CAPTA and its ancillary programs have never had any accountability or transparency, allowing for the trillion dollar pilfering of Medicaid and Social Security. Shift all programs to Medicaid. Medicaid has regulation. Introduce Medicaid legislation that will allow for the oversight of child welfare. Include a national central registry for grievances, start mandating competing cost for procurement and put child welfare agencies on the HHS OIG exclusion database. Lump it into one piece of legislation and call it Child Accountability Program and Transparency Act (CAPTA). Using the same name, it is sure to get through Congress.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA- Family Violence Prevention Fund President Esta Soler praises Conn. Senator Chris Dodd for introducing the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment (CAPTA) Act of 2010.
The (CAPTA) Act is the nation’s preeminent program for preventing child abuse. However its authorization expired in 2008. If passed, the updated legislation would improve programs which try to prevent child abuse and neglect and provide emergency shelter and counseling to victims of domestic violence. In addition, it would continue and update the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, which funds domestic violence shelters and services; the National Domestic Violence Hotline; statewide prevention programs and provides other critically needed services. The legislation (S.3817) also includes new information to help children exposed to violence and better address dating violence.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 1,200 deaths and two million injuries to women from intimate partner violence each year. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that, on average, four or five women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends each day in this country. More than 15 million children in the United States are exposed to parental domestic violence and about 800,000 children experience abuse or neglect each year.
Domestic, dating and sexual violence and child abuse are problems of epidemic proportions in this country, endangering millions of people, according to Soler. The recession has meant that more families experiencing abuse are seeking help from the system because they lack resources to protect themselves, however states and localities are cutting back on funding due to lower revenues.
Now more than ever, the federal government needs to step up and ensure that vulnerable victims of violence can get the help they need, according to the Family Violence Prevention Fund. They thank Senator Dodd for championing this life-saving legislation, pointing out that it should be a high priority for both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
In order to properly celebrate Black History Month, someone has to pick up and carry the torch to end the residuals of the peculiar institution because no one wants to talk about, except for Lala.
Michigan Child Protective Services stole her, used her as a lab rat, then stole her children and sold them.
It used to be called slavery, but now it is called Foster Care and Adoption and Lala wants her children back.
As a survivor of CAPTA, as well as the ASFA....I suffered literal torture for the past 31 out of all 33 years of my life.
In 1990 CPS stole me as a 5 yr old Child from my mother bc i was considered a "child prodigy" after they did 2 years worth of "evaluations" (including psyche) on me (evals that i have copies of til this day) and locked me away in long term kids mental institutions where i was forced to take psychotropic drugs, was physically, mentally, emotionally, verbally and sexually abused. I also was locked away in literal prison style solitary confinement. This was a 6x6 room, brick wall, hard tile floor, a metal door with a huge deadbolt on the outside, a slit in the door to slide food through & a plexiglass window for workers to look through....no sink, no toilet, no bed, no nothing....just locked in this room for hrs, days & sometimes even weeks. My longest stay in this room dubbed "the quiet room" was 3 weeks....proven later to be ultimately for something i didnt even do!!! I also was forced to receive shock treatments at the age of 19 bc i had a legal guardian at the time who consented to them, i couldnt refuse them & i died via cardiac arrest from the psychotropic drug risperdol at the age of 12 that i was forced to take bc i was a minor i couldnt refuse it...or any of the other psychotropic drugs...bc if i did...i either got locked in the quiet room, or they put me in 6 point restraints and injected me with ativan, haldol, thorazine or a cocktail of two of them to knock me out....so if i refused the pills...i got forced injections anyways.
We had this lock box to fill out recipient rights complaints to report abuse....well we wrote them....but very rarely received help bc recipient rights works out of the DHS offices and DHS was burying the abuse complaints so they could further use us as paychecks & guinea pigs for psychotropics. This eventually was proven to be exactly what happened to me amd countless of other children across the country in 1997 when MICHIGAN drafted the ASFA & then president bill clinton passed it..so yes...i am literally one of the child survivors that caused the ASFA to be made by at the time michigan 4th district congressional representative dave camp and it was commissioned by the ways and means committee when submitted to the house. Bill clinton passed it and thus adding the ASFA as a extension off of CAPTA.
