DCF Interviews at School

It is a pet peeve of mine that DCF investigators think they can talk to children at school and that schools let them.

It has been a major debate in several federal appeals courts, amongst attorney members of the National Association of Counsel for Children, on the American Bar Association Child / Parent Attorneys email discussion list, amongst members of the National Association of CPS Defenses Attorneys and even at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Unfortunately it remains an open question. But I lean toward the proposition that schools should not permit DCF personnel, police or other employees of outside agencies to interview children, who are not in the custody of the interviewing person, at school.

My answer to the question "is it legal?"on avvo.com, which lays out some of my reasoning, can be found here: http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/my-child-is-being-questioned-at-school-by-dcf.

If your school committee has a policy about visitors or interviews and you know or suspect that your child might be a target for an interview, consider adapting the form letters in my previous post to your situation.

And consult with an attorney who is familiar with DCF policies and practices.

When DCF Comes a-Calling: How to Try to Stay Out of the Fire When You're Already in the Frying Pan

In the article "Attorney Participation in Family Partnership Meetings," Sara R Brennan, NACC Legal Intern, wrote:

Without the assistance or guidance of an attorney, many parents volunteer information that can later be used against them, without a complete understanding of the consequences some of their statements can have. Parents may also agree to safety plans that can later be used against them in proceedings if they do not comply with every single provision of the plans. Furthermore, parents are sometimes forced to agree to out-of-home placements for their children, usually without a full understanding of their options.

e-Guardian v. 34, no. 7, National Association of Counsel for Children, August 2012, pp. 1-2.

The article proposes that state courts should exercise their discretion in favor of appointing attorneys to represent parents during the initial, pre-court stages of child protective services (CPS) investigations. It mentions two programs that provide pre-petition representation and suggests that NACC members disseminate information about solo practitioners who provide pre-petition representation.

I provide representation to parents in Massachusetts facing those frightening calls and letters from CPS that a worker "needs" to meet with the family to discuss an allegation that their child(ren) has(have) been abused or neglected. I work with families during Initial Assessments, Investigations and Assessments and represent parents at Fair Hearings, in court and at other aspects of the "variable response," Integrated Casework Practice Model.

A couple weeks ago, I fielded a call from a parent in just that position. S/he was being investigated by the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families [DCF, Massachusetts's CPS agency, formerly known as the Department of Social Services (DSS)] for the second time in as many months. S/he couldn't afford an attorney and so, as I had done for others, many times before, I gave the caller a free, (not so) brief, initial consultation. I say "(not so) brief" because, after our one and a half hour phone call, I spent another half hour writing an email to send links to the Mass. DCF regulations and other material I had summarized on the phone.

The parent who called from a remote part of the state, had, without representation, just gotten through an "Initial Assessment" for an allegation of neglect with a determination of "unsupported." S/he was now being subjected to an "Investigation" by the same intake worker (who was determined to vindicate him/herself by "supporting" this abuse / neglect report from a "mandated reporter," even if the children were no more at risk than they had been the previous month). The caller to my office was worried about what being investigated means that was different than the previous initial assessment and what the consequences of a determination that s/he had neglected his/her children would be.

Since it did not seem that s/he was at risk of having his/her children removed from his/her care even though the DCF worker said it was definitely "illegal" to leave children alone in a car under any circumstances, I started by telling him/her:

Stay calm about your DCF matter and don't let the investigator trick you into saying anything about being overwhelmed or stressed out by the process.

The "variable response" differentiation between an "Initial Assessment" and an "Investigation" are not yet in the official regulations of DCF in the Code of Massachusetts Regulations. For the purposes of this article, it should suffice to say that an Initial Assessment results in a finding of unsubstantiated, minimum risk or refer for assessment, and seems, at least partially to exclude less serious cases from being able to seek reversal of any findings through the Fair Hearing process, discussed later.

Under the statute, DCF must "investigate" whenever there is a report of suspected abuse or neglect of a child. The law setting out when a report becomes mandatory and authorizing any person who has reasonable cause to believe a child is being abused or neglected to report is in section 51A of the statute, so these are typically called "51A Reports." The resulting "evaluation" report is called a 51B because of where the requirements for the investigation are in the statute.

The current DCF "Intake" regulation that attempts to detail the statutory "investigation" scheme is here: http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/source/mass/cmr/cmrtext/110CMR4.pdf. The "non-emergency" investigation that I was discussing with the caller is section 4.26.

