Ok, so the thing is, in Maine and Massachusetts I know people dealing with the people who can take away kids.
Now, far be it for me to speak glowingly of the tyrannical bastards who denied us our freedom until such time as political maneuvering centered on Missouri made it expedient in 1820, but Massachusetts does this better. Way better. Worlds better.
As in I mention what I've experienced and heard of in Massachusetts to people in Maine and they're all "I wish things were like that here."
A strong possibility as to why is that Massachusetts has a agency to actually handle the difficult matter of deciding whether or not to break up a family. In Maine it's DHHS itself. Department of Health and Human Services. The people who give me food money so that I don't starve. The people who give me insurance so that my depression doesn't rule my life and I have a flat rate of a 3 dollar co-pay even though the only medicine that works on me is one of the more expensive ones out there. The people who do everything, and then a bit more.
If instead of DHHS we had an isolated (standalone) CPS or DCF in which the people were specifically trained to deal with this shit, then maybe our people who can break up families wouldn't be so terrible.
It's a necessary job, some families need to be broken up. No soul-having individual (few soul-lacking individuals) want to see kids suffer needlessly. Child abuse is a serious problem, child neglect too, and these and all related problems need to be dealt with.
But on the flip side, breaking up a family for no good reason is bullshit.
By the time DHHS got around to saying what needed to happen for my sister to get her child back, they knew that everything the accuser had said to them was a lie. He'd changed his story to them three times (making four stories) and when he had to make a legally binding report he recanted all four of those stories and presented a fifth. Granted he didn't present it to them, but they knew he said, on the record, that he'd been lying to them.
With only lies telling them to break the family up, and a lot of stuff telling them not to, they're digging in, trying to get better leverage, and refusing to budge. They're doing everything they can to delay giving my sister her child back.
Now, in Massachusetts they take a different approach. If there's no abuse or neglect, but there are other problems, they take a position of, "This is what you need to do to keep your family together, let's get it done as soon as possible because then you don't have to worry and I can move on to dealing with children who need my intervention more."
That seems a better approach.
The people who can take your children away are given enormous power because they have enormous responsibility, they should also be given excellent training and be subjected to great scrutiny, because without good training and effective oversight great power and great responsibility are a recipe for disaster.
That's what seems to be happening in Maine.
Now, far be it for me to speak glowingly of the tyrannical bastards who denied us our freedom until such time as political maneuvering centered on Missouri made it expedient in 1820, but Massachusetts does this better. Way better. Worlds better.
As in I mention what I've experienced and heard of in Massachusetts to people in Maine and they're all "I wish things were like that here."
A strong possibility as to why is that Massachusetts has a agency to actually handle the difficult matter of deciding whether or not to break up a family. In Maine it's DHHS itself. Department of Health and Human Services. The people who give me food money so that I don't starve. The people who give me insurance so that my depression doesn't rule my life and I have a flat rate of a 3 dollar co-pay even though the only medicine that works on me is one of the more expensive ones out there. The people who do everything, and then a bit more.
If instead of DHHS we had an isolated (standalone) CPS or DCF in which the people were specifically trained to deal with this shit, then maybe our people who can break up families wouldn't be so terrible.
It's a necessary job, some families need to be broken up. No soul-having individual (few soul-lacking individuals) want to see kids suffer needlessly. Child abuse is a serious problem, child neglect too, and these and all related problems need to be dealt with.
But on the flip side, breaking up a family for no good reason is bullshit.
By the time DHHS got around to saying what needed to happen for my sister to get her child back, they knew that everything the accuser had said to them was a lie. He'd changed his story to them three times (making four stories) and when he had to make a legally binding report he recanted all four of those stories and presented a fifth. Granted he didn't present it to them, but they knew he said, on the record, that he'd been lying to them.
With only lies telling them to break the family up, and a lot of stuff telling them not to, they're digging in, trying to get better leverage, and refusing to budge. They're doing everything they can to delay giving my sister her child back.
Now, in Massachusetts they take a different approach. If there's no abuse or neglect, but there are other problems, they take a position of, "This is what you need to do to keep your family together, let's get it done as soon as possible because then you don't have to worry and I can move on to dealing with children who need my intervention more."
That seems a better approach.
The people who can take your children away are given enormous power because they have enormous responsibility, they should also be given excellent training and be subjected to great scrutiny, because without good training and effective oversight great power and great responsibility are a recipe for disaster.
That's what seems to be happening in Maine.
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