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Fighting Child Protective Services
False Accusations

Federal Child Welfare Laws

NOTE: As part of the 2004 site update, this page is being changed during February 2004. All sub-sections are being moved to different pages. You will find them in the side-bar index (frames version) as the pages are prepared. This will give room to provide more information about each topic.

• Index of Federal Child Welfare Laws - this federal website page lists all the laws enacted since CAPTA in 1974 that affect child protective services as we know it today. Keep in mind this has all taken place in just the last thirty years. This can be changed! These laws can be repealed just like Prohibition was enacted and repealed during the nineteen-twenties. These are wretched, bad laws and once their evil is exposed, compassionate and reasonable lawmakers will do what they can to provide for the sanctity and safety of American families.
• Children's Bureau - oldest federal agency for children, responsible for assisting states with child welfare services.


• Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003 - Bush signed this.
• Summary of Public Law 93-247 - This is a summary of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 (CAPTA), which established an agency for research and to train people to work in the child abuse industry: social welfare, law, medicine and more to prevent or treat child abuse/neglect. It offered incentive money to the states to set up programs. It started national child abuse/neglect hysteria by providing for a "full study and investigation of child abuse and neglect, including a determination of the extent to which incidents of child abuse and neglect are increasing in number or severity."


• Summary of Public Law 96-272 - This is a summary of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980. Title I of this Act established programs and funding for adoption and foster care assistance for children under title IV (Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Aid to Child Welfare Services) of the Social Security Act. In order to be eligible to this funding, the states must have a plan providing for a state child welfare service agency, for audits every three years, for "certain other administrative, personnel, reporting and benefit standards requirements" and most importantly, that reasonable efforts will be made to prevent the removal of a child from his or her home and to make it possible for a child to return home".
  

  This Act authorized state custody funding for both voluntary placements and for "the result of a judicial determination declaring that continuation in the home would be contrary to the child's welfare and that reasonable efforts to keep the child in the home have been made" with the requirement that the child had been on AFDC public aid or had been eligible to receive AFDC within 6 months prior to the initiation of court proceedings. State custody funding was limited to state licensed foster homes or "licensed nonprofit private child-care institutions."
  

  This act also requires states to make "adoption assistance payments" when a child (1) had been on AFDC public aid or had been eligible to receive AFDC within 6 months prior to the initiation of court proceedings, (2) is eligible for SSI, or (3) is a "child with special needs".
  

  Defines a "special needs" child : (1) cannot or should not be returned to his or her parent's home; (2) has a special condition making it reasonable to conclude that such child cannot be placed with adoptive parents without providing adoption assistance; and (3) has not been able to be placed without assistance."
  

  There is a provision for statistical reports to be made by states to the federal government. Requires states to determine need for each child's foster custody and to implement "a statewide information system on children in foster care, a care review system for each child, and a program to help children return to their families."
  

  "Defines child welfare services to mean, among other things: (1) protecting and promoting the welfare of all children; (2) preventing the unnecessary separation of children from their families; and (3) placing children in suitable adoptive homes where restoration to the biological family is not possible or appropriate."



• Summary of Public Law 105-89 - A summary of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. This law intensifies the war on families to the breaking point. Now the country has made a high-stakes money game out of increasing the number of children adopted out of state care. The results are that more children are being detained on more trivial charges, and termination of parental rights (TPR) can occur after only 15 months of state custody. This is an affront to the human spirit and to the God-given Parent-Child bond. Read it and weep.



HOW MUCH HAS YOUR STATE PROFITED FROM THE ADOPTION OF CHILDREN LATELY? HHS Awards First Adoption Bonuses - 9/24/1999 HHS Awards Adoption Bonuses and Grants - 9/20/2000 HHS Awards Adoption Bonuses - 9/10/2001 "Nearly $20 million in adoption bonuses went to 42 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico for increasing the number of children adopted from public foster care. The bonuses were proposed by the Clinton-Gore administration in its Adoption 2002 initiative and were included in the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA). Last year, 35 states received bonuses. To date, every state and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have qualified for these funds for one or both years of the program." Because of these bonuses, more children are being taken from their loving families unjustly, to feed the state's needs for readily adoptable children.

• Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC) - "statutory law in all 52 member jurisdictions and a binding contract between member jurisdictions. The ICPC establishes uniform legal and administrative procedures governing the interstate placement of children."

• Indian Child Welfare Act - children with native American ancestry can benefit from this law.


• Indian Child Welfare Law Center - Minnesota website that explains how the ICWA should work.


• Brief Bio of Leah Manning - a social worker who helped develop the Indian Child Welfare Act.

• FOIA Advocates - find your state's privacy records act.
• Privacy Act - your right to any information about you that a government agency may have in its records.


• FBI Freedom of Information Website - learn more about it here.


• NASA Freedom of Information Website - more information about FOIA.


