New York State Office of Family and Children's Services: no confidentiality agreements are sought from "trainees" before disclosing to them parents' confidential information and no procedures exist preventing re-disclosure

On November 4, 2016, I have filed a Freedom of Information Request with the New York State Office of Family and Children's Services (NYS OCFS), after that office denied me access to a "training video" because it contained a confidential "identifiable" information from a certain family.

In that FOIL request, I asked for copies of confidentiality agreements from those to whom that information WAS shown and for consent of the family to have their information shown to a 242 "trainees".

Within 10 days, I received a reply from NYS OCFS.

Here it is, in its full glory.

I will remind my readers what I was asking for in that FOIL:

So, since NYS OCFS claims it has NO RECORDS "responsive" to my FOIL request, that means that NYS OCFS admits that:

1) The 242 "trainees", including judges, CPS workers and attorneys and private attorneys who were shown a video on November 18, 2014 that NYS OCFS did not allow me to see because it allegedly contained "identifiable private" information about a family or a child were shown that same video without being required to sign a confidentiality agreements;

2) NYS OCFS released confidential information to whoever created that video without a contract for creating that video - so, that video may very well have been an investigative video from a real CPS/police case, shown to the whole wide world without consent of either the parents, or the parents' attorneys, and possibly shown to the parents' opponents in litigation, neighbors, competitors in business or judges who never had, and never supposed to have access to that case;

3) NYS OCFS did not follow the very law that it used to deny me access to the video and did not issue a prior written approval for the use of private information contained in the video for research and training;

4) that NYS OCFS did not seek consent of the family whose information was, on the one hand, confidential for release through FOIL, but not confidential to be shown to 242 people who had no legal grounds to see that video, and had no restrictions on redistribution of its contents; and, as the most important information, that

5) NYS OCFS does not have any policies, rules or procedures tracking the once-disclosed confidential information and seeing how that information was further re-disclosed.

In other words, NYS OCFS admitted that, with all claims of "confidentiality" - for FOIL purposes, it treats information in the Child Abuse Register as disclosable to the "chosen" individuals at a whim, with no care or concern about how it will further be re-disclosed or used.

This is a class lawsuit waiting to happen, and NYS OCFS knows it.

Any parents who have been in the cross-hairs of CPS in New York before November 18, 2014 have a reason to file that lawsuit now, seeking disclosure whether their confidential information was subject to unlimited dissemination to unauthorized individuals, and challenging the lack of procedures in NYS OCFS tracking re-disclosure of such information.

A new FOIL request was filed with NYS Office of Children and Family Services verifying how secure the data in Child Abuse Register is from unwarranted disclosure

Yesterday, I received an answer from New York State Office of Children and Family Services to my administrative appeal of partial denial of my previous FOIL request.

Among other things, the response of NYS OCFS Appellate Officer said the following:

The list of the "training team members" was provided to me in the earlier FOIL disclosure by NYS OCFS, and I publish it here, the list of members starts at Page 3.

New York State Office of Children and Family Services claimed that I am not entitled to access to the video that was used in the training of 242 "training team members" that NYS OCFS also calls "county court-child welfare collaboration" teams.

Note that the "collaboration" is taking place out of court, and is not reported to parties in the specific child protective court cases.

Both ex parte communications and basing judicial decisions on evidence that is obtained outside of court proceedings is illegal in New York.  A judge may not participate in a CPS investigation, and thus any "collaboration" with CPS for judges (and their law clerks) are also illegal.

Yet, among the 242 "trainee members" of Office of Court Administration (OCA)/OCFS "collaborative teams" were multiple judges and law clerks from Family Courts from across New York State, I noted judges and law clerks from Erie, Suffolk, Westchester, Monroe, Oneida, Onondaga Counties, and CPS workers and attorneys from those counties, too.

They were "collaborating".  Ex parte. 

NYS OCFS denied me access to the "training video" at that "training/collaborating session" because allegedly it contained "sufficient detail with respect to one family/child to enable identification and disclosure of the identity of family/child".

SSL 372, the basis of the denial, prohibits access to identifiable information about the child not only to members of the public seeking such information in a FOIL request (I actually did not seek identifiable information about any children, just a video that was shown to 242 people by OCFS), but to anybody who is not authorized to have access to that information from a particular case, and only in some cases, outlined by that statute, such access is allowed, but with additional safeguards.

For example, SSL 372(4-b) allows release of personal identifiable information about the child to a "good faith researcher" - whatever that is - but with a specific approval from OCFS.

If a "training company" producing such a video even qualifies as a "good faith researcher", still there should be a document from OCFS granting approval of their access to confidential information that OCFS acknowledges the video contained - by denying me my FOIL request on that ground.

Moreover, if a CPS or a court attorney or a judge, or a private attorney, have access to a court case, they only have access to a CPS case assigned to that judge, or where that particular CPS agency is a party and where the particular private attorney represents a party.

That is not the case where 242 people, including judges, law clerks, CPS workers and attorneys, private attorneys from across the State of New York, from the Canadian border to New York City, watch the video with identifiable confidential information from ONE case and from ONE location.

Even the judge from the particular Family court which handled that particular case is not allowed to watch that video if that video was not submitted in court, that would be becoming privy to extrajudicial evidence, which is judicial misconduct.

Moreover, a judge may not be present and condone dissemination of private information from the case the judge handles to 241 other people who have no authority under existing laws - SSL 327, SSL 415 and 422, among them - to have access to such confidential information.