Once DCF concludes, either through an Initial Assessment or an Investigation, that the family needs to engage in "services" to correct the problems that caused them to be reported to the Department, they enter into a stage called "Assessment." DCF's regulations about the 45 day Assessment are here: http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/source/mass/cmr/cmrtext/110CMR5.pdf.

"Service Plans" are the "agreements" DCF workers try to get the parents to sign, either on an "emergency" basis, i.e., during the investigation, or for ongoing case work, i.e. for 6 month increments after Assessment. The regulation about service plans is here: http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/source/mass/cmr/cmrtext/110CMR6.pdf.

The regulations about requesting copies of the reports that were filed (51As) and that the caseworker doing the initial assessment or investigation writes (51Bs) are in article 12.00, here: http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/source/mass/cmr/cmrtext/110CMR12.pdf, particularly section 12.08.

How to request a Fair Hearing to appeal the finding that you did abuse or neglect your children is in article 10.00, here: http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/source/mass/cmr/cmrtext/110CMR10.pdf.

Definitions of abuse and neglect (though not particularly good ones) are in the Glossary, article 2.00, here: http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/source/mass/cmr/cmrtext/110CMR2.pdf.  Slightly more detailed descriptions of what they mean by "reasonable cause to believe," "supported" and "The List" (that the worker told this parent s/he would be on "forever") are in article 4 sections 4.32-4.38, linked above.

Most of what it all means is in court interpretations of things DCF did that parents appealed, which is covered in a 3 day course and 1200 page two-binder notebook for lawyers in this field and changes all the time, so you can see why I couldn't really teach you everything you need to know in one phone call or even a way-too-long blog post.

The Mass. Trial Court Law Libraries has a good set of resource pages, called "Mass. Law About ...". You might find the cases and additional links at the one about Child Abuse and Neglect to be informative. Here's a link: http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/subject/about/childabuse.html. Note the subsection with its own link on that page called "Is it illegal in Massachusetts to leave a child alone in a car?" Here's a link to it: http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/subject/about/childabusefaq.html#car. There's a similar subsection called "How young a child can be left home alone?" Here is it's link: http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/subject/about/childabusefaq.html#home.

I have included them here because the handling of these subjects is typical of how mandated reporters and DCF workers in Massachusetts deal with issues. That is, they seem to believe that "there is a law" that makes certain actions "illegal" when, actually, the case law makes it a fact-specific determination and leaves a good deal to the discretion of the parent, as long as the parent is being reasonable.

Judges and children: When the twain should (must?) meet

I discovered this interesting blog article on the Family Law group at LinkedIn.com

Family Law Blog: Judges and children – AJ v. JJ and others [2011] E...: It sounds like a definition of people you should never work with. Animals are less of a problem! Actually, I raise this as a topic beca...

An English appellate court said that a family court judge should have met with the children to explain to them why he was sending them back to Poland to be with their father who had custody, over their reportedly vigorous objection.

The blog author seems to agree with the system there, similar to ours, that parents are discouraged from bringing their children to court and that children's voices are heard through a Guardian Ad Litem (GAL). The reported decision said it was the judge's responsibility to avoid the scenario of screaming, kicking children being dragged onto a plane by explaining the process to them.

Many parents and children believe that children's voices are not adequately heard or are inaccurately reported through the GAL system and argue that children should have the opportunity to directly communicate with the decision maker, either as witnesses or parties with standing to have their positions count. Is it for the best? Are there other options?

FDA Regulation and Parental Rights in Artificial Insemination

The Just Families blog of New York Law School's Diane Abbey Law Center for Children and Families posted the article at the link that follows about a trend of couples sidestepping fertility clinics to find sperm donors: Online Sperm Donation

I posted the following comment there based on the first few legal thoughts* I had reading the article:

Would the FDA still think it had a right to regulate the transaction if the donor made his donation directly without the intervention of the husband? What if it were a loveless marriage and the husband was the donor the only intention being to make the wife pregnant, does that still invoke the regulatory powers of the FDA?

Regarding the presumption of legitimacy - my research suggests that those laws have nothing to do with the use or not of a physician but predate artificial insemination and create a rebuttable presumption that the husband is the father of a child born during (or in the case of Massachusetts within a certain time frame before or after) a marriage. It is to protect the child from being fatherless or being declared not the child of the mother's husband unless there is evidence presented that bursts the presumption and it is in the child's best interests to declare the genetic father to also be the legal father.

