In reference to the Indianapolis Star article on July 29, 2010, “Indiana’s homeless school children up sharply”

It does not take a rocket scientist to know what Governor Daniels will do about the problem.  Take more children, bring in more federal dollars, push more families into the grinder known as family court.

Indiana’s children are in sad place.  Indiana DCS, under the less than stellar guidance of James Payne, abuses more families and children than any other state.

What will be the long term result?  More children will drop out of high school and end up in prison or mental health facilities. There will be more single parent families, a higher suicide rate and skyrocketing alcohol and drug abuse.

How do we fix this problem?  KISS.  Keep it simple stupid.

First of all, most caseworkers know nothing of local resources.  They don’t know locations of local food banks, churches and other groups that offer aid to the homeless.  They don’t check with other family members to see if they can help. That would be the job of real social workers, not DCS drones.

Of course it would never work because there are no federal funds available for these interventions.

These are tough times for all Hoosiers. DCS’s solution is to make it harder on families by removing their children and making the parents jump though impossible hoops to get them back.

Maybe, they will get the picture as caseworkers start losing their jobs due to State job cuts.

In two recent scathing editorials (see here and here), the Indianapolis Star has documented the finding of (yet another) Federal probe into Indiana’s horrific Juvenile Detention system.

The report focuses on sexual abuse in Indiana’s Juvenile detention centers and prisons by prison staff, which is apparently rampant.

So, where does DCS come in, you might ask?

What The Star editorials fail to mention, and most people are probably unaware that, under Indiana Law IC 31-37-5-8, it is actually the Department of Child Services, not the Juvenile Courts, who get to decide where a Juvenile Offender is “placed”. This means that DCS has been knowingly placing children into situations that are not only not “rehabilitative”, but are shockingly unsafe for anyone, let alone a child.

If DCS has been given the power to knowingly place kids at risk (and then, even more disgustingly, force the parents to pay for it!), then DCS also has the responsibility to oversee those placements and refuse to place those children in these deplorable conditions. Anything else would be state-ordered and state-sanctioned child abuse and child endangerment.

DCS takes children away from families every single day. Don’t they owe it to the children, their families and the citizens of Indiana to see that children, even “bad” children, are given the best possible chance for a “better life”?

The Governor’s “award winning agency” suffered another black eye following the perjury conviction of a supervisor in Gibson County.

Hoosiers are deeply ashamed of Governor Daniels, Jim Payne and their “award winning agency.”

Dumping Payne is the first thing that needs to be done to turn DCS around.  Next we must have total accountability for caseworkers.  If a caseworker lies in court, they must go to jail. EVERY TIME!

Governor Daniels should speak out about abuses by caseworkers, but so far he remains silent.

What was Jim Payne thinking when he allowed a serious drug addict to have custody of a child?  Once again hiding behind confidentiality, he answers no questions.

Experts agree that it takes 12 to 18 months for an addict to become clean and to stay that way.  Yet, after 6 months, Aryana Neighbors was placed back into her mother’s care.

This ten-month-old survived being thrown down on concrete by her mother and thankfully ended up in the care of family members.  She did not survive because of Jim Payne, but in spite of him.

Families have been screaming for years about lying caseworkers.

Now in Gibson County, Indiana, a supervisor, Gayle Edelen was found guilty of three counts of perjury and one count of official misconduct. Mrs Edelen faces a sentence of 6 months to three years in prison.

We are hopeful that Judge Meade will order a complete review of all cases.

It is surprising that the Indiana Inspector General’s office filed the charges since hundreds of cases have been filed from parents across the state.  However, we will give credit where it is due.  Hats off to Mr. Mischler of the IG Office for a job well done.

Word has reached us for years that Judge Jeffery Meade has been rubber-stamping whatever DCS says.  Hopefully, this will force him and other judges in Indiana to ask DCS if they can prove what they say. 

When we think of Memorial Day, people too often think of cook-outs, the Indianapolis 500 and time off from work.

I think of the lives lost in foster care, the undreamed of potential gone forever.

I think of the wasted millions of taxpayer’s funds lining someone’s pockets.

I think of the broken families and grandparents who will never see their grandchildren.

I think of the unmarked graves that Jim Payne, Director of DCS, would like us to forget.

