yellowstone123 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 8:36 pm
Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 5:09 pm
Question: are these exceptions to when the juvenile court can take custody of children?
Yes and No.
I’ll give you the beginning in the ‘1990s in a few parts:
In general CPS in one California County will remove the children, place them with relatives or shelter care, write a report* describing the issue, it’s faxed to intake, detention and control (IDC) where a CPS worker there may have questions about the detention, and makes calls and clarifies some issues with the field office, the police or medical staff, and at least once or twice the CPS Emergency Response worker who did the initial investigation, detention and placement, wrote/typed and faxed the report to IDC and CPS worker at IDC will start a discussion the phone with each other, sometimes it gets heated as the CPS worker in the field who did all the work doesn't want to be lectured by a CPS worker at IDC/Court.
This may happen once if five years to the CPS emergency response worker in the field who is likely juggling 30 referrals/families at at a time. The IDC CPS worker may also have sat next to the worker on the phone and done Emergency Response a year before but is now at court.
The IDC CPS person writes/types the petition, calls and verifies questions, puts it on calendar for the following day, gets the petition, all reports and puts them together for the court. The court officer, a CPS worker, who could have also worked emergency response two years prior and all three worked in the same unit reads everything and gives it to the county counsel who will read and get familiar with the issues. County Counsel likely has two or three detentions that morning, 12 judicial reviews, and 2 trials later that afternoon in the same court room that day.
But I think my point is that being poor and homeless would have been flagged by so many people before it even was given to the judge for the first of many hearings and rulings. Being a poor family is not jurisdictional in Juvenile Court and a child brought before the court shall not be described as someone who is at high risk for depression, anxiety, withdrawal, untoward aggression, etc for living in poverty.
*In CPS investigation allegations of physical abuse and sexual abuse are extremely serious. The general rule is to bring the police with you or call them after a disclosure is made and have them interview the child. Many times, a CPS worker explains to the officers that they need to take the child into custody and release the child to them. This only takes a few seconds and, on the spot, but this is an arrest, a report by law enforcement is needed and completed, the report then goes to detectives. Many times, in cases like this the parent is dealing with two court rooms, judges, attorneys and different burdens of proof on the government. Where in Dependency Court (child abuse) the burden is a preponderance of evidence where in criminal court it’s beyond a reasonable doubt. Many times, the first responding officer will then go arrest the parent or perpetrator. Does this happen all the time. No, and it can lead to many difficulties later in court because this was not done at the beginning. When it’s clear that those two subdivisions of section 300 are involved, CPS needs to get the police to the school or home or shelter, neighbors house immediately.
To be continued
Now if someone calls the child abuse hotline – the real child abuse hotline not the one of the Mormon churches reportedly has, a CPS worker is handed a referral, most of the time it’s dropped in his basket on top of a filing cabinet. The referral is also electronic and is in his computer in which the cps emergency response worker will log into, which is a state system called CWS or Child Welfare System. The physical one in a green folder with the referral printed out and the one in the computer are identical.
If the issue of the family is being poor and somehow it did generate a referral, but usually it would have been flagged by the hotline supervisor, let’s say it got through and was assigned to be investigated and the CPS emergency response worker who locates and talks with the father and his children – 1) female, age 15, male, age 11, female age 7, male, age 3 who are living in their broken-down truck and camper in skid row. They are across the street from a 24-hour fitness, and they use it for showers and the restroom, which the staff verifies and does not mind and get their daily meals from a food pantry every 3 days, the free clinic a block away said they were just there two days ago, and have been for two years, and it’s sad dad’s truck is only quarter mile from their old apartment.
When a CPS worker speak separately with a children, two broken down cars ahead of the truck, the children report that they are in no pain, report no type of abuse, no marks or bruises are noticed on exposed areas of the children’s body that the worker casually notes, they appear well nourished and the father is setting something up either in waiting for his housing to come through and in which he is now the 2nd from the top , or he might be moving in with a sister in Fresno. So, it appears to the CPS worker the family is poor. The Legislature (the people) and the governor are clear – being poor is not considered jurisdictional. I'll get into being described a dependent of the court and being declared a dependent of the court. I might was well explain the process many children in poverty face.
To be continued
“One of the important things for anybody in power is to distinguish between what you have the right to do and what is right to do." Potter Stewart, associate justice of the Supreme Court - 1958 to 1981.
