Es su CASA mi CASA? I don't think so; at least it wasn't in our case.

Today I saw that  friend of mine had become a fan of the Facebook Cause that supports the National Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program.  On the National CASA web page I found this quote:  "The joy of being involved as a voice for a child needing a safe and permanent home or helping a family to regenerate and become parents  is like Christmas every time!"—CASA volunteer Freddy W. Baugh writing on National CASA’s Facebook page.  (Italics added)

As a parent who, to this day, still feels very victimized by my family's experience ten years ago in what I can only describe as the meatgrinder of the Child Protective Services - Dependency Court system in Orange County, California, I initially bristled at reading that information.  Not because my friend did anything to intentionally hurt me, because he certainly did not.  I am sure that he is just trying to do something positive for the world and for children. 

My reaction is partly frustration that I still do not know what more I can do other than drumming up support for a wonderfully effective organization, The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, http://www.nccpr.org/ , through my own Facebook Cause, "Getting Child Protection Right".  And it's also partly frustration and, yes, resentment, that despite the presence of a CASA volunteer in our courtroom, no one from CASA ever spoke to me or to my wife.  I wish they had.

Looking at the phrase above, "helping a family to regenerate and become parents", presupposes that a family has stopped being a family and parents have stopped being parents.  But how does that happen?  In our case, it happened because no one in the system bothered to investigate us in any depth prior to taking action to separate parents from children.  It happened becuase there is no CASA that is there for parents.  Oh, of course there is an attorney, but our attorney (or, in our case, attorneys, plural, because of a potential legal conflict of interest between my wife and myself, despite no REAL conflict) were not able to get the court to really see how unbelievably we parents were being mistreated by the system until a hearing that took place some nine months from the time our boys were taken into custody.  NINE MONTHS.  Do you know what effect nine months of nights away from our kids did to the course of my wife's multiple sclerosis?

I feel the pain of parents who write to me through "Getting Child Protection Right".  Their pain is my pain.  No doubt they could use a CASA, too.

I think I'll share this blog entry with my friend.  I think he'll understand.







 

Happy Birthday to Holly, and A Loving Tribute to the memory of Dr. Stanley van den Noort, M.D.

Today is my friend Holly's birthday. She is a physician, wife, mother, cancer survivor. Despite the fact that we have only seen each other one time in our lives, she is a very special friend who came into my life during a most difficult time. We live many time zones apart and before this day passes, I want to send her my heartfelt good wishes on the occasion of her completion of yet one more solar circumnavigation.
Happy Birthday, Holly.

* * *

http://sciencedude.freedomblogging.com/2009/09/18/legendary-uci-researcher-van-den-noort-dies/57369/

Stan was my wife’s neurologist for almost twenty years, and since I took her to almost all of her visits with him, we became good friends and allies in managing her battle against the chronic progressive nature of MS. He treated her through the remission that accompanied her second pregnancy and the nursing of our baby and watched our two little sons grow up, as we usually brought them to his office at UCI.

One afternoon In 1999, the OC Department of Child Protective Services took our boys from their elementary school in Irvine to Orangewood Children’s Home on allegations of abuse against me and failure to protect against my wife

Three days later, after a CPS in-home investigation and evaluation, which included full disclosure of my wife’s MS and my spousal caregiving and parenting role, we reported for a hearing before an OC pro tem dependency court commissioner after CPS formally agreed in writing that our sons could return home. Our attorney told us that such agreements were rare and only given in those cases where CPS regarded parents highly and judged them as low risk.

At that hearing, after objection to the agreement by an attorney from the contracted law firm representing the children, the pro tem commissioner imposed an additional requirement by court order: “Father not to be sole caregiver of the minor.” (sic)

That order was neither discussed nor debated in open court and no one raised the issue of my wife’s MS and my caregiving role.

That judicial indifference to the presence of the disease of MS in a family and lack of discussion by any of the attorneys present created a situation that made it impossible for us to comply with the court order. There were times when my wife had to lie down for a nap when I was the only other adult at home with the children. I clearly explained that to social workers who visited our home, whose response was that we were therefore in violation of the court order and would consequently lose the children.

I explained the situation to our attorney and implored him to seek a modification of the court order, because MS prevented us from being able to comply. He told me that he attempted to do so, but failed.

The inevitable happened. CPS took our boys away again and this time placed them in a “sibling assessment facility”.

During this time, Stan, who had known our family for some ten years, went so far as to write a letter to the dependency court on our behalf. He knew what kind of parents we were and he was unfailingly supportive. It was incredible to him and to us how lack of awareness of the disease and its effect on a family could be so ignored by officialdom.

My wife’s MS definitely worsened under the stress caused by the emotional pain of having our boys taken away. Stan did what he could to help us. He was a wonderful physician and a great friend. Our boys finally were allowed to come home ten and one half months later and the court finally dismissed the dependency case in December, 2000.

Through relapses, remissions and exacerbations, Stan was always there. He got my wife into a late-stage clinical trial for Copaxone after her body rejected beta interferon, and she remains on that injectable medication today. That may be the reason she is not in a wheelchair full-time after some thirty years of living with MS.

Stan was a wonderful clinician and researcher, a great professor and dedicated dean. But to us, he was a beloved healer and friend, advocate and ally, and rock of support. We have missed him for the two years since his brain injury, and now we will miss him forever.

May his memory be a blessing to all who knew and loved him, and may our story be of comfort to his family, especially his beloved wife, June.

Getting Child Protection Right

It's been some time since I've posted here. In the interim, my kids got me to join Facebook. Shortly thereafter, I established a Cause there with the same name as the title of this post. One purpose of that cause is to raise funds for The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, a non-profit corporation based in Northern Virginia, whose executive director is Richard Wexler.

When we were in the meatgrinder of the CPS system, I really wanted someone to help us get out of it, and naturally I went to the Internet for information. But now, with the benefit of the passage of time, I know that the real solution to how we, as a society, handle issues of child abuse and neglect must come on the policy level that will influence state legislators to take the action necessary to make the reforms that children and families so need and deserve.

Here in California, where state finances are in turmoil, this could be an opportunity for reform ideas to take root. If there could be a non-governmental alternative to addressing cases of child abuse/neglect, one involving extended families, friends and support communities, what a different experience children and families in crisis would have.