Kentucky Joined the Ranks of Foster/Adopt Corruption?

Question

If you go onto YouTube and type in "cps corruption" you will get many many videos pertaining to Louisville KY. Children who are wrongfully taken, their parents losing their rights to the children, and the children being adopted out so the state can get money. The local news was investigating it and some cps workers came forward (identities with-held to avoid retaliation) to tell the news about "special orders" made for children and how the poor are targeted since they would lack the resources to fight back. We all would prefer people to adopt thru foster care.....but this is what we are supporting! How the heck can we stop this? CPS is as corrupt as the agencies! How can we support the foster system if they are kidnapping children from loving families?

Answer 1

darn.  i'm a little confused as to what the question is.  i'm not trying to be snarky.  can you add a 'sum it up' in once sentence?  i'd like to try to answer this....

thanks!

*************************

ooooooooooooooh, ok!  no no no...i woudn't start with that.

gee, that's a tough one.  i think exposure is number one.  i'm not sure if you saw the expose' on dateline last week, but it was along the same lines.  they talked about kids from a latino country who were taken from their parents and sold to the us under false pretenses.

my point is, a lot of PAP's in the us were unaware.  they were shocked by it.  i think we need to focus on our country as well, along with the illegal/immoral adoption practices that go through agencies right here.

part of the problem is that prospecitve adoptive parents just want a kid at any expense.  h**l, they pay a ton of money to buy kids from anywhere.  god forbid they do the research to find out where they truly came from.

i've heard adoptive parents actually tell me, "oh!  but the birth mother wanted her to have a better life!  she couldn't afford her baby!"

if you can believe it, a-parents actually think that lie is TRUE!  hahahahaha!!!!!   they do.  they believe their adoption experience was legit.

that's where the problem lies- in agency hands.  the agencies will lie to every a-parent just to make money off them.  they do it bc they CAN!

cps will never get better if adoption continues to be a billion dollar business that it IS and HAS been.

why do a-parents think celebrities get perfect white infants instantly when the working class adopter waits??????  MONEY!  sad, but true.

agencies will always have a lie ready for hungry adopters.  in fact, i talked to a former social worker and she said they had options A-F to give as reason the mother couldn't keep her child.  they just had to pick one answer and write it down on the baby's paperwork.

IE:

a. "the birthmother was very concerned for her child and thought adoption was the best plan for her baby."

b. "the natural mother was unable to provide adequate care for her child and wanted better for her through making an adoption plan."

LIES!!!  = $$$$$

Answer 2

Does it happen?  Yes.  

Is this an isolated incident?  Probably.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water, here.

Most children taken into state custody should have been sooner than they were.  

Children are saved from horrendous environments and abusive  families where they are emotionally disposed of and serve as physical pawns in mom or dad's next horrific relationship gone bad.

Where there is corruption, it must be ferreted out and eliminated.  But let's not strike to eliminate the only system we have to protect children, or we will see them dropping like flies.

Answer 3

I think grassroots ways of spreading the word at this time are important because as you can see, some don't even realize this type of behavior is going on.

When enough people start to gather then I think that they can form state wide groups to take on the system at a state level and reform it from the inside.

I think its important for our smaller groups  like "first parent rights" "adoptee rights" or "foster youth rights" or "donor conceived rights" can come together and support one another for eachothers struggles that are even connected in this larger scale, that we can have stronger armies, with more bodies and more say on the matter. We have alot more to work with then. We have been through the system, as in all of us, we're all a part of the industry, we know it best and will take it down.

Once enough people catch on, hopefully there will be an overhaul of the entire system. Dream big and stick together, and it will happen!

Answer 4

Joined?

Hon.. they've been there a LONG LONG time.

Answer 5

It's like that almost everywhere... but they are just the ones who openly got busted. If it was not for a few brave parents and reporters nobody would have known...

Their system is based on the same one every other place in north America uses... Where I grew up in care It was shut down and overhauled.. they said it was for the better but all they did was put in measures to help them cover up what they do.. perhaps I should be grateful they apologized for what they did.. but it doesn't mean anything not when it's hollow and they corrupted it more in the disguise of change. These people who run these "child protection" rackets have the moral ethics of a cobra.

Answer 6

Sadly, many CPS systems are corrupt.  I believe it all stems out of the fact that foster programs are given money for all children they take from foster care and place in permanent adoptive homes.  

We dealt with DYFS in NJ (Div of Youth & Family Services).  They were horrible.  They told the bio family to find an adoptive family to proceed with a private adoption since the child had special needs (a life-threatening disorder).  The bio-family had made it clear that they did not wish to parent the child.  DYFS felt that the child should not be placed in foster care.  We began the process of a private adoption and DYFS stepped in and "changed their minds".  They told the bio family that they were going to "capture" the child and terminate their parental rights in order to place the child in foster care.  When we showed up at one of the hearings, the case worker told me point blank that since our son was a "Caucasian infant" he was a "hot commodity" and they were going to stop our private adoption from occuring.  I was appalled that a case worker would even say that, let alone believe it!  

