by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

A tragic story was published this week in Albany, New York, where a 2-year-old child was forcibly removed from his family by the family police force known as “Child Protection Services” (CPS), even though there was no record or claims that the child and his brother, who was also removed, were ever abused.

The 2-year-old child along with his brother were then placed into a State-licensed foster home, where one of the members of that home had formerly been investigated for child abuse.

That member of the licensed foster home was Sarah Carter, the adult daughter of the licensed foster mother, who subsequently left the young toddler, 2-year-old Antonio, in a hot car for 4 hours where he died of hyperthermia, or overheating.

What makes this story, which happens all too frequently, so tragic, is that Antonio had parents who loved him, and observed how he was being mistreated in the foster home he was placed in during the supervised visitation times with their son, who often showed up with bruises and cuts, and smelled like he had not been bathed for some time.

This was reported to the caseworker, and other family members tried to gain custody of young Antonio, but to no avail.

The Times Union covered the tragic story in Albany.

Family, ex-caseworker of child who died in hot car say CPS ignored red flags

Sarah Carter faces charges in the death of 2-year-old Antonio Suarez-Ware, who was in the foster care of Carter’s mother

Excerpts:

The Monticello woman arrested for allegedly leaving 2-year-old foster child Antonio Suarez-Ware alone inside a hot car last month, leading to his death, was named in a previous report of alleged child abuse in April 2020, according to a police report obtained by the Times Union.

The report adds to questions about how Sullivan County’s Department of Social Services handles foster cases. Earlier this year, a grand jury recommended sweeping changes to the department after an investigation spurred by the 2023 death of another toddler who had been under county Child Protective Services’ supervision at the time.

In the weeks since Antonio’s death, his biological family and a former CPS caseworker assistant assigned to his case have alleged that the county ignored red flags around the foster family, ultimately failing children they were supposed to protect.

Sarah Carter was arrested on Aug. 1 and charged with criminally negligent homicide for allegedly causing Antonio’s death on July 16. The child’s aunt, Chante Ware, said Antonio and his 3-year-old brother were in the care of Carter’s mother.

[There were] prior police reports for noise complaints and neighborly disputes for Sarah Carter and her mother.

Sullivan County Child Protective Services initially removed Antonio and his brother from their parents’ home in May because of ongoing domestic disputes, concerns about their mother’s health, and what the Department of Social Services said were deplorable conditions in the home, according to Chante Ware, who lives in Albany.

Another aunt, who lives in Kansas, had been trying to obtain custody of the children, Ware added.

A caseworker assistant who transported Antonio and his brother back and forth between the foster home and the biological parents for visitation, noticed what was happening to Antonio in the foster home, and reported it to her superiors.

As a result of her trying to step in and advocate for these two children, she was fired.

Martinez, the former caseworker assistant assigned to Antonio and his brother, assisted with overseeing the boys’ visits with their parents and transporting them back to their foster home. She told the Times Union she noticed Antonio and his brother were sometimes sent to their visitations wearing dirty clothes and with cuts and bruises.

In early June, Martinez said Antonio had bruises on his face and chest, which the foster mother attributed to a fall. Martinez said she reported the marks that month.

Martinez also noticed a rash on Antonio’s body, a condition she said a doctor determined was due to his diapers not being changed frequently enough. Martinez said that when she brought it up to the foster mother, she defended herself and claimed that she always changed his diaper.

“Antonio was a little off whenever we did the visits, and the father said that it wasn’t like him because Antonio was always cheerful,” Martinez said.

The foster mother did not respond to multiple attempts by the Times Union to reach her.

Martinez said she sent verbal and written notices of her observations to the caseworker, foster care staff and her supervisor, but she was always brushed off.

Martinez said she was fired in June for poor performance, but claimed DSS retaliated against her because she kept making reports about her supervisor and the boys’ foster mother. She said she is considering a wrongful termination lawsuit.

“If they would have just listened and investigated her, or at least removed them, (Antonio) would still be here,” Martinez said. (Full article.)

This is yet another case that happens all too frequently where the “child protection” police called “social workers” determine that certain parents are not fit to parent their children, NOT because of abuse, but because of what they call “neglect”, which in many states is 70% to 80% of all children who are removed from their homes when they don’t want to be removed, and the parents do not want them removed either.

“Neglect” can be anything from medical neglect, such as not vaccinating your children, not taking them to regular doctor visits, or even asking for a second opinion from a different doctor, to just “general” neglect, which can be letting your children play outside without shows, wearing dirty clothes, or just homeschooling your children.

The Child-Trafficking Foster Care and Adoption Business Needs to be Abolished

This system of legalized child trafficking under the color of the law is so corrupt, that the only solution is to abolish it, and stop funding the child traffickers.

This was the message of the late Georgia Senator Nancy Schaefer back in 2010, before she was murdered. See:

Senator Nancy Schaefer: Did her Fight Against CPS Child Kidnapping Cause her Murder?

University of South Carolina law professor Josh Gupta-Kagan who practices in New York, has just written an excellent article in the Family Justice Journal titled: Medicaid Funds Kinship Care without Separating Families. So Should CPS.

An excerpt is published at The Imprint without a paywall.

He argues that the U.S. already has a system in place that can take care of families where abuse is not happening, which is Medicaid, and the emphasis is to keep families together.