I also noted that NYS OCFS, in their effort to duck and further stall my FOIL request, shot themselves in the foot by stating to me that, even though they showed to 242 people video admittedly containing confidential information about a "family/child", do not have lists of members of such "collaborative teams" - in other words, OCFS shows confidential information to people without verifying whether they even belong to any identifiable "groups" that may even begin to claim authority to access that information.

And such recklessness with confidential information by NYS OCFS is a grave concern.

With that in mind, I filed a new FOIL request with NYS OCFS:

Meanwhile, litigants whose CPS cases were handled by New York State Family Courts before November 18, 2014 should be aware that their information may have been used, without their knowledge or consent, to create and then show a video to 242 people that I know of, and could be disseminated further, without any tracking or safeguards.

Litigants are also welcome to review the list of 242 attendees that I published, and see whether "their" judge, law clerk, CPS worker, or CPS attorney were at that not so little "get together", with a potential of fixing cases behind people's backs.

People who had findings of child neglect after this November 18, 2014 meeting by the attendee judges have a legitimate claim that their cases were fixed at the get-together.

I will certainly publish the answer of NYS OCFS to this FOIL request.

Stay tuned.

Do CPS laws and their application raise mortality rates of mothers and newborns?

All around the country, "mandatory reporters" are reporting child neglect and maltreatment (in New York, for example, there are 47 CATEGORIES of professionals who are made mandatory reporters and are criminally prosecutable if they do not report their SUSPICIONS - without any verification of facts - of child neglect or maltreatment).

While the legal definition of a "child" is a "child born alive", many states, influenced to do so by federal grants, introduced and are vigorously applying laws reporting and prosecuting pregnant women for suspicions of using drugs or alcohol during pregnancy - in a sort of "fetal neglect" prosecutions.

A test case was filed last year in a federal court in Wisconsin with a constitutional challenge to an arrest, detention and order of involuntary drug treatment of a pregnant mother who disclosed at a prenatal visit that she did, but no longer does, abuse prescription drugs.

The constitutional challenge survived a motion to dismiss, even though the part of the lawsuit charging individuals for arresting the mother was dismissed on "qualified immunity" grounds, because, since the lawsuit is the first constitutional challenge of its kind, the actors sued allegedly did not have notice that their actions towards the mother are unconstitutional.

The challenge to this statute

is to both facial and as-applied constitutionality.

Note that the fetus of "any gestational age" is under protection of social services in the state of Wisconsin (and many other states) now, indicating that a woman can be arrested, kept in custody and ordered into an involuntary treatment simply because she had unprotected sex yesterday, the woman's right to control over her body and the right to abort that fetus guaranteed to women in the U.S. by the U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v Wade be damned.

Such interest in protection of fetuses is greatly enhanced by federal grants provided to states if they introduce such legislation - as Wisconsin did.

It is common knowledge how important it is for a woman to go to prenatal visits, as early as possible in the pregnancy.

Pregnancy to some women can be a life-threatening event.  Pregnancy may be counter-indicated to women with some medical conditions such as cancer, heart problems, kidney problems, and can severely worsen the mother's medical condition, if not cause the mother's death - along with the unborn child.

A woman can terminate a pregnancy at will in the first trimester, on medical indications during the 2nd trimester and if her life is in danger until late in pregnancy.

Yet, if the woman wants to keep the child, she needs to be able to go to a prenatal visit without a fear of being arrested for her report to the doctor of what drugs she was taking in the past or is taking at the time of the pregnancy.

The recent "double-birth" of a child in Texas - who was first taken out of her mother's womb at 23 weeks to undergo a surgery to remove a tumor that was detected during a routine ultrasound at 16 weeks, put back into the womb, grew to term and was born for the second time - is a miracle of modern medical technology, but that miracle was made possible because the mother went to prenatal visits that helped detect that the unborn child is in need of that surgery.

At the time I was an attorney representing

• mothers who were hunted by social services before birth,
• pregnant mothers whose already-born children were taken away, and social services created conditions for visitation of those children that could cause speedy unattended labor in a mother (remote location, no car, the pregnant mother was supposed to bring heavy bags of stuff - snacks, toys, other items - to satisfy social services that she is a good mother for the children she is visiting), and
• pregnant mothers to whom social services made a declaration that they will snatch the baby as soon as it is born

I saw that social services do not really give a damn as to welfare of that newborn child - otherwise they would not cause the pregnant mother to carry heavy things to remote locations, risking to die, together with the baby, in a premature labor in the middle of a remote field.

Otherwise they will not deprive the child of the mother's breastfeeding.

Yet, federal laws "require", as a condition for the States to receive grants, to speed up snatching of newborns, children of the age most desirable by adoptive parents - and to get that money, safety and wellbeing of mothers and newborn babies is disregarded.

As a blogger, I also received reports from around the country that pregnant mothers targeted by social services forgo not only prenatal visits (as mothers in Wisconsin and other states with similar legislation, I am sure, may be doing now - fearing an arrest if they say, of if the doctor detects anything that makes the doctor suspect that the mother drank alcohol or did drugs at ANY time during her pregnancy). 

Since during prenatal visits the mother can also be given some help with food - in New York, it is WIC (Women, Infants, Children) food assistance for pregnant mothers - not going to such visits may cause the mother to unnecessarily starve herself and the baby she is carrying. If the mother is doing that for fear of being put in jail, such a law is not protecting the unborn children, it is jeopardizing them.

But, as people are reporting to this blog, mothers are forgoing not only prenatal doctor's visits, but also hospital births, too, trying to instead choose a home birth, give birth to the child secretly, in the hope of preventing social services from snatching it.

