Grandma Donna, that is not necessarily correct. I do volunteer work in social services and often children want to return to a home where there is abuse. They would rather return home to their parents whom they love, than go to a foster home even though there is founded abuse in the home. I have to make the decision on if the child should remain in foster care or would be better off with family reunification.
Returning to their home is a far cry from going to Granny's to get beat up. Children who do not live with their extended family WILL NOT want to go to an abusive situation, even with family members.
If you work for the state and have not realized that many parents are falsely accused, the children you serve would be better off if you would do some research on the upsurge in false accusations. To treat a child as if he/she were abused if they have not been is abuse in and of itself. Even removing a child from an abusive home is a traumatic experience; that's why they don't want to leave.
If parents put their kids first, and were dedicated to raising their kids, social services would not be on their case in the first place. There are terrible parents all over, and the sad fact is, their children are often bad parents because of how they were raised. It is a cycle that continues to repeat itself.
I agree with you on this one, but our culture does not promote good family values. Welfare discourages fathers from living at home with their children and parents cannot get help when they need it. Costs are going up and wages are going down. We have a wave of fundamentalism sweeping this country demanding that a woman have that child, then lobbies Congress to decrease welfare benefits and promoting corporal punishment.
The Mental Health system is overworked and underfunded and DFCS removes children from their homes rather than help the parents. The extended family is dead and laws have been passed forcing grandparents and other relatives out of the children's lives at the times they are most needed.
America IS NOT a child friendly nation.
The reason so many children are abused in this nation is because, as a culture we do not care.
When a child is removed from the home and grandparents want custody, I give them a background check as part of my evaluation. You would be surprised on the rap sheets I see of 50 and 60 year old g-parents. Most grandparents are wonderful and love their grandkids. Some are not and its no wonder why their kids are screwed up.
Sorry, but a rap sheet does not make a bad grandparent. Screwed up kids come from the best of homes because of the issues I mentioned above in our culture. No family is an island and cultural factors often outweigh the best parenting.
The supreme court ruled that grand parents have few or no rights in most cases.
Which was a big mistake and should be rectified by Congress immediately. Having an extended family is the best possible scenario for children to grow up happy and emotionally stable.
In the case of the neighbors I previously mentioned, they have lived there 25 years and have not one single friend on the street.
That could say more about the neighbors than them.
They are hermits, do not socialize at all, I think she is agoraphobic. He is the step-dad to the 2 daughters, both whom have kids and have not come around for years. Knowing how they are now, it is no surprise their kids do not come around. There were rumors that he was abusive and given the fact neither daughter, or son wants anything to do with them now, maybe they should look in the mirror and wonder why their kids don't talk to them.
To make a value judgment about people you do not know, and in the absence of any credible information, says a lot about your judgment skills and is troublesome to me that you are in a position to determine where a child lives.
So to give you the idea that all grand parents are wonderful people is wrong
Neither Donna nor I have made such an assertion and your implication is another indicator that your judgment skills need some improvement.
you must first make peace with your kids, before you can expect any rights to the grandkids.
This is simply ludicrous.
The laws in most states give g-parents zero or very few rights, and zero rights to a family that is still intact. In the case of a death of a child, or a divorce, g-parents may have very limited rights and they are lucky to get visits once a month.
This is not healthy for the children and, again, they have rights to have relationships with their extended family members, including their grandparents. To argue against this is to ignore thousands of years of history that has shown extended families to be of great importance to the emotional development of humans and animals alike.
Every case is fact specific and in most cases, if a person wants nothing to do with their parents, that is their choice. What about the mother that stays in a long term marriage to step-dad even though he sexually abused her kids? This stuff happens all the time and much if it goes unreported. Do you really think that parent wants her mom and step-dad around her child? Sometimes I wonder why I volunteer for CASA because I see a ton of horror stories but somebody has got to look out for the kids. It is no wonder why CPS in my state has a 40% job vacancy.
From what I've seen CASA is nothing more than a rubber stamp to help legitimize the poor decisions made by DFCS caseworkers. I have not only not been impressed by them, but I think they lack the knowledge and experience necessary to advocate for children. In the case that led to the construction of the web site I'm currently building, the CASA worker did nothing but work for DFCS, even stating that the Juvenile Court Judge was there only to implement DFCS decisions. She also totally ignored the Indian Child Welfare Act after being told that the child was a Cherokee descendant.
I have a great relationship with my parents and I hope they are always involved in
Again, no one has stated that in every case the relatives are good for the children. We have just had to deal with a CASA volunteer and she certainly DID NOT know what she was doing and does not need to be involved in making decisions affecting the lives of children.
our lives, but terrible parents do exist and those are the ones that keep social services employed.
From what I've seen this is where you get the information about the families you deal with. Social Services promotes itself above the welfare of the children they are supposed to be helping.
I'm almost 60 and have raised three children, have the equivalent of Master's Degree in Psychology and have studied human development from birth to death, following many people for as long as 25 years, many from birth to their mid twenties. What are your credentials?
