It seems to me that if CPS immediately and preemptively puts you under a punitive regime like this (what happens if grandparents don't live nearby or just aren't alive? Oh well, not their problem I guess) for merely being reported, then it is a highly effective vehicle for harassing neighbors you don't like.
> They came up with that plan because the grandparents DID live nearby.
Yes, these kind of ”no unsupervised time, but children remain with parents” agreements are one alternative that CPS sometimes gives, where what they see as suitable supervisers are available, to putting the children in temporary foster care during an investigation.
They are justified in exactly the same cases where what they are an alternative to would be justified.
Putting children in a foster home is a higher legal barrier than a voluntary "Safety plan." Phrasing this as alternative is disingenuous.
It's safe to assume if that legal barrier was actually met they would have put them in a foster home as staying with the parents would be too unsafe.
The parents got bluffed by tyrants. Personally I would never open the door to, nor sign any document, nor speak with CPS outside of court proceedings. Let them gather whatever evidence they need with a warrant and enforce any order by mechanism of the judge rather than agreeing to whatever pompous authoritarian bullshit is spewed out by some 3rd-rate bureaucrat in a "voluntary safety plan."
>”no unsupervised time, but children remain with parents” agreements are one alternative that CPS sometimes gives,
IANAL but I don't think anyone but a judge can give that order, and I would certainly bet my freedom and even my life on that.
I'm not saying they're better, but would you rather just let it end with CPS and not get a hearing? To get a kid taken basically is going to require your consent or the holes lining up in the swiss cheese. I want as many layers in that swiss cheese as possible if the allegations against me are false.
Stuff like due process is what our forefathers died to at least ostensibly give us.
I'm not so sure. It appears the parents capitulated to two weeks of "safety plan" to CPS when there was no abuse at all. I don't see much functional difference between "CPS found no abuse and stopped there" and "CPS found no probable cause of abuse, then brought it to judge who said WTF with the safety plan without probable cause of abuse" other than the latter shut down the whole safety plan BS.
CPS is basically the adversary in the court proceedings so I see the judge more as an additional layer in the swiss cheese rather than a replacement layer in the swiss cheese, which your previous statement seems to allude towards.
Did you read TFA? Nothing you are saying is matching up with the information. CPS is not the adversary in this case, nor did they bring it to a judge.
The parents agreed to the surveillance plan. Unless they go to a judge for an order mandating it, it's voluntary. It's likely the lawyer recommended they go along with it.
This is like the 5th time you've commented on my stuff while missing major information from the article, or simply going off on some random tangent.
The fact that you characterize someone building an abuse case against you, and interfering with your normal parental rights, as not your "adversary" really makes me question what you have to prove here. Is this an ego thing? Is this why you're trolling right now?
From the beginning I indicated I would force them to go through the court for the "voluntary" agreement. Your snark "but judges are better?" completely bypassed that, seemingly completely missing the request for the order would never even get to the judge if the adversary CPS never pushed for the order in the first place.
> nor did they bring it to a judge.
Which is why I proposed a scenario where they were forced to if they wanted it to happen. I'm well aware many of my opinions were not expressed in the "information" of the article (oh no!).
>This is like the 5th time you've commented on my stuff
If you check this thread, you initially commented to me on this thread. It was your choice to reply to me unsolicited, although your statement here is a nice attempt to try to turn that on its head.
You can't really say what other alternatives were available beyond that this is what the family preferred. The grandparents were available and that's what they chose.
They could just do what we do with every other crime, and only punish people AFTER we find that they're guilty. You say this like the parents absolutely NEEDED to be supervised, despite saying "we only did this because we didn't realize it was illegal" - this is not exactly a High Threat situation.
If CPS is going to force this sort of thing on parents, they could also reasonably be expected to compensate for the involved expenses - force CPS to pay for a nanny if CPS really thinks that's essential. If CPS can't afford to do that, then we as a society have already voted that the nanny wasn't actually worth the cost.
