what if my house really is messy?

[survivorsofcps]

Ok i have to ask. What if your house really is messy but otherwise you are a good parents? what if you can't keep up due to being a single parent or too many kids or medical condition? Is there anything you can do besides turning to cps?

[treytrey1]

Cps took my kids because of a messy house. They were called for another reason but never gave us time to clean it up. Its in the report that we had animals
and animal feces and rotten food, you name it in the home. Whats funny is that the so called animal feces was really playdough and we only have one small
dog. There was some food because we had just cleaned out the fridge and hadden made it to the trash yet. The kids rooms were messy but that is to be expected,
they are children. Our room looked like a storage room, (small home, no where to put anything). They pushed there way in there. The kids didnt use that room
so we still feel they has no right. They actually gave use 3 months to clean it. With the schedule we kept and 3 kids we couldnt get enough done. They
said the home wasnt suitable for the children, but why not take them in the beginning? They allowed them to live in the so called fiflth for 3 months.
I know Im rambling, all Im trying to say is get your home in tiptop shape, because they can and wil use it against you.

[survivorsofcps]

oh i totally agree its just my medical condition limits my abilities sometimes it is super clean and other times not so much.
my boy is rowdy always spilling things.
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I do not think a messy house is a good reason but cps does.
I wonder if they did away with calls for messy houses how much more time and money would they have for everything else just saying.
Plus cps is supposed to help you clean it if you are struggling for whatever reason.
did they bother doing that?

[family_man]

The same thing happened to my family. This is why I recommend that no family should let the investigator into their house without warning. Talk to them outside if you must, but do not let them in unless you know everything is as neat as a pin. Make an appointment for them to come back after you've enough time to clean everything up!

[survivorsofcps]

I do not have a current case open

[treytrey1]

In our case they has a person come out from an agency who was suppossed to help us find ways of cleaning it and keeping
it clean. At first all he did was ridicule, and they he only sat and talked to my husband. He never came when I was home because
it didnt fit into his schedule. We has a bug problem, that they were going to pay for for a yr, but after the kids were taken
they covered 3 months. We covered the rest. We also has a hole in kitchen floor, that they were also going to pay for.
At the meeting where they took the kids, another lady higher up told us to beg our church for money to fix it because
they werent going to. People in our church did offer to help when they found out what happened, we never had to ask.

[survivorsofcps]

sometimes the church does a better job of helping then cps

the other side of the coin is sometimes the church is the one reporting . that is not christ like. especially if there is no abuse but the parents are just poor

[fatherofthree]

A messy house should not be a reason in itself. They should see visible hazards in the home to be a requirement to remove children. I have been in some homes I wouldn't let my worst enemy reside in let alone a child. Bugs that bite, poop every where, ect. A normal messy home is just a statement to clean it up, after all child welfare investigators are not the clean home police.

[survivorsofcps]

lol clean home police

[treytrey1]

Ok in our case the hole in the kitchen floor and the bugs were hazzards that my children should not have to live
in. Cps left them in the home for over 3 months knowing the problems were there. I feel they werent too concerned
for the children or they would have taken them day one. I think my cw supervisor finally said we had enough time
to clean it and since we couldnt they took the kids. They were taken 5 days before Christmas. My son had a severe
emotional meltdown and had to be hospitalized. Cps has done more harm than good. To this day hes still not the same.

[survivorsofcps]

i'm sorry trey

[survivorsofcps]

you got the kids back trey?

[Eljay]

There have been stories of CPS helping pay first/last/deposit to help people get into position to get their kids back. As Treytrey said, they paid for exterminators and said they would pay for repairs (even though they failed to do so). Others have had CPS offer/provide organization and housekeeping assistance. If it's your only problem, there are remedies, but it's really about how hungry/corrupt that particular CPS office is. The point is to improve things for the kids.

[survivorsofcps]

well perhaps that is true but that is not my point
DI
My point is that medical records have been kept from me.
I cannot get any help with my diagnosed and deadly serious medical condition because I was in foster care/legal guardians care because of cps.
That medical condition is hindering my ability to keep my house clean. My medical condition is growing worse and worse. Yet the organizations that help people with my medical condition require medical history as proof of the disease. i do not have those records.
i just learned after 12 YEARS of trying to find out where they might be. Then these two organizations can help me.

