I can verify that your article was accurate regarding the social service culture when it comes to helping children. The Child Welfare System (CWS) in California desperately needs accountability and revamping. Child Protective Services (CPS) in some counties of California truly do ignore pleas and reports of abuse in order to make their statistics more pleasing to their head department.

There is a case I’m involved in as a person who cares about a child. The CPS file is over two inches thick. Doctors and nurses from three hospitals have submitted reports and pictures. Local police have three open Special Victims cases on this child. Individuals have sent letters, made phone calls, sent pictures and videos - one staff member within CPS informed me that there had been only four reports made on this child. I informed him that the documentation we had proved that over 30 reports had been made in just the last six months.

What was the significance of the discrepancy between our documentation and his data? In my opinion, it proved that the reports, when called in, were not recorded or researched. When I confronted the intake supervisor with this question, his response was, “I’m not responsible for my employees not doing what they are trained to do.”

We are still attempting to help this child, but have effectively been blackballed by CPS. Guess what? When police go to investigate reports, CPS workers tell the detectives that there is no need to investigate because “we are monitoring the situation.” Because the victim is a minor, the detectives are required by some obscure law, procedure or cultural policy to cease their investigation.

The child in question is just barely four years old.

The system, someone told me recently, cannot fix the system. Contact with Sacramento CWS main office and with the governor’s office has confirmed that. There must be a complete review and overhaul of the state’s entire CWS by an independent party.

Child Welfare System officials in other states, when given all the documentation and the history of abuse that has been turned in to CPS, are appalled that the child remains in an environment that will almost certainly eventually kill that child. But when I tell them that the child lives in California, the response is uniformly disgust and pity.

What a great reputation California has when it comes to protecting our young ones.

Forgive my sarcasm. It sometimes is difficult to wait for this child to be either rescued by removal to a safe environment (plenty of family are available, by the way, the take this child), or to be rescued by death. If this little soul dies, what will my response be?

I will pay for a full page ad to run every day in the local newspapers with the names, dates, and specific reports made to the CPS workers, including the supervisors and City Council members, until I am forced to stop or until the system is changed. Go to jail for libel or slander or whatever it’s called? Okay. Then, when I get out, I will continue to publish and advertise the circumstances.

Until then, my hands are tied because any overt action on my part will result in my being banned from this child’s life completely. Frankly, sometimes I am able to give this little spirit some respite and a tender touch.

I hope it’s enough to keep the spark of hope alive.

For those of you who defend this system: there are good people who work in it, but they don’t usually stay long. It is a job that kills one’s soul, because most people get into the job hoping to make a difference and help children. When they find out that this is simply not possible, they either leave the job or become emotionally hardened in order to protect themselves.

My appreciation goes to all the social workers, medical personnel and peace officers who see horrible situations every day and keep working, sometimes waiting for that one time they can help and protect a little child. Thank you. Don’t stop: you are needed.

And to the children, adults and elders who are being abused: Don’t give up. You are worth more than you ever dreamed of. You are important, and deserve to be treated with love, respect and affection. I hug you in my heart.

I also had a similar situation where they took one of my emotional girls away after 5 years because she was being influenced by her run-away older sister. So they put her in another home and gave her Prozak. Drug the kids and then maybe they will quiet down. We tell the kids to “Say no on drugs” and when they put them in the system that is the first thing they do. We fought to get her back but we had too much “family” influence on her. We tried to protect her from the system but the system wanted her to be dependent on them, not us. Job security I guess. We finally won visiting rights and she visits us for vacations and holidays. We are really her only caring “family”.

If you read this comment please e-mail me. I have been a foster parent for 15 years and there are many stories I can share about how the foster program can harm the children than it helps. The Social Services Hierarchy is more concerned about their jobs rather than the kids. They cover up a lot of abuse and incidents so it does not reflect on their incompatence or image. I had one case where a near death incident was not reported because it would have shown that the socal workers were too busy to investigate. Or they didn’t want to file the incident report. Too much paper work maybe. So they shipped the kids off to another state to escape the investigation.