Why is Lady Justice crying? Family Court decisions do extraordinary damage taking children from hundreds of thousands of loving families and failing those children truly at risk. As Green Party Congressional Candidate for New York District 21, I want to update my prior statements on abuses in foster care and traumas of child custody battles with a statement detailing the immediate and long-term actions we need to take.
Every year, state agencies forcible take about 670,000 children from their homes and kinship networks and place them with strangers. About 85% of these taken children – more than half a million children – should never have been touched by the state. This is a hidden epidemic of taxpayer-funded kidnappings, stolen newborns, forced terminations of parental rights and forced adoptions have reached heartbreaking, national levels. They join children and parents hurt by the win-lose culture of family law when custody decisions force families into the pain of parental alienation.
My previously published Democracy Chronicles articles on the abuses and violations of rights in foster care and family court decisions, and five solution sets for foster care and family court, set the stage for my recent call for expanded attention to all family separations not just those at the southwest border. This statement updates my roadmap for actions in light of the latest events. I demand the following:
- Immediate halt all actions of state agencies that separate children from families and kinship networks, without physical evidence of abuse, including ex parte orders without a hearing and all contested TPR (Termination of Parental Rights) and contested adoption proceedings; halt all adoption and guardianship bonuses
- Implement Family First Prevention Services Act and shift taxpayer funds away from forced separation of children from family and kinship networks to providing services, resources and opportunities to at-risk families; fund family advocate programs
- Transform agencies and change federal legislation to stop $50 billion for-profit foster care system; develop and fund models for independent child/family/advocate/agency case reviews including forced TPRs since 1990
- Call for Congressional Hearings on Adoption and Safe Families Act including detailed accounting of child whereabouts and impact of child separations; focus testimony on children and parents
- Call for Congressional Hearings on shared parenting, parental alienation and the harms of outdated family and custody law
Called “the Government Mechanic” when I ran for President as an independent candidate in 2016, I am an organizational psychologist by training. I excel as an architect of solutions to complicated problems. I hope you will join me and the Family Forward Project in this fight for children’s rights and to transform family law.
Amanda says
September 27, 2018 at 2:05 pmThis will be a great move forward and it will assist and oversee all of the organizations that are truly Trafficking children through Organizations when the Funding does not allow for adoption incentives to continue raising per child each year.
I fully support what you do and from a Parent fighting false allegations that has had my foamy separated for 2 1/2 years. Thank you for recognizing the Childrens cry.
God bless you with all you do.🙏💚
Adrian Tawfik says
September 27, 2018 at 7:54 pmIt looks like a reasonable set of solutions for a terribly serious problem. Good luck in your election Lynn! Vote Green in New York’s District 21 on November 6!
Carolyn says
September 27, 2018 at 9:57 pmAs a family fighting Medical Kidnapping of military children, I agree with the agenda. I would also do away with Child Abuse Specialists in Children’s Hospitals across the US. The agencies and judges use only medical information from that person and totally ignore medical proof of no medical issues from other highly qualified medical experts and geneticists.
mary brown says
September 29, 2018 at 4:00 pmPlease please please get your facts right!!
1. Your 670,000 figure is WRONG. I’ve seen you use that before with the comment 670,000 were served but that means received service, not like were served a subpoena. According to afcars 2016 figures 273,539 children entered foster care. Of those about 30 percent were placed with relatives making that appx 190,000 placed with strangers.
2. the 85 percent figure is subjective, but I suspect you are taking the figure of cases reported to cases substantiated but that is totally different from saying that 85 percent of children that were taken into foster care should not have been. If you have figures to show where you arrived at that figure I would be interested in seeing that. Studies that I have seen show that the about 1/4 of removals are questionable and another 1/4 could have benefited from family services. I do agree that about 80 percent of the stated reasons are ‘neglect’ but that can be anything from letting your child play outside to severe drug abuse.
I am TOTALLY on board with CPS reform and agree with many of your suggestions. BUT PLEASE get your figures right!!
mary brown says
September 30, 2018 at 7:04 pmFrom the 24th AFCARS report, where you are getting the 670,000 figure, if you hover over it you will see:
“This is an estimated count of all children who were in the public foster care system during the FFY. This number is the sum of two mutually exclusive groups of children: the children who are already in care on the first day of the fiscal year (as of October 1) and the children who enter foster care during the year. An individual child is counted only once for each year.”
This tells you CLEARLY that the 670,000 is a combined total of children already in care plus those taken into care.
Here’s the link. Check it out for yourself.
https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/resource/trends-in-foster-care-and-adoption