I know some state laws and AID contracts limit the right of the sperm donor to assert his parentage, but for the best interests of the child, it would seem that limiting the presumption to physician-assisted sperm donation would be counter-productive.

More thoughts:

What about this kind of transaction takes it out of the Griswold v. Connecticut or Belotti v. Baird privacy realm that permits the FDA to be involved?

Forgetting about the FDA regulation issue, what are the pure Family Law / Parental Rights issues involved? Do state laws adequately deal with the issues involved in sperm donation? Can the parties to the transaction write an agreement that would be sufficient to foreclose the donor from having any rights or obligations regarding the child? Would it be legitimate for the parties to deal with each other anonymously with fictitious names and proxy email addresses?

Has the law of parenting fallen too far behind technology to adequately address these issues? Should the law ignore technological advances until it catches up? Are there issues of morality aside from the legal issues? (That is, is there something malum im se, wrong in itself, rather than malum prohibitum, wrong because it is illegal, that needs to be addressed here?)

* I had other initial thoughts based on the title of the article that were of a practical rather than legal nature that I didn't post on the Just Families blog mainly around the question, "How do you get the sperm into the Internet for online donation?" When I read the article, I understood that it was the offer of the donation service only that are made online and the couples travel to where the donor is to consummate the transactions.

SCOTUS overturns CA9 on Warrantless CPS interrogations

The U. S. Supreme Court issued its decision today in Camreta v. Greene. Read the full decision here:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-1454.pdf

This is the 9th circuit case in which the circuit court found a Fourth Amendment violation based on a CPS worker and Sheriff's deputy's warrantless interrogation of a then 9-year-old at school. The 9th Circuit, though finding the violation, found that the official had qualified immunity since the law was unclear before. The deputy was granted cert in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled it could review the appellate court's constitutional decision, even though Camreta was the prevailing party below, based on qualified immunity. Nevertheless, the Court held the case is moot, because Greene has no continuing stake in the controversy. Consequently, it vacated the portion of the 9th Circuit opinion that imposed the warrant requirement.

Justice Kagan wrote the majority opinion in which Roberts, Scalia, Ginsberg and Alito joined. Scalia wrote a concurring opinion. Sotomayor, joined by Breyer wrote an opinion concurring in the result, but opining that the court should have decided only that the case was moot and vacated the judgment below. Kennedy, joined by Thomas, wrote a dissent concluding that Camreta as a "prevailing party" should not have been permitted to appeal the constitutional decision below, which he describes as "obiter dictum".

Thanks to the NACC yahoo group for notice of and the link to the decision and to members of the group for the concise summary quoted above.

Details of Temporary Custody Hearing in Orlando paper or And Yet Something Else Not to Do to Your Child

The "Yet Something Else Not to Do to Your Child" in the article linked below is shoot him. Yes, you read that right, a father is alleged to have shot his own son.

Ocoee father shooting son: Judge says mother of teen shot can't protect her children - OrlandoSentinel.com

The horrendous circumstances depicted in the headline caught my attention. I think you knew already that parents should NOT shoot their children. That's not why I posted the article.

I have often thought that child protective services (CPS) agencies (the Department of Children and Families, DCF, formerly DSS, in Massachusetts) overreach in bringing "failure to protect" cases. I went to read the details in the article thinking I would find myself objecting with statements such as, "What more did they expect her to do? How could she have predicted that?" But the article convinced me, as the Florida DCF lawyer convinced the Orange County (FL) judge, that this was probably a reasonable failure to protect case.

That's not why I posted the article.

Two things really caught my attention:

1. The reporter seems to have been in the courtroom. She published details about the allegations and comments about what the attorneys said.

In Massachusetts, child protection cases are closed to the public. We might get a snippet in the news about the police bringing DCF into a case when they find children in a "house of horrors" or when parents are arrested. But we don't get to see inside the CPS system -- the public doesn't know how it is decided whether children are released to their parents or placed.

2. The article said that the children were upset when told they wouldn't be going home and it has comments about what the parents' attorneys said. Nothing was said though about what the children's attorney said.