And that is an extremely dangerous situation.  Labor is unpredictable.  It was the highest cause of mortality of women for centuries before the advent of hospital births - and for a reason.

The mother can have eclampsia, the mother can bleed to death, the labor may not progress fast enough, the baby can be strangled by the cord, the baby can have an incorrect position preventing safe delivery - a number of different things can go wrong, even in a young and very healthy woman.

The following mortality statistics in labor was officially reported.

In 1900,

6 to 9 women per 1000 died in labor, and

100 babies died before reaching 1 year of age

After 1900, infant mortality sharply dropped, with introduction of better sewage, better nutrition and better prenatal care and care during delivery - hospital delivery.

Yet, as recently as in September of 2016, a trend of rising maternal mortality in birth was reported, and moreover, it was reported that maternal mortality in black mothers is 3 to 4 times higher than in mothers of other races.

Under these circumstances, it is criminal to introduce laws that drive pregnant women from doctor's offices and from hospital births to hide themselves and to hide their babies from being seized by social services.

Laws reporting "fetal neglect" and laws allowing prosecution of mothers for taking drugs before birth, are jeopardizing the LIVES of both mothers and babies.

As to infant mortality at birth, we already have an infant mortality rate that is 4 TIMES HIGHER than in the neighboring Canada, 28 infant deaths from birth complications per 100,000 births, as compared to 6.9 infant deaths in Canada per 100,000 births in 2016, up from 23 infant deaths per 100,000 births in 2013.

Compare it with rates of infant mortality reported in the U.S. in 1995, around the same as in Canada now.



What happened since then?

Adoption out of foster care act happened in 1997, giving CPS money incentive to grab children at birth, and intimidating mothers into not going to prenatal visits or hospital births, in order to prevent snatching children by CPS for purposes of adopting them out to the waiting richer adoptive parents.

With such an alarming trend, we as taxpayers need to dedicate funds to encourage pregnant women to obtain prenatal and natal care, and to improve quality of that care - and repeal laws that help intimidate women against going to prenatal visits, and scare pregnant mothers into giving birth in secrecy, out of hospital, with no help, for fear that their babies will be snatched at birth in order to be adopted, in exchange for federal grant money.

THAT is a crime.

Attention parents in Delaware and Otsego Counties - with less children to grab, CPS may fabricate more cases to grab those kids who remain

I wrote recently about demographics in the rural Delaware and Otsego Counties, New York.

In these counties, as I wrote previously, two maternity hospitals closed recently, schools are closing, the entering kindergarten size dropped, and a much-advertised pool project in Delhi NY that got a lot of money in fund-raising finally tanked, for the same reason - there are less people in the area and much less children than even 15 years ago.

Less children may spell a problem not only for social services (job cuts, budget cuts), but also for parents and their children in the area, since children increasingly become at risk of getting swept into the "child protective system", simply to help social services maintain local budgets and prevent those job cuts.

As I wrote before, federal law provides an enormous amount of money for the States, channeled to the local social services, as payment for each child adopted out of foster care.

For the child to be adopted out of foster care, and for the County social services to get that money, the child should first get into that foster care, and that's what child protective cases are for.

As I also wrote in my previous blogs, New York State government refused to answer my FOIL requests about the "slip-of-the-tongue" of the New York State Office of Children and Family Services that judges actually participate as part of investigative and prosecuting teams in cases that they then decide as the sole fact-finders (without disclosure, of course, of their participation as investigators, together with the prosecutors of those cases, social services).

Nevertheless, as much as the government wants to stall answers to certain question (and stalling answers is an answer in itself, of the government's bad faith in the matter), there are some hard facts that are well known.

There are many fewer children in Delaware and Otsego Counties today than at the turn of the century, in 1999, and that is on my own personal knowledge and memory. 

In Delaware County in 1999, the Treadwell school had several kindergarten classes, and the Delhi School had 4 kindergarten classes.  Now the Treadwell school is closed, and there are fewer kindergarten classes in Delhi Schools, as far as I know.

Walton, NY maternity hospital closed.

Oneonta (a bigger city) maternity hospital closed.

These hospitals are businesses (notwithstanding their non-profit basis), and they closed their maternity wards because they were not cost-effective.  In other words, they were losing money.

When a business loses money, it

• restructures;
• relocates;
• cuts services, or
• goes bankrupt.

When the government is in charge of the business, the government cannot go bankrupt - it is supported by YOUR pockets, and the government considers those pockets as having no bottom.  The government will simply FABRICATE business in order to get the same or more amount of money to finance its business operations, and child protective services is a big business in this country.

That the government would rather fabricate its business not to cut budgets, can be shown that, with less children in Delaware County, for example, there are more child protective cases in that same Delaware County - so much more that a new judgeship was established in Delaware County to handle those cases. 

Where the previous judge handled both criminal and child protective cases, now Delaware County has separate judges - Richard Northrup for criminal cases and Gary Rosa for child protective cases.

But, judges cannot create new child protective cases.

They preside over child protective cases that are filed by social services.

And, as a matter of pure logic, when there are less children on the area - there must be the less child protective cases, and the less children in foster care. 

Yet, we have, first, the 2nd judgeship, with the money for that judgeship justified by the claims one judge cannot handle the amount of cases - like the previous judge could.

And, we have personnel lists and budgets of Delaware and Otsego Counties, where there are no budget cuts for Social Services and no personnel cuts either.

