so parents what are you gonna do about this whole mess?

[Frustrated]

CAS fiscal crisis eases

Funding: The province will cover the $4.2 million deficit, but number of kids in care must be cut by 25%

By Jonathan Sher The London Free Press, Last Updated: December 12, 2010 7:38pm

The cash-strapped local children’s aid society will reduce the number of kids in care by 25% in order to keep its doors open.

A deal reached with Queen’s Park ends the threat that funds would dry up early next year at the Children’s Aid Society of London and Middlesex, which otherwise faces a $4.2 million deficit.

It was that sort of fiscal crisis that led the Ontario government to sack a neighbouring CAS in Huron and Perth counties.

“Will the doors to children’s aid in our community remain open? The answer is they absolutely will,” said Jane Fitzgerald, the London-based agency’s executive director.

Although the province has agreed in principle to cover the agency’s costs, it did so with big strings attached.

The local CAS must reduce the number of children in its care during the next four years by about 220 from its current caseload of 886.

It was just such a cut that led the provincial NDP to accuse Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals of gutting children’s aid and placing kids at risk.

But Fitzgerald insists cuts will be achieved in ways that enhances rather than hurts the welfare of children.

“The motivation is to get better outcomes for kids. That’s what it’s all about,” she said.

In an interview with The Free Press, Fitzgerald and her point person on children’s service, Larry Marshall, laid out a four-year-plan they’ll unveil this week to the community.

To reduce the number of kids in its care, the agency has three strategies but only the first doesn’t require significant changes.

Among the children in the agency’s care there is a bubble of older children who in the next four years will turn 21 and no longer be under the care of CAS.

That bubble alone will enable the agency to reduce the number of kids in care by between 10 and 15%, Marshall estimates, enough to achieve roughly half of the target reduction.

It’s the other half of the reduction, somewhere between 80 and 125 kids, that will prove challenging.

The agency will tackle it on two fronts:

The agency will try to take fewer kids into its care by keeping more of them with their families.

Once kids are in the agency’s care it will try to find permanent homes for them more quickly, with extended family or adoptive parents.

Though the agency will try to keep more kids with their families, Fitzgerald said none will be placed in harm’s way. Kids who have been abused will be removed from the home but the agency will do more to help families that can’t provide basics such as shelter, placing such a family in a motel and trying to find them accommodation, she said.

That effort to keep kids with family will get provincial funding but Fitzgerald isn’t sure how much.

The agency has already taken steps to seek adoptive parents by seeking judicial orders that cut off access to kids by their biological family — generally a prerequisite to adoption.

Five years ago only 10% of kids under the agency’s care were cut off from their biological family.

But now 70% of all new kids taken into agency care are cut off from biological family.

The kids aren’t cut off right away but legislation requires the agency to make a decision within one year for kids under age five and within two years for older kids.

Though cutting off biological family from a child may seem harsh, research shows that it’s generally best for the child to have a permanent family he or she can rely upon, Fitzgerald said.

The cash crunch for children’s aid has been province-wide and its trigger was from 1998 to 2004, when the cost of children’s aid in Ontario nearly doubled, growing more than three times as fast as the provincial government as a whole, she said.

Since 2004 the pace of growth has slowed to that of government overall — about 5% a year.

The new approach in London will slow growth further but it’s too soon to say how much when the number of children in need will be affected by issues outside the agency’s control such as poverty, she said.

[email protected] twitter.com/jsherLFPRESS

Source: London Free Press

[Frustrated]

It almost sounds like they wanted to sell these children up for Adoptions to make ends meet, to increase their funds because of that shortage. They are using our children as moneteary reason is just plain sick.

[clara2002]

aww, that breaks my heart. i hear alot of disturbing life stories, and ill tell ya one thing, i feel like crying right now. i dont want to sound weak. but i cant help it.

[nebulousslave]

One of the most relevant books I had recommended to me by another parent while attending parenting classes, is the "Art Of War". I have learned that Japanese corporations generally use this book in their business strategies to compete against more industrial powerful nations. On the surface It may not appear that a book about war can apply in ACS cases, but I honestly think that it does. Some of the themes in the book is:

1. Strategy
2. Organizing
3. Propaganda to thwart enemy efforts.
5. Conservation of your resources and energy
5. Making an enemy over commit
6. Exploiting your enemies weaknesses.
7. Discipline
8. Timing

Also, in my opinion, I believe the internet to be the most powerful tool in organizing and confronting corruption in government and business, this very forum is a testament to this fact. Please check out this link on the "Critacal Mass" bicycle movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass or google flash mobs. If all of us that is affected by ACS policies were to channel energy into one focus movement, public awareness would be raised for those that have no understanding of how much the child welfare racket is destroying the American family institution.

Make no mistake about it we are all at war, at war with corruption and greed. So when at war one needs to do what warriors do, but in our case the war needs to be a war of mind and spirit against shear brutality and subversion of the law by government workers willing to cash in on others miseries.

[clara2002]

i was wondering, is the rulers paying foster parents to dispose the white race and the redman race? if the fosters or adopted parents are caught, do they get exsposed or rewarded?

[frankchapter37]

while I **think** my case is closed and the cps off my back. I am committed to this fight. Our parental rights to raise our children any way we choose, whether we cuss like sailors at them, drink like a fish, smoke pot like a chimney, walk around naked and tell racist jokes, let them be dirty and rambunctious to the point where they bruise themselves, spank them, leave them in a car by themselves to run into a store for a quick minute, don't use a car seat, whatever the hell you see fit, is a fundamental birth right.
At the end of the day, a loved child knows they are loved. And taking them away from people who truly love them (even if those people are not perfect) and placing them with complete strangers is the biggest abuse at all.

