I Can't Post Details

... but sometimes working in the "child Protection System" feels like I'm participating in a something that does everything but protect children.

I firmly believe that I approach my positions as a person who has the child's best interestst at heart. Sure, I care a lot about the families I work with, but my passion is to find committed people who will go the distance with very tough kids. And I find them.

The problem is that there are so many people in the system who do not truly have absolute permanence as their goal for a child. There are so many players that just having a committed family isn't enough for them. And even after a family is selected or even placed, one of the players can swoop in and ruin things for the child by having them move away from a parent or parents who are truly committed to them for life.

Then, as Cindy has had happen to her recently, once we have adopted, sometimes CPS investigates us -- after hearing false allegations from children who are in a mental hospital or detention. I don't even want to go on about how odd that seems to me. "Hello, you are mentally ill. I am gonig to write down everything you say and investigate it as if it were fact." (OK, I know, I know, mandated reporting, must check it out, yes, yes, yes, I get it. It's not the investigating that bothers me, it's the manner in which it is done. We have been "investigated" by two counties and the difference in their approach has been phenomenally different. One of them the assumption was that it was our parenting. The other it was the assumption that it was the child's issues stemming from years of early abuse and neglect that were the problem. The way it was approached made all the difference to us.

But I digress.

The point is that sometimes it is very discouraging for me to put forth so much effort to find families who commit to kids only to have them get burned at many stages in the process. It's as if in order for things to be in the "best interest of the child" there is a need to make sure families suffer.

There is a way to treat everyone right -- but all the professionals in the business have to be on the same page. They have to want children in permanent homes. And there are way too much evidence that I've seen in the past few years for me to belive that everyone really wants this.

I may not change the system, but I will change children's lives by helping them get out of the system if I can. One life at a time.