Enough of These Stupid Foster Care Ideas Already!

It's way past time that we stand up and take responsibility for our actions. I can tell that we want to...politicians, columnists, and even your Average Joe are all whipping the names of children around to rally people behind one agenda or another. Not just children, dead children. Not just dead children, but children murdered in what were supposed to be protective placements, foster and adoptive homes.

Enough, enough, enough...while I'm a firm believer in free speech, I also believe that you should have to take responsibility for the words that spew from your mouth or fingers.

When a child dies in foster care, it has nothing to do with whether or not social workers are armed or have safety measures in place. Unless the caseworker (as in the Saige Terrell case in KY, and also in KY in 1987) is dead or risking death, there is no room for that discussion in the discussion of child protection.

I'm hearing all sorts of off-the-wall arguments to strengthen the protective system so that more children are screened. PS referrals should be initiated every time there is a domestic abuse complaint (it wouldn't have saved Ricky Holland). Let's open a type of safehouse where children can come in and be properly investigated by multiple persons to see if they've been abused in any way (it wouldn't help countless children in or out of foster care, where merely going to school could afford them that opportunity), let's put the Office of the Childrens' Ombudsman under the legislative branch and pull it out from under CPS' authority (I can see your heart is in the right place but you're not seeing the scope of the problem...).

The problem is more serious that these philosopher types would like to admit. How many stories have to be told of children who have died when they were either under CPS's watch in their own homes or in foster/adoptive placement before people say, “Isn't there something in place to stop that?”