Excerpts:

Money impacts relationships. And when the money involved is a foster care subsidy to kinship caregivers, it can drive a wedge in relationships between parents and kinship caregivers that should be strengthened, not strained.

Unfortunately, foster care funding incentivizes the “relational disruption” endemic to foster care, when it should instead support family members coming together to support each other and their children.

In contrast, Medicaid funding has increasingly supported family members taking care of each other and can provide child welfare with a model for funding family caregiving without disrupting relationships and without even requiring a family court or foster care case.

Consider a mother who lives with her aunt, and they both struggle to make ends meet. The aunt helps the mother take care of her infant child since she has a mental illness and sometimes uses illegal drugs.

Her drug use increased following an assault by her ex-boyfriend. The child protective service (CPS) agency learns that the mother has left the child at home with the aunt for days and has even brought the child with her while she uses drugs.

Concerned for the child’s safety, the CPS agency convinces the family court to authorize it to remove the child from his mother’s legal and physical custody on an emergency basis.

The CPS agency then describes kinship foster care to the aunt: she can apply for a kinship foster care license, keep the child with her, and get a monthly stipend from the state that will go a long way towards making ends meet.

But that kinship foster payment comes with a catch: the aunt has to keep the mother out of the home. The aunt is frustrated with her niece but is also worried about the impact of CPS’s position; without a place to stay, her niece’s drug use could worsen, and accessing mental health treatment could be harder.

And what kind of system pays you to keep a loved one away?

Regardless, the aunt feels she has no real choice. She says yes, and soon is receiving a monthly stipend, while being drafted to enforce the CPS agency and family court’s rules that prevent her niece from living with her.

In this family–a simplified composite of families encountered in my career as a lawyer in the family regulation system, and which represent some significant portion of the more than 120,000 children in kinship foster care on any given day–the aunt is an essential support to the mother.

Any intervention should support both the kinship caregiver and the parent, so they can continue to take care of the child and each other together. Instead, foster care funding rules incentivize, and even demand, damage to these relationships.

Consider a growing trend in state Medicaid systems: paying family members to provide home health assistance to disabled or elderly family members.

This funding became more common during the COVID-19 pandemic as states sought to keep people out of nursing homes and faced staffing shortages for home health aides.

Facing these incentives, at least 37 states used COVID-era funding flexibility to expand ways to pay kinship caregivers to help take care of elderly and disabled family members.

That expanded kinship caregiving funding has remained, even as COVID has receded, with 30 states making some form of this Medicaid funding permanent. (Full article.)

While this attorney is advocating to reform CPS to be more like Medicaid, why not just abolish it altogether and take some of the massive funding that goes to removing children from their family, and put it into Medicaid instead and eliminate the need altogether for CPS and their horrible Child “Welfare” practices?

That would be the rational, sane choice, IF your goal is to keep families together and safe.

Unfortunately, that is not the primary goal of the Child Welfare system, as it makes way too much money trafficking children, and employs hundreds of thousands of government employees, from the social workers, to the attorneys and judges in family courts, and to the foster and adoptive parents who get federal funding to raise children that were not born to them.

We have the research that is decades old now that clearly shows that children fare far better when left with their families, even if those are “troubled” families, such as having issues with “drug abuse”, which of course are ALWAYS “illegal” drugs, and not the more dangerous drugs that require a doctor to prescribe, such as opioids and anti-psychotic drugs, then if they were taken out of those “troubled” homes and put into the evil foster care system. See:

Study: Children from Poor Parents, Even if they have a Drug Problem, do Worse if Put into Foster Care

Some may ask: “What about the other 15-20% where there is REAL abuse happening in the home?”

Ah, yes, we already have a system in place for those cases too.

It is called the “Criminal Justice System.”

You know, that system that is guided by the Constitution where a suspected criminal is assumed to be innocent until proven guilty, where that suspected criminal has the right to remain silent, the right to a speedy trial, and the right to a jury trial by their peers?

These are all rights afforded to arrested criminals including rapists, murderers, extortionists, and any other class of criminals.

But those same rights are NOT given to parents who have their children kidnapped from their home by CPS, where they are assumed to be guilty until proven innocent, where the evidence presented to a Family Court judge only has to be just a “preponderance of evidence” instead of the “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that is required in criminal courts.

Not only are parents accused of child abuse or neglect not given the same rights as murderers, rapists, terrorists, etc., in Family Law, the alleged victim, the child, is incarcerated while the alleged criminals, the parents, are allowed to keep living in their homes.

In the meantime, as this horrible child trafficking system of foster care and adoption continues, children across this country are being sexually abused, trafficked, and murdered in the system every single day, while their biological parents are helpless to do anything about it.

Related Reading:

The U.S. Foster Care System: Modern Day Slavery and Child Trafficking

Child Kidnapping and Trafficking: A Lucrative U.S. Business Funded by Taxpayers

From Child Protection to State-sponsored Child Kidnapping: How Did we Get Here?

America #1 in Child Sex Trafficking and Pedophilia – CPS and Foster Care are the Pipelines

Christian Churches Redefine the Meaning of “Orphan” to Justify Participating in Child Trafficking

Comment on this article at HealthImpactNews.com.

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