Chez Chesler

Texas Child Protective Services removed all the children from those who practiced a certain religion this spring, because there was "a pervasive belief that children having children was what they were supposed to do". (I'm sure there were plenty of comments in the blogosphere over the past couple of months as CPS kept refusing to return the children to their parents, even after being ordered to do so by several courts, and taking much longer than the original raid, and much longer than it takes to reunite children and parents when school lets out, once they complied.) It was never clear if the teen pregnancy rate at the Yearning for Zion ranch was much different from that in the rest of Texas. In any case, it turns out that a similar belief was pervasive in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where 17 girls in a 1200-student high school that serves a city of thirty thousand people are pregnant. We've yet to see if DSS will act against the entire community.

Labels: DSS, Gloucester, YFZ

DSS chief says state must balance children's needs and risks - Boston.com

In a January 25 article, Massachusetts House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi opened the testimony before the House Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect, which he forme dafter Haleigh Poutre allegedly was beaten into a coma by her adoptive parents in 2005 after the Department of Social Services decided against taking her away from the couple despite the girl's history of previous injuries by saying, "The number of children confirmed as abused and neglected in 2005-- 35,214 children -- would fill Fenway Park. Half were aged 7 and younger." He said said Massachusetts has the nation's third-highest rate of child abuse and neglect cases. DSS received court permission to remove Haleigh from life support, but when doctors said she showed signs of improvement she was moved to a rehabilitation hospital, where she remains. The state was criticized for moving too quickly to end life support. But then embattled DSS Commissioner Harry Spence acknowledged that cases such as Haleigh's grab public attention. But he said only about 100 of the 28,000 families DSS works with involve cases of grave danger to a child. He said Massachusetts has the second-lowest rate of death among child abuse victims, behind only New Hampshire, and the vast majority of cases his agency handles involve neglect such as failure to ensure a child is properly fed, bathed or supervised.

So it seems to me that DSS is inflating its numbers by calling more situations abuse and neglect than other states, and than commonly accepted meanings of the term. The overwhelming majority of the 28,000 families they work with do not involve grave danger at all.

Labels: DSS