childrens' rights

[grandma_donna]

I would like to hear what anyone thinks about the problem of children who have loving grandparents with whom they have a lifelong bond and a history of extended visitation being placed with strangers in foster homes rather than with these grandparents as a matter of policy. Current dfcs policy in the county I live in is this- if a parent is even suspected of wrongdoing, the child is taken and placed in a foster home while dfcs investigates the parent. There doesn't need to be any proof against the parent, only an allegation. Meanwhile, while most people seem to think that foster homes are for children who have no family willing to take them, that isn't the case. dfcs, in this county, routinely will take a child who has family, even grandparents who are caring for them at the time, and put them in a foster home and deny the child any access whatsoever with their family for an indefinite period of time and then continue to force the child to live with these strangers, causing extreme emotional trauma to the child, for months while they investigate the entire family until someone is able to jump through enough hoops to be allowed to rescue the child from their emotional nightmare and bring them back into the family. My grandchild has always been a secure, well adjusted, happy child until dfcs decided to take over her life. Now she has nightmares of being abandoned and lost and crying to be picked up by her grandmother. She never before had digestive problems but now she vomits regularly and has appetite problems. She worries that she won't see her grandmother and mother again and tells me regularly that she wakes up crying for me and asks why I didn't come to get her. She is three years old. She has no understanding of why she must live with her cousin rather than with the grandmother who has taken care of her all her life. How do you tell a three year old that dfcs says she must live where she doesn't want to be simply because her grandmother doesn't have a piece of paper from the county called a certificate of occupancy because she built her own house? How do you assure her that she isn't being denied the right to spend the night with grandma because she's been a bad girl when dfcs demands that you not tell her anything at all about what's happening to her and why. She thinks, according to what she's told me, that if she's a good girl I'll let her start to spend the night with me again. She was never abused before dfcs decided to take over her life. Now she is a confused and insecure little girl with sleep problems and digestive problems. She thinks she's been bad and she worries about being abandoned by her mother and grandmother. How does one go about ending the abuse heaped on a child by an agency that simply refuses to see children as individuals and puts their own liability worries over the rights and emotional well being of the children they control?

 

[Duranie]

Every DSS has their own policies and I have no idea how social services can remove the child from your home. There was obviously a reason. Have you been communicating with the case worker? You are saying that you do not have a certificate of occupancy, so if your home safe to live in? These kids have already been through so much DSS is not going to risk leaving them in a house that is potentially inhabitable.

Can you hire a home inspector to prove the house passes all city and housing codes?

 

[grandma_donna]