In Mass children's counsel are supposed to follow their clients' expressed wishes or, if the child is too young or otherwise incompetent for reasons other than just minority, use substituted judgment to determine what the children would want if they were competent.

Hmm, on third thought, did the children need to be taken away from the mother?

Yet Something Else Not To Do To Your Child

This article that I was alerted to via the Snopes.com "Daily Snopes" is perhaps this Georgia mother's reply to the following inquiry:

At a party several years ago, I was introduced to a lawyer who was here from China studying taxation law at Harvard Law School. He asked me what field of law I practiced. When I told him Children's Law he said, "I don't think we have that in China." After a brief discussion of what Children's Law was about, he said, "You can probably tell me then, is it true that you're not allowed to beat your children in America?" When I said yes, that was mostly true he asked, "So, what do you do when they don't study?"

And the answer is:

As punishment for bad grades, a Georgia mother forced her 12-year-old son to kill his pet hamster with a hammer, police said.

The day after he was forced to kill his pet, the child told his teacher [...].

The teacher reported the incident to DFCS authorities, who contacted police [who arrested Mom].

See the rest of the article here: Cops: Mom forces son to kill hamster for bad grade | ajc.com

So there's something else to add to my list of Top 10 Discipline Methods Not to Use on your Child.

Another Thing Not to do to Your Child?

Don't let him wear long hair.

At least not if he goes to Floyd Elementary School in Mesquite, Texas.

Texas school board keeps ban on boy's long hair

and continues the in-school suspension for the pre-kindergartner. The article says:

The district is known for standing tough on its dress code. Last year, a seventh-grader was sent home for wearing black skinny pants.

Something Else Not to do to Your Child

Don't hide your child in a crawl space.

An Illinois judge found that it constituted neglect for a mother to hide her then 5 year old son in a crawl space in her mother's house for most of two years to keep him away from his father whom she accused of abuse.

Ill. Judge: Mom's Hiding Of Boy Amounts To Neglect
JIM SUHR, Associated Press Writer
BENTON, Ill. (AP) ― A mother's hiding of her son for nearly two years in his grandmother's home, often in a crawl space behind a wall, amounted to neglect, a judge ruled Friday. See full article here.

Neither child protective services nor the court had believed mother's allegation of abuse. She and the child disappeared two years ago after the court granted the father temporary custody. The article does not say how they were found. There are criminal child abduction charges pending against the mother, the maternal grandmother and the MGM's boyfriend.

The boy is currently having supervised visitation with his parents (which are reportedly going well) and a custody and visitation hearing is scheduled for January 8th.

Top 10 Discipline Methods Not to use on Your Child

On the same day that I received a request to answer a survey for child abuse professionals about what I think my community's beliefs are concerning discipline methods, I saw an article about one type that wasn't on the list.

A pediatrician at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is circulating a survey about opinions about child abuse. Professionals in various disciplines of the child protection field were asked to say whether we think it is the norm in our communities to use certain methods on various age children usually, occasionally, rarely or never. It didn't include the one that turned out to me to be the Number 1 Truly Shocking Thing NOT to do to Your Child.

But first the list:

Top 10 Discipline Methods Not to Use on your Child

Number 10 - Pinching

Number 9 - Kicking

Number 8 - Hot peppers in mouth as punishment

Number 7 - Calling child names such as stupid, ugly or useless

Number 6 - Hitting on the buttocks with an object such as a belt or switch

Number 5 - Slapping child on the face or the back of the head

Number 4 - Hitting child elsewhere than on the buttocks with an object such as a belt, hairbrush or stick

Number 3 - Shaking

Number 2 - Beating (that is hitting over and over again with an object or fist)

and the number 1 Truly Shocking Thing NOT to do to Your Child ...

... TASING.

That's right, I saw an article about a woman who called the police on her 10 year old daughter who curled up on the floor rather than take a shower at bed time. AND THEN the mother gave the officer permission to use his taser on the child if he thought it was necessary. See the November 19, 2009, Associated Press article from Ozark, Arkansas, here.

The girl's father, who reportedly "does not have custody", described the child as having "emotional problems."

The Mayor wants the State Police or FBI to investigate and said:

People here feel like that he made a mistake in using a Taser, and maybe he did, but we will not know until we get an impartial investigation.

Really? Really? The town has to have an independent investigation to determine whether a child having a tantrum at home needs to be shocked into submission?

