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.