An Open Letter to President Barack Obama-Kids better off with troubled homes than with foster care

I submitted the following "policy question" to President Obama's staff through the White House website:

If "everything is on the table" shouldn't the new administration take a good hard look at foster care and Child Protective Services?

1- Foster Care is a failure:
http://www.nccpr.org/
● The Evidence is in: Foster Care vs. Keeping Families Together: The Definitive Study. NCCPR’s analysis of a study comparing outcomes for more than 15,000 children, with a link to the full study. Children left in their own homes typically fared far better than comparably maltreated children placed in foster care.
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/evidence.doc

· 80 Percent Failure: A Brief Analysis of the Casey Family Programs Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study.
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/cfpanalysis.doc

· Civil Liberties Without Exception: NCCPR’s Due Process Agenda for Children and Families
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/dueprocess.pdf

· Epidemic of Hype: How hysteria over methamphetamine has become the latest excuse to “take the child and run.”
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/epidemicofhype.doc

· A Foster Parent Speaks Out. A foster parent shares her observations about the child welfare system in her state.
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/fosterparent.doc

· Residential Treatment: What the Research Tells Us.
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/residentialtreatment.doc

· The Trouble with CFSRs. NCCPR’s analysis of the federal government’s Child and Family Services Reviews.

STATE AND LOCAL REPORTS: NCCPR has issued reports on child welfare in several states as well as in New York City. They are available (in pdf format), by CLICKING HERE TO GET TO OUR STATE REPORT INDEX PAGE
http://www.nccpr.org/reports/cfsr.docas well as by regular mail or e-mail as attached files.

I am not afiliated with the NCCPR. They advocate foster care and CPS reform. In January of 1996 I was hired as a Child Protective worker at New York City's Administration for Children's Services as part of the "first wave" of "fresh blood" that was going to reform Child Welfare in New York. That was more than thirteen years ago. We still to this day are regaled with tales of child welfare reform. Some things simply cannot be fixed and have to be scrapped.
2- Child Protective Services should be regarded as the Keystone Kops of social work.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=cps+failure+to+protect&ei=utf-8&fr=chr-yie8

As a ten and a half year veteran "Child Protector" I saw first hand too many instances of incompetence, cruelty, and irregard for human and civil rights. For example, fathers and extended families are rarely sought out, and too easily disqualified to be caregivers regardless of what any rulebook or syncophant might say.

Emergency child removals (of which I have done many) are cruel, traumatic, destructive to all involved and simply funnel helpless children into the abyss. While studies tell us that foster care has an eighty percent failure rate and that children fare better in "abusive" and "neglegent" families than in foster care our country,( and through its leadership much of the world), continues on this destructive path.

The people voted for boldness, audacity and change that could be believed in. The President would go down in history as a Great President alongside Abraham Lincoln were he to have this matter looked at seriously and with a whole new and objective eye and reach the conclusion that would be inevitable: Foster Care and child removals are grossly overused, their use fluctuate with political and journalistic tides, budgetary considerations and social work fads. What these trends, fads and political tides have to do with protecting vulnerable children would be something you should look into.