• National Institutes of Health FOIA Website - lots of good information here!


• Request Letter Generator - excellent letter generator. You may have to make a few minor changes, but this will help get you what you want, under the Freedom of Information Act.


• FOIA and Privacy Act Explained - I like this website... it is written by an ordinary citizen who has used these letters to get needed documents.


• Sample FOIA/Privacy Act Letter - this is on the Hope4Kidz website.


• Dept. of Justice FOIA/PA Information - they provide a person you can complain to if CPS doesn't honor your requests.

• U.S. Supreme Court Database - comprehensive search of U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
• Pending Youth Law Cases - this is a PDF file (Adobe Acrobat needed).


• Chicago Tribune: System Ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL - news article about a new federal court ruling.


• 15 Month Rule - 1/31/2000 - a Kane County (Illinois) judge has ruled unconstitutional a state law that allows for the termination of parental rights for no other reason than a child has been in foster care for 15 months.


• Calabretta V. Floyd - federal case law from the 9th district, providing binding case law for CA, OR, WA, ID, MT, NV, AZ, HI and AK. This is about a California homeschooling family whose Fourth Amendment rights to privacy were violated by a social worker, Jill Floyd of Yolo County. The Appellate Court decided that coerced entries by CPS workers and forced strip searches are a violation of Constitutional Rights.


• Wallis v. The City of Escondido - Sept. 14, 1999 decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Interesting that this took place in Escondido, a city whose name means "hidden". All that is hidden will be brought to light. Thank you, William and Rebecca Wallis, for pursuing this case of violated Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. (see notes below, re: immunity statues) This is binding legal precident in the US 9th District including WA, OR, ID, MT, CA, NV, AZ, HI, and AK


• Wallis v. Spencer - Feb. 7, 2000 decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. This is binding legal precedent in the US 9th District including WA, OR, ID, MT, CA, NV, AZ, HI, and AK


• Troxel v. Granville - June 5, 2000 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. (see notes below, re: 14th Amendment)


• Mabe v.San Bernadino County - January 24, 2001 - a mother will be allowed to continue with her lawsuit against a caseworker for violation of Fourth Amendment rights. The caseworker did not have a warrant to enter her home and take her daughter in a non-emergency situation. This is binding legal precedent in the US 9th District including WA, OR, ID, MT, CA, NV, AZ, HI, and AK

"It appears that the district court also applied state statutory immunities for child abuse investigations to the federal constitutional claims and concluded that the City is immune from a S 1983 action under a state immunity statute. Again, the district court erred. Immunity under S 1983 is governed by federal law; state law cannot provide immunity from suit for federal civil rights violations. Martinez v. California, 444 U.S. 277, 284" (Wallis v. The City of Escondidio - 1999) (emphasis mine)

"It is clear that the California immunity statute does not control this claim even though the federal cause of action is being asserted in the state courts. We also conclude that it is not necessary for us to decide any question concerning the immunity of state parole officials as a matter of federal law because, as we recently held in Baker v. McCollan, 443 U.S. 137 , "[t]he first inquiry in any 1983 suit . . . is whether the plaintiff has been deprived of a right `secured by the Constitution and laws' of the United States." (MARTINEZ v. CALIFORNIA, 444 U.S. 277 - 1980) (emphasis mine)

Parental Rights Protected By The "Liberty Clause" Of The Fourteenth Amendment To The U.S. Constitution

The liberty interest at issue in this case--the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children--is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court. More than 75 years ago, in Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390, 399, 401 (1923), we held that the "liberty" protected by the Due Process Clause includes the right of parents to "establish a home and bring up children" and "to control the education of their own." Two years later, in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510, 534-535 (1925), we again held that the "liberty of parents and guardians" includes the right "to direct the upbringing and education of children under their control." We explained in Pierce that "[t]he child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations." Id., at 535. We returned to the subject in Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158 (1944), and again confirmed that there is a constitutional dimension to the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. "It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder." Id., at 166. (Troxel v. Granville - U.S. Supreme Court - No. 99-138. Argued January 12, 2000--Decided June 5, 2000)

• Title 42 Sec 1983 Civil Rights Lawsuits - lots of leads to the information you need to sue child welfare agents in federal courtrooms.


• Suing Judges - "However, the Court went on to hold that the Virginia Court was a proper defendant in a coercive action brought under § 1983 because it possessed enforcement powers. 'As already indicated, § 54-74 [of the Code of Virginia (1978) ] gives the Virginia Court independent authority of its own to initiate proceedings against attorneys. For this reason the Virginia Court and its members were proper defendants in a suit for declaratory and injunctive relief, just as other enforcement officers and agencies were.' Id., at 736, 100 S.Ct., at 1977." (Supreme Court of Virginia v. Consumers Union of U.S., Inc. , 462 U.S. 1137 - 1983)