Glossary

Child-Protection Glossary

adoption: Placement of a child with persons other than his natural parents, with full legal parental authority vested in the adoptive parents. Historically a charitable act, secrecy has turned adoption into legalized baby-theft.
advocacy research: Research aimed not at exploring the unknown, but at producing numbers to support a pre-existing dogma.
aging out: Leaving the foster care system by reaching age of majority.
alienated parent: A parent whose child has been taught to hate him.
Amber ambush: Public alert to take children from parents.
anger management: A course of study often prescribed for parents involved with the child protection system. Social workers think of parental anger at child snatching as a lack of appreciation of their services.
attachment (disorder): Attachment refers to the child's bond with his parents. When children are removed from their parents and placed with substitutes, they often treat their new family as thieves. Psychiatrists treat this normal child reaction to aberrant adults as a disorder. In April 2000 Candace Newmaker was murdered in a form of crackpot therapy designed to cure this "disorder".
baby bounty: The funds appropriated to provide food and shelter to foster children. It includes the overhead to operate the agency, and is often large enough to serve as an incentive to snatch children from their parents. The term can also apply to the funds, originating both from the public treasury and adoptive parents, that go persons inside the adoption industry.
baby farm: Historically a place where care of babies was provided for hire. Unscrupulous baby farmers accepted a lump-sum fee for raising a baby to adulthood, then killed the baby a few days after admission. Baby farms became extinct near the turn of the twentieth century.
best interest of the child: A warm-sounding phrase that justifies atrocities in child protection and divorce. It belongs in the same book with other failed slogans such as separate but equal, arbeit macht frei and workers unite. The child's true best interest is keeping his parents.
birth-mother: In a world in which parents are deemed to be interchangeable, this term is necessary to distinguish the true mother from her substitutes.
birthnap: Taking a baby around the time of birth.
blamestorming: A discussion or meeting for the purpose of assigning blame.
bushwhacking: Service of legal process extremely close to the court date, preventing the target from obtaining legal counsel.
caregiver: Anyone taking care of a child. Use of this term suggests that parents are fungible.
caseworker or case worker: Any person child-protectors assign to the job of working with (or against) a family.
casewrecker: A case worker
Celexa™: An anti-depressant. Generic name: citalopram.
child abuse registry: A list of child abusers maintained by social services. In Ontario and many other jurisdictions courts have no control over who is on and off the list.
Child Catcher: A character in the 1968 movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, whose mission is to find and dispose of all children in the barony of Vulgaria.
child laundering: The illegal acquisition of children through monetary transactions, deceit, and/or force.
children's rights: Ill-informed reformers often advocate children's rights as a remedy to the abuses of child protection. In practice, since young children cannot advocate for themselves, persons speaking for the rights of the child are usually courthouse hacks advocating destruction of the family.
Cinderella effect: The tendency of parents to be more abusive toward children who are not their natural offspring.
clonidine: Drug used to induce sleepiness in active children.
close your file: Children's aid never destroys a file. Some parents over thirty have been astonished to find CAS citing family history from when they were toddlers. When a CAS worker suggests she might close a file, it is a gambit to get a little more cooperation from her victim.
clutter: Social work jargon for the kind of case where workers can find nothing abusive in the family, so they search the house to find things out of place.
coerced abandonment: Signing away custody of a handicapped child as the only way to get specialized care.
Concerta™: The same chemical as Ritalin, packaged for prolonged release.
concurrent planning: Simultaneously arranging for reunification of a child with his parents and adoption of the child by strangers. Also called dual planning.
consistent with: An expert witness can use this phrase to suggest to a jury events for which there is no evidence.
constructive serial sterilization: A doctrine that once a mother has lost a child to protectors, later children can be snatched in the delivery room. (from Barbara Bryan)
CPS: Child Protective Services, generic term for the child protection industry throughout the United States. Sometimes spelled CP$.
crown ward: Canadian term for a child legally severed from his parents. There are many synonyms, ward of the court, ward of the state, permanent ward, dependent child.
desaparecidos: A term for the victims in Argentina's dirty war, in which persons disappeared, but police would not give family members any information about their fate.
detained child: What the social workers call a foster child, but without the beneficent tone.
disservices: Client's name for what child protectors think of as services.
divorce continuation: A case in which child protectors intervene in a family after a divorce has taken place.
eligibility spectrum: (Ontario term). Since the interventions that destroy a family are called "services", the criteria for determining which families get the intervention are called eligibility. In straight talk, the eligibility spectrum determines who loses his kids.
enmeshment: A condition in which two family members are so closely joined that they cannot function independently. When the persons are parent and child, for example a homeschooling family, it is a psychological justification for removing a child where neglect cannot be asserted. The term was popularized by Salvador Minuchin
err on the side of the child: A slogan justifying removal of children from their parents in dubious cases. Given that foster care is many times more dangerous than parental care, it is actually erring on the side of danger.
escitalopram: Generic drug known with the trade names Lexapro, Cipralex, Seroplex, Lexamil and Lexam. A drug in the SSRI class used as an anti-depressant.
ex-parent: A parent completely removed from the life of his child. Also ex-father, ex-mother.
family death penalty: Crown-wardship, or termination of parental rights.
