Child Protective Services That Operate Like the Mob
Everyone is thankful for Child Protective Services, which takes "let's think about the children" as an organizational slogan. But when a senator from Georgia (local copy) admits that the organization tears families apart to hurriedly adopt children off for huge wads of cash, well, that's when CPS starts to look less like a government agency and more like a human trafficking ring.
We want to make it clear that none of this is aimed at the child welfare system or all the caring, wonderful people working for it. The problem seems to lie with laws like the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. According to it, for each child adopted into a foster family, the responsible state receives $4,000 to $6,000, with an additional $20 million bonus if it exceeds the average number of adoptions from previous years, which turns the practice of protecting children into a nationwide pie-eating contest.
So sure, you want to be known as the state that rescues the highest number of children in America, but the policy also encourages CPS to make an increasingly liberal interpretation of the term "rescue." Consider that, a few years ago, CPS employee Pat Moore was fired for refusing to put a child in a foster home simply because everyone in the foster family had a felony conviction, and the family occasionally hired a convicted sex offender to babysit. But hey, at least none of them had been convicted of genocide yet.
The situation is so bizarre that CPS whistleblowers have even reported foster parents putting in orders for other people's children, at which point the organization will reportedly investigate the shit out of that family until they hear someone use a cuss word, and then it's hello, new parents.
If you still don't buy the mob analogy, consider this: When Vanessa Shanks' child was taken away and she fought the decision in court, CPS responded rationally by taking away children of her relatives, and after Shanks finally won in court, they took away her attorney's children. And to think they could have saved themselves so much time by simply offering Shanks "child insurance."
Source: Cracked online magazine