Shortly after the ASFA was passed. Dave Camp was made chairman of the ways and means committee (the very committee who comissioned the ASFA) & thus he was able to literally baby sit and protect this "evil act" all the way until last year when he retired, coincidentally he retired after i publicly posted this information about the ASFA 😅 The ASFA was created to put children in more homely settings (foster homes) instead of locking them away in places worse than prison (mental facilities) so they would not have to suffer everything we had already suffered...the ASFA did make more fosterhomes...but thats ALL IT DID!! other than that....most of the same abuse that happened to me is now happening to children in fosterhomes & mental facilities...all the ASFA did really was expand the battle field from just mental facilities to adding fosterhomes fosterhomes....the madness truly never quit....not even for me.....CPS has terrorized me for my entire life to the point i am currently in the middle of a federal lawsuit right now to get my children back CPS stole from me with intentionally created fraud court papers. Beverly Tran has a pdf copy of my filed claim if anyone would like to read it.
All the while i grew up in these facilities from the age of 5 in 1990 til the age of 21 in 2007 my adopted parents who adopted me at 7 yrs old and hardly ever took me home were collecting money monthly from the federal govt for adopting me & at the same time the state was collecting my disability checks to "pay for my stay" & other things for the facilities...disability the federal govt awarded me as a result of surviving their own abuse upon me!!!
In 2003 The state allowed my adopted mom to get legal guardianship of me at 18 and she collected even more federal money monthly off my back a til i was 27 when i finally won my own guardianship from her, macomb county & the state of michigan on december 20, 2012.....6 weeks later.... CPS began attacking me....which is why i am in the middle of a federal lawsuit now....CPS stole my kids from me with a intentionally created fraud petition on November, 26, 2013 that til this very day (January, 26,2019) HAS NOT been signed by a judge & HAS NOT been filed with the court!!! Yet my parental rights were taken on November, 13, 2015 & my children were adopted out August 2016 despite the fact there was never a CPS case opened on me in the first place because the petition was never signed or filed!!! So for the past 31 out of all 33 yrs of my life, i have literally been a child cash cow whos back was being double dipped off of by my adopted parents and the state & now a mother whos had my children stolen from me with fraud court papers to make more money off their backs as well ...and CAPTA made this 100% possible to do to me & countless of other children & parents!!! #Kids4Cash
CAPTA was specifically created to steal children for profit and use them as paychecks & psychotropic guinea pigs til they age out, appoint them guardians, make more money off them, steal their kids when they have them & drug them up & Make even more money off them too and rinse and repeat. Which is why multi-generations of families across the country like my own have been stolen by CPS!!! CAPTA is the Birth mother of this #Kids4Cash Madness!!
Statement of Congressman Pete Stark Supporting the CAPTA Reauthorization Act of 2010
MR. STARK: Madam Speaker, I rise to support the reauthorization of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. This bill strengthens our ability to identify, treat, and prevent the abuse and neglect of children. This legislation also includes the Family Violence Prevention and Services Act, which recognizes the common co-occurrence of child abuse and domestic violence and provides resources to states to address both.
The Adoption Opportunities Act included in this bill focuses on the needs of older youth and minority youth in our child welfare system. More than 400,000 youth are in foster care in America. About 115,000 are awaiting adoption. More than one-quarter of those waiting for a family are over the age of twelve. However, the vast majority of those adopted are children under the age of nine. Older youth wait in the child welfare system for a long time, with the chance of being adopted decreasing every day. Many of these youth – over 25,000 each year - age out of the system without a permanent family to support their transition to young adulthood. Too often, these youth end up homeless, unemployed, or incarcerated.
I applaud the focus on these older youth. This bill authorizes national recruitment efforts to reach prospective adoptive parents, establishes an internet-based national adoption information exchange system to bring together children up for adoption and qualified adoptive parents, and connects agencies and families to resources that will reduce barriers to adoption.
We must do all we can to increase adoption. Earlier this year, I introduced a bill, the Every Child Deserves a Family Act (H.R. 3827), which would further reduce barriers to adoption by preventing discrimination against prospective adoptive parents or foster parents solely on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender identification, or martial status. I look forward to continuing to work on reforming our child welfare system in the next Congress, and I urge my colleagues to support S. 3817 and to stand with me to protect children.
Compounded with the secrecy, lack of regulation, stripping of civil rights, non-existence due process and the inherent contemporaneous conflicts of interests embedded deeply in CAPTA and ASFA in dealing with the States Attorney General, the Medicaid Fraud Control Units, the exclusive civil penalties of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the sequestering of federal authority of the U.S. Department of Justice, and the fact that authorization of billing is a judicial determination that has only been challenged by me, nothing is going to ever be done.
