Someone in this gang of idiots, if not more than a few of them need to go to jail for this. Girl placed with Oklahoma City father despite reports of black eyes and bruised body | NewsOK.com Unspeakable, this type of sh!t really pisses me off. Here you have "qualified" people who are really good at putting your life under a microscope and telling you all the ways you are phucked up yet they put this girl in this nimrods hands and now she is dead. I think I may just go to the trial.
good lord. another child dead in oklahoma because she was returned despite evidence of abuse? between over-worked and undertrained child welfare workers, idiot judges, and laws that sometimes make it impossible to remove a child, too many children in oklahoma are dying that people KNOW are being abused. the whole system, from top to bottom, needs to be overhauled.
For about two and half years, the biggest part of my practice was representing parents in what's called, in Louisiana, Child in Need of Care cases. (For lots of different reasons, I mostly gave that up a couple of months ago.) My biggest fear when I was doing that work was that a child would be returned to a parent I represented and the child would, like this poor girl, turn up dead. Thankfully that never happened. Based on what's in the article, I can say that the courts I worked with would never have essentially handed over this child to the father with no strings attached. Yes, it's true in Louisiana (I can't speak to Oklahoma's law) that a parent, against whom no allegations of neglect or abuse have been made, is the first option for placement of a child in need of care. However, that placement is subject to "such terms and conditions as deemed in the best interest of the child". What that likely would have meant, in the courts I worked in on facts similar to those in the article, is that the father would have had to have undergone a limited background check and have his home inspected by the state to make sure it was safe and appropriate for the child. (Safe as in no exposed wiring or other obvious hazards and appropriate as in sufficient food and bedding for the child.) Assuming there were no issues in the first step, the child likely initially would have had supervised visitations with the father for a few hours a day a couple of times a week, either at the agency's office or supervised by the caretakers (in this case, her grandparents, with whom she lived for three years). If those visitations went well, that is, if there were no problems or concerns, then after a period of a couple of months, the visitations would be changed to unsupervised day visits. If those visits went well, then the visitations would have been changed to unsupervised overnight visits. If those visits went well, then the child would have been placed in the father's custody. Because it appears the father didn't have much (if any) experience in caring for a child, he probably would have been ordered to, at a minimum, take parenting classes and successfully complete them. He also might have had to have undergone a substance abuse evaluation and/or a psychological evaluation. He almost certainly would have been ordered to clear up his driver's license and traffic ticket issues before the child would have been allowed to ride in a vehicle with him. In the courts where I practiced, had the child returned from a visit with injuries and conditions similar to those described in the article, I'm fairly confident that visitation with that party would have been either terminated or severely restricted until an investigation was complete. Again, relying on Louisiana law, I'm assuming the child was in the custody of the state of Oklahoma (she almost certainly would have been in the state's custody in Louisiana) simply because her mother was in jail (though the article doesn't say when mom got out of jail). And assuming she was in the custody of the state of Oklahoma, she was probably placed with her grandparents in lieu of foster care (although she did end up in foster care). But what confuses me is that she was apparently placed with her grandparents for THREE YEARS while essentially being a ward of the state. The federal Adoption and Safe Families Act essentially mandates that parents be given about a year (a little more in some cases; a little less in others) to get their sh!t together and get their kids back. If the parents don't then the state moves forward with terminating the parental rights and freeing the child for adoption. So why was a petition for termination of parental rights filed? Another issue that strikes home with me on a more personal level (and in many cases can be a red herring though it wasn't here) was the fact that the child cried and said she didn't want to go with dad. Here there is, unfortunately, solid evidence that she knew what she was talking about. But many kids (my own four-year-old son included) frequently cry and carry on when being moved between parents. In most situations, the squall is over in five minutes and when it comes time to return the child to the first parent, a similar incident occurs. (This has been the case with my son. He wails when it's time to come to my house that he doesn't want to be with me and he wants to stay with his mom. When it's time to bring him back, he wails that he doesn't want to be with mom and he wants to stay with me. All kids are conservatives; they don't want ANYTHING to change.) Ok, I've ranted enough. That whole case is horribly tragic and I extend my deepest sympathies to the grandparents, the mom and, most importantly, the little girl.
The thread title confused me. I thought you were talking about the Department of Homeland Security. I was getting on here to debate you until I read your post and realized you were talking about the Department of Human Services or whatever. As you were.....
