Protect our children or send them back to be killed?

"Just suppose one day a husband came home and his wife did something to irritate him.
Maybe she asked for money, or spilled food.

He hit her.

Hard.

He broke her arm, fractured a rib, and knocked out a tooth. When she went to the hospital, medical personnel called police and he was arrested. Later he pled guilty to abuse and was sentenced to jail.

His wife went to stay with her relatives while recovering. Six months later, the man gets out of jail. He wants his wife back. He gets a free lawyer and goes to court.

The court orders the wife to go on dates with her husband and work out a plan to get back together. Later the court orders the wife to return home for overnight visits.

Finally, regardless of the wife's opinion, the court orders her to return home and resume the marriage.

Outrageous!

Unthinkable?

Substitute the word "child" for wife and the word "family" for marriage. As long as children are seen as possessions and "family reunification" is more important than "best interest of the child" NOTHING will change."


-Marcia Swanson





I read the quote above on a foster board that I frequent and it has been saved and sitting here for a few weeks.. just waiting on me to figure out the words that I want to say.. The above quote is soo true. If any of us knew a battered woman, what would we do? We'd tell her to get the hell away from the abuser! Run and never look back! Get police protection!

Instead our system put soo much clout in the PARENTS rights and not what is in the best interest of the children. So many times kids are held in the system for months/years and then tossed back at the birth parents- in the process being ripped away from the only 'family' they've ever known- their foster family.

Many times, it seems that DCS is soo bent on reunification that they speed things along or overlook things that just shouldn't be overlooked and then the terrible occurs.. Children are killed, some just abused and returned back to the system but even that damages their fragile emotional wellbeings.



I've heard of so many deaths of little ones lately [Tajanay Bailey (the 3yo who was murdered by her mom & mom's boyfriend after being reunified from fostercare) & Sheldon Bartley Jr. (a 2yo that was recently accidentally smothered by his mother who was either high or drunk or both- also had charges of neglect against her from the previous summer) ~ both from Indiana with parents that have had run ins with DCS .. and of course the more famous case of the mother who killed her four daughters in Washington, DC - 6 DCS employees were fired over that case] it seems like nothing is changing. You would honestly think that with so many deaths- well publicized deaths involving DCS- there would be a call for an immediate change.. I hope that the system is somehow overhauled to start looking out for the best interest of the CHILD, but I seriously doubt it..