In one of the many groups I participate in, to know ALL sides of any issue, a reply to a member was given. For those in Foster Care, this may be of concern?
______________________________________
Reply by member:
1)“...One of my biggest
pet peeves is that the MAPP and PRIDE trainings are totally insufficient to
prepare anyone to foster. They focus mostly on the children that you will have
in your home, however, do not
concentrate on allegations and/or documentation..”
In addition:2) “…I think it should be mandatory
upon becoming licensed that every foster parent have some kind of legal
protection…...
New Mexico has a unique approach to fostering.
They have placed the fostering system under the state insurance umbrella, a
good start....”
- My additional Comments on 1):
I most firmly
agree with 1). Only to add None of us are truly prepared to defend ourselves
when the Agency comes knocking at our door.
However, a while back in our
discussion group, this same issue was brought up.. And myself, being a curious
sort, plus looking for more information to add to our NFPCAR website, I did a
bit of research on if there were any courses to address this issue. And to my
surprise, I did find one “Allegation Prevention – Interactive”-3.0 hours
training credits, presented by Foster Care & Adoptive Community.
So I purchased this course for $4.95..
And then started reading. (Download Course)
The first paragraph was very
encouraging: “Accusations can
happen to a foster parent at any time. They are always "at risk".
There is no suit of armor to protect them from erroneous allegations. It isn't
a matter of "if" a foster home will have an allegation, it is a matter
of "when". There are, however, many things a foster family can do to
minimize the risk of allegations. This course is designed to make you aware of
the steps you can take to lower the risk of accusal..”
However, after going through the
course, I came to the same conclusion
ie “do
not concentrate on allegations and/or documentation..”
But, I encourage everyone to read this
course and see what they think. I have attached it for your review.
In addition, I have listed links
relating to False Allegations, one may want to review at the bottom of this
post.
And do send me your comments on the
Questions that are asked at the end of this training document. BTW, I still did
reply for my 3 hours of training.
FYI, here are the questions:
1. After having read this course, what
might you change or do differently in your home?
2. What frightens you the most about
being a foster parent?
3. What in this course surprised you
the most regarding the possibility of allegation
4. What tips or experiences would you
like to share with other foster parents?
Comments on 2):
“…I think it should be
mandatory upon becoming licensed that every foster parent have some kind of
legal protection…”
I agree. However, and unfortunately,
those who are and/or have been Foster Care Givers, are in reality “Contracted”
by the agency.. And, through time, subtle changes in statutes, this has come to
mean, you, as a Foster Care Giver are responsible for yourself. Yes, hard to
believe, since the agency may say, and/or express the thoughts that “We are a
Team??”
Let me drift a bit to share a story of
the Agencies alleged “Team Approach”
For those of you who are old enough,
in our Western Character World, there were two heros.. ie the Lone Ranger and
Tonto… They traveled together throughout the West to Stop the Bad Guys harming
other innocent people.
One day, while they were traveling in
the open lands, they were confronted by a group of hostile Indians.
So, the Long Ranger asks Tonto, “What
are we going to do??”
Tonto’s reply was, “What do you mean Pale Face?”
May you find Strength in your higher
power,
Granpa Chuck
1. Search
Results
www.fosteringperspectives.org/fp_vol7no1/implications.htm
Indeed, allegations of abuse and neglect by foster parents are found to be ...
nsufficient training and support from DSS
can contribute to these situations. In other ...
www.fosteringperspectives.org/fp_vol7no1/accusations.htm
False
Allegations:
One Foster
Parent's
Story ... future MAPP training in her ...
www.abcadoptions.com/foster.htm
Foster
Parent
Allegations False
Allegations...the
Dark Side of Foster
Care.