my grand daughter was removed from my home at ten p.m. because her mother was alleged to have done something. Not because there was any evidence against her mother, only an allegation, which has since been shown not to be true. I have not been accused of any wrong doing, nor has my husband or or her brother who has lived with us since he was seven years old. Her brother is now sixteen. He still lives here with us in the same house that dfcs has refused to allow my grand daughter to live in. There were no allegations that the house was unsafe. The house had all of the elements inspected when it was built, plumbing, septic tank, electrical, etc. I was denied a certificate of occupancy because the inspector at the time was apparently discriminating against the people in my private subdivision at the behest of the developer who was illegally controlling the unregistered and therefore illegal landowner's association. I, along with six others, have filed a lawsuit against that developer which has been working it's way through the courts for the past seven years. The developer took action against a number of us who were informing the other landowners of the discrepancies in the surveys and the fact that the association was collecting money without ever having been properly formed. The developer's response to that was to collude with the county inspector to deny us the proper and usual building permits and so forth. I offered to supply the people at dfcs with a private inspection of my home. This after they had me spend almost a thousand dollars replacing my hand painted hardwood floors with carpeting and linoleum and taking down walls to cover up the cable wires and telephone wires that the caseworker mistook for exposed electrical wires. I believe the real reason that dfcs refused to allow me to have my grand daughter is that I argued with the supervisor about the fact that she insisted that my daughter show up for her evidentiary hearing without an attorney. Dfcs never had my daughter served with papers for that hearing and her court appointed attorney advised her not to come to court until she was served as he couldn't represent her until she had been served. The dfcs supervisor told me that my daughter and I had been told by the caseworker to show up in court for that hearing and that we were to do what the caseworker told us to do, not what the attorney told us to do and that they didn't have to serve my daughter with papers at all and that her attorney didn't know what he was talking about and that she wasn't to listen to him. So, we didn't go to court that day and waited until they finally got around to serving my daughter with papers. When we went to court my daughter's attorney had filed a motion to dismiss based on the fact that dfcs failed to serve her with papers for the "10 day hearing" within the proper time frame. The attorney for dfcs threatened that, unless we dropped the motion to dismiss, dfcs would withdraw their reccomendation for reunification and deny family placement. We decided to go forth with the motion to dismiss and it was granted by the judge. Dfcs refiled against her. Their lack of proper process caused my grand daughter to be in the foster home fully two and a half months longer than she should have been. They didn't do their job as prescribed by law and they went on record in court to that effect and I believe that they have been prejudicded against me ever since because I argued with the supervisor and she was proven wrong. I also believe that there is prejudice against me based on anger that I complained that my grand daughter showed up for her first visit with me and her mother with a busted lip, two burns on the bottom of her foot, a large abrasion on her forearm, a bruise on her ankle, a discoloration on her hip, and complained to me that she was hurt and asking why I didn't come and save her. I insisted on an investigation of the foster home to be sure that the other children (there were seven in the home according to the supervisor) weren't being hurt also and to be sure that there was proper supervision and that my grand daughter wasn't being deliberately hurt by any of the other children. The dfcs director took offense at this because she said, "I know these people". I believe that in the county where I live the dfcs people are only accustomed to dealing with young, ignorant parents who are frightened to death of them and who rarely exercise their rights and that having someone demand due process from them and exercise their rights in this case was met with anger and deliberate foot dragging. I complied with every single demand on the list that dfcs gave me and I have my grand daughter's brother living with me and have been a second parent to her for her whole life. I have a lovely home, wholesome values and lifestyle, no criminal record and good references. I have a close and loving relationship with my grand daughter and she wants to be with me if she can't be with her mother and her mother offered to give me custody of her voluntarily. Dfcs simply doesn't want her to be with me. I firmly believe that their refusal to allow me to care for my grand daughter is their revenge for the fact that I have demanded that they actually do their jobs according to law and have talked with the agencies that oversee dfcs to be sure that their actions are legal. They have therefore decided to hold me to the letter of one of their rules which is a certificate of occupancy, the only thing they could come up with. Apparently, in this county it is best to be meek and compliant and to allow these women to feel their power or the child they have control over will be used as a hostage while they educate you on just exactly how much power they have. Am I angry? You bet. My little grand daughter is the one suffering here. She cries at night because she can't be in her real home. Dfcs has lost focus on what their purpose is supposed to be. Their bottom line here is their perceived liability and they don't care who they hurt ( the helpless little children) in order to see to it that there are no successful challenges to their way of doing things.

 

[Duranie]

I am really sorry you are going through this. I don't have any advice for you but have you called any attorney's? Maybe getting the media involved? Is there someone in your local media that does any child advocacy reporting?

 

[grandma_donna]

Thank you for your kind words. The real travesty here is what all of this is doing to my little grand daughter. She just cannot understand why the place and people who have been the source of stability and comfort for her and her happiest experiences are off limits. She thinks she's done something wrong and keeps reassuring me that she will be a good girl if I will bring her home with me. I am finally going to court in the next couple of weeks on the lawsuit on my home. Once that is done with I hope to be able to hire an attorney to pursue my grand daughter's rights and resume my rightful place in her life. Meanwhile, know this, dfcs is no longer an agency for children's welfare, at least not in Haralson County Georgia. They are making decisioins that are harmful to children and I hope that I can be instrumental in fixing that problem. My grand daughter may never be able to overcome the trauma they've caused her but I hope to bring these policies out into the light of day and expose the people who have made and implemented them for the imcompetent child abusers they actually are.