To be blunt...unless you are having sex with your kids, knowingly letting other people have sex with your kids, or you treat them like that little boy in "A Child Called It", I don't think anybody has the right to interfere. Laws already exist, so people don't go around assaulting other people.

Organizations like the CPS will be the downfall of America.

[monkette31]

I was told at one point that the case can't be closed for two months, a standard procedure. We had two "referrals" before, which were unfounded before my kids were taken. They call them referrals. I would beware if I was you now, because the fact that you have had a "referral" now, it is more points against you. If you they show up again or call, they may ask you to go to a "TDM", which sounds nice, Team Decision Meeting, but it's just a meeting with you and your wife and perhaps the kids and about 6-8 other people from DCFS. Do not offer them any information about your family, now or ever, they twist everything and will use anything twisted against you in this meeting. They may even act like they are trying to help you, but they will try and get you to sign a "caseplan" or whatever they call it. Once that is done, you are in their grips. They will call it "voluntary" but it is far from that, at that point you will be a dcfs client with a "case" and that will be used against you. If you ever end up in court, GO TO TRIAL! All of their allegations will become fact, should your court appointed lawyer tell you to just sign their caseplan....

[Kahallsmalls]

So listen up!!! See CPS is not stupid either, they don't target or take children of anyone important, or rich like myself, they figure hey if they cannot afford to fight us then we just got some free funding headed out way by destroying your family. While I’ve been in court no once did they say anything about the health and welfare of my child, they were so struck on hurting my wife and I. So I'm wondering, since the economy is so bad I find that the more research I do they are doing log rolling, that means making deals behind closed door so that they can continue to keep their jobs and show that they have a need, so that they can prove to the government that their jobs are needed as well as that they get funding!!! See the point there, and in that case even though the majority of us took our kids to the doctor or E.R. to make sure our children were safe, we ended up in a horrible situation where we have become the victim. So what do we do? We have to first get a lawyer that is only a CPS involved lawyer, make sure we don't have a CPS Appointed Judge,(hint log rolling), and get people who feel the same way we do. Now the first step is putting up the farm and everything else that you have to get that super expensive lawyer that can beat CPS, then you turn around and go to your senator, your town mayor and the NEWS, lots of lawyers say no media, get rid of their ass because we have to put out the injustice that has happened to us, and sue them back for lost time and pain with the absence of your family. After you do that then you have the money, which equals power, to go at the them hard, and change law, In Texas the law is different than other states, most states have to prove abuse, before they can take a child, but here they just take children and do log rolling, in order to keep your child by saying no issues while we had him...ect.. So this is where it gets tricky most say, I sued CPS, and won great, no its far from over, it’s time now to get those fired for what they did, if they cared about children then they won't be doing this ever again when they don’t' have a job. Then you go after the law and you bring it to the Supreme Court with a great lawyer, many lawyers will go and do cases like this for free because it builds a great reputation to change law. Anyways it’s a long process but if we want to beat CPS and protect good parents and other children from getting taken out of happy healthy homes. WE cannot sit here and stop on the fact that a website gets the word out we need to contact and bring it to the attention of those who can bring things into law across the country as soon as I win my case with my son, I will be finishing my education and getting my retribution and going after CPS to destroy their whole operation!!! I will not be satisfied with millions of dollars, I will be satisfied when this devil has been slain, and the right hand of God comes forth and gives them a first class ticket to hell!!

[LindaJM]

I'm glad you feel that way - that you need to go the full-mile until CPS is destroyed. We need more people with the motivation, direction, and nerve to do that.

[littleplanet]

I'm surprised more families haven't spoken out against it - but it seems many are traumatized, afraid to let people know they were accused of "child abuse" whether it was a valid claim or not.

Those that get their kids back are afraid to speak out because they don't want their kids taken again.

Many people just want to leave it behind and try to forget the trauma.

So, unfortunately, we've got few helpers... but the more people they attack, the more likely it is that they're going to target someone who will become an activist and do great good in trying to fix this for all families... and the more of us there are trying our hardest to change things, the more likely that we'll get to that 100th monkey effect and really be able to change the world.

I agree totally. There's an awful lot of post-trauma out there, in families who have gone through this.
The bully system works (for the bullies) because of the power structure that supports it. Their method is to pick on the people who find it impossible (in one way or another) to fight back...or to mass-movement to create a force capable
of launching a strong enough attack to effect change.
(There is something about this issue that is eerily similar to me as the 45-50 million Americans who do not
have health care.)
Also - I think we are seeing the results of socio-economic change: as the economy rots, desperation sets in
to create and preserve sustainable jobs.
As Nancy Shafer pointed out - state-sanctioned kidnapped kids is a multi-faceted layered "industry" that employs
legions of related "professionals."

It is a curious thing - I am in the middle of a book written by a retired high-level politician who took on BIG PHARMA
for providing the legally prescribed drug that killed his daughter. He did his homework, burrowed through all the necessary research, interviewed professional investigators, hired top guns, and eventually won his case.
In a word, he had resources. Those resources were David's pebble that brought down Goliath.
(yet...although an important one, it was just one battle.)

I don't know if this system is smart like a fox (tip the boat, but don't roll over) or a fool drowning in its own
paradise, but hard to know just what kind of pebble will bring it down.
I think social media (as opposed to conventional media) is one of the most powerful weapons we have.

Most important: (and many thanks to you for moderating this fine forum!) it can be a wonderfully empowering thing
for people to TALK to each other / share stories / tips, advice / witness a growing movement / and to just know
that they are not completely and utterly alone in their struggle.
I believe in that: when people join forces in a common struggle, good things can happen.
(isn't that where we come from?)