Over the last decade, Guilford County has worked very hard to attempt to find parents and families who are seeking to house foster children. It’s often very difficult to find quality matching family environments for the children in the county’s Foster Care Program overseen by the Guilford County Division of Social Services.
Now, the county is implementing a new way to hook up foster children with foster parents: Guilford County DSS is hosting an Art Exhibit & Foster Parent Info Session, where those who would like to foster children will be able to view art made by the kids.
The county is obviously hoping the artwork warms up some hearts and helps establish a connection with the kids.
The art exhibit and information session will be held on Saturday, April 13 in the first-floor common area of Four Seasons Town Centre in Greensboro. It will run from noon until 4 p.m.
Those interested in becoming foster parents will have a chance at the event to chat with DSS staff, learn about the foster care program and the process, ask questions of county staff – and also to enjoy artworks created by the young artists in foster care.
DSS staff are so optimistic about the event that they already have plans to host another Art Exhibit & Foster Parent Info Session next month.
That one will be held on Saturday, May 11, also at the Four Seasons Town Centre.
The county is hoping to get some good media hits out of the event in order to raise awareness across the county of the Foster Care Program and the need for more foster families. To that end, the county is making some existing foster parents available for interviews with reporters at the April 13 event.
I wish Rhino and a lot of other news sources and our leaders would talk about the federal monies DSS agents get when they even falsely allege a child has been neglected. And if they falsely allege neglect or abuse, therefore basically kidnapping children for which they get federal funds, there’s no penalty for these statute and civil rights violations. The violators have immunity protection.
We know these gov’t agent abuses occur probably only because one lawyer in Western, NC got so many cases where DSS agents literally kidnapped kids, tricking the often poorly educated parents into signing outside their home placement agreements, threatening them with losing their children forever if they refuse.
Certainly had it not been for the AP picking up on this, this injustice and criminal behavior of state agents would have continued for who knows how long, stealing children from parents, often because of poverty or health needs.
My point is, there would be no worries about having to find so many foster families if DSS agents would simply follow the statutes that give and restrict their authority in cases of suspected neglect or abuse. In other words, outside an emergency, the law dictates that a hearing must be held prior to any child custody determination – UCCJEA and NCGS 50A-205 (a). DSS must provide evidence to back their allegations, and the allegations have to meet NCGS &7B definitions of neglect, serious neglect or abuse and further comply with NCDHHS’s screening tools.
This law (the NC Juvenile Code – 7B) is routinely violated by DSS agents, based on many testimonies I have heard, court cases (usually in other states where there are lawyers who actually take on such cases) and what I have personally witnessed, and yet you cannot usually — especially in NOrth Carolina – succeed in suing these criminal agents – because they are protected by what is supposed to be qualified immunity, but in practice it is more like absolute immunity.
If you try to sue the state in federal court, for all the civil rights and statute violations committed up to that point, the judge or magistrate will tell you that you can’t sue the state without its permission. When you ask why in the world the state would give you that permission, you get no answer.
But you can sue the agency for which the violating agent works via an NC Tort Claim (this is the permission I was asking about ) — that is IF you can find out in time about such an option that no one – not the NC Lawyer referral service or anyone else working for the state of the federal government – will inform you of.
Even then, despite the NC Supreme ruling in Chisum regarding accrual of the claim and discovery, the Industrial Commission won’t allow discovery to determine when the statute of limitations runs. They decide that it runs when one injury occurs, disregarding any discovery of even fraud you become aware of afterward – even if it involves something as egregious as neglect to the level of fraud on the court. Even if you could not have sued for this latter discovery of violating yet another statute until you became aware of that violation.
So what we have here, is an unacceptably cruel and unusual hurdle for parents to protect their innocence and their family bonds. when their children are taken by state agents in violation of the parents’ rights or DSS’s legal authority to do so,
Certainly some children need protection, but that is usually not what DSS claims – they, more often than not, allege neglect, which, even if true, is often due to the parents needing assistance, not condemnation or false, unfair allegations — allegations that more often than not – DO NOT MEET THE NCGS 7b legal definitions of neglect.
It is a fact, that DSS can be strapped for funding to help parents in need of assistance so they can keep their child home and avoid the well-studied negative consequences of putting children in foster care unnecessarily. The government provides far more funds to these agencies for removing children and adopting children than it does to help parents keep them at home — where the majority who have been taken belong.
It is also a fact that removing a child from his/her biological family is certain to cause trauma to that child and often that trauma can have far-reaching and long-term consequences; therefore child removal should be a last-resort solution. In practice it is NOT!
And it is completely unethical for the NCDHHS to claim on its website that it is its goal to keep families together, because based on many testimonies, when NCDHHS is informed of agency violations, with provided evidence that their agents have violated the laws and civil rights of parents and children – NCDHHS makes fraudulent investigations and reports. We have county agents repeatedly violating laws and rights and a state agency that is supposed to provide oversight, not only ignoring these heinous and damaging violations, but lying in their reports about what happened or didn’t.
How can we expect DSS agents in this state to obey the laws and respect parents’ and families’ rights if there is no oversight with integrity?
It is just as important to expose these routine violations of the Juvenile Code and what can only be described as kidnappings by government agents as it is to seek loving foster families for the actually very few children that NEED to be removed from abusive environments.
Many violated parents will testify that their children were taken from them over false allegations of neglect and then placed by DSS agents with drug addicts, alcoholics and/or otherwise dangerous, and truly abusive foster parents.
With a couple of exceptions, the state legislators did a good job passing the laws that make up the NC Juvenile Code. The laws balance the needs for children with the rights of parents and their children. If DSS agents would OBEY THE LAW, they would be less desperate to find foster families to place children they never should have removed from their homes in the first place.
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform has documented the harm done by unnecessarily removing children from their biological families and the many violations of due process committed by DSS agents and the courts, and it has been calling for reform for years. It’s time for the press to LISTEN. Because the judges sure aren’t!
Why is federal money involved in state DSS? What is the criteria for receiving this money and how much money has the various DSS agents in NC received in the past year? Vaughn, you state “agents” receive federal money. Since “agent” is considered a “person,” are you saying individuals receive federal money?