So, once again, with less children in the area - who do child protective workers protect?  At taxpayers' expense? What helps local Social Services Departments maintain the same budgets and the same number of workers for years?

Upon my personal knowledge and as a result of my FOIL requests to Delaware County, I know that the County has no anti-nepotism policy (which would prohibit hiring of relatives), and that the County employs the whole clans of relatives in key and inter-related positions, who will not let go of their lucrative positions.

I also wrote about the pet non-profits in the area (Delaware Opportunities Inc. as the leading one) to which millions of dollars out Delaware County budget are funneled, where multiple local government officials are on board. 

The non-profit stalled my FOIL request for lists of employees - but I am sure, after having lived in Delaware County for 16 years and after having worked those 16 years as either assistant to a trial lawyer defending people against local social services, or as an attorney suing social services and defending people against them, that this non-profit hires people the same way local government does - through connections and bloodlines.

All of those people need to be fed.

The source of their livelihood is a child.

One child in the "child protective system" is a unit, by which grant money is measured (how many children the system has "helped").

Normally, child protective proceedings where the government overrides the parents' constitutional right to care and control over their child must be the EXCEPTION, not the rule.

Yet, budgets have to be maintained, and salaries and benefits have to be paid for family clusters of employees who will not allow themselves to be fired or have their benefits cut.

How can budgets be maintained and jobs of social workers (as well as court personnel, social services and police investigators, and budgets of pet nonprofits) be kept at the same level when there are less children, the objects of the alleged "help"?

Of course, by more aggressively trying to make up cases.

I am sure that neither Delaware County nor Otsego County maintains statistics as to how many children were in the County at a given year and how many of them are, at any given year, receiving "services" and are in foster care.

Yet, pure logic suggests that if:

1) the number of children in the county goes down, but
2) the number of child protective cases goes up - to the point justifying a second judgeship, as it happened in Delaware County, and in order to justify the inflated personnel lists where everybody uses for their personal use taxpayer-paid

• cars,
• cell phones (a monthly cell phone bill of Delaware County comes on over 300 pages), 
• computers and printers (and the County does not have even an inventory lists of those, so they can be sold by county employees and proceeds pocketed, like they did with cars, I already reported this to the office of NYS Comptroller, with no response, so I will take further legal action regarding this interesting occurrence, as a taxpayer whose money is used to fund these criminal activities).

When the number of children is less, but the number of child protective cases is more, that means that the PERCENTAGE of neglected and abused children in the population is on the rise.

I wonder if Delaware or Otsego County has such statistics, I doubt it, but such a number could inform taxpayers, as well as parents targeted by social services, to ask the government to investigate the reasons as to why child neglect and abuse of children is on an, undoubtedly, sharp rise.

I am sure that the rate of the rise in percentage of children receiving "services" from Social Services (including foster care and supervision during child protective litigation "services") is correlated with the rate of decline of numbers of children in the area and with the number of additional cases needed for social services to justify maintenance and growth of their agency budgets and the budgets of the local government's pet nonprofits.

And, with these tendencies, and children, statistically, becoming more of a prey of social services, simply to justify and grow their budgets and to keep their jobs, parents need to be aware of the danger and act accordingly. 

The most prudent defense in this case is for parents with children to simply LEAVE the County, and, if possible, the State of New York, and to go to a place with growing instead of declining children's population.

The way CPS operate now, where there is a growing population of children in the area, there is less probability for social services to grab and fabricate a child protective case against a particular child.

An administrative appeal was filed for the denial by New York State Office of Children and Family Services of records upon which it based its published Annual Implementation Plan of 2015-2019

I recently wrote about NYS OCFS stalling and, finally, denial of most of the information I asked for in my FOIL request back in May of 2016.

Here is my appeal:

For the readers - RTATs stand for "Regional Interagency Technical Assistance Teams

and consist of these "representatives"

- note that identities of members of such teams are not disclosed in their description either.  I asked for lists of members of all the RTAT teams, and New York State Office of Children and Family Services pretended it does not have such records, which I considered as an improper denial of my FOIL request and appealed in Point TWO above. 

Here is my further appeal:

Here are my concerns about these records - and the reasons why NYS OCFS is denying my access to them.

• All those "teams" whose lists of members I asked for - and was denied by NYS OCFS - have access to individual information about child protective cases, YOUR cases, New Yorkers.  You might not even know whether Social Services have a file on you, but people whose identities NYS OCFS refused to reveal to me, do.  They get that information, and, unless we know their identities, we will never know where the potential breaches of privacy may have happened, and, if they happened, the victim of such a breach will be forever wondering, where did the particular evil-wisher learnt the supposedly private information.

• The Annual Implementation Plan lists Family Court judges as participants in such teams - and NYS OCFS refuse to reveal their identities.  A similar FOIL request is pending with NYS Office of Court Administration, but I do not expect them to be any more forthcoming than NYS OCFS.  Because, as I said before, they know they are caught red-handed.  The so-called "multidisciplinary teams" in which unidentified Family Court judges (who rule as factfinders, without a jury, on child protective cases) work as INVESTIGATORS of child protective cases.  So, judges participating in such cases also work as INVESTIGATORS, and may be deciding cases not on evidence presented, but on the basis of their agreements with other members of "multidisciplinary teams".
• Federal law provides financial incentives to courts to adopt children out of foster care - a task which is contrary to the elected judges' duty for impartial adjudication.  In other words, judges have a financial incentive to
• take your child away from you into foster care; and then
• to sell your child into an adoption out of foster care, terminating your parental rights forever - because the court will get federal money for that (1/2 of the grant money received from adoption goes to courts for "technical assistance" - and, by the way RTATs are "technical assistance" teams, so imagine what they are discussing behind closed doors, how much money they are getting for each child they grab from parents into foster care and adopt them out).

