You Don't Come First Anymore!!!

I'm going to vent a little bit about the job.

In the course of business, my office handles CPS (Child Protective Services) cases.  On the majority of cases we are appointed as attorney ad litems for children meaning we represent the child's interests in the court proceedings. CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) acts as the "ground troups" since CPS caseworkers are so overloaded.  CASA is the very critical "filler" to keep even one child from "falling through the cracks."

I'm not even going to attempt to give any of these parents the benefit of the doubt.  Mainly because I haven't seen a single one that deserved to be p***ed on if they were on fire, much less more opportunity to keep their children in abusive, neglectful and miserable, most times squalid, conditions.

The majority of these parents are hardcore drug addicts.  Every once in a while we will run across a parent who is just plain lazy/miserable and could care less about their children being happy and healthy.  Believe me . . . there are children in every single community in this world who are either being abused and/or neglected.  This crap does not discriminate along economic, race, religious, etc lines.  Although you will find almost every child of a drug addict being neglected.  Feeding their addiction is the addict's number one priority.  Feeding the kids? Not so much.

Which brings me to my job complaint for today.

We started out two years ago representing a little 3 year old girl (Leila) and her 8 month old half brother (Will).  CPS was contacted to intervene due to neighbors noticing the lack of care they were receiving from their meth-addled mother.  Both children are the products of "transactions" with two different dealers.  At the time of Leila and Will's rescue (really? what else do I call it?), their mother was pregnant again and still strung out on meth.  After the baby (Esteban) was born in late 2009, he was immediately rescued too.  Then in late 2010, another baby (Zina) was born.  She was rescued also.  All four children are now in the care of two different families with Leila and Will with one family and the two babies with another family.  CASA reports that all children are happy and healthy with only Leila having some dental problems.

You'd think that the mother would work her butt of to get clean since she's been screaming since day one that she "lives for her babies, her babies mean the world to her, she can't live without her babies!!"

Horse hockey.

She can't live without her meth and when push comes to shove, SHE comes first.  She's gonna get her fix and everybody else can go to hell.  But the whole while she is screaming to get her kids back and how much she loves them.

I am so sick of these piece of poo parents who don't give a rat's behind about their kids when they have them. But they get all offended and indignant when someone comes and takes better care of the kids.  Actually gives the kids a chance at being happy and healthy. Hey! Wait a minute!! Actually gives these kids a chance at being . . . . . a KID!!!

Let's not forget the case about the7 year old girl who routinely cleaned up her mom's vomit and got herself to school for almost 2 weeks before the teacher realized that the little girl was dealing with something pretty bad at home and instigated an investigation.  Luckily that little girl was re-united with her Dad who had divorced the mother because of her alcoholism and drug abuse but the court gave custody to the mother.  Once the court did that, the mother made it dang near impossible for the Dad to get his visitation. Go figure.

Today we got notice that one of the drug addict parents wants to relinquish their parental rights.

You know what?  I couldn't agree more.