To begin, I do not believe these Child Protective Services workers should be blamed for the child's death for the following reasons, so let us start with the "Right To Lie" federal case which sets forth the question:
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| Wayne County CPS Workers Elaine Brown and Kelly Williams blamed for the death of Aaron Minor |
In this report, it is unknown if these workers lied which is really not at issue here.
What is at issue are roles and responsibilities of the players in child welfare.
Let us take a bottom up look at statutory authority in the food chain of child welfare.
CPS operates as the intake under the powers of the State, not local, which means the role of prosecution does not fall upon Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, but instead, upon the State Attorney General.
Wayne County is the only county of the State where the State Attorney General prosecutes child welfare cases.
Next, upon review of the statements of the anonymous child welfare worker, who, obviously does not possess a legal background, fails to even realize that the one main, and constitutional, reason why the Detroit Police Department will not just bust into a home, based on what CPS calls "exigent circumstances", is because police are supposed to possess a signed warrant, not rubber stamped.
But, as I have always said, there are no civil rights in child welfare.
Continuing on up the CPS food chain, Wayne County Child Protective Services follow the policies set by the State of Michigan, under the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services, where the latest Director Nick Lyon, who is too busy preparing for his legal defense, with the taxpayers dimes, is a tad bit too busy to address the egregious fraudulent billing, including civil and human rights violations of human trafficking in child welfare.
In child welfare, each state-county section of the state system has quota in the number of removals, and/or cases opened under child welfare, in order to maintain levels of operations and its federal funding.
If one ever took the time to do a time series of expenditures...what a minute, I constructed that model over a decade ago... one will observe, with crystal clarity, that it should appear as odd that each year there is not volatility in caseloads.
Same number of cases opened; same number of cases sustained; same number of foster care placements; same number of termination of parental rights.
This is what is called benchmarks and if the state does not meet its previous year's benchmarks, then, they lose federal dollars, of which I have alleged for over a decade, that the State uses a portion of federal funds (FFP) as its state participation rate obligations.
That is a major "no-no", but of course, state officials are too busy in the criminal investigation of the players in the Flint Water Crisis, oh, and I forgot to mention, still under federal oversight of its child welfare system.
But of course, for those who are loyal fans very well know, there were substantial errors in that particular case because HHS lied to the federal court.
Without going into my ad nauseum on that federal oversight case with Children's Rights, there was not a peep on the filing of false cost reimbursements or that magical and secretively omnipotent organization called Michigan Children's Institute, which has never been audited.
This takes us to the upper echelon of Michigan's child welfare administration where many of its leadership, civil servants and contractual arms, are playing the immunity game.
What I mean by the immunity game is that the state slammed through a bunch of laws, washing its hands of responsibility with its child welfare contracts, meaning, the Bureau of Child and Adult Licensing does not possess the authority to accept grievances, let alone conduct and refer suspected violations of law and policy to the Attorney General.
Heck, the Office of Children's Ombudsman (OCO) does not even refer suspected violations of law and policy to the Attorney General, because they still operate on that deflective policy of "valid-not-opened".
If, in the even the OCO actually does find violations, it is sequestered from the public due to those lovely privacy laws in child welfare, because, as we all know, well, at least the state administrators do, the Attorney General exists in that particular conundrum of contemporaneously "advising and advocating".
How can the State Attorney General prosecute these CPS workers when it is obligated to defend its actors while it prosecutes child abuse and neglect in Wayne County?
I cannot fail to mention that the State Automatic Child Welfare Information System (SACWIS) sucks, badly.
Data reporting is not just incomplete by its users, but it is redundant and technologically arcane, intentionally designed to omit "certain" reporting variables.
Ok, in this particular case, CPS had a referral from a mandatory reporter to check on a mental health patient, who, more than likely, according to the report, was in a situation of "food scarcity".
Food scarcity is the fancy new term which means the state has significantly cut, or even, severed, SNAP food benefits.
Now, let us examine this particular component of the story.
The mother was poor, with mental health needs she was obviously addressing, which means to mean she was receiving Social Supplemental Income, federal welfare, as the national trend is to dissolve the social safety net without any replacement.
If she was receiving $733 a month, that means her SNAP benefits were cut to $18 a month, which includes a child in the home.
This means if she needed food, as the shift is to send the poor to the food pantries, praytell, my gentle readers, how is a mother, with disabilities and an infant, supposed to: (1) get to the food pantry without transportation as some set distribution in vehicle food lines; and, (2) get to and from the food pantry having to pay bus fare from her monthly allotment of $733, and pay her bills?
Let us not even waste our precious time to contemplate if the mentally ill have the ability to even execute this aforementioned food gathering task.
| Drive through food line distribution of the week for a family of 4. (Industrial case of mustard, 2 cabbage, 4 butternut squash, pre-rotten tomatoes, 2 bags of rice, out-dated milk, and frozen-thawed-frozen-thawing chicken quarters.) |
I do not know about the rest of you, but to me, the unraveling of the social safety net for the most vulnerable, or rather, "The Poors", is a scheme to hustle more federal dollars through privatization, because someone has to make a profit and these poorly trained CPS workers. lacking of resources for proper referrals to prevent situations such as this tragedy, should not be held liable for the unintended death of the child.
The same poor quality of services can be seen in mental health.
They, the CPS workers, were, including the mother and the child she just lost, are part of the food chain in the perverse child welfare system which is only a foreshadowing of its final stage of privatization.
It is my belief that the workers possesses legal claims against the State of Michigan and should be approached by the legal community.
Call me, I will consult.
This is a principal-agent issue where the State should be blamed and federal court oversight should continue.
What say thee, Attorney General Bill Schuette?
CPS worker says colleagues not to blame for child's death CPS worker says colleagues not to blame for child's death
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