Social services will get federal incentive money for adoptions out of foster care, too, despite the declarations in state statutes that the "duty" of social services is to make reasonable efforts to reunite the family. 

I have a blog from 2014 about the financial incentives of Social Services to seize children into foster care and then adopt them out, but apparently, the 2014 information is old, the statute was updated, and I will soon publish an updated review of that law.

Let's see what NYS OCFS FOIL Appeals Officer will answer.  I will not hold my breath, and, since federal monies are feeding these swarming "teams" populated by secret individuals, I have another avenue to obtain that information - Freedom of Information Act request under federal law.  All the more that President Obama recently signed into law an amendment to that act providing for presumption of disclosure.

As a taxpayer, I want to know how state and federal taxpayer money are used by child protective services - to really protect the children, or to feed their lucrative private businesses of selling the children to relatives and friends, while pretending some semblance of "court proceedings" - where the presiding judge is, without disclosure, a member of the investigative team.

I want to know identities of all members of all teams going back at least 7 years.

And, of course, I will report my findings on this blog - if I get them.

Stay tuned.

New York Office of Children and Family Services, when caught red-handed in systematic ex parte communications in child neglect cases, lies in response to a FOIL request

This past spring, I obtained and read online, in public access, the 2015-2019 plan of services published by the New York State Office of Children and Family Services.

It is available here.

In that plan, I found, with astonishment, a description of "collaboration" between "OCA" (that is, New York Office of Court Administration) and "OCFS" (that is, New York State Office of Children and Family Services).

The plan states that there are teams engaged in that "collaboration", there are 3 levels of that collaboration, with respective teams, and that the team members meet and "collaborate" frequently.

Here is the description of the "teams" and "levels of collaboration" in the NYS OCFS' 2015-2019 plan:

 Why did I consider this "collaboration" a problem?

Those who have child neglect cases pending against them, just ask your attorneys, or a court clerk, to disclose whether your judge - or the judge who assigned your judge - a member on one of these "collaborative teams", and you will immediately see my point.

The problem is the potential for ex parte communication and case-fixing.

Your attorney or you yourself (if you are an ex parte party) will not be invited into these "teams".

These teams, according to the "plan", existed for years - and the team members developed such a familiarity with one another that they can now quickly and easily call or e-mail each other to "solve problems", which would include deciding a particular case in a particular way, without explanation to the parties or their attorneys.

And that is a monumental problem, ladies and gentlemen.

Case-fixing in state court is a federal crime.  This month, federal authorities indicted several state employees for fixing court cases in state court.

New York State Office of Children and Family Services, in an official document, acknowledged existence of a structure, with an elaborate 3-level hierarchy, existing for years, consisting of Family Court judges and executives and employees of social services on all levels who regularly meet with one another, and who developed such a familiarity with each other that they can simply pick up a phone or shoot an e-mail to one another to have a "problem solved" - which very well can mean a court case of child abuse or neglect fixed.

Think about it.

Your presiding judge in a Family Court child neglect or abuse case  receives a phone call from another "team member", social worker, a witness in the case, saying - judge, let's solve this problem, we want this case decided this way.  The judge says - "no problem".

You will never know why the judge made this or that decision, because judicial deliberations are secret, but you will never know that judicial deliberations were actually with the ex parte participation of your opponent in litigation, the Department of Social Services.

The California indictment for case-fixing involved money paid for that case-fixing.

I do not know whether money is passing hands in the 3-level "collaborative teams", but it presents an appearance of case-fixing all the same, and money is involved in such cases nevertheless - federal money for foster care, for budgets of Departments of social services.

The more the judge - member of the "collaborative team" - decide cases in favor of social services, the more children he or she places in foster care, the more children the judge orders adopted out of foster care, the more children are adjudicated as abused or neglected and ordered to receive costly "services" - the more money departments of social services will get.

On May 16, 2016 I asked NYS Office of Family and Children's Service (OCFS), through a FOIL request, to provide me with records reflecting the lists of members in these teams, from 2009 to 2016, meeting schedules and minutes of those meetings.

By law, OCFS had 5 business days to respond.

Nevertheless, it took its sweet time, responded to me only on June 21, 2016 and took 90 days more to prepare the records for release.

90 days from June 21, 2016 came and passed, and OCFS did not respond.

I have sent a reminder and threatened OCFS with a lawsuit.

OCFS then responded with 7 pages of members of collaborative teams as of 6/17/14, I will post documents provided to me separately.

Yet, the list does not provide a breakdown by the 3 levels described in the OCFS 2015-2019 plan, nor did OCFS provide to me list of team members for years:

2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2016.

Nor did OCFS provide to me meeting schedules or minutes.

So, I reminded OCFS that they did not fully comply with my FOIL request and clearly stated to them that I believe they are either lying to me in their response to my FOIL request, or to the public in their 2015-2019 plan, or to both.

It is very clear, based on the elaborate and detailed description of the 3 levels of collaboration that this secret out-of-court COURT-PROSECUTION joint organization exists for years, both the court administration and OCFS are very proud of it.  It is very clear that, until I showed interest in the details of these teams, OCFS did not consider existence or operation of this secret organization as being anything improper, and only stonewalled me when I asked for list of members, and when it finally hit lawyers for OCFS that what OCFS describes is a criminal organization within the meaning of RICO.

