SB 6416 was the will of the Senate, but not the House. The House leadership thinks that foster parents should have equal standing when it comes to permanent placement of children. And, that means permanent placement over the relatives if the foster parents were the last ones to have the child or if government thinks it is in the best interest of the child to put the child somewhere else. Keeping in mind all this blog has covered...the lies in court...lies from CASAs....lies from CPS...the not bothering to look for relatives but going straight to the foster program....no, I don't agree with the House.
Yes, we have some very good and well meaning foster parents. For them we can be thankful. But, we also have some who are the end game of government's redistribution of children. It is impossible to know the story of Alexis Stuth (see KING 5.com) and not understand that some very bad things are happening with the support of taxpayer funded government.
I promised you that SB 6416 would not pass as the House amended it and it didn't. Senator Jim Hargrove (D), Chairman of the Human Services and Corrections Committee, and I agree in many, many matters regarding CPS and child placement. Without going into the details of the final days... we would not have passed the bill because the Senate was not going to agree in the House amendments. This bill, with the House amendments, would have actually placed foster parents above relatives! It was a terrible bill with the House amendment. I tried up until the final hour to get Chairman Rep. Ruth Kagi (D)to recede from the House amendments and she would not do that. She favors best interest of the child over relatives and seems to believe that the last one who has the child has the bonding issue sewed up.
After talking with House leaders several things were evident. One is that extremists in the foster movement have the ear of leadership in the House committee. Rep. Roger Goodman (D) was the one who quickly found SB 6416 as a vehicle upon which to amend his wording giving preference to fosters over relatives. Several in the House are close to a foster lobbyist that I know does not represent all foster caregivers.
The House staff is very liberal on this issue. They have influence in the process.
CPS and its leadership does not want to change the status quo. The ombudsman for the department wanted to change the law...but the department didn't want it changed. Denise Revels Robinson did not want it changed.
I am waiting to learn the outcome of some of the language in the bill that may become law. It was amended into another bill. If that bill is signed into law then some of my language in the Alexis Stuth Bill was successful.
On another note...
I have posted a more than usual number of comments over the last couple of days. Others I may hold and bring forward so I can make specific comments where we can all see the message from the reader.
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15 comments:
Ruth Kagi knows the truth. I have watched her now for the last three years as it pertains to DSHS and family rights. She has heard stories on both sides yet she persists on ruling for the abolishment of family ties. She knows how the court works against families and the toxicity that exists within the department.
I don't know what she is thinking but one thing is clear to me. She has fallen in line with Statism and is working hard towards that end. I have my suspicions but will never state them because they are not "politically correct." At one point she worked for grandparent rights then switched up after her husband died. She became frustrated because she couldn't get the bills passed. Now she is the number one enemy of the family here in Washington. She cannot, I repeat, cannot get re-elected again. If family rights do nothing else over the next year,they need to work to take her out of office.
Somebody has to be held accountable for the lives being destroyed. I saw 5 kids "advertised" on the Northwest Adoption Exchange site today that have relatives waiting to take them. The 2 sets of relatives have approved adoption home studies and are being ignored. The 2 different cases are in region 3. They are all older children that are considered "unadoptable". But rather than put these children with the people that already love and want them, they are on display and are very emotionally damaged by the so called "professionals" in this particular region. It gave people hope, at least it did me to have Susan Dreyfus and eventually Denise Robinson to get things in our state straightened out. That`s all we heard. How they were for families being together. If there were to be a change, we would notice and I don`t know about anyone else but it seems to me things are only getting more corrupt. It will never be about the children and what`s best for them. For Governor Gregoire, Susan Dreyfus and Denise Revel Robinson, you will probably never have to experience the loss of a child so it`s just human nature I guess to be able to go about your business and not think about others and their feelings. Can`t you take a little time to think about how the Willards feel? How would you feel if it were you in their shoes? Do you think about Lilly and what is truly the best for her? What about her mother? That`s only one case. I feel children with approved relatives are being ignored strictly because of money. Will family ever come first?
Actually, it is pretty much a done deal in other bills read ENGROSSED SUBSTITUTE HOUSE BILL 1782 that gives preference to whoever has the child the longest. This bill has passed and is now in the governor's office. If the governor passes as written it will affect our case drastically.
Some of the bill is pretty good....however the judicial rules will have to change and I believe the judicial rule makers will try to keep them the same. Those rules don't advocate for 72 hour shelter care hearings to become "trials" whereas this bill suggests that they can. Now they have a "slam bam, thank you mam" approach to the 72 hour shelter care.
Another good feature of the bill is requiring hearsay to have an affidavit although perjury is a protected crime in this state, and for that matter, all states as it pertains to state workers and related agencies. Hearsay is not allowed in criminal matters in the law which is why they have made child removal strictly civil.
I am going to work with the judiciary to get up to snuff on some things.