Allegations ... Online training for new & licensed
foster parents. Hannah and Her ...
www.nfpcar.org/
Featured
Power Point Training ... 80 percent
of allegations are false. ... An Organization
Originated by Foster
Parents Falsely
Accused, but has Evolved to ...
foster-child.adoption.com/parents/false-allegations-2.html
These
statistics from the National Foster
Parent
Association, paint a bleak picture. ... If you are parenting a child who
has a history of making false
allegations,
make .... Even if your toddler-aged child is potty trained before he or she comes into ...
www.nacac.org/parentgroups/allegations.html
As
a parent group leader, you probably already know that false allegations of .... of your
local foster
care
association) who might provide training for your group. ...
False Abuse Allegations: What Parents Can Do: A Checklist
Laws (2002) Suggests what adoptive and foster parents can do to protect
themselves from false ...
- [PDF]
www.hunter.cuny.edu/socwork/.../Child_Safety_Curricula_Staff.pdf
File
Format: PDF/Adobe
Acrobat - Quick View
1. careful selection, preparation, and training of
foster parents;. 2. staff adequately ... in foster homes, and that false allegations are made, and is nonjudgmental. ...
www.examiner.com/foster.../foster-parents-false-allegations-part-1-of...
Aug
18, 2011 – Foster
Parents;
False
Allegations!
... In almost all training classes for foster parents someone invariably
raises their hand to ask about this storm, ...
www.fosterparenttraining.com/?tag=false-allegation
Online
Training for Foster Parent Relicensing; Accepted
by most agencies. Parent Project Online - Changing Destructive Adolescent
Behavior.
GranPa Chuck 
You, the author, are being duped by the pro SBS leaders. The so called leaders are deeply invested in SBS both financially, professionally and psychologically. The prospect of being wrong implies they have been the linchpin to the destruction of thousands of families. They have mental health issues to begin with and cannot be trusted to be fair. There is a mountain of evidence that SBS as described, both from before and after Guthkelch and Caffey, never existed. Guthkelch himself has denounced the SBS proponents on NPR this year at age 95. Contrary to Levin’s statement that babies have never been shaken, babies have been shaken and that has been captured on nanny cams and the shaking, severe and protracted, did not show either RH or SDH as a result ever, not once! Isn’t that telling?
Use the link below to download the 2 videos that exist.
Here is the link to the shaking videos with no injuries…
https://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=M3BtaklsaTFiR0pqQThUQw
Extract the files from the downloaded zip folder and start the PowerPoint file and press the slide show button in PowerPoint to watch.
A study by Lee looked at 1258 fathers, 26 of the worst abusers identified in that study were witnessed to shake their kids by mothers they lived with, and none had RH or SDH. Note how infrequent shaking is in general. Note how emergency physicians virtually never see babies who have been shaken who are brought in to be checked by concerned parents who have been warned over and over about shaking. I have never seen a case and the only one I know of was a mother who witnessed her husband shake a 5 week old. The child was examined immediately in an ED and there were no findings at all. There has never been a witnessed shaking that led to either finding.
Loving parents for all intents and purposes do not abuse their kids; this was made up to account for cases like Audrey Edmunds; a women who never hurt a child according to all reports. Furthermore, there is no scientific research to prove that happens among loving caregivers. The notion of parents flipping from loving to monstrous is fundamentally absurd. However, it is essential for the child abuse MD’s to speculate that people snap in every case. Of a thousand loving caregivers the odds of ‘snapping’; this made up event that is not seen among loving parents followed for years in other studies, is virtually zero. The real probability could be as high as 1 in 1,000,000 and even then with no witnessed events, it is still hypothetical. Yet it remains the key piece with Edmonds and thousands of other improbable abusers who are falsely accused based on nonspecific and nondiagnostic findings. The findings are used to prove abuse but even the child abuse MD’s now admit they are nonspecific. This is the sine qua non of the conviction; a speculative, extremely low probability event that is the essential component of the fabricated accusations, passed off as 95% likely by prominent SBS advocates whose business is >> 90% prosecuting innocent families. Their statements of certainty that this occurs would mean that 950 of 1000 previously loving parents would abuse their children every year. That would be millions of cases. It is an absurd presumption and has no place in the court room when those odds might be described as the polar opposite of beyond a reasonable doubt; they really are “fundamentally implausible”. Without a witness to abuse, presuming abuse in loving families is as farfetched as an accusation can be.
