PROTECT OUR FAMILIES - I SECOND THAT
Protect Our Families.com is an interesting website, with contributors from various American States. Protect Our Families is an organization committed to advocating for the rights of children, whose bone disorders and medical symptoms have been misdiagnosed as child abuse, and their families. Because of the medical conditions of two of the Bayne children this site is relevant to them. Moreover, the case histories that are cited are similar in many aspects to the Bayne story. Several of the cases involved criminal charges against a parent or parents with courts ruling in the parents’ favour yet the social services still pursued permanent custody and won in some cases but not in all.
The home page refers to a case of Alice and Miquel Valesquez who were accused of child abuse due to their infant daughter’s fractures. You can read online their entire story which was featured in the Reader’s Digest. Even after their daughter had a positive skin biopsy for Osteogenesis Imperfecta (brittle bones) the social workers and child abuse doctors refused to acknowledge it and continued to insist the child was abused. It was a long ordeal for the family but thankfully they were able to get their daughter back home. They also sued and won a settlement against the state of Virginia. Their family's story is featured in Reader's Digest which you can read online.
Protect Our Families. Com has a three pronged agenda.
Medical Information It desires to aid in preventing the mistaken diagnosis of child abuse when a child actually has a medical condition which has been misinterpreted as child abuse. To rule out all potential pediatric conditions before coming to the conclusion of child abuse, and to avoid unnecessary reporting to child protective services, POF advocates that medical doctors be wholly trained to understand and to identify numerous pediatric conditions and bone disorders, among which are Osteogenesis Imperfecta and Vitamin D deficient Rickets which can resemble child abuse.
Family Support POF provides medical and legal information and support to family members who have been wrongly accused of child abuse with a goal to equip the families and their attorneys to be able to research their child's potential medical condition resulting in resolution of their cases as well as obtaining appropriate medical care for the child.
Legal Reform While Child Protective Services plays an essential societal role in protecting abused children, POF is concerned that child protection services acknowledge that medical doctors can make mistaken diagnoses resulting in wrongful accusations of child abuse. POF is working on legislation to change the laws that govern CPS in order to give families and children more rights and protection from false allegations. POF also advocates for greater liberty for parents during an ongoing investigation to obtain for their child full evaluation of potential medical diseases because the child has a right to be accurately diagnosed and treated since it is not in the child’s best interests to ignore serious medical conditions.
From a concerned, and up-late parent:
ReplyDeleteThe readers digest story is excellent. There are a number of similarities to the Baynes case, also several other cases that I am aware of.
For parents who have been involved with false accusations, there are a number of similarities; assumption of guilt of the parents and no search for altnernate answers by social workers and ignoring positive or non-cooberating information, not listening to the parents explanation or attempting to follow up, punishing parents if they put up a fight, among many others.
Imagine being falsely accused and have to pay the state for them to take care of our children, who do a poor job at that.
On the website the legal reform page was the most interesting (http://protectourfamilies.com/legal.htm) It contains numerous issues that are virtually identical to those faced in B.C.
The general comment I would make with respect to reform suggestions is that for each item of reform there must be a matching count of how many times the problem has/is occurred and what the cost to the parents and state is.
I think if the public knew the true cost to parents and children and how it steals from more Ministries who do develope children such as Education and Sports, they would demand more accounting of how MCFD conducts its business.