Pictures from VOCAL NY Booth at the Monroe County Fair, 2004

		Right Panel: Family Preservation Findings Left Panel: The Research on Foster Care and Adoption with quotes from the Pew Commission's Report on Foster Care.  Below: The Funding Strategies and a table of the amount of money spent on Title IVE(foster care, adoption, and independent living) and Title IVB(Family Preservation) with Title IVE greatly out weighing IVB. Center Panel: the distribution of foster kids through out the fifty states and the ranking of each state by numbers of children in foster care.  New York is second highest.
		Our brochure and membership form, The Seattle Post Intelligencer edition of 'The Power to Harm' which is the chronicle of the Wenatchee cases, 43 adults arrested in the small Washington community for child abuse. Below is 'The Shredding of Families' by Drs Lillian and Richard Dunsmore. IF THE NATION HAD DELIBERATELY DESIGNED A SYSTEM THAT WOULD FRUSTRATE THE PROFESSIONALS WHO STAFF IT, ANGER THE PUBLIC WHO FINANCE IT AND ABANDON THE CHILDREN WHO DEPEND ON IT, IT COULD NOT HAVE DONE A BETTER JOB THAN THE PRESENT CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM. -National Commission on Children
	Left: A side view showing News Headlines, our petitions, and 'What You Can Do' info, 'A Parents Guide to the System' by the Child Welfare Organizing Project. Right: A side view of the cover of The Post Intelligencer's "The Power to Harm", Books, guest book sign-in, 'Family Alert' news letter and 'No Law Against Mercy', a book by Barbara Lyn Lapp and Rachel B. Lapp. Famous Cases of False Allegations
		Petitions, books, Funding Strategies. The American Civil Liberties Union's Children's Rights Project estimates that a child in the care of the state is ten times more likely to be abused than one in the care of his parents. Seth Farber, "The Real Abuse," National Review, (April 12, 1993) The John D. Rockefeller-led National Commission on Children also found that children often are removed from their families "prematurely or unnecessarily" because federal aid formulas give states "a strong financial incentive" to do so rather than provide services to keep families together. ...victims of false allegations often complain that they were "guilty until proven innocent." In fact, to the child savers, you can never be proven innocent. - "Wounded Innocents" by Richard Wexler
		The Research from the Pew Commission's Report on Foster Care released May of 2004. Adds Commission Vice Chairman William H. Gray (D-PA), former Majority Whip and Chairman of the House Budget Committee, "The foster care system is in disrepair. Every state has now failed the federal foster care reviews and we've seen far too many news stories of children missing from the system or injured while in care. We must act now on behalf of the half a million children currently in foster care." "The nation's foster care system is unquestionably broken," stated Commission Chairman Bill Frenzel (R-MN), a twenty-year veteran of Congress and former Ranking Minority Member of the House Budget Committee. For Immediate Release Tuesday, May 18, 2004 Contact: Gina Russo, The Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care Releases Sweeping Recommendations to Overhaul Nation's Foster Care System Groundbreaking study of federal financing, court oversight of foster care declares: "Children deserve more from our child welfare system."

IF THE NATION HAD DELIBERATELY DESIGNED A SYSTEM THAT WOULD FRUSTRATE THE PROFESSIONALS WHO STAFF IT, ANGER THE PUBLIC WHO FINANCE IT AND ABANDON THE CHILDREN WHO DEPEND ON IT, IT COULD NOT HAVE DONE A BETTER JOB THAN THE PRESENT CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM.

-National Commission on Children

FAMILY PRESERVATION

Douglas Besharov, the first director of the National Center for Child Abuse and Neglect states that the incidence of false allegations is 70 percent.

According to the National Coalition for Child Protective Reform, as many as two of every three cases prompting investigation are determined to be false.

99 out of 100 children are not beaten up by their parents every year - 97 percent of all children are not abused or neglected in any way in the course of a year - 95 to 99 of 100 women were not sexually abused by their fathers, or step fathers during their childhoods. "Wounded Innocents" by Richard Wexler

"Partly what went wrong with family preservation was a political response. There were people who didn't like the notion of family preservation and trashed it. I don't think the evidence ever was conclusive that it was a failure. To my mind, the principal failing of child protection in the United States over the past 35 years ... is that family preservation has not been taken seriously enough almost anywhere in this country.... "

"Well, family preservation can't be a blueprint for every case.... However, those cases are, in this country, rare and certainly a distinct minority of the cases that are in the system. "

"Family preservation is appropriate for the majority of cases in which violence is not a serious issue and in which safety is not the first concern. The vast majority of children who are separated from their parents in the United States are separated for reasons that even state officials concede have nothing to do with the true meaning of safety... But the least restrictive intervention, the one that keeps children connected to their families, is the one that is best for children. "

"All children removed from parents, even children removed from parents for very good reasons, ... suffer mightily in the process of the removal. Preventing that suffering is itself a worthy goal of the state.."

Panel calls for sweeping foster care fixes By Erin Madigan, Staff Writer , Stateline.org

Exerpts

"Under the current system, states rely too heavily on the foster care net, instead of other preventative services such as family reunification and community-based support, the commission said. ...."