FGDM: Family Group Decision-Making. A group that makes decisions for a family. Social workers outnumber parents who are reduced to an advisory role.
FLAW: Family law.
fluff: Matter added to a report by social workers to justify family intervention. From CPS in Abiline Texas.
forced adoption: Adtopion without the consent of parents. Coined by Ian Josephs.
forever family: Social services term for an adoptive family.
fostercarceration: foster care + incarceration, by Susan Jackson.
foster care: An arrangement for care of a child in which legal authority vests in a bureaucrat who may see the child for one hour a month or less, while the day-to-day care is provided by a paid contractor with no legal authority over the child. A century ago, foster care referred to temporary care of children until they could be returned to their parents.
foster parent: The contractor mentioned in the definition of foster care. Candidly called "foster contractor".
gender: When used as a euphemism for sex, it suggests that sex roles are arbitrarily assigned rather than biologically determined.
genealogical bewilderment: See wikipedia
genetic sexual attraction: Sexual attraction between close relatives, such as siblings, first and second cousins or a parent and offspring, who first meet as adults.
Geodon: An anti-psychotic, generic name ziprasidone.
Gestapolemics: Calling your opponents Nazis.
harvested mother: A mother whose children have been taken for adoption. (originated by Erika Klein).
he or she: This now-common pronoun serves to remind readers that there is something wrong with masculinity by itself. We do not concur, and avoid the compound pronoun.
heterosis: The increased function of any biological quality in a hybrid offspring.
high-bidder adoption: Adoption of the kind of child most coveted by adoptive parents. Typically the child goes to the family willing to pay a substantial fee to mediate the adoption.
inappropriate: No words are more typical of our moral culture than “inappropriate” and “unacceptable.” They seem bland, gentle even, yet they carry the full force of official power. When you hear them, you feel that you are being tied up with little pieces of soft string. Inappropriate and unacceptable began their modern careers in the 1980s as part of the jargon of political correctness. They have more or less replaced a number of older, more exact terms: coarse, tactless, vulgar, lewd. They encompass most of what would formerly have been called “improper” or “indecent.”…“Inappropriate” and “unacceptable” are the catchwords of a moralism that dare not speak its name. They hide all measure of righteous fury behind the mask of bureaucratic neutrality. For the sake of our own humanity, we should strike them from our vocabulary. — Edward Skidelsky
Indian: Inhabitants of the Americas descended from the pre-Columbian people. Use of this historically incorrect term continues while the alternatives are too technical (Aboriginal, Mongoloid, Amerind), racist (Métis), too specific (Mohawk, Ojibwa) or reek of political correctness (First Nation, Native American).
justice theatre: The outward display of justice, meant to deflect criticism while nothing is really done. Example: lawsuits against state child protection systems by Children's Rights Inc.
legal orphan: A child freed for adoption by severing all legal ties with his parents. Also paper orphan, and in Canada, crown ward. In many cases, the parents are still willing and able to care for the child.
Lexapro™: Anti-depressant. Generic name: escitalopram.
lithium: In pharmacology, a mood-stabilizer qv.
low-bidder adoption: Adoption of an undesirable child. Typically the agency must offer incentives to the adopters to get the problem child off their hands.
mandated reporter: A person required by law to report suspected child-abuse to child protection agencies. This now includes just about every professional who comes in contact with children in his work, such as teachers, doctors, day-care workers and policemen. Also known as snitch.
mercenary parent: What the social services industry calls a foster parent.
mood stabilizer: Drug companies may not make unsubstantiated therapeutic claims for off-label uses of drugs. The term mood-stabilizer has no official definition, so any drug can be promoted for this use.
moral entrepreneur: An individual, group, or formal organization that takes on the responsibility of persuading society to develop or to enforce rules that are consistent with its own ardently held moral beliefs. Moral entrepreneurs may act as rule creators by crusading for the passage of rules, laws, and policies against behaviors they find abhorrent, or as rule enforcers by administering and implementing them. Although these are different and distinct roles, the effect of moral entrepreneurship, according to Howard Becker who coined the term, is the formation of a new class of outsiders whose behavior now violates these newly minted regulations and therefore is subject to the opprobrious label of “deviant.”
multidisciplinary approach: A form of cooperation in which members of different trades generate business for each other.
natural parent: See: birth mother.
noble cause corruption: A state of mind in which a person commits otherwise illegal or immoral acts for a worthy purpose. It explains the actions of workers and experts in actions to separate children from their parents, break up marriages and sometimes jail people on false allegations. Similar to the aphorism "the ends justify the means".