I think of the fear that grips new parents who are too afraid to seek out medical attention.

I think of the newborns crying out for their parents as they are ripped away from their mothers breasts.

I think of judges that just rubber-stamp whatever DCS says instead of doing the job they were hired to do.

I am hopeful however, as more and more the veil of corruption is being pulled back, exposing the darkness to light.  As the darkness flees, we see the true nature of DCS and their allies. You see, folks, it’s all about the money and not the children.

We are hopeful that by next Memorial Day, there will be less suffering and fewer deaths in Indiana. 

Since receiving a phone call from a woman who said her name was Tasha Miller, we have to ask the question, do we trust our State Government?

More and more people are calling groups like HonkforKids asking for help in dealing with the State.  They are asking:

       “I spanked my child and the neighbors saw me. What do I do if they turn me in?”

       “I yelled at my child because he wanted a toy I couldn’t afford. What do I do if Wal-Mart  turns me in?”

       “A State Trooper saw me buckling my child into a car seat.  If I make a mistake, will he take my child?” 

      “My child isn’t doing well in school. Will DCS come and get my child if she isn’t an ‘A’ student?”

A Governor who will not even talk about the abuse and deaths in foster care doesn’t help.

Then we have Carl Brizzi riding in like a white knight on a dying horse yelling, “I’m here to act like a prosecutor.” 

Many of us have wondered why Carl Brizzi would never take any action against DCS even after hundreds of parents cried out for help.  Now we know he had a financial interest in DCS.  How many hundreds, maybe thousands of parents and children have suffered because of Brizzi’s failure to do his duty over the last eight years.  For the complete story go to:  http://www.ibj.com/fbi-seeking-records-on-brizzi-deals/PARAMS/article/19927

So this is the question for today.  How much do you trust the State?   Would you turn to the State if there was a problem in your family? 

Many of us have wondered why Carl Brizzi would never take any action against DCS even after hundreds of parents had cried out for help.Now we know he had a financial interest in DCS. How many hundreds, maybe thousands of parents and children have suffered because of Brizzi’s failure to do his duty over the last eight years.

For the complete story go to:  http://www.ibj.com/fbi-seeking-records-on-brizzi-deals/PARAMS/article/19927

In an eye-popping article published in September, 2007, forensic adoption expert Dr. David Kirschner showed a link between adopted children being murderers.

Dr. Kirschner paints a riveting, and chilling, picture of these children’s personalities. And his picture is much more compelling because it is repeated over and over, with almost no variation, across dozens of cases.

Read Dr. Kirschener’s fascinating article by clicking here.

Now ask yourself: Why does the CPS “industry” in general, and Indiana DCS in particular, lean so heavily toward the “Terminate & Adopt” model?

In the 1994 case of Tipton v. Marion County DPW, our own Indiana Court of Appeals cited some extremely interesting case law from the United States Supreme Court. This makes it clear that our Courts, and the “industry” both recognize that the mindless DCS mantra of “Terminate and Adopt” rarely benefits the child.

Note that one of the Supreme Court cases cited below is over thirty years old (1977), and it cited “published studies” that were presumably even older than that!

Read the Court’s words below, and ask yourself: If this is a well-known fact, then just why does this continue to be the option that DCS so often pursues, in utter disregard for all this combined experience and wisdom?

From Tipton v. Marion County DPW, 629 N.E.2d 1262, 1270, n. 6 (Ind.App. 1 Dist. 1994) :

“The U.S. Supreme Court has at least twice recognized the absence of empirical support for the assumption that termination [of parental rights] will inevitably help the child. In Smith v. Organization of Foster Families for Equality & Reform (1977), 431 U.S. 816, 97 S.Ct. 2094, 53 L.Ed.2d 14, the Court cited evidence in the record, confirmed by published studies, to the effect that it was rare for a foster child to achieve a stable home life through final termination of parental ties and adoption into a new permanent family. And in Santosky, 455 U.S. 745, 765, n. 15, 102 S.Ct. 1388, 1401 n. 15, 71 L.Ed.2d 599, the Court referred to the assumption, that termination of the parental relationship will invariably benefit the child, as “hazardous at best”, weighing the absence of empirical support for such an assumption in favor of the parent when fashioning a standard of proof which allocates the risk of an erroneous determination between the parent and child.”