-- We the parents of the United States
SCF criticism well deserved
Article by NEAL FELDMAN July 6, 2002
Who wrote your editorial of June 5? Looked like Services to Children and Families!
Critics pointing out the flaws, failings, crimes and corruption of SCF are clearly by implication dismissed as just crackpot purveyors of myths.
You admit that SCF makes mistakes. Virtually each and every one of these mistakes involve gross violations of civil, constitutional, human, due process and/or parental rights.
These rights are not to be violated, as U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Wallis v. City of Escondido Case No. 9755579 clearly states. U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer ruled regarding Illinois DCFS that the entire system was unconstitutional due to gross rights violations. The Baby T case from Illinois had the Adoption and Safe Families Act ruled unconstitutional regarding its arbitrary 15-month time-frame as a gross violation of due process rights.
The list of rulings is long indeed, demonstrating the travesty of injustice that is Child Protective Services. With good reason many refer to children's services as Gestapo CPS and to social workers as social wreckers.
Critics of child-services agencies consider Oregon to be one of the nation's worst abusers of families. You dismiss this widely held view though you do nothing to disprove it.
There's good reason that children's services is a widely despised organization. And considering they are supposed to be protecting children, and this is generally a popular thing to do, one has to realize it is how children's services operates that causes what should be a popular agency to be so widely reviled.
Many social workers making these life-altering decisions armchair-quarterbacking parents have no real experience or knowledge to draw from. Some have a degree in social work, which you will note is an arts degree, not a science degree. Social work, in many opinions, is largely an extremist political agenda masquerading as a science.
SCF is not their first name. It once was CSD. But CSD, because of their actions, was so publicly reviled they changed the name. But mere months after their cosmetic change you and SCF were shocked that SCF had the same results in polls that CSD had! Go figure!
Now, instead of changing their name, they are hiding the agency inside of DHS and insinuating SCF into every other agency of DHS! The head of SCF, Ramona Foley, is put in charge of one of the largest sections of DHS.
People fear SCF, and now all of DHS, with extremely good reason:
SCF's track record. The phrase We are from children's services and we're here to help you does, and should, strike terror into the hearts of parents.
The facts are clear. Blanket denials don't change this. Dismissiveness doesn't change this. Children's services agencies from Washington, with the horrifically corrupt Wenatchee witch hunt, to Florida, with their thousand missing foster children, are on the run from the truth and the facts.
When will the Statesman Journal editorial staff stop desperately attempting to save the rats on the sinking ship, especially when it is the rats who are sinking the ship in the first place?
Neal Feldman of Salem is a parental and family rights advocate and a longtime critic of how child protection agencies operate in Oregon and elsewhere. He can be reached at
neal.feldman@comcast.net updated email May 12, 2004
published with permission, July 8th, 2002
