Open Letter to Child Protective Services social workers

An Open Letter to Child Protective Services social workers Dear CPS social worker, I dont know you and you dont know me. Im sure you are expecting a bitter letter from a parent that had her children taken, but this letter is not meant to down you or be bitter toward you. It is a letter to hopefully, shed light and help you understand more about your role in this world. You made the choice to study social work in college, maybe from the start, you knew working for child protective services was your goal or perhaps it is one of the first jobs you were hired on to, but either way, your career was aimed towards helping others. That tells me that at one point theres a chance you were a compassionate human being that only wanted to help and change lives. You never imagined your job would be this. Destroying families in the name of help, being forced to follow the rules even when you dont morally agree, and working for a system that is so poorly funded. You are over worked and over booked, the dream you had for your career is but a distant memory. I know you use to feel so deeply and your emotions effected your work, but eventually you became desensitized. You no longer feel like you should and you condone this by saying you cant get that involved with your cases. Im sure you have witnessed some terrible things. Abuse, neglect, addiction, and mental health issues. You have seen the suffering of children and it is your job to save them. You take this job seriously and want what is best for the children. Its a shame that your heavy case loads and courts often keep you from doing what you know is right.Maybe you are one of the good ones, but are caught in a system that doesnt let you be good or maybe you arent one of the good ones, you feel nothing and are okay with ripping a family apart even if its not the right thing to do. You condone this by telling yourself that you are in a position to do what you have to do to protect these kids even if there is no viable evidence. You see yourself almost as a God playing Gods role. It doesnt concern you if it is right or wrong, because in your mind, you think it's better safe then sorry. You manipulate, you lie, you stare the grief of children and parents in the face without a flinch. Your income is good and your life isnt so bad, you probably have a beautiful family that you go home to every night to sleep peacefully with knowing that you are above the system. The federal government pays a hefty incentive to every child that is in your system and forced into adoption. It pays well so even if you know that the children in the system are in for a hard life, you dont care, you terminate the rights of parents that love their children more than life. Perhaps these parents needed some advice, resources, a hand up or even a hand out, but they surely didnt deserve to lose their children. You hear their cries of grief and witness their rage, they beg and they plead. They fight ruthlessly and finish your case plans for you to find more problems that dont really exist. You condemn parents for the things they do then go home to do the same. You are a hypocrite, a sociopath, and a problem in this world. Im not bitter, I am honest. I hope you can take what I say and use it to think about the things that you continue to do. Its not all your fault, the system is broken, but the good people figure that out and quit. That is why the turn over rate for your job is so high, because it takes a special kind of person to destroy lives. I am the mother of a little girl. I raised this litte girl for 4 years before she was ripped from my custody based on lies and manipulation. It has been a year, a year of hell and unimaginable grief. Their claims against me were mental health issues and their idea of helping was to rip my family apart. Ive never hurt my child or neglected her. Im no where near a perfect parent, but I am far from an unfit one. Ive struggled with depression and it has been a really hard battle, but despite it all,I still did what I needed to do for my child and I did it with love. I got my butt out of bed every morning to care for my child and although I fell short in some areas, the answer was never this. Ive been alienated and bullied while being forced to watch my daughter suffer over being taken from all shes ever known. Ive watched my bright, beautiful baby girl lose the sparkle in her eye and regress while she begs me to come home.Ive been the focus of her anger and confusion, I am blamed by her, not you. She doesnt understand. Id be lying if I said I didnt lose my mind the day they took her, but of coarse it was twisted on me and used against me. I would like to see the government kidnap your children and you keep your sanity. There are ways to help and there are ways to hurt people. I cannot believe that you work for a system and dont know the reality of the system you work for or the reality of foster care...or the reality of the chances of these children leading a successful life after losing their families. You know that children are usually safer with their family than in a foster care setting, but you also know there is no money to be made in that. If you only took the children that genuinely needed to be removed and kept the rest of the families together, just getting them the real help they need, you know there would be no money in that, but it would cost money to fund services to really help them. As of right now, you are banking more money than you are losing, so why change a thing? Why? I will tell you why, because family is all we really have in this world. Every family has their issues, I mean, look at our childhoods.None of had a perfect one, but most of us turned out okay regardless and couldnt imagine our life without our crazy relatives. Our children are our next generation in this country, if we continue to hurt them like this, we will continue to see our future generations decline. The money that could have been spent on preserving these families will now be spent on a life time of mental health treatment, welfare benefits, disability, and law enforcement, because those that come out of this system are more times than not destined to this lifestyle. You know this. I know that it runs so much deeper than just that. The time for change is now. Kept together and helped most of us would grow to be half way functional, decent human beings and then the cycle wouldnt be able to continue. The goverment needs this cycle to keep their control over us and keep up their finances. If you want to help then do us all a favor and stop turning a blind eye to the reality of the system. Do you want to save the children? Quit your job now and stand with us against what is happening to us and our children. If you dont quit your job, then do your job with morals and values. Every family that you meet, think about your own. Realize that you dont know everything and arent an expert at parenting. We are all different and what you think is right isnt always right. Help us, be a friend to us, educate us, support us, lift us up and keep our families together. Comfort the grieving and dont allow the corruption to dictate whether or not you do what is right even if this means standing alone without a job. Our children are too valuable for anything aside from this. There is no amount of money in this world good enough to do what you do. Please,take this to heart, because the change starts with you. God Bless America. Sincerely, A broken mother, Crystal Truitt