Psychic Vision Leads to Child Protective Services Call on Parent

    I have seen school districts using calls to child protective services agencies as a means of chilling parental advocacy. Of course, these calls are couched under the heading of "doing our jobs", "better safe than sorry", and "we are mandatory reporters." All of these justifications would have more credibility if the calls were more even-handed and applied to school personnel who may have committed acts of abuse in the classroom. These claims are met with wide-eyed innocence with the administration dismissing such accusations with a blanket immunity that "school people do not commit acts of abuse." My glib answer is that school personnel do not take virtue pills in the morning and they are just as able to be an abuser as any parent.  At a minimum, any call to child protective services also needs to be grounded upon a reasonable basis.

    Well, one district in Canada left reason and reasonableness outside of the front door of the school. A classroom aide visited a psychic who reported that a child in her class was being abused. On this basis, the school called child protective services on a parent, who had expressed safety concerns over the handling of elopement in school. After a heart-wrenching investigation, the allegations were unfounded.  Schools everywhere need to review their internal policies as to when and on what evidence they make that hotline call to child protective services. I would hope that psychic reports without more evidence would generally not fall within any school's policies.

Comments

[anwalt fuer erbrecht]

Thanks for the detail Charles. I found your your article very helpful about the Psychic Vision Leads to Child Protective Services Call on Parent.

[bergendee]

Mr. Fox, I want to know more about your statement that you "have seen school districts using calls to protective services agencies as a means of chilling parental advocacy".

Our family just went through a hellish experience very similar to this "psychic" story, when a call was made to CPS days after we wrote a very thoughtful complaint about our child's case manager.

Our son has Aspergers, and wore a transmitter because he eloped twice, begged to be kept out of school, and returned from school with an injury to his face. His assistant convinced me nothing happened in school, yet the bus driver and aide said he did not self injure on the way home either.

A few days before we were to meet to ask the Principal and Spec. Ed. Supervisor to replace our child's case manager, an employee bypassed school protocol and made a direct report to CPS alleging sex abuse against my husband. Another child told his mother he saw the case manager and assistant accusing our child (in the presence of classmates), of making a statement about "sex", the same week as the false report was made. Our child denied making comments he was alleged to have said, on that day and following, but later told his doctor that his assistant injured his face a few weeks prior! We reported this to the CPS worker, but she did not show any interest in looking into what could be the actual source of disress in our child.

She had already threatened to remove our children from our home within an hour, because I agreed to meet with her only with an attorney present. She later denied saying this, and made a false afadavit, claiming I denied her access to my other child.

The allegations were decided to be unfounded, but both our children were deeply harmed by the terror of thinking they were going to be taken from our home, and having to live apart from us, with relatives, for weeks, because of the CPS worker's threat.

We knew CPS was called because we had complained about the case manager to the Principal. I wondered "how many other parents of disabled children in my area have been intimidated like this"? We are looking into legal action now. Has anyone done any investigations? I would like to research this, and inform others, and my political representatives, etc.

Can you tell me more? Are there other parents who would share their stories?

Bergendee

[Internzoo]

A great post!Parents should keep in touch with such posts that are in welfare of students and guide them on how to handle such issues , if come across any.

Internzoo
http://www.internzoo.com

[arlena]

I know all too well how the school will try to turn it around and blame the parent for trying to advocate for their child.
I have pictures of what they did to my son and called cps regarding the matter. only to have an investagation opened against me for trying to protect my child against the use of restraint. Needless to say, they want to be the ones to call the shots on how our children with special needs are treated. But they are not the ones who are fighting to get services for their children. If they were, they would see things alot diffrently.

[doreen wallace]

My son's ASW got tired of traveling to my home. She missed alot of time due to "illness" may sick and tired of being a working teenage. The agency had trouble finding aqualified replacement. When I said couldn't travel into their center for therapy CPS was called. we were cleared and through holding her acountable I did get a new worker. One year later another teenaged ASW burned out and she too got a placement in the center. and I got another visit from CPS. Quess there must be a loophole in their contract. How can you trust people like that?