But, alas, I have omitted the best parts of why Michigan, which was the first state to create its model of human trafficking.
It re-animated the Michigan Children's Institute, a former, and actual, brick and mortar building in less than 18 months of CAPTA to "capture" lost revenue from the oil embargo moments of the mid-1970s,
Then, Michigan went on to breathe life back into its brick and mortar of MCI to
give birth to a theoretical, institutional model of child trafficking, and it was all billable to Medicaid, with everyone who participated receiving a beautifully woven cloak of immunity.
Yes, this immunity means anyone in the child welfare system has the "Right To Lie" even though it subsequently ruled that it did not, but, heck, who is going to enforce the ruling when I just pointed out the deficiencies in the rules of construction with both CAPTA and ASFA, in all three branches.
Besides, this lawsuit which is still before Judge Edmonds, has never, not one, nope, ever mentioned Michigan Children's Institute or Medicaid Fraud in Child Welfare, but I have and you can either read it in the preserved court record or click the links, below.
Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon:
As you know, improving our child welfare system
to better protect children and to meet the benchmarks was a
top priority for my predecessor, Maura Corrigan. I'm here
today to reiterate what an important priority this is for
me, and also is a top priority for my boss.
What our Children's Services Agency does is a
critically important part of the MDHHS mission; to provide
opportunities, services, and programs, to promote a healthy,
safe and stable environment for residents to be self
sufficient.
The State Journal's reports documented allegations from current and former state workers in Ingham, Barry, Marquette, Monroe, Muskegon, St. Clair and Wayne counties. Workers said supervisors are under intense pressure to get out from under the terms of a decade-old federal lawsuit filed by a New York advocacy group over a string of child deaths.
The Michigan Department of Health & Human Services gave its first substantive answers to the allegations on June 8, during a previously scheduled hearing on the federal lawsuit.
Throwing dead babies is an effect I coined during the 2006 campaign of Governor Jennifer M. Granholm.
Michigan had just gone through a horrific year where Michigan Supreme Court Justice Maura Corrigan had put on a television campaign for position of Chief Justic, asking everyone to call in and thank her for her wonderful work in foster care and adoption while almost 100 children had died in state care that year.
Gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos during his campaign, began slinging the names of the murdered foster and adoptive children against Granholm.
This national child abuse propaganda machine has again pumped up its political agenda without recognizing its public obligation to present the facts.
Similarities of this report are eerily reminiscent to other, less funded groups who are dedicated to bringing awareness to the higher occurrences of deaths of children in foster care than in the child's original home.
The report does shed light on the lack of transparency when dealing with investigations but the report, itself is far from transparency, itself, as it does not clarify "child abuse and neglect deaths".
The only indication to their application of child deaths is in the report's use of a graph of child deaths in the top "Rich Democracies". In this sense, child abuse and neglect would refer to poverty, making the terms fungible.
If this is the case, the report should note that the United States has the highest child mortality and child poverty rates compared to all industrialized nations; hence, poorer children are more likelier to be abused.
The report, sadly, neglected to acknowledge Medicaid fraud, waste and abuse in child welfare, and its ancillary programs of Title IV-B and Title IV-E, further demonstrating the lack of accountability of this advocacy group.
I speculate this report was a collaborative effort of imperialistic morality parade drummers who are rallying for the existence of their operations utilizing the "throwing dead babies effect."
Recently, legislation was introduced to reauthorize Child Abuse Prevention Treatment Act (CAPTA). As I believe this is the case, this report, along with the organization, is a textbook example of how a non-profit structured for educational purposes crosses the line to perform lobbying activities.
I am absolutely against the re-authorization of CAPTA.
I support the expansion of Medicaid to include all child welfare programming. Removal of a child would no longer be based upon poverty indicators, sugar glazed as the term neglect. The mechanisms for regulation are already in place and would only have to be encouraged.
Since this report did not reference or cite its sources, I will do it for them:
Every Child Matters is pleased to announce the release of the second edition ofWe Can Do Better: Child Abuse and Neglect Deaths in America, a compelling report that explores the growing crisis of child maltreatment fatalities in America. The report, however bleak, offers hope and insight on how to reduce these tragic, yet preventable fatalities.