olanzapine (generic): An anti-psychotic, trade name Zyprexa. Infamous for the side-effect of rapid weight gain.
parental alienation syndrome (PAS): A pattern of behavior in which a child is taught to dislike or fear a natural parent. The term was coined by Dr Richard Gardner to describe divorced parents, but the same syndrome can occur in child protection cases.
paper orphan: see legal orphan
parenting: Prior to the era of political correctness, parent was not used as a verb, or if used at all, referred to the reproductive process of becoming a parent. It now refers to the acts of caring for a child. Routine use of this verb suggests that a substitute parent is as good as the real thing.
parenting capacity assessment: In Ontario, an evaluation of a family by a professional selected by the Children's Aid Society. In all but the rarest cases, the parents fail.
parenting classes: A form of treatment often prescribed for a family by case workers. As well as running down the clock, bad lessons serve the purposes of child protectors, since when the child fails to improve, they can further blame the parents.
Paxil: An anti-depressant. Generic name: paroxetine.
pedophobia: Avoiding contact with children out of fear of pedophile accusation. Failure to help a toddler in November 2002 led to the death of Abby Rae.
practice baby: A baby borrowed from and orphanage and used for educating college women in home economics. Used by many universities, including Cornell from 1921 to 1969.
psych whore: Colloquialism among legal professionals to describe psychiatrists who diagnose children with disorders in order to increase funding of child protection agencies.
public pretender: Play on the words "public defender", referring to their habit of offering no meaningful defense.
public serpent: Someone who might describe himself as public servant. Term attributed to Marilyn Treveno.
puffery: Exaggerated praise used for promotional purposes.
quango: Acronym for quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization, an agency formally independent but exercising a government function often using government funding.
quetiapine: An atypical antipsychotic. Trade names: Seroquel, Xeroquel, Ketipinor.
restraint: The application of force to the human body to limit movement.
Risperdal™: An anti-psychotic.
Ritalin™: A stimulant administered for its calming effect.
sanctimommy: A mother who points out perceived faults in the child caring of others.
secret prisoner: A person jailed while his name is withheld from the public.
Seroquel™: quetiapine (qv)
service dissuasion: Fears of social services driving a family to avoid necessities for a child, such as medical care.
services: The social services industry's name for their actions, even when destructive of families.
shaken baby syndrome: A medical theory that a baby can be killed by shaking that causes no perceptible damage to the skeletal system. Purportedly, subdural hematoma, retinal hemorrhage and brain swelling are the indicators of shaken baby. The theory is now scientifically discredited, but many persons falsely accused are still suffering consequences.
shotgun divorce: A divorce imposed against the will of both partners.
snitch: See mandated reporter.
social worker: A person with credentials in social work. But the term is often used as a synonym for caseworker
social worker smirk: Anyone who has seen it knows what it is.
Sophie's Choice: A novel by William Styron and movie starring Meryl Streep. The title character enters a Nazi concentration camp and has seconds to decide whether to give up her daughter or her son.
SS: Schutzstaffel, the parent organization of the Gestapo, which carried out the holocaust; also social services.
support: In normal use, assistance, but in social worker jargon, orders delivered under threat.
termination of parental rights: The severing of legal ties between parent and child. It is known as the family death penalty. The Canadian term is crown-wardship.
therapy: In proper use, the treatment of an infirmity, but in social services usage, often a form involuntary and destructive intervention in a family. Clients define therapist by adding a space inside the word.
think dirty: Phrase used in the Ontario Coroner's office during the heyday of pathologist Dr Charles Smith, expressing their attitude in cases of child deaths. Many innocent parents of dead children were falsely accused of homicide, and many more lost their children because of the think dirty accusations.
Trileptal™: A mood-stabilizer qv.
unworthy victim: Opposite of worthy victim (qv).
veto of silence: A social services response to an inquiring reporter, no comment, but suggesting that there would be a different side to the story if confidentiality could be breached. This usually scares the reporter away from the story. From Richard Wexler.
Village People: Unwanted professionals entering the life of a child. Derived from the name of a musical group formed in the late 1970's combined with the title of Hillary Clinton's child-care book It takes a Village.
Walther (verb): Walthered describes the railroading or harming of families with small children with no justifiable cause, except to cover up one’s own incompetency. Originated by blogger kbp, based on the actions of Barbara Walther, the county judge in the Yearning For Zion case in Texas.
worthy victim: A victim whose victimhood tends to support elite policies, and consequently merits public attention.
wraparound services: A program in which a large number of professionals collaborate on the treatment of one child, brought under control of the therapeutic system by the courts.
wolf fairy: Name for social worker by youngest son of caller to the Alex Jones show.
Zyprexa: olanzapine (qv)