[Eljay]

well perhaps that is true but that is not my point
DI
My point is that medical records have been kept from me.
I cannot get any help with my diagnosed and deadly serious medical condition because I was in foster care/legal guardians care because of cps.
That medical condition is hindering my ability to keep my house clean. My medical condition is growing worse and worse. Yet the organizations that help people with my medical condition require medical history as proof of the disease. i do not have those records.
i just learned after 12 YEARS of trying to find out where they might be. Then these two organizations can help me.

Wait... spina bifida is a birth defect... Are they really asking for medical records to verify whether you had it as a child? Could they be that stupid?

[survivorsofcps]

yep they are and will not help me without it. Unless i become complete paralyzed they won't do a thing.

[treytrey1]

No I didnt get them back, according to the therapist, the children were still having too many
emotional problems to return home to us. They kept claiming it wasnt us it was the kids, but in court
they would always say we wernt done with our plan, which was a load of you know what. We had finished
months before and kept asking what else we still needed to do but were never given an answer.
Two of my kids are with my mom and now in Alabama. The other one is with my husbands mom and after
two yrs of the case closing we finally got unsupervised visits. His mother wanted them all along but we
had to get therapist on board, and she swithched therapist about 4 months after case closing. The new therapist
need a while before getting on board. We were given a no contact order with the other two and just got to see
our oldest daughter in her 16th birthday. Her case closed a couple of months before youngest childs did because there
were still things my mother in law needed to do before they could give her custody of the youngest. So it has been
over two yrs without seeing my other children. We still havent seen our son. He suffered the most. My mom did let
us talk to them last Christmas which still makes me cry to this day. It was the first contact we had had with them. It was
very special!

[survivorsofcps]

I would recommend making a video recording stating what really happened. Everything you tried to do or were kept from doing. ie visits that they kept you from. when they return. whether it is now or later they can watch it and know the truth. My mom never got to tell me what happened from her perspective.

[treytrey1]

Thanks that sounds like a great idea.

[noroses4u2c]

My home was messy because I was unpacking after a move. Just days after she was taken the place was all clean. I was never allowed to have her back. Instead, they kept adding to the lies. In my case some of the people working the case knew my ex-husband prior to the case even being opened against me. He didn't even have visitation rights at the time because of violence against us when she was a baby. My daughter told me early on that he admitted to her that this friends of his had it set up where he'd get her and that it had been planned for a long time and that they were just trying to find out our address. I never had a chance to get her back. The case was rigged before it started.

I have known single mothers in the past that had their babies taken because of a so-called messy home. Most weren't even really messy. The worst was a mother that had dirty dishes in her sink. It wasn't even a sinkful, just filled about half way if that.

They take children for messy homes all the time.

[survivorsofcps]

Exactly and "just clean it" is not enough for most social workers they want it to be perfect ALL the time. Even if you just went to the hospital due to your medical condition and haven't been home to clean it. Doesn't matter must be perfect at all times. Give me a break. Of course it gets cleaned up. It justs takes disabled/handicapped people longer. Sometimes much longer.

[Eljay]

I saw an episode of Hoarders/Hoarding today that involved a family with four children who used grandpa for daycare because they claimed they had NO other resources/options. Grandpa's house was a disgusting mess... it was horrid and way, way, WAY unsafe for children. The police had stopped by grandpa's for illegally parked car issue and saw into the house, with the hoard including children's toys, and called CPS. CPS came over, spent 3 hours documenting, and took the kids into custody, even though parents showed up in the middle of their investigation. Dad, mom, and grandpa were ALL criminally charged with child endangerment. The parents claimed ignorance, that grandpa would always come get the kids, they never knew his house was like that, they hadn't been in grandpa's house for YEARS (even though grandpa had the kids on a near daily basis.... does this make sense???). In the beginning of the show, Dad - who has anger issues - is yelling about how it was all his dad's fault that the kids had been taken by CPS, and questioning how dad could live like this, and says, "I have a CLEAN house!" ....