Fortunately for everyone involved, our bio family had enough sense to go to court to stop DYFS from "capturing" the child.  We had a family court judge that allowed the bio grandparents to take custody of the child for the purpose of adoption and we proceed from there.  We did end up involving an adoption agency so as to make sure DYFS would not step in again, but it is sad to know that many bio families are taken advantage of by CPS or DYFS.  It's scary.

Answer 7

Oh, such a mess.

And unfortunately I don't believe it is isolated. There is evidence of a systemic problem, dating back decades, to remove children from poor families of color and place them with (usually white) adoptive families. It isn't the same thing as what is going on in Kentucky, and it isn't nearly as extreme (no babies "to order" that is just SICK!), but it is worse overall because it involves the breaking down of families and communities. I've just been reading about it in a wonderful and powerful book called >Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption<, edited by Jane Jeong Trenka et. al. The part that pertains to this issue are 3 articles: "Adoption Myths and Racial Realities in the United States" by Dorothy Roberts; "Parents in Prison, Children in Crisis" by Ellen M. Barry; and "Orphaning the Children of Welfare: 'Crack Babies,' Race and Adoption Reform" by Laura Briggs.

I'm not going to get this all down persuasively or be able to cite it perfectly, so you will have to read the book (request it at your library and they will probably buy it since it is new--and then other people can read it also!), but here are a few of their points:

--poor women, especially women of color are held to much higher standards of parenting, or perhaps white, middle class women are held to lower ones: abusive head trauma is missed twice as often in white children than in children of color; Black and Latino toddlers hospitalized for fractures were over 5 times more likely to be evaluated for chld abuse and over 3 times more likely to be reported to CPS than white children with comparable injuries (Roberts, pg 51)

--"State agencies are far more likely to place Black children who come to their attention in forster care instead of offering their families less traumatic assistance at home." (Roberts, pg 51)

--Extended families of color (grandparents, aunts, etc.) are often passed over as guardians for children, with preference given to white adoptive families, (Barry, Briggs)

--The widespread sentencing of women to prison for nonviolent, petty drug crimes has resulted in many more children in foster care--and being temporarily imprisoned does not necessarily mean you are a bad parent, (Barry)

--The widespread myth of the "horrible scourge" of "crack babies" put tens of thousands of children into the foster care system--and some mothers into prison, (Briggs)

--And at the same time, support to poor families (AFDC) was being taken away. (Briggs)

--Black and Latino children were/are often seen as being neglected solely because their parents are poor. (Briggs)

--"In a policy that has been developing since the 1960s, we have--through the myths of a culture of poverty, crack babies, and now adoption reform [read: transracial adoption]--replaced a relatively cheap program, AFDC, that nevre served its recipients very well, with an ever-growing foster care system and a poverty policy that is far more expensive but brutally punishes women--and their children--for being poor by taking their children away." (Briggs, pg 86)

So basically I'm heartbroken right now over what a mess has been made of things. I went to pretty much all Black schools (and you know that was in poor neighborhoods) and I know so many wonderful Black families. So I agree with you that it is hard to recommend adopting from foster care wholeheartedly, because so many of these children should be reunited either with their first parents or with other members of their first families--and subsidies and support and education should be given to these families so that they can stay together.

Such a mess...

Answer 8

The videos you are refering to on YouTube are not real evidence of "crimes" commited by CPS workers.  They are videos created by angry, unfit parents in the area trying to force blame on anyone other than themselves for the crimes committed against their children.  Specifically, I am from Louisville and I actually know a family involved in this scandal.  They operated a meth lab from their home and the children were taken as a result.  No children in Louisville are being targeted to fill orders for the black market cornering human sales.  These are angry, drug addicts trying to convince the public to let them off the hook.  YouTube is not a source for reality.

Answer 9

Was it this state or Tennessee that had this issue going on a year or so ago?  I know that they were busted big time for it.  I wrote about this. CPS was busted big time for the monetary incentives that they get.  

I know that we have an adoptive mother, BPD Wife, who has dealt with this issue in her state.  She was adopting from the CPS system until they decided they could get a bigger profit from someone else.  They went with a private agency that the natural parents and grandparents agreed with.   Its alarming no matter how you look at it.  

I am concerned that we are going the way of the UK in unnecessarily taking children from their parents because they are poor or have been associated with adoption in some form or fashion.  I know a couple of  parents who have been targeted for that reason alone.