Yet, I do have a vested interest to get down to the bottom of how this secret court-prosecution joint organization operates, and I will vigorously pursue this organization by available legal means.

Since case-fixing resulted in California in a federal indictment, and since OCFS does not want to voluntarily provide records that would shed light on the operation of the case-fixing cartel in child neglect and abuse cases in New York, I will turn the case to federal authorities, with a demand to turn the case over for the investigation of a federal grand jury.

If that is not done, there are legal remedies available to private complainants to force the feds to turn a case for investigation of a federal grand jury, and I am fully prepared to do that.

Yet, at this time, remedies are available to parents-respondents in child neglect and abuse proceedings.

There is a number of remedies available to get this information through a pending court case, such as:

1. asking through written discovery, notices to produce and interrogatories whether the presiding judge participates in such ex parte "collaborative team" with petitioning Department of Social services, or its officers and employees; 
2. calling the presiding judge to a deposition to testify under oath as to the judge's participation in such teams (only that will need to be done pro se, no attorney will agree to do that deposition, for fear of losing his or her license - remember, your attorney's license is in the hands of the same case-fixing judge);
3. subpoenaing the records of such teams;
4. calling people listed as members of such teams from the list OCFS disclosed, here, to depositions to testify about other members;
5. filing RICO lawsuits against the State of New York, Family Court and individual judges and Departments of Social Services.

A party in a child neglect or abuse proceeding has a right to know whether the presiding judge is a member of the case-fixing organization, and especially when the New York State Office of Children and Family Services acknowledged existence of such an organization, but refuses to release its records, even the lists of members.

Child neglect and abuse adjudications and DSS "services" imposed upon parents illegal in Delaware County, NY

When a child neglect or abuse proceeding in New York concludes with an adjudication (court decision) of child neglect or abuse, the proceeding moves to a "dispositional stage".

At the dispositional stage, the court must order "services" in accordance with the social services plan.

Social Services Law 34-a(2)(b) requires that a "summary of understanding" between the social services and the local District Attorney's Office must be made part of that plan.

I asked, on a FOIL request, for the summary of understanding between the Delaware County DSS and the Delaware County District Attorney's Office.

Here is the response I've got:

If the plan did not comply with statutory requirements, it was not valid.

If it was not valid, no services could be provided, ordered by the court - or funded - without first satisfying statutory requirements.

New York State Comptroller actually audited the County in 2014-2015, and specifically audited its Department of Social Services.

They did not see this?

Or somebody's hand was greased enough not to see it?

The fact remains - without full compliance with applicable statutes, the "multi-year services plan" in Delaware County is illegal, and without a legal services plan, all child neglect and abuse adjudications are also illegal.

The law is the law - right?

Attention parents in Delaware County, NY, whose children were taken by DSS and put into foster care: financial incentives to keep children in foster care

Recently, I received a response to my FOIL request from Delaware County (NY) on a number of issues.

As part of the response I received rates of reimbursement established by Delaware County (NY) for foster care parents, which I am publishing here:

Based on the daily "regular service and maintenance" rates, the following calculations as to monthly and yearly reimbursements can be made:

		per day	per month	per year
Normal	0-5 years	$      15.89	$       476.70	$   5,799.85
Normal	6-11 years	$      19.14	$       574.20	$   6,986.10
Normal	12+ years	$      22.13	$       663.90	$   8,077.45
Special	Any age	$      38.22	$    1,146.60	$13,950.30
Exceptional	Any age	$      62.43	$    1,872.90	$22,786.95

Parents whose children are in foster care have a right to verify at which level their children are labeled, and how their foster parents are reimbursed for their care - and whether the monies provided for the "care and maintenance" are actually used for the purpose of "care and maintenance", or simply goes into the foster parents' pockets.

Apparently, it is very lucrative for a foster parent in Delaware County (and many foster parents in Delaware County, NY get such positions because they are officers or employees of local governments) to get a child into foster care who is still young (and does not eat much), but who is labeled "special" (behaviorally difficult) or "exceptional" (whichever the Commissioner deems "exceptional") - because keeping such a child pays more.

Please, remember that when a child is grabbed by social services and put into foster care, it often happens to poor parents whose children are on Medicaid and monthly SSI payments from the federal government.

And, that social services always bring child support proceedings against parents for children in foster care.

So, parents whose children are in foster care have a chance to verify whether the monies from the feds (SSI), from Delaware County as per reimbursement schedules I publish here, and monies squeezed from parents in child support, are actually used for the child, or simply soaked by the County into its "general account" and used for purposes unrelated to the child's care, which is fraud.

Here are also money allowances or "stipends" that must be provided to foster care children - so parents can verify whether that is done by foster parents or not.

There is also clothing allowance:

0-5 years	$        1.10	$         33.00	$      401.50
6-11 years	$        1.54	$         46.20	$      562.10
12-15 years	$        2.39	$         71.70	$      872.35
15 + years	$        2.92	$         87.60	$   1,065.80

So, if your child is in foster care in Delaware County for a year, and he is, let's say, 12 years old, and he has "behavioral problems", the rate of reimbursement for him will be:

$13,950.30 - care and maintenance

$240.00 - allowance

$872.35 - clothing allowance

---

TOTAL: $15,062.65

That is what the County provides out of its budget to take care of that child in foster care. 

First, the County then cannot get more than that from the parent per year - and should take into account the monies it receives from Social Security for the child on a monthly basis.

