Thursday, March 29, 2012

Flash: Kids Don't Need Parents, Just Orphanages

The what? The "case for".... orphanages? Right. Is this an early April Fool's day joke? Ever ask a kid what he thought of an orphanage? Of course not. Because, you're an idiot, Mr. Harmon. Kids from orphanages report feeling desperately sad, mainly because they don't know why their parents gave them up. So would you, so would I. When one parent is crazy, you give the child to the other parent. Period. GENDER DOES NOT FUCKING MATTER.

At present, only moms get kids after marriage - about 90% of the time. In most states in the U.S., if a mom is crazy - like the one below - then dad is ignored and bypassed and the kids go into state care, and typically given to foster care homes run by psychos or scam artists, who get state aid for the kids and pump them full of anti-depressants to control them. Otherwise the kids go into an orphanage - which has no parents or surrogate parents, just EMPLOYEES. To run a proper orphanage, with full-time care for the kids, including health care, activities, etc., well, requires millions. Think of prisons or old-age homes. These are facilities that meet all the needs of a group of people with no serious neglect. ANY IDEA HOW EXPENSIVE THOSE PLACES ARE? They're comically expensive. And you would hope an orphanage is better run than a prison (realistically, the prison probably is).

Meanwhile the child(ren) could have a dad who wants to raise them but is disallowed by the Nazis, er, state, because he does not provide "the best available possible home environment for the child." To translate for you who haven't read what I've read, that means since dad is unmarried AND A MAN, he's considered to be a philandering asshole who neglects or abuses kids, REGARDLESS OF ANY EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY. The state labels him as "sub-optimum" and then RETAINS CONTROL over the children and puts them wherever they want, whenever they want. The child's natural parent IS REPLACED BY A BUREAUCRACY. Let me guess..... THE STATE IS IN FAVOR OF THIS IDEA? The same state who then demands INCREASING FUNDS for all of their "child welfare programs?!?!? Paint me shocked.

I literally have PHYSICAL, LEGAL DOCUMENTS of a father who's ex-girlfriend ABANDONED his son and after he ran to his son's aid, he was DENIED CUSTODY OF HIS OWN SON by the state who labeled him "sub-optimum." This, to a man who was from a large, Spanish, Catholic family where extended family lived in the same household and their entire way of life held family ties to be the most important thing in the world. If you don't believe me, go hang out with some moral, church-going Spanish folks and tell me what you find out.

Once again, the Constitution of the United States of America comes dead last and State Greed, Power, Lust, and Control comes FIRST, LAST, AND ALWAYS.

The case for orphanages

LAWRENCE HARMON

March 23, 2012|By Lawrence Harmon
(ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE/MATTHEW CALLAHAN/GLOBE STAFF)
COULD ANYONE in their right mind deny that the 3-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son of Tanicia Goodwin would have been better off in an orphanage than at home with their mother or in a foster care placement that would eventually lead back to her?
This week, Salem police accused Goodwin, 25, of attempting to murder her children - Erica and Jamaal - by slashing their little throats. It’s an extreme case. But thousands of other Massachusetts children carry scars on their bodies and psyches from their biological parents.
Goodwin poses a severe test to the underlying family preservation philosophy of the state Department of Children and Families, the agency charged with protecting children from abuse and neglect. The agency sees its mission not only as physical protection but as making “every reasonable effort’’ to keep family units intact. That mission reflects, in part, the social work profession’s decades-long bias against long-term institutional care. But it also reflects a simplistic view of orphanages as some Dickensian throwback where little kids go begging for bowls of gruel. What social workers should fear instead is the isolation of the Salem public housing unit where, according to police, Goodwin tried to kill her children.
Intensive investigations are under way. But no one should be surprised to learn weeks from now that the caseworkers and courts did everything by the book. Child protection workers followed their ‘kin first’ mandate some seven years ago when Goodwin asked voluntarily for her cousin to take guardianship of Jamaal. And the system respected “the right of families to be free from unwarranted state intervention’’ when it returned Jamaal to Goodwin in 2010.
Then, in May, child protection workers received and responded to a report that Goodwin physically abused her son in the course of disciplining him. She cooperated with caseworkers, signed a safety plan, and accepted child care and after school services. Even marginal improvements on the part of an abusive parent count heavily toward retaining custody under the shaky family-preservation model.
Still, social workers in Massachusetts remove about 4,500 children from their homes for parental abuse or neglect each year and place them in the care of relatives, foster families, or small group homes. Within seven or eight months, about 90 percent of the children are back under the care of their parents, according to state officials. And within a year of their return, about 15 percent of those children must be removed from the home again.
It would be far kinder to “institutionalize’’ these returnees than to keep them in a years-long cycle of abuse and foster care placements. Especially given the modern incarnation of orphanages......

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