"States should give children and families a stronger voice in courts by providing better trained lawyers and volunteer advocates.... "

“I do think that there’s a growing chorus of voices in the states that believe that part of the problem is that the funding structure itself is flawed and that pumping money into the system isn’t going to help them fundamentally reform the system until the flaw in the funding mechanisms are corrected as well,” Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told Stateline.org.

"Recent studies conducted by child advocacy organizations and government agencies disclose that caseworkers are opting to forcibly take children from their parents rather than providing family preservation services."

"Limitless funds are available to the states through Title IV-E, earmarked for out-of-home placement. State agencies increase their overall revenue by removing children from their homes since money from Title IV-E is channeled to the states in direct proportion to how many children they incarcerate into the system."

"At the heart of the ills afflicting child welfare agencies are perverse federal incentives that the continued removal of children from their homes and the destruction of families. As Kenneth A. Visser, Director of Family Preservation in the Michigan Department of Social Services explained to a Congressional Committee in 1991: " The current system of financing rewards us for foster care placement."

"Dana Mack, an affiliate Scholar with the Institute for American Values and author of " The Assault on Parenthood", notes that a 1986 federal study evaluating child welfare caseworkers found that up to two-thirds of "substantiated" cases of child maltreatment involved no actual wrongdoing on the part of parents. Many removals of children into foster care are "capricious actions of 'preventive intervention'--undertaken on a caseworker's presumptin that though a child's home situation poses no immediate dangers or deprivations, it might sometime in the future."

Monday June 14, 2004

ERIE, Pa. (AP)

Alledgedly abused adopted teen girl dies suddenly at hands of adoptive mom.

Stratton Children Bring Home The Bacon
By Allison Hart

Federal funding per month for the Statton children and pay-out amounts show the county makes a net profit per month. This article also highlights that parents have very little constitutional protections and that the money incentives exist for every foster child in the child welfare system.

N.Y. State, 31 others fail child-welfare test
By LAURA MECKLER
Associated Press
8/19/2003

WASHINGTON - Describes how New York State and 31 other states failed to pass the test!- the test to prove its ability to obtain permanent homes and protect children from child abuse.

by Jay Tokasz

8/24/2003

Outlines the deaths of three children, killed by adults, in less than a year, two in foster care and one known to the child protective agency of Erie County.

Bakersfield, California-AP--

The judge said the testimony of the children in this case was not reliable and the conviction of John Stoll was reversed.

Attorneys blame poor defense by public defender.

by the Progressive Newswire, Alexandria, VA- April 15, 2003

Richard Wexler with the National Coalition for Child Protective Reform(NCCPR) said,

"These cases do not represent the majority of New Jersey foster parents, who do the best they can fo rthe children in their care -- like most parents, period. But teh rate of abuse in foster care nationwide is far higher than in the general population, far higher than generally realized -- and far higher than official statistics reveal."

by Robin Wallace for Fox News

by Barbara Lyn Lapp

Ten of the twelve Prokoshev children are placed in foster care when father disciplines his son for being rude to a teacher. When picked up by CPS, the children screen in terror and run. The children begged to be allowed to go home. "Pavel Prokoshev, the oldest son at 18, was arrested and jailed - though never charged - for threatening a CPS case worker who was trying to enter their home. Pavel was born in Russia, and remembers the KGB. "It's the exact same system here, just a different name," he said."

Brian and Ruth Christine one year after their children are taken from their custody, regain their children at gunpoint, only to loose them again as convicted felons. They were allowed only two visits with their children during the year their children were in foster care but were never charged with any crime.

by Mike Barber and Andrew Schneider, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporters

This article highlights the parents in the Wenatchee alleged child abuse case and how rights were denied and justice circumvented.

Newark, New Jersey(AP)

The death of a small boy in the child welfare system of New Jersey

abcNEWS.com

In January 2001, a small girl was missing in the Florida child welfare system and is still missing.

by Brian Ross, abcNEWS.com

Brothers and sisters survive the Florida foster care system and tell of their nightmare.

by Kathleen Parker, townhall.com

This article sites well-meaning folks put in place an overprotective system gone astray.

by John Anderson - The Spectator

A small boy placed with an aunt dies from blow with a frying pan. Attorney Argentieri fights to win civil case against Allegany County who had custody of the boy.

Steubenville, Ohio (AP)

The mother in this case was arrested by a policeman who noticed the mother's three small children where sunburned while at a county fair. The mother was jailed for eight days and held on 15,000 bail. The children had first degree burns.

by Elayne Clift, The Barre, Montepelier Times Argus

Talks about a sixteen year old Vermont teen who had been placed in a group home and was found dead in a brothel in New York City.

by Kristen A. Graham, philly .com

This article highlights the case of four adopted boys in New Jersey who were found gravely under nourished.

Levittown, PA (AP)

Foster mom duct tapes children to keep them quiet.

by Bill Poovey, Associated Press Writer

This story highlights the saga of a 15 month old taken from a family on alleged child abuse that was never proven and the child's return after six years of fighting the system.