The report recognizes the growing number of American children who die each year as a result of child abuse and neglect -- nearly 2,000 -- and several studies suggest that this is a low estimate of the actual number of deaths. Among rich democracies, this rate is 3 times higher than that of Canada and 11 times higher than that of Italy...more
In the spirit of fuchsia, I have provided a quick synopsis of the hearing: TRANSLATION: THE FEDERAL COURT SYSTEM IS CRUSTY, DUSTY, AND RUSTY.
The Judicial Conference is more focused on maintaining its current status quo operations rather than the administration of justice.
Southern boarder states do not have enough federal judges to process immigration cases or even do the 9th Circuit appeals.
Federal courts are having issues with people filing too many lawsuits.
Corporations are hustling federal courts because they can afford to prolong litigation, in what I call frivolous and
Judges, who are far removed from reality and technology, are delegating to magistrates, who are far removed from reality and technology, who in turn, delegate to clerks, who are far removed from reality and technology, who cite legal precedents, which are far removed from reality and technology.
I know this as a fact. I have watched them use my work for legal research because I am the only one who created databases, specifically for them in mind. My introductory brief on reality and technology in the federal courts is on file with the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.
Feel free to FOIA and let me know what they give you.
Hank Johnson, a former federal judge, demonstrates in his line of questioning how federal judges have absolutely no clue about federal child welfare laws of CAPTA or ASFA. Children removed from parents at the border are automatically placed under the federal auspices of privatized foster care, under the court granted guardianship of corporations, where concurrent planning, adoption planning, is fast tracked under ASFA, and the child is sold adopted under that state's jurisdiction to maximize revenues.
Child trafficking, once crossing the border, morphs into what I like to call, the Trafficking of Tiny Humans, which means these kids are thrown into foster care to be bought and sold using federal and state taxpayer dollars called adoption.
Many of these child traffickers, called "coyotes", who do not get caught, dupe parents, spirit children away, and take them across the border to be sold as slave labor, whether it is for sex or free labor, or both.
What would you do if you had your child Legally Kidnapped? Perhaps, that is why some people will continue to "illegally cross the border" over and over again.
Poverty is the crime of child abuse and neglect, which automatically makes illegally crossing the border with a child a crime, not a misdemeanor, justifying federal prosecution and placement of the child in foster care.
Mr. Samuel J. Kahn of Kent Holdings and Affiliates did not submit written testimony. Hmmmm....
Issa does not get Article III Judgeships and "zero-tolerance". Some of these "illegal border crossers" cannot just up and go back home if you snatch their kids. Issa never did like me. I smashed him on child welfare about 10 years ago. Still looking for that interview. Smooches!
This is a very well written, introductory peice on the child welfare system, specifically the foster care component.
The article fails to mention the biggest crack in the system: Medicaid fraud.
This is why children fall through.
There is too much money involved and the system is too big to fail.
Besides that, the feds do not have jurisdiction to come in and audit these non-for-profit religious institutions.
#Time2AuditrGod
The Child Welfare System: Kids Falling Through the Cracks
Multiple public and private agencies make up the child welfare systems across the country. Although the primary responsibility falls on the shoulders of state governments, the federal government supports the states through funding, program development, and legislative initiatives. Both state and federal governments are essential to the process. The child welfare system’s mission is to create safe and permanent environments for children and to strengthen family units. It is an immense and complex project. So immense and complex, however, that important aspects of child safety fall through the cracks. Oversights are often devastating. Read on to learn more about the challenges that abate the U.S. Child Welfare Systems’ mission.
Receive and investigate reports of possible child abuse and neglect, provide services to families that need assistance in the protection and care of their children, arrange for children to live with kin or with foster families when they are not safe at home, and arrange for reunification, adoption, or other permanent family connections for children leaving foster care.
Public and private agencies also work to provide services such as “in-home family preservation services, foster care, residential treatment, mental health care, substance abuse treatment, parenting skills classes, domestic violence services, employment assistance, and financial or housing assistance.”
First, a concerned person reports suspected child abuse or neglect. More often than not, this person is a “mandatory reporter,” a person required by law to submit a report if he or she suspects child abuse or neglect. Mandatory reporters include individuals who have regular contact with children such as social workers, school personnel, healthcare workers, mental health professionals, child care providers, medical examiners or coroners, and law enforcement officers. Approximately 48 states and other territories have mandatory reporter laws. In many states, every person, regardless of occupation, is legally required to make such a report.