See also my Guest Commentary on the bill that was then pending in the Massachusetts state legislature to ban corporal punishment in the December 13, 2007, Arlington Advocate.

Teen Strip-Search Ruled Unconstitutional, But School Officials Are Off the Hook

At least the U.S. Supreme Court got the main part of the case right -- they found it was outrageous and unreasonable for school officials to search 13 year old Savanna Redding for Ibuprofen. The court though gave qualified immunity to the school officials saying it wasn't constitutionally settled before now such that they should have known it was a violation.

Here's a summary of the case from the Willamette Law School Supreme Court news:

Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding
Decided: 06/25/09
No. 08-479
Full Text: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/08-479.pdf

FOURTH AMENDMENT (The Fourth Amendment prohibits a search of a student by school officials that extends beyond the outer clothing and belongings when the degree of suspicion of further contraband is low, and when the contraband is of limited danger)

The United States Supreme Court held 8-1 (opinion by Souter) that a search of a student’s underwear is a violation of the Fourth Amendment when suspicion of further contraband is low and the contraband is of limited danger because the measures adopted must be reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.”

The Court also held 7-2 that the school officials were still protected from liability by qualified immunity, because the search was not a violation of the Fourth Amendment by clearly established prior case law.

The student was suspected of distributing common pain relievers some of which were prescription strength. The school officials found pain relievers in the student’s belongings. The school officials had the student strip down to her underwear and then extend out the elastic of her bra and waistband of her underwear and attempt to shake out any other drugs she might have been hiding. The student’s mother filed suit, alleging the strip search violated the student’s Fourth Amendment rights. Claiming qualified immunity, the school officials moved for summary judgment. The district court granted the motion, finding that there was no Fourth Amendment violation, and the federal appellate court reversed.

The United States Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the search of the student’s underwear violated the Fourth Amendment. The Court reasoned that individual and societal expectations of personal privacy support the notion that a search extending beyond the outer clothing is a distinct search from the previous search. The court held that this level of search requires a further element of justification on the part of a school official. The suspicion must match the degree of the intrusion. In this case the threat was possession of common pain relievers which are a limited threat in their nature and which were not suspected of being passed around in large quantities. Further, the school official had no specific reason to suspect that there were more drugs hidden in the student’s underwear. [Summarized by Jim LeBlanc]

And here's a link to the AlterNet story about the decision:

SCOTUS: Teen Strip-Search Ruled Unconstitutional, But School Officials Are Off the Hook | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet

School curbs girl's report on gay rights activist Milk

The project was to create a powerpoint about a famous person to present to the class. The sixth grade girl chose Harvey Milk, the first openly gay public official in the U.S., about whom a feature film had recently been released. When it was her turn to present to the class the school principal said the teacher had to get permission from parents under the school's sex education policy for other class members to attend.

School curbs girl's report on gay rights activist Milk

The powerpoint is included in a link with the above article. Give me a break - she mentions that Milk was gay (no-duh) and the name of his partner but there was nothing else in it that should have required a parental permission slip. The ACLU is asking that she be allowed to give her presentation to the whole class and that the school give her an apology that they send to all the parents who received the original sex ed notification.

I'm all for parents having a say in the education of their children but, as the U.S. Supreme Court said in Tinker v. Illinois ..., students "do not leave all their rights at the schoolhouse door." The government should not be engaged in content-based censorship.

Shaken baby or not?

A report in the Brockton Enterprise Increases in shaken baby cases concerns officials tells of various officials' speculation about the rise in reported cases of suspected shaken babies.

There are experts in the field of evidence-based medicine who suggest that there are other explanations for many of the injuries that the shaken baby prevention advocates attribute solely to vigorous shaking. The pediatric neurologist and pediatric radiographer who spoke at a seminar I attended sponsored by the (Massachusetts) Juvenile Bar Association two years ago delineated the genesis of Shaken Baby Syndrome. They pointed out the flaws in the "research" of the founder of the Shaken Baby movement and how the advocates ignored contrary evidence in a series of cases.

The Shaken Baby Advocates insisted that the injuries and signs apparent in various infants and toddlers could not have been caused by anything other than being vigorously in the manner they propose. Then the evidence-based medicine teams would scientifically prove that the injuries could have been caused by a car accident as described by the accused parents in one case, by falling down the stairs with the baby as described by the accused parents in another case and even by falling out of a high chair as described by the accused parents in yet another.

