Commentary by Terri LaPoint
Health Impact News
Child Protective Services, funded by American taxpayers, doesn’t believe that they should be held accountable to the citizens who foot the bill.
Repeatedly, we have seen efforts by various state CPS agencies around the country to silence parents who speak out about the abuse that they and their children suffer at the hands of social workers and courts as well as abuse that happens to their children in foster homes, group homes, and hospitals.
CPS social workers and their attorneys sometimes request, and judges approve, gag orders demanding that families keep quiet about what they have seen.
Not content with the violation of the parents’ Constitutional First Amendment rights, social workers frequently retaliate against families members who talk, pushing for quicker termination of parental rights, denying visitation, or making up new fictitious allegations.
The story we share today plays out in CPS cases every single day, all over the county. If Philadelphia Department of Human Services (DHS) has their way, the story will disappear and no one will hear about it.
Richard Wexler of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform (NCCPR) asks for the help of our readers to make sure that the story doesn’t disappear.
He published this blog piece on Tuesday, November 27, 2018:
There is a news story that Philadelphia’s child welfare agency desperately does not want the world to read. What do you think we should do about that?
Reporter P.J. D’Annunzio of the Legal Intelligencer has written a series of articles about “the horror show that is foster care in Philadelphia.” The first article (Link) delved into exposing abuse that happens to children at the hands of the state once they are taken from their families and placed into foster care in Philadelphia.
D’Annunzio opened with the story of grandmother Virginia McKale of New Jersey learning to her horror that her 9-year-old grandson in Philadelphia DHS foster care had been raped by another foster child…..Read More