Jan Smith
Correction on my previous post: The governor did sign the bill last year late so it now is affecting all families with children in foster care this year. If children are in foster care more than six months for three and over you are screwed. Less time (three months) if they are infants. This means that extended family need to move quickly if children are removed by filing a petition for custody while also going through foster care training. Somehow the word needs to get out to parents in the beginning stages. Not sure how to fund that just yet. All extended family need to listen to the training on extended family placement to NOT make the mistakes that they discuss on this and to prepare arguments in court. Here is the link: http://www.dshs.wa.gov/ca/partners/trainingvidClinical.asp
Jan Smith
Recently, my daughter and son-in-law couldn't make the visit, so I, the grandmother asked to have the visit for myself and was denied with the worker stating rather emphatically,"I am not going to waste resources for a partial visit." I didn't ask for a partial visit, I wanted the whole visit that the state was going to pay for anyway and not make up. This is the attitude of the department - that extended family is a waste of resources and there are those in the House that need to get that.
Dear Senator Roach,
I think that this is a shame and throughly agree with you and I know some do not as I have spoken with someone who goes to Olympia almost or maybe everyday and does not seem to understand this either and thinks that at least it would be a step forward for Grandparents. We,my husband and I, do not as we can see that this does put the foster care givers ahead. I think that unless you have some people,that are going through this themselves,to speak on this issue then the ones that are voting on this are not going to understand this either. I think and I may be wrong but unless you have gone through this it is hard for anyone to understand.I know that this is not true in the case of the last people to have the child have a stronger bonding and the Stuth's are a good example of that.I can say in our case that that is not the case either as our Granddaughter has been gone now for 11 months now and we know that she still wants to come back to what she knows in her heart as her home and I just don't think that will ever change,she was just asked the other day by someone else if she wanted to live with her grandmother and grandpa and her answer was "yes". She is our little girl as we have raised her since she was just 3 months old and she was one of the best babies ever to raise since the day that we got her.So even though she has been out of our home for 11 months she still wants to be with us, so there theory does not hold up.The child/children have already bonded with those parents/family that raised them and I don't have any counseling degrees but most people can figure that out.What the department thinks is tn the child's best interest does not always mean that it is.You have some very biased superivisors/higher ups that only want what they want to do and are not willing to change their minds.
As of right now the department does not want us to have our granddaughter and the attorney for her and the CASA,who are glued together and who both very involved with this organization,want her to be adopted outside the family.This is how the department works. It really is all about the money.We do have proof the CASA blantly lied in the adminstrative hearing and fortunately fpr us we have proof of some of her lies.I sure hope that it helps us to get her thrown off of her case and the attorney for her has a conflict of interest and is certainly very biased toward the departments way of thinking,does not want to talk to anyone else who knows our granddaughter much better that the department.
This is a real problem for families and really does need to be resolved. So Senator Roach how can we as families get something done about this? where do we need to go in your opinion to get something accomplished in the right direction for the children sake and their families? Do we need to go to the United States Supreme Court? Slso can we call this Ruth Kagi and ask her to vote yes for this?
Thank you Senator Roach for your time and all that you do to help with this situation.
Grandma in Vancouver
PS You can take this part off if you want or blank out the name, but is Gary Malkasian the lobbist or the extremist for the Foster Care
Who in their right mond would put fosters first? And why? Have they no family they love....or whom loves them?
Senator Roach
...the theft of the daughter from a seattle father who initially trusted the efforts of the department only to realize it was business as usual.... They litterlly manuervered their deceptions thoughout the case. the department has hidden and buried facts of his daughters abuse and neglect while in foster care.
It is unconscienseable that our judicial system allows the "save the children" as a market to profit for those who are employed within it, and for any who would prey upon another as a subhuman, slave or less than a barnyard animal.
only by chance i sat in briefly on another termination where a desperate father, representing himself speaking in broken english, was being made a spectacle during court proceedings by those employed by our state. the witness, a domestic violence counselor, clearly was having fun with this one and they all were receptive.
CPS could care less if a person boiled and ate children they just want to take children by any fraudulent means necesary and traffic in them. Children are a commodity to be profited on.
So true! All about the Federal money. We need to take this to DC to tilt the scales for families First. Obama may just be our ticket. He was raise by his Grandmother, funding needs to be more for relatives than foster. That will be the only way things will change.
What CPS does and the courts condone insults human intelligence...
I wondered why there wasn't any one else in the courtroom with this desperate father, representing himself speaking in broken english,... he felt his public pretender had not been properly defending him and was all alone because he was told that he could not have anyone else in the courtroom with him...that was the termination of his parental rights hearing to take his three children....
Senator Roach,
where do you go next after a public defender does exactly the same cover-up for cps that the last public defender was fired over (and subsequently turned into the state bar association who apparently approves of its attorneys hiding facts of foster child abuse and neglect, perjury forgery and fraud)
The family DC rally is now scheduled for July 23 and 24th. Maybe Pam can be a guest speaker? She won't be in session then.....
You collect your information, join with others who have similar issues with the bar association, then you file a lawsuit against the bar. There are three entities that can be sued in this venue and they are: the county, state, and bar association. None of them have immunity. You also need to get involved with the judicial rules. This is important at this time because they are trying to get standardized rules and these rules give special leeway to therapeutic judges and administrative judges.
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