The cases often rely on the assertion that certain retinal damage patterns can only be caused by a baby being vigorously shaken but the evidence-based presenters showed that the claim was based on believing an assumption that did not look at a wide enough collection of retinal damage patients. When retinal images across other medical specialties besides just child abuse pediatrics are viewed, there are many other causes including some as benign as sneezing that cause the retinal images that shaken baby prosecutors so often rely upon.

The bad economy may be causing a lot of hardship but it is not necessarily the cause of an increase in reported shaken baby cases. An increase in reported shaken baby cases may not even be caused by an increase in shaken babies. When DCF investigators or police are investigating an injured baby case they may well have a predilection to think shaken baby and be dealing with a system of "experts" too quick to disbelieve the parents and assume inflicted injury.

If you are the subject of a 51A (report of child abuse or neglect), are accused of having shaken your baby or are subjected to any other investigation by police or the Department of Children and Families (DCF, formerly the Department of Social Services, DSS) be sure to contact an attorney with experience in this field BEFORE your interviews, BEFORE letting them into your home.

Families are too important to fail.

In an op/ed piece in today's Boston Globe, Vulnerable children are suffering twice, the chief of Ambulatory Pediatrics at Boston Medical Center and the executive director of The Children's League of Massachusetts tell the story of a mother helped by the Department of Children and Families despite budget cuts.

Despite their increasing caseloads, the late-night DCF worker and a supervisor came to assess the situation. They knew something we didn't - that this wasn't the first time this mother, a depressed refugee who had been through God knows what before arriving in the United States, had told a caregiver that she was in trouble. By the end of the evening, the mother was in the hospital being treated for her depression, and the children were safe in an emergency placement. The next day, with the mother's agreement, they were placed with a family friend. Now, the mother is out of the hospital with daily supports and the children are back home.

From my perspective as an attorney who has seen way too many cases in which the only help a troubled family received from DSS was to have their children placed in foster care and to face an unnecessarily long and arduous process of getting them back, this case may represent an unintended benefit of DCF's budget and caseload problems. All too often, in my and my colleagues' caseloads, a mother with a history with the Department mentions to a "caregiver" that she is feeling overwhelmed only to have had DSS place her kids in foster care and put them on an adoption track because the mother couldn't "correct" her condition quickly enough.

The "vulnerable children" piece starts by saying the mother brought her children into the clinic "recently." By a couple paragraphs later they are "back home". More often, in my experience, the other parent or a caring family member, let alone "a family friend" is denied the opportunity to help with their troubled relative's children when troubles are brought to the attention of DSS/DCF. It seems to me that not having this repeat customer's kids be subjected to a longer stay in foster care with strangers might be an unintended benefit of DCF's increasing caseload and decreasing budget. Maybe DCF's budget crisis helped these children get home more quickly.

If increasing caseloads and a tightening budget cause DCF workers and supervisors to give additional thought to whether children need to be in foster care and whether their families can be helped instead of being discarded while the children get a brand new "forever family," it might go a long way toward making DCF into a valuable safety net to which troubled parents feel safe turning for help instead of a feared monster set only on gobbling up their children and spitting out the parents who love them.

The authors end by saying:

Citibank, AIG, and the automakers have received unprecedented amounts of money from the federal government because they are deemed "too big to fail." We need to remember to look out for those who are "too little to fail."

To that I would add that families need to be thought of as "too important to fail" and that therefore more of them may need to be treated with the respect and true assistance that this refugee mother apparently received instead of keeping them from their families and rushing them to "permanency" in non-family placements.

Read the rest of the Globe op/ed here.

In re: Adoption of Sebastian

Fascinating case of first impression from Manhattan Surrogates Court -- In re: Adoption of Sebastian. Mom whose ovum was implanted in her spouse's uteris after in vitro fertilization is permitted to adopt her child to ensure full, safe recognition of her legal relationship with the child.

The court noted that because of the international nature of the couple, because of the state's out-dated paternity laws and because of the federal "Defense of Marriage Act" (so-called), though there were less expensive, quicker ways to protect the relationship to which genetic mom was entitled with her child, adoption was the only way to assure full and complete recognition.

Read full opinion here.

Supreme Court to hear school strip search case

As reported here, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Safford (AZ) Unified School District's appeal of the Ninth Circuit's reversal of the dismissal of Savana Redding's suit against it for strip searching her to look for ibuprofen when she was a 13-year-old honor student with no history of discipline issues at her middle school.

