US CHILD REMOVAL RISING

CHILD REMOVAL RISING

CITIZENLINK - April 18, 2002
http://www.family.org/cforum/fnif/news/A0020389.html
Child Removals on the Rise
By Bob Kellogg

SUMMARY: Not all children placed in foster care come from homes where there is substance abuse or violence.

A growing number of children in foster care come from seemingly normal, law-abiding families, who find themselves at the mercy of Child Protective Services. According to Brad Dacus, of the Pacific Justice Institute, the number of children taken from homes has quadrupled in the last 10 years. It's not because suddenly parents are four times more hostile or abusive to their kids," Dacus said. "It's because the system is becoming more and more zealous in taking children."

"Jeanna," a single mother who had all three of her children removed and placed in foster care, said the experience can be devastating. Describing the experience after her children were taken away, she said "you come into an empty home, you go to sleep in an empty home. You feel basically empty." The courts eventually gave them back, but she said she lives in fear it may happen again. "If a dish is dirty in the sink, you know, they could come tapping at (my) door and if that dish is in that sink they can say, 'I'm taking your kids.' It's just that easy,'" she said.

Dacus, meanwhile, said many child seizures are about money for the state agencies. "Child Protective Services receives money for every child they take from a family. They're rewarded with federal dollars," Dacus said. Susan Orr, of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, countered, saying federal dollars only cover about half of a state's costs and are awarded only where the parental rights have been revoked. "These children are lingering in foster care," Orr said. "States have been able to get a bonus if they move the child to a permanent home."

Dacus added that children placed in foster care are often questioned without representation from an attorney, pastor, or other third party.