Blogs by Deborah K. Frontiera
Fighting CPS
6/21/2016 10:32:27 AM
June 21, 2016
The purpose of this blog has been to provide updates on some of the cases I reported in my book (Fighting CPS: Guilty Until Proven Innocent of Child Protective Services Charges ISBN 9-780-9800061-6-2) that had not been resolved when the book went to press, and to report other cases where CPS is not working up to par. I’d also like to hear about cases in which Child Protective Services did the right thing so those cases can serve as examples of what should be done. Occasionally, I will report helpful tips and web sites with advice on fighting CPS. To comment on this blog, or to tell your story, email Deborah Frontiera at frontiera.fightingcps.deborah.gmail.com
Back in March of 2016, I found a reference to the following story online when searching “Fighting CPS”. It is yet another example of Child Protective Services having too much power. I’ve only pulled parts of the much longer story:
LANSING – When he was 15, Lamar McGaughy lost his mother to drugs. He lost his siblings to Michigan’s foster care system.
Split up after their mother’s death, McGaughy and his siblings barely know each other today.
The 38-year-old Detroit barber was afraid the same would happen to his son and daughter after their mother got into trouble with Michigan’s Children’s Protective Services. The court wouldn’t place his kids with him because he lacked legal custody over them, though he’d always been a part of their lives.
He had reason to be afraid. For most parents fighting CPS in court, “the system is really designed for them to lose,” said Liisa Speaker, a Lansing attorney who represents parents at the Michigan Court of Appeals. Michigan is caring for the nation’s 12th-highest rate of kids awaiting adoption because judges terminated their parents’ rights to them.
McGaughy got no help from the state agency legally required to do all it can to keep families together, because the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services doesn’t deal with custody paperwork. He got no help from the publicly funded defense that state law guarantees him. His court-appointed lawyer showed up the first day of his case and never showed up again.
LaMar McGaughy, 38, of Detroit smiles as he speaks about his two children during a meeting at the Detroit Center for Family Advocacy last month. The center offers legal assistance to families involved with Child Protective Services in how better to keep their children out of the foster care system.
Parent advocates say Michigan erects a wall between kids and their families because DHHS is the only agency helping parents overcome their struggles and at the same time is their courtroom opponent, logging those struggles as possible evidence against them. In child welfare cases, judges can issue lifelong penalties based on far less evidence than is required in criminal court. Most parents’ only defense is an overworked, underpaid court-appointed attorney.
Yet there are signs of a better way.
McGaughy’s family was saved by the Detroit Center for Family Advocacy, a small agency that prevents foster care in nearly 90% of its cases by offering parents targeted legal help and social work that costs a fraction of what taxpayers spend on foster care.
DHHS officials welcome such work, but said the state already keeps most families together. Only about 5% of the nearly 84,000 cases CPS investigated in fiscal 2014 ended up in court. Petitions to permanently terminate parental rights were filed in only a fraction of those cases.
“Our job is not to go after parents and hold them accountable and make them pay for what they did,” said Colin Parks , the state’s CPS manager and a former investigator. “Our job is to keep children safe.”
‘A frightening amount of power’
Parents can lose their kids forever based on far less than the proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” it takes to send someone to prison. Parents often lose their kids without criminal charges. CPS cases happen in civil court.
THIS IS WHY THERE MUST BE A MOVEMENT TO PUT THESE CASES IN CRIMINAL, NOT CIVIL, COURTS. D.F.
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