After a report is submitted, it is either “screened in” or “screened out” depending on the amount of information and sufficiency of evidence. If a report is screened in, a Child Protective Services Caseworker will come in and assess the situation. He or she will talk to the child and relatives. If a child is suspected of being in immediate danger, then the child will be brought to a shelter, foster home, or relative’s house while the investigation plays out. At the end of the investigation, the case worker will typically either find the case unsubstantiated or substantiated depending on the evidence. The agency can then initiate a court action if it feels the authority of juvenile court is required during the trial in order to remove the child from the home. In substantiated cases where there has been child abuse or neglect, the threat is labeled as low, moderate, or high. Depending on the severity of the case, the caseworker may recommend community-based resources and service systems, or recommend complete removal of the child from the home. Low-risk parents are often provided support or treatment services, while high-risk parents may be indicted on criminal charges.
CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM CHALLENGES
Many of the most severe challenges in the Child Welfare System lie in the Foster Care System. Nearly 400,000 children in the United States are living in the foster care system without permanent families.
Children in group placements are at greater risk of abuse and arrest. One in seven children in the child welfare system lives in group placements and 40 percent of those children do not have “documented behavioral or medical need that would warrant placement in such a restrictive setting.” Young people stay in group placements for an average of eight months, although research recommends a stay of three-to-six months for those who require residential treatment. Kids in group placements also suffer from an inappropriate mixing of ages. According to theSociety of Research in Child Development, young adults are more susceptible to peer influence. Younger children can suffer from being placed with older kids with behavioral health problems.
Insufficient Background Checks
A major source of controversy in the child welfare system is adequate background checks performed by case workers. There is an overload of cases of foster parents with a criminal background taking in children. For example, Oklahoma is currently under investigation for child abuse and neglect in its foster care system. A recent report, conducted after the death of a 20-month-old boy in foster care, showed thatless than 5 percent of the 125 cases investigated for abuse in Oklahoma contained criminal background checks for foster parents.
Caseloads
Caseworkers across all child welfare systems consistently have extensive caseloads. The more cases, the less time and effort a caseworker can devote to each individual child. It also minimizes the ability for a child and caseworker to develop a meaningful relationship, and caseworkers are sometimes blamed for child abuse or neglect in foster homes under their supervision. For example, Catherine Davis, a family services agency caseworker in New Jersey, was suspended after seven-year-old Faheem Williams was found starved to death in his home. His two brothers were also malnourished and burned. Davis had somewhere between 99 and 107 cases. The Child Welfare League of America recommends that “workers carrying ongoing in-home protective services cases…carry no more than 15-17 families.”
Aging Out
When foster children turn 18, they age out of the child welfare system. Many of these children move forward with very little or no support at all. In 2012, 23, 396 foster children aged out of the system. Almost 40 percent were homeless or couch surfing, and 48 percent were unemployed. Fifty percent experienced issues with substance abuse, while 60 percent of the young men had been criminally charged. Nearly a quarter of those aging out did not obtain a high school diploma or GED, and only six percent had graduated with a two or four-year degree.
CASE STUDY: ACTIVE CLASS-ACTION SUIT MD. VS PERRY
On behalf of the children in the Texas child welfare system, the Children’s Rights Law Firm of New York, along with co-counsel Haynes & Boone, Yetter Coleman and Canales & Simonson, filed suit against the state of Texas for “violations of plaintiff children’s constitutional rights, including their right not to be harmed while in state custody and their right to familial association.”
M.D. is one representative of the plaintiff children. She entered foster care at the age of eight. Although initially sent to live with relatives, she returned to state custody after sexual abuse occurred in the home. She moved to multiple placements, including group institutions, where her mental health suffered. When the original complaint was filed, M.D. “lived in a restrictive short-term therapeutic placement with no visitors or basic privileges.”
The main focus of Children’s Rights in this suit is to give children in the Texas welfare care system permanency, whether obtained from reunification with relatives or adoption. Children’s Rights primarily looked at cases where the child had been in foster care for a minimum of 12-18 months, as after a year to a year and a half, foster children’s success rates plummet. Chances for emotional and psychological distress increase and they often act out and exhibit unruly behavior, severely ruining their chances for adoption/permanency. Children without a permanent home age-out without any kind of safety net.
The suit was filed March 29, 2011 and is currently in progress. Children’s Rights is currently in litigation with eight other states as well.
