Off The Cuff

Welfare People Abusing Power Again?

Posted by: From Arkansas in Are You Kidding Me? on Sep 27 2008

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This will likely not come as a shock to people that the welfare department in many places tends to overreach their authority. Now I believe that there are times when action needs to be taken. I used to live in Florida on a street that had houses behind other houses. Ours was one such. You had to go down a small gravel road some feet to get to our house. We looked out our front door to see someone else’s back yard. Our house sat sideways to the other houses. For some time, we could hear some strange noises at night that sounded somewhat like a child crying. We did know that there was a boy about 10 years old living in a house a couple of doors down from us. We could see their back yard but not where the noise was coming from. Bear with me here. It’s been a while and some of the memories are vague. After a number of nights, we were finally able to hear what sounded like a child being whipped and crying out. I could not take it anymore. I shouted as loud as I could that if that child beating did not stop right now, I would call the authorities. It did stop then. But on other nights, it began again. I was saved from calling by another neighbor who turned the father in for beating the kid. That was a necessary act.

I do believe that the welfare department has it’s uses. However, having heard about and having had dealings with such places on occasions, I have found that for the most part, the welfare people are NOT your friend and never will be. And they can be incredible liars just to get you out of their hair. I know. They are out to do what damage they can to the most people they can touch. When did they get so off base? I hear about abuses in the “system”. What I have never figured out was why they do this? Okay, there are times when there is a reason…..getting very small children away from what they determine are questionable parents in order to have children adopted to others. Putting kids into foster care where they are crowded and, by the very nature of the system, abused. Small children get scared so easily when they are ripped from their homes by strangers and then put with other strangers. HOW can this possibly be good for the child???

Today, I found out about another abuse of the system by the so-called welfare “authorities” who apparently are abusing their powers. Now where we live, the welfare people can go into a home on a rumor, take the kids and put them into foster care without any court orders or written authority of any kind. They can walk into a home without your permission to be there if there are children in the home. It appears that the welfare people in that case did the same.

Think of this. A mother with two children, ages 13 and 10 years old. Both children are special needs, autism and ADHD as some of the problems. You can read the story on their website. Due to what appears to be overzealous welfare workers, those boys were removed from their home by strangers and placed in a strange environment. The 13 year old is going to be in a school. That’s good. The Mom was planning that anyway. However, the 10 year old is still in the facility where they were placed originally. The family can only talk to him on weekends. This child has been cut off from his family. How can that be good for him? He is autistic and has ADHD. It is possible that he does not know what’s going on, is scared. What harm is being done to this child that his Mom is going to have to deal with for years to come?

And a note here on foster care. I am sure, very sure, that there are people in foster care that have the heart for it but there are also people who are in it simply for the cash. How do I know? I know because there was a case a few years ago here where the foster care parents who had a small house were taking care of 6 kids at once. The welfare people had nowhere for some kids to go so that family, who by the way could not take care of all those kids, took them because in this area foster care parents get $400 a month per kid plus money for the kid to eat. Anyone doing a little math can see that they were getting $2400 a month plus extras. What gets me is that in this particular case, it would have been better all around if the welfare people had simply helped the original family instead of drastically taking children from their own home. What are the emotional problems that a child suffers if that happens to them? No one knows until years later when they are dealing with it themselves.

Before people start coming down on me for blogging about this, just see for yourself. I can tell you that there is something drastically wrong with a system that has the welfare department who has total authority and can do all this WITHOUT any official paperwork at all, no court ordered claim of any kind. Just show up at the door and you are demanded to let them in. They have the power to do this AND take the kids even if there is only a rumor or suspicion of a problem. They do not need the police with them at all. They can do this on their own authority because they have it. No agency has the right to simply come into someone’s home and take family members. Ah but thats the rub. They DO have this authority. They can do this. I know it for a fact. And there is absolutely NOTHING you can do about it at the time. NOTHING!!! After they take the kids, you have to jump through hoops, spend a lot of time, energy and money to get it all reversed. There is still the possibility that they could do it again. This is just not right. These people ought not to have that much authority at their finger tips. Believe me, they have it.

Now, for the record, this is my opinion on my blog. I do have that right. There are some who will say that I am making blanket statements about the welfare system. Yes, that’s because it is broken. In our area, the whole welfare office was changed, people removed and others retired, personnel completely changed. Things that were wrong were hopefully made right. But nothing, nothing at all is going to help those kids that got ripped from their homes if it wasn’t necessary. No, not ALL welfare people are bad or wrong. But all it takes is a few like this and it goes sour fast. Yet, it isn’t just a few. This is not the only case of this sort that I have heard about. The real problem is that you have a system that is based on uncorroborated evidence and hearsay. They really do not have to prove anything at all to get the kids out of the house. Only when they go before a judge do they have to prove anything. Yet, they act like they don’t have to then either. They expect the judge to go along with anything they do and that DOES happen.

This system is broken. If no one fixes it, it will continue to break up families, abuse the kids emotionally if nothing else, cause stress among the kids and parents. What is all that for? Who knows. What does the welfare office get out of this? I have no idea. The system is BROKEN and it appears that people are not interested in fixing it. They DID at least try to fix it here but only because too much was done and it got into the public notice. What happens when it does not see the light of day. Something to think about.

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