Child Welfare Information Gateway E-lert! September 2011 Encourage your colleagues to subcribe to E-lert! To ensure that E-lert! reaches you each month, please add us to your safe senders list. The following new or updated publications and resources are now available from Child Welfare Information Gateway. Use the links listed below, or contact us to request print copies, which we will mail to you, for free, if they are available. What's New National Adoption Month Website Launches The 2011 National Adoption Month website is live. Find new resources, widgets for your organization's website, a new activity poster, resources in Spanish, and much more. www.childwelfare.gov/adoption/nam/index.cfm New Systems of Care Resources Family Engagement in Child Welfare Video Series offers unique insight into the key elements needed to make peer-to-peer family engagement programs successful. www.childwelfare.gov/familyvideos Systems of Care Policy Action Guide provides a framework for thinking about child welfare policy options and initiating actions that help promote an effective policy initiative. www.childwelfare.gov/policyactionguide Child Maltreatment Prevention: Past, Present, and Future This issue brief highlights the importance of prevention as a critical component of the nation's child protection system and outlines beneficial programs that reduce the likelihood of child maltreatment. www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/issue_briefs/cm_prevention.cfm Updates Case Planning for Families Involved With Child Welfare Agencies Presents a review of statutes and administrative codes that demonstrate how States use a variety of approaches to address the issue of case planning in child welfare. www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/laws_policies/statutes/caseplanning.cfm In This Month's CBX The September/October issue of Children's Bureau Express (CBX) spotlights States' Program Improvement Plans (PIPs), with articles on three States at various junctures in the PIP process. cbexpress.acf.hhs.gov Subscribe to CBX at www.childwelfare.gov/admin/subscribe Did You Know? Fostering Connections Act Child Welfare Information Gateway offers a legislative overview of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008, as well as an implementation guide and a list of additional resources about the act. www.childwelfare.gov/fosteringconnections Give Us Your Feedback To help us meet your needs, we welcome your ideas and suggestions. Please check out our website for publications surveys and other ways you can provide input. Thank you! Connect With Information Gateway on Facebook Child Welfare Information Gateway is on Facebook! Become a fan today and start connecting with others in child welfare and related professions. www.facebook.com/childwelfare Contact Information Child Welfare Information Gateway Phone: 800.394.3366 Email: info@childwelfare.gov Web: www.childwelfare.gov E-lert! is a free service of the Children's Bureau/ACF/HHS and Child Welfare Information Gateway.

Info Request- I want your CPS Complaint

AFRA EDITORIALS By Leonard Henderson

September 8, 2011
Info Request- I want your CPS Complaint
Today, I had a nice phone conversation with Dr. Graves of JurisDictionary.  I had emailed him asking about working up a special version specifically for helping people defend themselves against CPS.  He expressed that he was just too busy to do that and suggested perhaps I could adapt his information specifically to CPS defense.
So now I am looking into doing that.  And immediately ran into a brick wall.
The first thing we know about a CPS case is- it is more or less a LAWSUIT.  

• What starts a lawsuit is the COMPLAINT by the Plaintiff.  
• As the Defendant, you need to respond to that Complaint.

Right there is my PROBLEM.  My own case never made it that far.  My involvement with CPS was VOLUNTARY, until they decided to BLAME ME as the CAUSE of things I had nothing whatsoever to do with.  After that, it took very little time and trouble to fix their little red wagons over that.  I just ended up madder than hell forever and at 100% total, complete WAR with them.
Over the years of teaching others how to fight CPS, their cases were always so advanced that whatever the original Complaint might have said- made no difference at the level the case had developed into by the time the "consumer" found me.  All this time, we have been working on Defense a lot further down the road.
So, in order to begin developing a system of DEFENSE, I need to see some original COMPLAINTS the agencies have filed against YOU, their "consumer" or "client".
These Complaints ARE Public Record, so there is no legal reason (I am aware of) why you cannot share your original Complaints with me.
I need them for the purpose of showing people HOW to develop a DEFENSE against the Complaint from line 1.  And I need to see enough of them to work up a "generic" defense.  Defense BEGINS with HOW you respond to the original Complaint.
If you have your original court Complaint from CPS already scanned in, or you can easily scan it in, I would very much like to see it.  If it would make you more comfortable, you can black out your names and addresses on a COPY of that Complaint.  I do care about what state you are in and the actual verbiage in the Complaint itself.
Please feel free to email them to me- leonard@familyrights.us
I will NOT identify you personally in any materials I might develop for educational materials for Pro Se CPS defense.