There is a gigantic business of prosecuting families, getting government funding and generating convictions to get more funds. DA’s, police, child abuse MD’s are all the beneficiaries of false convictions. They are not in the business of preventing child abuse they are in the business of generating convictions for child abuse. Currently I am seeing about 75 cases a year and >> 90% are innocent people being falsely prosecuted and convicted in about ½ of the cases.
They are convicted when child abuse MD’s and their colleagues within institutions operating in a framework well defined by Irving Janis at Yale in the 1970’s, as “group think”, use medical problems and accidents to misdiagnose abuse. I take the time to study these families and read the letters written by those who know them, and for loving caregivers the letters paint a picture of caring people, with zero history of violence or impulsive behaviors. The probability of these people snapping is effectively zero, ruling them out as abusers. The child abuse MD’s believes all these people are liars when they tell the story of an accident or a prodrome of illness leading to a medical encounter. It is easy for an authority figure to accuse anyone of a fictitious event that is witnessed by nobody and a behavior, the type of which they or no one else has ever seen in the accused. The child abuse MD’s can literally say anything and because of the titles they have, these non-evidenced based opinions are given undeserved weight. Judges, police, DA’s and social workers must stop just believing these child abuse specialists. They must go beyond relying on these people and explore the issues via legal documents like Tuerkheimer or medical research that my article references; studies predating the fabrication of SBS that show the dogmatic pillars of child abuse pediatrics are wrong. They must try to decide for themselves how improbable the majority of allegations proffered are. Disproven dogma, not science, is being used to inflict the most dreadful of problems on innocent families and in many cases stealing children from parents and destroying families. I know about abuse. I have held dead abused babies in my arms. When it real it is easy to see. When it is conjured up via the misdiagnosis of accidents and medical problems, it is equally obvious. The denialists in this calculus are those that refuse to acknowledge how often medical problems and accidents are misdiagnosed as abuse and the 1000’s of cases that could be accidents or medical problems that are dismissed with certainty that they can be “abuse and only abuse.”
Here is a link to an article that summarizes the evidence against SBS.
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/7z55j01t
Read this summary of the medical history and evidence base (you can download the references) showing how awful what they are doing is.
“He said she said” is not the approach to this issue. Their science is based on children precategorized as abused by their colleagues, the very findings they say diagnoses abuse. This is circular logic. RH and SDH are nondiagnostic findings but if every child with RH and SDH is precategorized as abused and put into an “abuse group”, how reliable is the conclusion that all children who are abused have RH and SDH. And when the dogma was finally shown to be unreliable after 25 years of analysis, the American Academy of Pediatrics decided by a committee made up people like the very people cited in this article, the ardent proponents of SBS, to stop linking their “beliefs” in abuse to any specific medical findings to “provide more clarity in the courtroom.” Diagnoses like abusive head trauma or nonaccidental trauma were invoked that suggest both mechanism and intent to abuse when there is zero ability to infer that from the nonspecific findings they rely on. The purpose was to win more cases with even less reliable evidence then before and it continues to work. The scientific debate has been controlled by those with the power to dictate policies and publicity and is linked to the prosecution machine that operates in this area of the law. Hopefully that will change.
I have been in Emergency Medicine for 35 years and I am not a naïve do gooder. I have seen it all, plus. The child abuse establishment has seduced the media and the legal system using their undeserved fame and ill-gotten stature to influence the courts and the media. They intimidate colleagues and those that disagree, relying on the emotions the child abuse invokes. Yet a false allegation is child abuse and people need to come to grips with this since now false allegations most likely out number the number of cases of real abuse that makes it to court. This is the biggest medical fraud in history.
(End of Comment)
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