by Eli Hager: For Complete Post, Click Here…
ngd-This ignoring of due process is used especially against anyone with a disability…
The child welfare system rarely offers the same rights as the criminal justice system, leaving many families facing permanent separation without due process protections.
Every year, child protective services agencies across the nation investigate the family lives of roughly 3.5 million children, or about 1 out of every 20 American kids.
In these cases, government officials frequently accuse parents of wrongdoing. They enter homes to conduct searches and interrogations, and what they find can be used against the parent by a state attorney in court. And the accused will face punishment — including, often, having their children removed from them indefinitely.
Child welfare cases, that is, operate a lot like criminal ones.
Yet the mostly low-income families who are ensnared in this vast system have few of the rights that protect Americans when it is police who are investigating them, according to dozens of interviews with constitutional lawyers, defense attorneys, family court judges, CPS caseworkers and parents.