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"Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own." --Aesop (c. 550 B.C.) legendary Greek fabulist

If CPS hasn't attacked YOUR FAMILY yet, see If you are ever approached by anyone from social services.... and WHEN THEY COME AFTER YOU

Learn as much as you can, as fast as you can at How To Fight CPS

Get YOUR VERSION OF HISTORY ON THE RECORD with your Sworn Declaration

Leonard Henderson, co-founder
American Family Rights Association
http://familyrights.us
"Until Every Child Comes Home" ©
"The Voice of America's Families" ©

I am not a lawyer and I do not pretend to give legal advice. If you need legal advice, see AFRA's Lawyer Friends who certainly are not pretenders (http://familyrights.us/info/law) I merely relate the things I learned in the past that seemed to work in my own case or things that others have related to me that worked in their cases. I provide information for free and do not expect to receive any form of payment or reward on this side of heaven. Therefore, DO NOT rely on this information as legal advice. Real Legal advice would come from a real lawyer who hates CPS and prepares a VIGOROUS DEFENSE against a negative (proving nothing happened) instead of talking you into a plea bargain (http://familyrights.us/bin/The_Problem_with_Plea_Bargaining.htm) 

AFRA Editorials are NOT copyrighted.  Please feel free to forward widely.  We are at 100% total complete WAR with CPS, not trying to be famous or important.

Child welfare in Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Where stigma and bias “flourish”

Richard Wexler

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Child welfare in Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Where stigma and bias “flourish”

The case file had a single word written across the top. There was no context for this one word, no explanation.

But in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and surrounding Linn County, when that word is on a child welfare file, no explanation is necessary. Everybody knows the word means the agency doesn’t like the family, the family deserves an extra measure of suspicion and the case worker really thinks the children would be better off with people with whom that worker is more comfortable.

That one word amounts to seven scarlet letters for a family caught up in the net of the Iowa Department of Human Services in Linn County.

The word is “CHICAGO.” FULL STORY

Foster Parents; Hosting Mini Seminars? Part 1 of 3

August 30, 2011
Marilyn Harrison, Foster Families Examiner

In this series, we are going to do something a little different. We are going to talk to you about seminars, workshops to assist other foster parents… FULL STORY

Foster Parents; False Allegations. Part 3 of 3

Marilyn Harrison, Foster Families Examiner

In part two of this series, we had just made a statement that bears repeating. We, that is Foster Parents Legal Solutions, understand where foster parents… FULL STORY

Whatever Schools Teach, Parents Have No Rights

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August 16, 2011 View the New Video Short/ Trailer Got an App? See the video on your smart phone Share This Online Preserve Parental Rights Join the Summer of 76 Campaign Click here for details.

Whatever Schools Teach, Parents Have No Rights Since California Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 48 into law on July 14, the curriculum for California public schools must include “the role and contributions of…lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans” in California and American history. Already, those on the left are preparing to defend the law in courts, while those on the right are driving petitions to overturn the law by a ballot initiative. Why go to all that trouble? Because the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over California and a handful of other states, has already made clear that there can be no opt-outs of anything in the curriculum, even if parents might find it offensive or contrary to their own educational ideals for their children. Some parents will like this form of education. Other parents will object to it. At ParentalRights.Org our view is simply this: Parents, not government, should be able to make these decisions. As it is, whatever curriculum California ultimately decides to keep, there will be public school parents who dislike it and who still have no rights under the Ninth Circuit to even opt their children out. In 2005, the Ninth Circuit declared in Fields v. Palmdale that “[p]arents…have no constitutional right…to prevent public schools from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise, when and as the school determines that it is appropriate to do so.” “In sum,” they wrote, “we affirm that the Meyer-Pierce [fundamental parental] right does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door.” And it’s not just California and neighboring states, either. In 2007, the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts decided the same thing in Parker v. Hurley: parents have no right to opt their children out of a public school course. Nor are we aware of any decision to the contrary in any Circuit or District in the country since 2000. So get ready for more legislation and more petitions as parents go back and forth over what all public school children must learn. When parents lack the basic right to simply pull their child out of a single class they dislike, there is no lesser recourse available than to change the entire curriculum for all. The proposed Parental Rights Amendment to the Constitution can correct this by reversing Palmdale and Parker and re-establishing parental rights for fit parents regardless of their child’s location. Until then, parents will just have to duke it out in the legislature – because what their children learn in public school is entirely a matter of state law, and not of parental discretion. Sincerely, Michael Ramey Director of Communications & Research

P.O. Box 1090 Purcellville, VA 20134 * (540)-751-1200 * info@parentalrights.org