By Jarred Jones
It has recently come to my attention that there is more to the deficiencies and inconsistencies within the Social Services department than I had ever realized. I recently met a young woman by the name Carly Sanchez. Carly recently had her children taken away due to her household being seen as unsafe for her children.
This was mainly due to her husband’s past record of domestic violence and problems with alcohol. In the face of this knowledge, Social Services gave Carly the option of leaving her husband, as he was still repeating his past offenses, or her children would be taken. She of course took the first option, however, before the end of their interview, the child services agent decided she changed her mind and recanted her offer for Carly to choose.
“I swear they have quotas to fill, and pay no attention to individual cases or circumstances.” Carly had to say when asked about the interview. On top of that, even though it was her husband who had the problems concerning alcohol and domestic violence, it was Carly who was forced into taking multiple drug tests and domestic violence courses over the course of several months, her husband had drug tests for two weeks, and was never called in again. When asked why this was so, the Services agent I talked to repeatedly avoided the question.
I was repeatedly given roundabout stories when I asked about the usual allocation of duties given to both parents when attempting to regain custody from foster care. Since the beginning of this case Carly has left her husband and consistently going to her assigned classes and visits with the children, while it appears her husband has taken a much more lackadaisical approach, when he is actually required to go to a meeting or class.
In the end it seems that the Department for Social Services in Colorado Springs needs to review their inner workings and improve their communication between departments drastically and soon. The lack of communication between Social Services within itself and to the legal system has caused a plethora of problems in Carly’s case, let alone the number of other cases they handle each day. It seems to me they put every case they open under a blanket category and pay no attention to anything that may be outside of the pre-determined box. If they would work to improve this it seems that the statistics for children taken from their homes wouldn’t be quite so depressing year after year.
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