Moreover, the County must report to Social Security as to how the monies received from Social Security is used for the child's benefit.

As to children 0 to 3, there is also a diaper allowance.

When a child is put into foster care, there are, as shown above, powerful financial incentives involved to keep the child there, not reunite the child with his parents, as Social Services are required to do by law.

A message to parents persecuted by Social Services in New York: bow low to DSS fabricating cases against you, and you may win

An interesting decision in a child neglect proceeding came out of Kings County, New York.

The court actually dismissed the petition based on a rarely used statute, Family Court Act 1051(c), before trial, because "the court's aid is no longer needed".

Child neglect petitions are very rarely dismissed, and even more rarely dismissed before trial, so the case must have really suck for the judge to have dismissed it.

Interestingly enough, while the petition was clearly frivolous, and child neglect proceedings are "civil" proceedings subject to the frivolous conduct rule, Social Services and their attorney were not sanctioned.

Here is the gist of the case - a single working mother had two children at home, one of them a baby.  The mother was the only adult watching the children on a certain day.

The mother needed to go to the bathroom down the hall from the room where the baby lay on the bed.

The mother arranged pillows around the baby as protection from falling and went to the bathroom.

The baby still fell from the bed and got a bump on her head.

The baby was not otherwise showing signs of suffering from an injury, and the mother whose job fed her family of 4 (including the two children) could not skip work and bring the child to the doctor.

The mother brought the child to the doctor only 4 days later.

This is it.  All of it.

The hospital called DSS.

The mother, frantic about the possibility of losing her children to DSS, spoke to DSS (which she did not have to do), "cooperated" with DSS by participating in any "services" DSS required her to do (which she did not have to do), and told DSS that she is ready to "do anything" that DSS would require her to do - whether DSS had any claim of child neglect against her or not.

DSS still filed the petition.

Put in a "service provider" visiting the mother's home.

Required mother to attend parenting class - while delaying referral to those parenting classes for months, despite mother's readiness and court directive that the referral be made within a couple of weeks of the court date.

Opposed the mother's motion to dismiss.

Offered the mother an ACD (adjournment in contemplation of dismissal), obviously with "admission of guilt" as DSS usually does, to forego the sticky issues from being tried, because trial is skipped if ACD is accepted, and, even if the ACD agreement is violated, the case returns to a dispositional stage because the trial was waived when the ACD was accepted.

The mother - I will give credit to her young attorneys, law students from Family Law Clinic, and their supervising attorney - rejected the ACD and proceeded with the motion.

And won.

I put some interesting points into a table, since the decision is so long (16 pages).

