Sunday, October 23, 2016

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
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.




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