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Originally Posted by Dale Cooper
I think the scattering of children throughout the community with basically lazy state employees responsible for ensuring their safety and well-being is a recipe for diaster.
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Well, as one of those state employees responsible for ensuring the safety of children, I thank you.
And I acknowledge that across different states there have been some real, terrible DHS screw-ups. But things have gotten loads better, even in just the past decade. None of the people I work with are workers I would classify as "lazy." Lots of 12 hour days and more. Getting called in the middle of the night when a child goes AWOL or attempts suicide. Entire nights spent in hospitals with infants who were born with hard drugs in their system, and so on. Not to mention being exposed to all kinds of dangers. This isn't a job you do for the money. It's a commitment, and the people I know in the field are highly committed. And none of us earns overtime pay either, even when we work a 70 hour week. And believe me, that happens.
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Maybe I've seen too many stories on the evening news.
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Well, as I say, there have been some dreadful incidents here and there throughout the years, certainly. But these things tend to be sensationalized in news programs. For every case with a horrific ending there are hundreds of others that come off just fine. And improvements have been made across the board. Better training programs, recruiting more capable workforce, increased support from supervisors, etc.
It's funny, the kinds of things people believe about the DHS. I hear these rumors all the time about how the state has a quota and each worker has to "snatch" a certain number of children out of people's homes every month to meet the quota, or how we get a big cash bonus for every child we remove from a home. It's ludicrous. There are a lot of misconceptions about this work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by middle-aged mom
Alternatively....
Castration of any man who fathers a child and is unable/unwilling to support the child.
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Hoo boy! Well, it ain't anymore extreme than the proposals the OP trotted out.
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Originally Posted by eRayP
Send her to work...these woman and the dead beat dads are low lifes that don't care about the kids and steal from other hard working americans. To add to the thievery they have bad attitudes and think other people are on earth to support their fat a*ses. Do you really expect people to feel sympathy for these people?
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Again, more ignorant misconceptions. First off, a great number of people receiving welfare DO work. Often there are two adults in the household who work. Not everyone who receives these types of benefits are lazy, drug-addled scum who sit back and collect money to go buy fancy hubcaps or whatever. That's nonsense.
Furthermore, we all need to realize that a good number of people who receive benefits are elderly or disabled or mentally challenged.
Again, the idea that the majority of people who get food stamps or other benefits are lazy good-for-nothings is baseless. Simply incorrect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ellemint
'Cause kids raised in orphanages or foster homes do so great....  |
Actually, I haven't had any dealings with orphanges per se, but there are kids in various kinds of shelters. We try to get them into foster homes whenever possible.
To tell you the truth, it goes like this:
1. First and best practice is to
not remove the child from the home in the first place. This is a last resort. We only work with law enforcement to take children into custody if there is a clear present or impending danger to the child or children. And before we even seek removal, we try to work with the family to see if there is a "kinship placement" which (obviously) is a member or members of the extended family where the kiddos can go until their home environment is safe for them or until the identified safety threats are gone.
2. If the child
has to be removed from the home and there is no extended family who can take them, we seek foster homes. The vast majority of the foster parents I work with are incredible people who volunteer to take on the responsibilities of taking children into their homes. Often these children have serious medical issues, various mental and physical disabilities, or significant psychological troubles stemming from the abse or neglect they suffered. While it's true foster families receive some money for housing these kids, believe me, it's not a money making enterprise. They get just enough to cover legitimate costs for caring for little humans.
3. If no foster home can be found, a child can go to a shelter, but only for as long as it takes to find a foster home placement.
And remember--through this whole process, the ultimate goal is typically to reunite the children with the parents. Sadly, this doesn't always happen (though it hapens more often than not.) There are cases, though, where parents cannot get their acts together or even make any effort to, and the danger to the children remains. Or, sometimes parents just abandon their kids to the court or DHS custody. In those relatively rare cases, we move for termination of parental rights and seek adoptive families for the kids.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iamme73
For the life of me, I just have never gotten this outrage about welfare. I remember in high school, I took a speech and debate class and one of the first debates I had because this was back in the 1990's was about welfare. I actually had to do some research on the subject and not just go by my gut.
What I found was these families were really poor. The moms didn't have a bunch of children as was the stereotype. Most of the families were off of welfare within 5 years. It didn't create dependency. The families that were on welfare long term had other issues with drugs, or violence or mental health issues, that welfare alone couldn't address, but that wasn't an indictment of welfare only that some families needed welfare in addition to other aid.
The amount of money they received was very little. And they had to jump through embarrassing hoops to receive that paltry sum of money.
Also, the vast overwhelming majority of parents had worked previously before receiving welfare and the vast overwhelming majority worked after.
I remember thinking of all the ways our government spends money on behalf of society, helping moms take care of their children is one of the best uses of public money.
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Well spoken. And true.
I'd also point out that it is a
very small percentage of families or individuals who receive actual money (TANF or Temporary Aid to Needy Families) and this frequently comes in the form of vouchers they can use for rent, etc.
It is an incredibly laborious process to successfully apply for TANF, and the opeartive word in that acronym is
Temporary.
By far, the greatest benefit people receive is SNAP (food stamps.) That works out on the average in my state to $1.42 per meal per person.
Behind SNAP is day care assistance, which of course can only be obtained if the parent or parents are working.
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