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RE: Our Homeless Experience 7: The Homeless Shelter, Part 2
Oh gosh. Her face :( Fragile like fine china. There is no removing all the horrible events she's seen. That all of you have seen. I encourage you to write that letter, and to go even higher. Attack where it need to be hit hard to change the system. I support you in every way. Make them pay for all the damages. CPS sent you there, have them pay for the healing part that you and yours have to face. The good is on your side. We all are on your side xxx. Big hugs, and hug your little ones too for me. I pray for a veil of protection of yous. <3
And then again, she has a robust mother to lean to, that matters a lot. The trauma of being on the other side of the wall when something like this happens is probably very minor compared to the trauma of being in the middle of the situation.
In a well-functioning system, the CPS and the shelter would cooperate with each other and with the parents to "help children recover from the trauma of homelessness", i.e. by arranging some activities for the children after school, let them experience some fun, love, care and hope, do checkups that the parents stay sober and drug-free, give people hope and help rather than stressful notes that "your time is out", offer parental training, and ... in the worst case, some people really are not fit for being parents, their children would probably be better off in foster care than staying with their parent(s), and the shelter would probably be much better off without those parents staying there.
Neither the CPS nor the the shelter is doing a good job here, neither in "sheltering", "helping children recover from the trauma of homelessness", nor "protecting children".
Why is it like this? Is it incompetence? Is it corruption? Or is it just a lack of information - like the CPS believing everything is OK and normal inside the shelter?
Most of the times, from what I am seeing, CPS is out there to do more damage than good. On the rare occasions there is good being done. Why is it like this? Corruption of course. The power. It is exactly like what was done to the native americans. They took the children out of their homes and put in residential schools trying to "take the indian out of them" saying the only indian left in them will be their blood. It is the exact same thing. Just different context.
In my book, it's "corruption" when someone with decision power is deliberately making choices to the favor of someone, possibly getting kickbacks, money under the table, other services or maybe even just a smile and a pat on the back. Like, if the shelter would get more income due to the decisions of the CPS, and the CPS would receive some funding from the shelter, that's a very clear case of corruption.
I fail to see the relevance of the indian campaign. Sending @hickorymack to the shelter was indeed quite bad work. I seriously hope the reason is that the lady in the CPS does not know how bad the shelter is - but a well-working CPS would do steps to take proper care of the other children in the shelter as well - and I do believe that includes taking them away from their parents if needed. I find it hard to believe violent parents can be good parents. Then again, I believe violence is much more accepted in the US than here.
I agree, CPS did not do a good job at all. I see a lot of people not wanting to do their jobs properly but want to get paid top dollar. Its a backwards world out there.
Even where I live, CPS is working just like the states. The good people around me are struggling to protect their kids, and yet the bad parents are allowed their children... Only one family that I know of that shouldn't have their children has had them taken away, BUT she was able to get one back and she had another baby. CPS is now looking away like if nothing happened. Yet the good parents are fighting the battle of their lives to keep their children home. :( I don't live in the States, these stories are everywhere.
I somehow don't believe people end up working for the CPS to earn "top dollar", probably the salary for working for the CPS isn't the best.
I tend to believe in the best in people. The CPS would probably have worked out very well mot of the time if it was staffed with people that came to the CPS because they wanted to do a difference, truly cares about children, and - perhaps equally important, get to see positive results from the work they do, gets to see the smile on the faces of children rescued, as well as positive feedback on the work they do.
Now, the reality is probably quite grim:
The employees in the CPS gets to see the worst of humanity, the worst dramas and worst problems.
The employees in the CPS gets almost no positive feedback, only negative. Damned if they do, damned if they don't - the CPS gets criticized if they take away children, and they get criticized if they don't intervene as well. Even with a well-working CPS, the press will always report on the bad news. Even in cases where the CPS is obviously right to take away the child, the press will blame the CPS for doing the wrong thing - as only one part of the story can be told, the employees in the CPS cannot and should not comment on the cases or persons they are dealing with.
The employees in the CPS has limited possibilities and resources to really do things better for the children. Like, if the only options on the table is to either leave the children homeless out on the street in the cold in the middle of the winter or to let them into such a family shelter, then nothing is right. Foster care or orphanage homes are also seldom a good solution, it may just be merely better than leaving the children with people that shouldn't have become parents in the first place.
Many of the children they deal with are already sufficiently scarred by traumas that they will never smile. Many of the children they deal with are difficult to handle.
The CPS should work with and cooperate with the parents - but there is a big stigma with getting involved with the CPS, and there is also a big stress knowing that the people on the CPS can take away the children even without a court order (jurisdictional differences apply, of course), hence the parents are seldom in the mood for a friendly cooperation with the CPS.
Many of the bureaucrats at the CPS probably don't get to see and meet the children much, for them they're just objects in a file.
Under such conditions, even the best people tend to get broken down, demotivated, even "dehumanized" and do a poor job - well, actually not, the best people will for sure resign and find some more positive work to do.
Sorry that I didn't be precise enough in what I was saying, I didn't mean people working for CPS would be there for top dollar, I meant in general, all different fields of work.
In a perfect world with a perfect government with a perfect system, all your points would be true. I do believe that people start to work for CPS for the greater good but from what I am seeing good families are being ripped apart. I cannot give the information I have as an example, but once my friend is feeling confident to write about it, I will share her story and then you can see it for yourself on how the system really is. The system does feel corrupted, it may be corrupted, but there is something I seen earlier that made me thinks... what if the system was not corrupted but was built that way?
I do agree with you when you say "even the best people tend to get broken down..." that is not a job that I would be able to handle. I would break down in a million pieces.