CONCLUSION
Child welfare systems are broken and reform is inevitable. Travesties occur way too often and are not publicized enough. We need to give foster children a fighting chance to survive on their own after 18. That starts with creating a safe and permanent environment for them while in the welfare system. Turning 18, after a lifetime of struggle and little support, does not make an adult. Fortunately, there are multiple advocacy groups across the country on a mission for reform
.
There seems to be major possible implications here on how the nation views child abuse and neglect, but then again, this could just a cursory assessment.
Traditionally, poverty has been codified by the States as neglect, leading to a distorted perception in actual intentionally perpetrated harms. As poverty increases, there is a direct and parallel relationship in the increase of child neglect cases. David G. Gil, a pioneer in the constructing the relationship between poverty and child abuse, was the streamlining catalyst for the States to generate policies to qualify for the funding of Child Abuse Prevention Treatment Act(CAPTA) programs.
CAPTA, being an entitlement program, established eligibility criteria based on meeting the Social Security Title IV-A poverty means test. Simply put, one must be impoverished to qualify for child welfare programming.
In the wake of the nation's economic challenges, factors such as unemployment, have led to an increase demand in social assistance. Since social assistance program funding has been shifted to child welfare, the only opportunity for assistance in the realms of keeping children in the community, as opposed to removals, and providing human assistance to meet basic living requirements (i.e. affordable housing, transportation, education, medical) has been through entrance of foster care.
These new Medicaid guidelines and waivers present States with opportunities to shift social philosophies from the criminalization of poverty to the promotion and securing of the general welfare of the nation by the amelioration of fraud in child welfare.
Louisiana has launched an new approach to combating Medicaid fraud, waste and abuse. Perhaps the new CMS guidelines can accentuate the Louisiana initiatives. I will be monitoring this national pilot program to stop Medicaid fraud. It is my belief that Louisiana's initiatives may prove effective in the realms of improving child welfare Targeted Case Management compliance and reducing unnecessary state placements of children out of the home.
In child welfare errors are deaths, but you cannot do any summations on data of rapes, beatings, tortures, lab rat drugging is no one is going to talk about it.
Just as Nancy Edmunds and her SACWIS issues.
Making random phone calls, mailings, or standing on the corner hustling people to take these polls just so they can get a paycheck, does not make for the best sampling methodologies when you can just make up whatever you want the hustle for more money.
FUN FACT! THE FIRST CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES LEGISLATION OF CAPTA CAME FROM A POLL AT NORTHLAND MALL, SOUTHFIELD, MICHIGAN. IT IS KNOWN INTERNATIONALLY AS THE MICHIGAN MODEL.
What we have here is the very first Medicaid fraud scheme in child welfare.
To begin, I wish to state that this report does not demonstrate any criminal nor egregious activities by the U.S. Department of Defense in dealing with children.
On the contrary, this report basically shows a snapshot of social stigma for the time.
During the late 1960s, our military men were having kids in Vietnam, but, unfortunately, due to the fact that the U.S. was just beginning to understand the demand for civil rights, these children were not only left behind, but were not considered legitimate because the parents were never married nor would the U.S. recognize marriage with a non-U.S. citizen.
Back home in the U.S. children of unmarried children were often referred to as "bastards" where the mother was shunned by society as being sexually promiscuous in terms like "tramp, whore, floozy, slut, sinner".
When these women would conceive, they would be spirited away to special places to have the child in secret and be forced to put the child up for adoption.
Well, it seems there were brave members of our armed forces and a few bold congressional constituents who stood up and spoke out on caring for their own blood dependents by putting the children through foster care.
Foster children were not recognized as legal dependents to become eligible for medical care.
The amendment to 10 U.S.C. 1972(2) provided for the legal description of a foster child to be a dependent for purposes of accessing medical care, or what would become known as Medicaid.
This action was one of the first major funding mechanisms for the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 (CAPTA).
Today, we still shun the bastards born out-of-wedlock and the poor by putting the kids in foster care, through tax exempt, Christian, "revenue maximization" organizations and other generic foundations through complex fraud schemes which fund political campaigns.
So, in the instance of CAPTA, or rather the public adoption system out of foster care, the state became the holder of the chattel, or rather the legal grant of custody and guardianship through possession of the birth certificate, or rather the state attorney general possessed the powers of parens patriea, better recognized as parental rights.
With these powers of ownership and the Social Security Number of the ward of the state, the States could now bill Medicaid, the largest funding source for foster care.
