Helping Family Protection Protect More Families

It is really amazing to me what you have done with #familyprotection in such a short time. Raising awareness is always step 1, and you have done a beautiful job. I consider children's rights to be one of the most important causes of my life. Many years ago I was blessed to do a vision quest, and my life purpose was clarified. My mission here on this earth is to assist people through the paradigm shift. Recently, in another awakening type of experience I realized that the people specifically that I am assisting are the parents. The kids coming into the world now are tuned in and tapped in. They don't need help shifting to a new paradigm because they are already there. The parents are the ones who need to shift in order to better help their children.

I have always felt passionate about children's rights. Having experienced being on the receiving end of the abuse of power as a child, I swore that I would do what was in my power to not allow that abuse. Becoming a parent is, of course, a whirlwind of new information. The shear number of places where power over women and children is abused is staggering. It starts with birth and unnecessary medical interventions, but it was schools that really pierced my heart. They are essentially miniature kingdoms with children as the lowly peasants. So, I looked around for what seemed to me to be the freest option available, and helped make it happen for my kids and my community because I believe children should be free to take charge of their own destinies. Just recently I wrote about how numerous countries' immigration policies are tearing families apart. Institutionalized racism and poverty are additional assaults on families and children. Institutionalized sexism is yet another. I feel crazy passionate about all these things, so my point is that children's rights is a spiritual calling for me.

I'm sad to say that I didn't really know how horrible the CPS situation was until I found Steemit. I had a few friends who had to deal with annoying interventions, but I always saw those as isolated cases, and none of them actually lost their children. What's crazy is that I actually worked for an organization where I had to deal with CPS almost every day. I knew how pretentious and difficult most of them were. I guess I just never imagined it was all so dark.

However, it is from that work I did where I dealt with CPS regularly that I think I have a solution that could be a big part of the puzzle. The organization I worked for was called Parents and Children Together. It was a part of the Association of Retarded Citizens of Colorado, and the whole mission of the organization was to keep families together. I worked one on one with parents with developmental disabilities to help them be able to keep their children. Most of our clients already had open DSS cases, though we had a few that were preventative. In most cases they could successfully parent, but they needed a little help in understanding a few basics. They also needed help getting the services they would need to be able to survive, and mostly they needed help dealing with CPS. People with developmental disabilities will often pretend they understand when they don't because other people have gotten angry with them in the past for being slow. So they will tell a CPS worker they understand the plan and what they need to do to keep their kids or get them back, but they really don't. Anyway, it's not super important that you know specifically exactly what I did. What's important is that my job was to go into their home each week and help them in whatever way they needed to become better parents. I also attended any meetings they had with CPS and any court dates. I was regularly called to testify.

I think this could be an excellent avenue for @familyprotection. Often I see comments about how it would be much better to help the family navigate through their difficulties with anger or alcohol or whatever than to take their children. Obviously sometimes CPS is singling out those of us who choose to parent differently, but there are other situations where there really is a genuine issue, though of course it doesn't necessitate the removal of a child. In these situations either volunteers or employees would work with families and help them find appropriate resources and support systems, provide them with valuable information and support to help them shift their parenting in a more positive direction, and also assist them in dealing with CPS. The work PACT did was incredible. I had some devastating losses where, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get children back with the parents, but we had some incredible successes too, and I know we saved a number of families from being torn apart. I really feel like this could be a valuable addition to the @familyprotection program. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about how this might look.

As a side note, I mentioned in a comment that I used to write press kits for a living, and I would be happy to do so for y'all to assist in your outreach to the media.