How the case started	A mother brought a young child to the hospital with a bump on the child’s head, the hospital personnel asked the mother how did the injury happen, the mother admitted that she stepped away from the child to the bathroom while the child was on a bed, the child fell and hurt her head The hospital personnel, mandatory reporters of child neglect, called social services
Was a child neglect petition filed?	Yes, on October 6, 2015
What was alleged in the child neglect petition	Neglect of the child that caused the injury Medical neglect of the child in delaying to bring the child to the hospital for 4 days after the injury The child was losing weight, and the mother failed to keep pediatrician’s appointments to monitor the child’s weight Derivative neglect of the other child of the same mother	The weight monitoring allegation had to come from a conversation with the child’s pediatrician. Such conversations could only occur if the mother gave social services authority to talk to the child’s pediatrician. Specifically, the mother had to have signed a HIPAA release for social services to talk to the child’s pediatrician. The allegation of missing medical appointments for weight monitoring were in social services’ case notes. The doctor himself denied those allegations in a sworn affidavit in support of the mother and claimed the mother never missed medical appointments for the child.
Was the mother a single parent?	Yes
Was the mother working?	Yes, on probation period
Were mother’s family situation and work situation known to social services?	Most likely, yes
Were allegations legally sufficient to file a child neglect petition?	No – the threshold for filing an Article 10 petition under New York Family Court Act is for a caregiver to fail to provide a minimum degree of care for the child, and thus putting the child in imminent danger of harm; A sole parent’s trip to the bathroom while the child is unattended, but, as the petition alleged, surrounded on the bed by pillows, is not failing to provide a minimum degree of care A sole working parent’s missing of an appointment for a young child who had a bump on her head, and delaying treatment for a bump on the child’s head by 4 days is not failing to provide to the child a minimum degree of care a parent is required to do	The alternative to what the mother did was to take both children with her to the bathroom. If that occurred, most likely, the mother would have been charged by DSS for sexual abuse of children because she exposed in front of them. Moreover, an adult female has private needs to be taken care of in the bathroom that children do not need to see, it’s the mother’s privacy issue. DSS was imposing conditions upon the mother of another adult caregiver to take care of children when mother was in the bathroom, which mother, most likely, could not afford
Did social services seek removal of the child or children from home?	No
Did social services refer the mother to “services”?	Yes
What kind of “services” did DSS refer the mother to?	Preventive services in the mother’s home, individual counseling with preventive services provider throughout the pendency of proceedings DSS sought referral to parenting skill classes
How did court handle the proceedings?	Court Attorney instructed DSS, at a conference on November 15, 2015, to refer the mother to parenting classes within one week of the conference
Did Court Attorney have a right to make decisions in the case?	No
Was referral to parenting skill classes on mother’s consent?	Yes, the mother stated that she will attend parenting classes as soon as she receives a referral	Possibly, a referral was needed for medical insurance, since the mother was The mother was represented by two supervised student lawyers from a Family Clinic, so she must have been indigent or low-income
Did DSS do the referral	Yes
When did DSS do the referral	After mother made a motion to dismiss the petition, mother started to attend parenting skill classes on February 4, 2016, the return date for the motion to dismiss/for a summary judgment, was January 9, 2016 On January 9, 2016, 3 months into the case, while the child remained with the mother, DSS still did not refer the mother to parenting skills classes, even though it asked the court to direct such a referral, the court attorney did, and the mother consented to classes, but needed a referral	Apparently, DSS did not believe that either of the children were in imminent danger while remaining in the mother’s care
Did the child’s pediatricians express they feel safe for the child to remain in mother’s care?	Yes
Was the age of the other child listed in the court order?	No
Did the petition allege any neglect issues pertaining to the other child	No	There were allegations that in 2012 DSS filed a petition against the mother for “inadequate guardianship” and substance abuse, but DSS provided no evidence to the court as to how the case ended (Footnote 1 in the case). Apparently, the previous petition was also legally insufficient, and DSS tried to pile up legally insufficient petitions, so that one would support the other – by sheer numbers.
Did the child have a disability?	Most likely, yes – the social worker who taught parenting skills classes refer to her class as “special needs” class
Did DSS oppose dismissal of the petition	Yes DSS also offered an “adjournment in contemplation of dismissal” (ACD) settlement, on the returnable date of the motion to dismiss/for a summary judgment	Such settlements are usually offered with admission of guilt, so, if violated, the case returns to the court skipping the trial, to the dispositional stage.
Did the mother consent to the ACD?	No
Did attorney for the child oppose the mother’s motion to dismiss?	Yes in the pleadings in writing, but supported it orally at the hearing
Factors considered by the court in favor of the mother	·      Mother’s “cooperation” with DSS, participation with “services”; ·      Mother’s submission to social services, her statement that “she will do whatever DSS asked so the mother could keep her children at home and learn from that experience”; ·      Mother’s status as a single parent; ·      Mother’s status as the single wage earner for a family of 4; ·      The fact that no treatment was required for the injury	The court relied on another court case, in support of the dismissal where the parent, like the mother here, has “undertaken remedial action and completed all services that could have been part of any dispositional recommendations”. Dispositional recommendations come when DSS have already proven that the parent neglected the child. The mother agreed to “do whatever DSS asks” at the time of litigation when not only DSS did not prove yet that the mother neglected the child, but when DSS could not prove that based on the allegations and circumstances of the case
Aggravating factors that other courts suggested, the court considered and found not present	·      Infant was left unattended for an unreasonable amount of time under the circumstances – not present, mother only went for a short time to the bathroom, leaving the child surrounded by pillows on the bed for safety; ·      The sleeping condition of the area was unsafe – not present; ·      The contents of the sleeping area created an unsafe condition – not present; ·      The size of the sleeping surface in relation to the occupants (persons, pets and/or objects) created an unsafe condition – not present; ·      The temperature of the room or the sleeping area, including the infant’s clothing and bed coverings used, in which the infant was cared for was so extreme as to make it unsafe – not present; ·      The parent or other personal responsible for the child’s care was under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs to the extend that such person’s judgment or physical ability was impaired to the point that such person was unable to adequately supervise the infant – not present; ·      A catchall, “another condition that a reasonable peson would understand to place an infant at risk of harm”	So, allegations in the petition made the petition legally insufficient, even if all of the allegations would be assumed as true and would be proven at trial, But Social services AND the court-appointed attorney for the child still opposed the mother’s motion to dismiss (attorney for the child – only initially, but still), pushing the court to allow DSS to prove their case at trial. Yet, under such circumstances, proving the case at trial would have meant introduction of a surprise evidence or surprise witness which was not mentioned in the petition
Did DSS ever seek amendment of the petition by motion	No
Did the court recognize propriety of a summary judgment motion in a child neglect case?	Yes, but did not grant it
Did the court recognize propriety of a motion to dismiss before trial because the court’s aid is no longer needed?	Yes, and granted the motion to dismiss

The good and bad.

It is, of course, good that the frivolous petition was dismissed.

It is bad that it was brought in the first place.

It is bad that not all parents have the benefit of the feisty law clinic representation.

It is bad that the judge did not toss the case on the legal insufficiency of claims (CPLR 3211), but instead took into account mother's cooperation with social services - at the time she was in litigation and did not have to even talk to DSS, especially that the petition was unsustainable.

The case gives hope and sets a precedent of a kind (it is not an appellate case, so it does not have full precedential power - unless, of course, DSS appeals and loses) in support of the use of FCA 1051(c) for pre-trial dismissals of child neglect petitions.

Of course, the attorneys thought they were doing their best for this particular client by bringing the motion to dismiss under FCA 1051(c) (where the focus of the court is that the court's "aid" is "no longer" needed), and not CPLR 3211 (where the pure insufficiency of pleadings would be the focus of the court)

Yet, the case sets a dangerous precedent encouraging judges to consider as factors in favor of a dismissal cooperation of parents with DSS that was obviously fabricating unsustainable neglect petitions against them, simply to support their budget for "services" (and the dismissed petition was not the first bogus petition DSS filed against that particular mother, and, since DSS did not tell the court how the first petition ended up, it is clear that DSS did not win the first petition either).

Considering positively, while reviewing motions to dismiss legally insufficient child neglect petitions, the factor of cooperation of parents out of fear to lose their children to do "anything social services require", as this particular mother did,  is encouraging DSS to proceed with fabricating cases against parents and ruling by sheer fear.

And that is plain wrong.