When Social Services Gets Out of Hand

[alwynsw]

Maine Social Services moves to protect kids. One ends up dead as a result of abuse by the foster family - the foster mom was a former DSS employee.

I don't expect a foster mom, especially one who is a former DSS caseworker to duct tape a child to a high chair for a time out, much less when it results in the child's death, to try to cover it up.

Read the story and post your opinion.

No system is perfect, but this is an outrage!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/fostercare/

[sangh0]

1. I like PBS's title better than yours

I don't think this is an example of too much "social services". IMO, it's too little. More social services, in the form of well-trained and adequately funded social workers could prevent, or at least reduce, tragedies like this.

[Bandit]

2. My sentiments also

Sometimes we do agree.

[pmbryant]

5. In this particular case, there was way "too much" social services.

I saw Frontline last night on this case and it truly horrified me.

According to the show, there was no good reason why the Maine DHS should have inserted itself into this young parent's life. None.

The child was being treated well. The parent seemed a typical young single parent. A bit stressed out. Hurting for money. There was absolutely no abusive treatment in the slightest, at least as the case was presented on the show.

Why then did the DHS, on the basis of one phone call and one in-house interview, then decide that this young woman all of a sudden needed to follow rules they dictated (pre-screening boyfriends, cutting off contact with her mother, etc) or else lose the kid?! And why did a court approve this intervention!?

That is shameful in and of itself.

Of course, the fact that the DHS eventually took the kid away, a kid who had never been ill-treated by her mother, and gave it to one of their employees, who then abused and killed the child herself, turns it from a mere nightmare into a horror I thought I only read about in novels.

:scared:

--Peter

[SoCalDem]

3. I saw that yesterday.. It's sad..

DSS has a fine line to walk, and many of my friends work there.. They are always confronted with the dilemma..

Is it better to leave a child with the natural parent(s), even if they could have a "better" life with foster/adoptive parents??

The little girl's mother seemed like an ok parent.. She was young and careless, and had lousy choices in men, but she loved her girls.. DSS put as many roadblocks as they could in her path.. The amount of money spent on "relocating her girls" would have been better spent on HER and helping her get her life together.. They did everything the could to isolate her, and then expected her to succeed.. There was no way she could have met thir expectations..

Her biggest fault, was in giving birth to two cute little white girls... Getting them adopted was easier than helping a mom and her two kids.:(

[alwynsw]

4. The particularly sordid part

..is the complicity between DSS caseworkers in placing the child in that particular foster home. Especially so, given the ruls concerning DSS casworkers as foster parents. It smells suspiciously similar to, "O.K., you want child support, I'll just quit my job and let them base it on my new income." Both are wrong. The DSS placement was definitley worng, if not illegal.

Power in some hands is a very dangerous thing.