Well with a cute title like this, you’re sure to get great turnout: Presenting the next Sac County Citizen’s Academy presentation: Learn Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About CPS but Were Afraid to Ask (PDF).
But I kid the county. There probably isn’t much about CPS that doesn’t scare most of us.
The Sac Rag 
I’m not a fan of CPS, either, even though I know it preforms a service that is essential for maintaining a humane society. I work at a mental health crisis center for children and know first hand what adults do to their kids, including abandoning them altogeter. Somebody has to find these kids a place to live, and somebody should remove kids from homes where mom burns them with a hot iron or dad slinks into their bedroom at night to molest them.
Unfortunately, the world is not so cut and dry. Consider the made-up case of a single mom with two or three kids. She has mental health issues. Perhaps she gets depressed and stays in bed for weeks at a time. No laundry gets done; the house goes to hell; the oldest sibling mildly burns herself while trying to cook some mac and cheese for the other kids. The burn is seen at school, and CPS is alerted. Does CPS remove these kids for the home? For how long? There is a good chance at least one of these kids will end up at my crisis center from the trauma of the removal alone.
And what if the removal does damage beyond a mere case of PTSD? I worked at a local hospital several years ago, and a toddler was brought into the ER that had been scalded to death. The kid was beet red from its naval down. I have seen many horrible hospital injuries, but that poor baby is one of the worse. The kid had recieved the injuries while in foster care. The rumor around the hospital was the kid was removed from the home merely because the parents were drug users, though I never saw the case file (I wouldn’t be telling this story if I had).
I saw the birth parents that day. They looked frightened and small. When the CPS case worker told them what had happened to their kid, it was terrible, and when they saw the baby it was much worse. The coroner would not let them touch their child. The tiny corpse was evidence. He ended up shoving them both out of the room. I wanted to punch the coroner in the face that day.
I think CPS’s power to remove kids from their families needs to be scaled back. I’ve gone on too long to actually lay out a cogent argumnet why i think this. But I know a persuasive case for CPS reform can be made. and should be. Maybe I’ll do it someday
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