intentions. It was always one of my aims to prompt this healthy and needed discussion because I completely understand that many people will doubt the points I have raised. That is why this has been a great opportunity to be able to explain to everyone why I am doing this, and what the actual problems are. Sure, there are times when children need to removed from abusive parents, and that is one of the great services that CPS provide. Some people commented things like "Do you think it is better to leave abused children with families rather than foster them?" Others commented that this was a 'hit post' to try to make CPS sound worse than they are. To pick up on this and really crystallize my intentions and why I made this video and I am writing this post.
I have no children of my own and have no axe to grind with CPS as a personal vendetta.
When I first discovered @familyprotection on Steemit I had no idea of the real situation, and was quite surprised to see many people hitting out at CPS with so many stories. My initial reaction was that this was probably just a few people who were very unlucky and that they were in a minority. I thought that CPS is probably performing a very needed service to the world, and that these stories are just from very rare and unlucky people. Being someone who prides myself in being grounded in truth and reality I took the time to research and read many many hours of posts and other material. I also took the time to watch a 4 hour deposition, from which I have edited the most crucial points for you to see in my video. As a scientist with a strong background of finding evidence and knowing how numbers and statistics can be warped and misrepresented to push a certain viewpoint or theory, I was very diligent and careful to read and learn from as many sources as possible.
It didn't take long for me to start to understand the truth, and discover that the stories that I was reading were not just from a few people but were from very many legitimate families and other very credible people. The truth of the matter is that what @familyprotection are saying is very true, and not only that but quite understated. The points that have been raised in my video and the endless posts on Steemit are just the tip of the iceberg. This rabbit hole goes further and deeper than many people would even want to know about. Child trafficking is a horrendous business that is happening worldwide, and is just starting to become exposed. Unfortunately the kind of people who engage in stealing and selling children for sexual abuse or even slavery are just the kind of people who would want to foster children, and even work with CPS. There are HUGE cases being exposed right now even in the United Kingdom, and this movement of exposing these atrocities are just starting to come out after many years of cover ups at the highest levels. I do not want to go into this right now, because we are just starting out with the basic problems with CPS. We are just starting out down this rabbit hole, and even that is a lot for many people to be able to take in.
SO my point here is that I am not some kind of whack job crazy person who has no sense of truth. I entered this whole arena with a very open mind, and was even skeptical about the claims I saw. I have come to my decisions after countless of hours of diligent research. Therefore, to those people who flippantly write that this whole @familyprotection movement is just nonsense, without really spending time to look at the truth because they know of one person who didn't have a problem are sorely missing the point and reality of the situation. This post and the movie I have made demonstrate the truth and the problems very clearly. I and many others have taken the time to reveal these problems, and so to those of you who do comment or feel that we are not being honest, I urge you to respect the time that we have all put in to this cause and listen up. THIINGS ARE FAR FROM OK! Just because the CPS do sometimes remove children who need to be protected, and just because sometimes they do get it right, does not mean that it is OK to then ignore the fact that the in the MAJORITY OF CASES TODAY, they are putting families through months of the worst kind of threats and torment with zero evidence. I have listened to court depositions where it is revealed that over 50% of CPS agents totally fabricate and withhold evidence to make sure their case is successful and children are removed. They do this under great pressure because that is their JOB and the whole service ONLY makes money when children are removed. This is happening on a massive scale, and it needs to stop. I really hope this point is clear now!
What Am I asking for?
I am obviously not saying that CPS should be canceled out and children should no longer be protected! What I have said is that there is drastic reform needed with CPS to ensure that the wrong people are no longer victimized because agents need to get their quota of removals and keep their job. It is a very sad reality that money makes the world going around, and there are no exceptions to this reality. Anyone who performs other work where quotas are present will know this truth. We can find it everywhere and it is a symptom of a (Capitalist) system that has lost its way and has no shred of integrity left.
There are many changes needed, and here are just some of them:
1. COURT PROCEEDINGS SHOULD BE MADE PUBLIC
CPS Agents know the rules and reasons needed to remove children and simply use these reasons to enforce a removal, even when there is just no evidence to support it. They often do not care about truth, and tear families apart. Court proceedings are done in private, which means there is no oversight on the whole process. This means CPS agents are able to lie and make stories up, which is happening in around 50% of the cases.