Then they show the parent's house....... it is far, far, FAR from clean. There are 4' diameter holes in the ceiling, drywall missing all over the place, NO BEDS FOR THE CHILDREN, very few toys, boxes and crap stacked all over, broken windows, filth.... it was like "hoarders in training" and they were 30% of the way to where Grandpa was. Sadly, it appeared that they were ignorant to the reality of the situation.... they really thought their own home was fine. The psychologist had to sit them down and explain why CPS had an issue with their home (as well as grandpa's). The blame was all on grandpa, and the clean-up focused on grandpa's house because the parents thought their own home wasn't so bad. They really had no understanding of it... if they DID, they would have been cleaning up THEIR home first to get the kids out of foster care and telling grandpa he can see the kids when he gets his place cleaned up. But they didn't... it was sad that they had no comprehension of how unsafe their own home was, let alone how irresponsible they had been to allow the kids to go to a home that they had (allegedly) no idea of the home's filthy condition.

[survivorsofcps]

Foster care is really necessary for these kids?

Seriously I do not think so. First off broken window. i lived in an house where the bratty next door neighbor kids would throw rocks at windows and then "no one knew" who broke them. NONE of the other places I lived had broken windows ever. They didn't like us b/c we were white living in a black area.
Even still help get windows fixed. Removal is not necessary for broken windows.

Yeah sometimes the houses really are messy. Yet I wonder...did they have a working vacuum cleaner? Could they afford cleaning supplies like trash bags/cleansers? Did they have hot water/electricity to heat water to clean with? Did it show them having a washer/dryer? This sounds like a case where they should have called code enforcement. Give them a fine if they do not get it cleaner but necessary to remove the kids? i don't think so.

"There are 4' diameter holes in the ceiling, drywall missing all over the place" Unless they own the home that is the landlords job to fix.

[Eljay]

Foster care is really necessary for these kids?

Seriously I do not think so. First off broken window. i lived in an house where the bratty next door neighbor kids would throw rocks at windows and then "no one knew" who broke them. NONE of the other places I lived had broken windows ever. They didn't like us b/c we were white living in a black area.
Even still help get windows fixed. Removal is not necessary for broken windows.

Yeah sometimes the houses really are messy. Yet I wonder...did they have a working vacuum cleaner? Could they afford cleaning supplies like trash bags/cleansers? Did they have hot water/electricity to heat water to clean with? Did it show them having a washer/dryer? This sounds like a case where they should have called code enforcement. Give them a fine if they do not get it cleaner but necessary to remove the kids? i don't think so.

"There are 4' diameter holes in the ceiling, drywall missing all over the place" Unless they own the home that is the landlords job to fix.

Really??????? You think that having small children around broken glass is OKAY? As if they'd never stick a hand in it? Slice their wrists and bleed to death? If a single broken window was the only problem, they wouldn't be taking the kids. You seriously can't pick ONE single item out of the list of 200 things that were wrong with that house and claim that CPS did the wrong thing. Their home was NOT suitable for kids to live in.

Did they have to go to foster care? Well.... since their parents were going to jail, and nobody else was available to get the kids (paternal gma out of state, maternal grandparents MIA), then yes, that's where they have to go. And this didn't just happen yesterday.... the kids had been gone for 7-8 MONTHS and the parent's home was still a filthy, dangerous pigsty (no beds or sheets, hoarded crap, mold, mildew, rat feces, etc.). This wasn't a case of a few dirty dishes in the sink. Perhaps they could have cleaned up in and attempt to let CPS reevaluate their home, and MAYBE let the kids come home, but they had not even STARTED to clean up their home (or if they had, it was still in horrible shape).

There is no point of defending them based on lack of money for a vacuum cleaner... there was no floor to be seen for all the clutter. All you need is a single broom and washcloth to clean house. You can even sweep carpet if you're desperate. There were plenty of excuses and blame going around so trust me, if the landlord was to blame, they would have said something.

Maybe you should watch the episode before you try to defend them:
http://www.aetv.com/hoarders/video/manu ... 3831363546

[survivorsofcps]

I will finish watching it but not right now.