Child Protective Services - Criticism

Criticism

Brenda Scott, in her 1994 book Out of Control: Who's Watching Our Child Protection Agencies, criticizes CPS, stating, "Child Protective Services is out of control. The system, as it operates today, should be scrapped. If children are to be protected in their homes and in the system, radical new guidelines must be adopted. At the core of the problem is the antifamily mindset of CPS. Removal is the first resort, not the last. With insufficient checks and balances, the system that was designed to protect children has become the greatest perpetrator of harm."

The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services had itself been an object of reports of unusual numbers of poisonings, death, rapes and pregnancies of children under its care since 2004. The Texas Family and Protective Services Crisis Management Team was created by executive order after the critical report Forgotten Children of 2004.

Texas Child Protective Services was hit with a rare if not unprecedented legal sanction for a "groundless cause of action" and ordered to pay $32,000 of the Spring family's attorney fees. Judge Schneider wrote in a 13-page order, "The offensive conduct by (CPS) has significantly interfered with the legitimate exercise of the traditional core functions of this court."

Georgia State Senator Nancy Schaefer published a report "The Corrupt Business of Child Protective Services" making many claims against CPS including:

• Unfair judgement of families, especially those most unable to defend themselves. Without compassion, unreasonable and impossible demands that separate families and cause stress are made of parents.
• Local governments accustomed to resulting flow of taxpayer dollars to balance growing budgets routinely ignore charges against Child Protective Services. Funding continues as long as children are out of their home, adoption bonuses are also available, but no incentive remains to return children home.
• On top of $4000–$6000 per child is a multiplying factor based on the percentage that a state exceeds its baseline adoption goal.
• Bonuses and incentives cause employees to work diligently to exploit children for government money while parents are charged for the cost of their care. Fraud, fabrication, withholding, and destroying of evidence, unnecessary termination of parental rights, and double dipping are common while confidentiality clause is used to protect the beneficiaries.
• Beneficiaries include state employees, lawyers, court investigators, guardian ad litems, court personnel, judges, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, caseworkers, therapists, foster parents, adoptive parents, and others. Incentives to put children on more drugs per day involve additional funds and Medicaid.
• Parents are sometimes pressured by CPS agents to divorce their spouse in order to see their children again. Parental cooperation is often interpreted as guilt, and parents separated from their children are treated as criminals often without access to visit or even see their children.
• Child protective services is a wasteful bureaucracy with no clear leader and unclear policies. State legislators are generally powerless to correct the federally mandated system.
• Tragedies happen where children die in CPS custody due to neglect or abuse while parents are trying hard to regain custody of their children. Such tragedies should never happen.
• While CPS claims relatives are contacted, there are very many cases that proves false, where grandparents and other relatives attempt to get custody and are denied. Parents and grandparents lose all connections to their heirs while children lose their heritage.
• The California Little Hoover Commission Report in 2003 reported that 30% to 70% of the children in California group homes neither belong there nor should have been removed from their own homes.
• Children are in far greater danger in CPS custody today than in imperfect homes. The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect reported in 1998 that six times as many children died in foster care than in the general public. Children removed to official “safety” are far more likely to suffer sexual molestation and other abuse than in the general population.