2. INCENTIVES NEED TO BE PUT IN PLACE TO REUNIFY & SUPPORT FAMILIES
With funding only available to CPS for removing and fostering children there is no incentive for agents to keep families together. There is also no funding for supporting or helping families to prevent removal happening. The only power CPS have is literally to remove children, and that is it! What if CPS had funds to support families in times of hardship? What if CPS could send help to clean a home, or cook, because a parent could not cope for a short time due to life's challenges. We need to see some incentives built in to the CPS so that they can offer help. This would go a long way to ensuring CPS agents are not hell bent on making a parent look as bad as possible.. which is basically what they do right now.
3. CPS AGENTS NEED TRAINING IN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND NON AGGRESSIVE INTERVENTION
CPS agents are all too often very aggressive in their tactics. They know very well how to intimidate and make parents SO angry that they act out and can even become violent. The worst CPS agents do this intentionally to make their case look better, and give more reason to remove a child. They act like thugs with absolutely no compassion, and seemingly no care in the world that they are psychologically damaging these children and parents for the rest of their lives. Yes I know there are some CPS agents that are VERY nice, and like i have said I am not talking about them. A HUGE number of agents act exactly how I have described and that needs to stop.
4. CPS SHOULD NOT BE RUN AS A BUSINESS
The entire structure and funding of the CPS needs addressing. It is currently run as a business, with staff in powerful unions and funding only allocated based on performance and the number of removals. This is abhorrent and needs to change. Employees who are not doing their jobs should not be protected. They should be removed. This will lead to better outcomes for kids and a better work environment for good CPS workers. You hear from the horses mouth in my video how it is VERY hard to remove staff even in the worst cases of misconduct. CPS should receive funding to do their job irrespective of how many children are removed. That should not even figure in the equation! How can we expect the CPS service to act diligently when they are basically forced to cheat and lie to protect their very existence. Human nature is what it is, and we can not and should not ignore it.
5. REGULATION IS NEEDED
Child Protective Services are an agency without regulation. It used to be that in order to remove children from a home there was a protocol that had to be followed, and the removal had to be approved. Now, the approach is to act first and deal with the consequences later. GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT! Children are being removed from homes only to have a judge rule 5 days later, that the children are to be returned, or in some cases not returned. They claim to be working in the best interest of children and families, but removing children without warrant isn't in the best interests of anyone. Someone needs to be making sure that the Child Protective Services Agency is following proper protocol and families are not being disrupted for no reason.
6. BETTER FUNDING FOR COMPETANT STAFF
The job of a CPS agent is VERY hard. They are completely overloaded and have very little training or guidance in their job. Because of this moral is very low amongst CPS workers, and many of the very good ones leave. In the UK experienced workers and managers leave to be replaced by agency staff of variable competence and commitment. It is not unusual then for between 40 and 60% of the children's social work workforce to be interim, short-term workers.
7. HONEST AND OPEN CULTURE IS NEEDED
Culture and leadership are key to driving the improvement agenda. A strong focus on performance should be within the context of building trust and commitment across the workforce. All managers need to be visible and available. They should also be closing any distances between management tiers. An honest and open culture should allow difficulties to be heard, rather than to remain unspoken. There is likely to have been a culture of top managers being uninformed, and not seeing it as their business to know about front-line realities. How else could poor performance have become embedded? The desired destination of the improvement journey is a stable, skilled, committed and confident workforce working with children (and adults), where required practice standards are clear, where there is challenge and monitoring to ensure these standards are met, and where difficulties which emerge are recognized.
I could go on, but these are some of the most crucial points. To those of you who do know CPS agents who are good people, I would urge you to ask them what they think about these suggestions for improvements. I'm sure they will agree that the way CPS is operating is very far from good, even if they themselves are good people. The CPS organization needs massive reform, and urgently, and that is where my focus is aimed at.
I hope this is now clear, and those of you who continue to think that things are OK can please keep watching the news. If you want to know the truth it is now coming to the public eye and is in plain sight for you to see.
Sending HUGE love and compassion to everyone of you who have had the threat of your child being removed by aggressive agents with no care for the truth. Any parent will know that this is probably the worst thing that can ever happen to you or your child, and that is why I support @familyprotection.
If you haven't seen the video I made, I embed it here for you to watch!
