What happens when the government agency that is supposed to be protecting our children is one of the biggest threats to their safety, happiness and wellbeing.
That is a serious question and one that is facing a large number of parents not only in Canada but in many countries around the world.
Many child protection agencies around the world are fighting with other government agencies for the few tax dollars available. To receive this funding they must show the need for this funding. To various governments that means that they must have a number of children in care, but more importantly they must show that they are also successfully placing (adoption) a minimum portion of the children that are in care.
This presents a problem as those who are most in need of care are generally the least likely to be adopted as they are often from homes where drug abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse is rampant and these children often are psychologically damaged and require far more care then most prospective adoptive parents are interested in or capable of.
The children that are adoptable on the other hand are often those who come from caring homes with loving parents that do their best to care for their children in the best way they know how.
So why are these children chosen. There really does appear to be various reasons. Single parents? special needs children? more then one? Parents who at first glance do not look like they are up to fighting against an unjust system?
The problem is that in all honesty I suspect the problem started so innocently. Somewhere along the line a politician decided that if CPS was to continue to get all this funding that there had to be some “results” and then decided from their throne on high that those “results” would be best shown by the number of successful placements in comparison to the number of intakes. To accomplish this CPS agencies looked at the numbers and then likely stumbled across a child in their processing that would normally be returned to their family, however in an effort to make the numbers work they decided that “just this time” they would not do the return.
Over time increasing demand to improve placements and increasing funding required to fight parents who objected to what was happening has led to those children who actually required the system in the first place, starting to be dropped from the system. The system no longer has the resources to deal with the children that it needs to look after because it is so busy fighting parents so that they can get access to the children that they can showcase to the government in their reports.
It is time to return CPS back to their roots of helping care for those children who are damaged by abuse and neglect and stop measuring their abilities by statistics like adoptions and instead start supporting them when they do their job properly instead of forcing them to search out innocent well adjusted children to victimize in an effort to appease their government bosses need for statistics and pretty pictures.
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