I hope SCOTUS isn't taking the case in order to overturn the Ninth Circuit. The July 11, 2008, Opinion of nine of the eleven appeals court judges who heard the case details the Constitutional basis for holding the school personnel responsible for their unreasonable violation of the privacy and person of the 13-year-old student.

The Ninth Circuit held that

[T]he public school officials who strip searched Savana acted contrary to all reason and common sense as they trampled over her legitimate and substantial interests in privacy and security of her person.

It would be a shame if parents had to worry more about schools abusing their children than the "evils" that Safford U.S.D.'s officials say they want to protect our children from.

Whom is this law supposed to benefit?

The Associated Press reported on September 26, 2008, that on September 24th in Nebraska, 11 children (9 of them siblings) were abandoned at two different hospitals under the state's so-called "Safe Haven" law. (See the full Boston Globe story here.)

According to the article,

Todd Landry, director of Health and Human Services' division of Children and Family Services, said that in nearly every case, the parents who left their children felt overwhelmed and had decided they didn't want to be parents anymore.

In my opinion it is disastrous to let children be dumped like so much not-worthy-of-my-time-to-repair-but-too-good-for-the-trash "Free-cycle" material, especially when states can achieve the same goal by just making it clear that they do not intend to prosecute troubled parents who seek help when they are overwhelmed with child-rearing.

Massachusetts has a "Baby Safe Haven Law" but it only applies to babies 7 days old or less. It is still problematic, though, because it permits the voluntarily-abandoning-parent to do so without providing any information about him/herself or the child. There is then no ability to notify the other parent nor any other family member who might be interested. The babies so abandoned are turned into complete foundlings without any birth-family history, medical history or sense of place in the world that can be difficult to overcome even in the most caring of adoptive homes.

As a society we should be able to help struggling parents and their children without the need to say "Children Wanted - No Question Asked."

WHAT?@@!??

A young mother's apparently disturbed young friend steals her baby Thursday night so on Friday

the Department of Social Services took custody of the baby and his 16-month-old sister, and Sterrett's third child, a 2-year-old boy, was placed with relatives, according to a spokeswoman for the agency.

DSS previously investigated Sterrett for alleged neglect involving one of her other children. That case was closed last year, according to Alison Goodwin, a spokeswoman for DSS, who gave no details.

Does DSS not realize, like the Texas authorities in the FLDS case didn't realize, that they need specific, articulable "reasonable cause to believe that the removal of the child is necessary to protect him from further abuse or neglect"? See Mass. General Laws chapter 119, section 51B (emphasis added). Doesn't "further" imply that there had to have been some abuse or neglect in the first place?

Nothing in the Globe article about poor Ms. Sterrett's troubles indicates that there was any evidence of

reasonable cause to believe that a child under the age of eighteen years is suffering physical or emotional injury resulting from abuse inflicted upon him which causes harm or substantial risk of harm to the child’s health or welfare including sexual abuse, or from neglect, including malnutrition, or who is determined to be physically dependent upon an addictive drug at birth

which is the applicable statutory definition from the infamous section 51A.

It's hard to tell for sure from the Globe article, but it seems as if this is another case of DSS breaking up a family in the name of protecting children from a parent they don't need protection from. Will the Globe report on Tuesday, after Ms. Sterrett's 72-hour hearing , if she gets her children back from the juvenile court judge? Will DSS apologize or even have its spokesperson report that they were wrong if Ms. Sterrett does get her children back?

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives even young mothers the right not to have their children seized by the state without probable cause.

CHINS cases: Parents have the right to counsel.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court acknowledged today that parents are entitled to intervene and to have counsel (appointed if indigent) in Child in Need of Services (CHINS) cases when the court is considering granting custody of their children to DSS. Describing the statutory scheme as one capable of "substantial" intrusion on the parent-child relationship and children as "'those most dear' to parents", Justice Ireland (a former Juvenile Court judge) ruled that "pursuant to G.L. c. 119, § 29, after a child is adjudicated a child in need of services, a parent is entitled to counsel at the dispositional phase of the proceeding if custody of the child could be granted to the department." In the Matter of HILARY (and a consolidated case), SJC-10036 (argued October 2, 2007, decided February 5, 2008).