CSC and its partner corporations administers the federal funding for child welfare, operates the child placing agencies and foster care programs, and trains Child Protective Services, maintaining databases of personal and medical information (Medicaid) for biometric purposes in predictive modeling of what they call "behavior".
Databases (SACWIS PRISM) always begin with the kids because no one cares and it is all too small to fail.
Besides, the Greeks started keeping track of its child populations to predict future troop levels; we do it now to build prisons, also.
TRANSLATION: The feds are finally cracking down and enforcing child welfare funding requirements. Maryland got busted fraudulently billing and now they are crying the blues about not being able to fund its failing foster care program
But wait, there is more.
The feds are expanding Medicaid to provide those services the states were suppose to provide to keep the kids out of foster care and in the home. That was part of the CAPTA reauthorization.
The CAPTA reauthorization is reducing the funding of foster care and channeling the money to the waivers for home-based and community services, funded through Medicaid.
Family Preservation Services has, over and over, demonstrated to be inefficient. One reason is because there is no working definition of family. The current philosophies of what is considered a family exclude many who would otherwise benefit from services. If a family is does not consist of a married man and woman, it becomes a platform to advocate for the removal of children, as it is deemed "environmental neglect".
Family Preservation Services have been redesigned to address the social ills of society (i.e. homelessness, lack of affordable housing, education, employment, medical resources) and are now listed under home-based/community services, a form of reinvesting in society as child protective services has created the climate to leave those in need with no place to seek assistance. The social safety net has been unraveled through out the last decade to direct a stream of children to foster care.
"If you stop snatching kids, we will give you even more money."
This is the general rubric first conveyed in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act federal medicaid assistance participation (FMAP) enhancements. States have received enhanced reimbursement rates for Medicaid for the purpose of reinvesting in society. Repair and care for the health of the community and there will be no need for such expansive and unnecessary services. Something to be thought of as a preemptive common defense of the general welfare of society.
There exists other reasons why funding will be reduced, or as it is presented in the news video, "cut off". Non-compliance and false claims.
Maryland is no saint when it comes to false claims in its child welfare system.
Would you keep pumping money into something that was not working? Unfortunately, Maryland will just have to stop snatching kids and start providing more resources and services back into the community. Otherwise, the state must stop ripping of the taxpayers in the filing of false claims in the name of children.
Federal officials won't reimburse Maryland's Department of Human Resources for nearly $10 million in foster care-related expenses that the state had expected to recoup, according to a legislative audit released Wednesday.
The funds would have paid Maryland for in-home, "pre-placement" services, provided to children with the aim of preventing them from being removed to foster care placement.
The U.S Department of Health and Human Services denied the claim because DHR did not have a process to document that the children it served were in imminent risk of entering foster care, the auditors stated in the report.
The state had spent the money from September to December 2008 with the expectation that it would be paid back.
"We had been claiming these funds for years," said DHR budget director Stafford Chipungu. "They had allowed it before. Now … they became strict."
DHR appealed but was denied in October. Now money from the state's general fund will be used to replace the expected reimbursements gradually over future years as it becomes available, he said.
Chipungu and DHR spokeswoman Elyn Garrett Jones stressed, however, that money would not come from program services. "We don't want it to affect direct operations," he said.
State Sen. James C. Rosapepe, a Democrat and a co-chairman of the General Assembly's joint audit committee, was outraged by the report.
"It's pathetic," he said. "Obviously, every state agency should be making sure that when we're owed money from the federal government for cost-sharing programs we should get it."
Rosapepe, who represents Prince George's and Anne Arundel counties, said he planned to sit down with the legislative auditor and department officials to get more information.
He added that this was particularly troubling for human resources, which "helps people with the least." "Frankly, it's those kind of programs that often get pushed the hardest when we're in tough times, even when the need is the greatest," the senator said.
Auditors recommended that state officials immediately amend their spending plan and submit any eligible expenses to the federal government for reimbursement — as well as submit timely amendments in the future.
In a response included in the audit report, DHR officials said its new state plan for foster care funds is expected shortly. As part of this new plan, the department has taken steps to create a plan to document "candidacy" for foster care. If approved, the state should be able to be reimbursed for pre-placement costs.
"The good news is that we will be able to, going forward, be able to claim these dollars," said J. Gregory Holland, DHR's director of cost allocation and revenue management. "All of these things happening, this created the opportunity to do things the right way."
