"The Indian family’s nightmare began in May last year when it was investigated by CPS. Welfare officials interviewed the family of the Indian geophysicist who works in a multinational firm to find that the four-year-son was fed by hand by his mother, did not have appropriate toys and slept in his father’s bed. There was no diaper changing table for the baby and when she was breast fed, the mother cradled only her head and not whole body.
CPS saw this as evidence of an ‘emotional disconnect’ and placed the children in an emergency shelter before eventually placing them in two separate foster homes, to be reunited with their parents only when they turn 18. Until then the parents can see them thrice a year for an hour each.
CPS has never publicly stated the case against the parents with Toresen only saying that the children ‘needed more’ than they were getting.
More? What exactly? Are toys, a diaper changing table, cutlery more important than the emotional bond that the parents can best provide? Do a paucity of these warrant a forcible abduction? Can any humane person, let alone a state, argue that this is enough to justify yanking these children from their roots and replanting them within the needs of a substitute ‘family’ that is paid handsomely to provide them the ‘more’ that CPS believes they need?
Certainly there is the suspicion that there has been a complete cultural disconnect. Indian mothers routinely hand feed their young children, Indian children just as routinely sleep with their parents. If a mother’s holding of her baby daughter while breast feeding her is seen as sign of an emotional disconnect or the fact that she feeds her little boy by hand and not cutlery is evidence that the child is being force-fed, then what should Indians make of the fact that Norwegian children sleep apart from their parents? Should Indian authorities take to barging into Norwegian expat homes, taking away their children because of what we define as abuse?
Assume for a minute that CPS acted out of what it sees as the children’s best interests, why did it not then offer counselling or remedial classes to the parents? Why did it not attempt to place the children within the parents’ larger, extended family? Why did it worsen the children’s trauma by placing them in separate foster homes, disconnected from each other, their language, culture and religion? Why did CPS refuse to even reply to four different letters written to it by the parents? And what kind of shameless arrogance even now leads it to drag its feet in finding the fastest possible resolution?
Perhaps it is not arrogance but something more sinister.
CPS “in order to have work, want children and they attack anybody who is vulnerable,” says Marianne Haslev Skanland, a professor emeritus in Bergen, Norway on her website. Last year, according to Norway’s Statistics Bureau, as many as 12,492 children received ‘placement measures’; between 2004 and 2010, as many as 19 out of 1,000 children born to immigrant parents were taken away from their families. CPS budgets have also correspondingly gone up. In 2010 it spent 7.7 billion NOK (krone), up from 930 million of the previous year.
Skanland talks of the child protection ‘industry’ in her native Norway. “It is an industry, which pays incredible amounts to psychologists for ‘reports’ and to foster ‘parents’,” she says. Foster parents are paid nearly 50,000 euros a year per child along with paid holidays, regular time-off and allowances for buying cars or improving homes."
Read more at:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2842917.ece
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CPS saw this as evidence of an ‘emotional disconnect’ and placed the children in an emergency shelter before eventually placing them in two separate foster homes, to be reunited with their parents only when they turn 18. Until then the parents can see them thrice a year for an hour each.
CPS has never publicly stated the case against the parents with Toresen only saying that the children ‘needed more’ than they were getting.
More? What exactly? Are toys, a diaper changing table, cutlery more important than the emotional bond that the parents can best provide? Do a paucity of these warrant a forcible abduction? Can any humane person, let alone a state, argue that this is enough to justify yanking these children from their roots and replanting them within the needs of a substitute ‘family’ that is paid handsomely to provide them the ‘more’ that CPS believes they need?
Certainly there is the suspicion that there has been a complete cultural disconnect. Indian mothers routinely hand feed their young children, Indian children just as routinely sleep with their parents. If a mother’s holding of her baby daughter while breast feeding her is seen as sign of an emotional disconnect or the fact that she feeds her little boy by hand and not cutlery is evidence that the child is being force-fed, then what should Indians make of the fact that Norwegian children sleep apart from their parents? Should Indian authorities take to barging into Norwegian expat homes, taking away their children because of what we define as abuse?
Assume for a minute that CPS acted out of what it sees as the children’s best interests, why did it not then offer counselling or remedial classes to the parents? Why did it not attempt to place the children within the parents’ larger, extended family? Why did it worsen the children’s trauma by placing them in separate foster homes, disconnected from each other, their language, culture and religion? Why did CPS refuse to even reply to four different letters written to it by the parents? And what kind of shameless arrogance even now leads it to drag its feet in finding the fastest possible resolution?
Perhaps it is not arrogance but something more sinister.
CPS “in order to have work, want children and they attack anybody who is vulnerable,” says Marianne Haslev Skanland, a professor emeritus in Bergen, Norway on her website. Last year, according to Norway’s Statistics Bureau, as many as 12,492 children received ‘placement measures’; between 2004 and 2010, as many as 19 out of 1,000 children born to immigrant parents were taken away from their families. CPS budgets have also correspondingly gone up. In 2010 it spent 7.7 billion NOK (krone), up from 930 million of the previous year.
Skanland talks of the child protection ‘industry’ in her native Norway. “It is an industry, which pays incredible amounts to psychologists for ‘reports’ and to foster ‘parents’,” she says. Foster parents are paid nearly 50,000 euros a year per child along with paid holidays, regular time-off and allowances for buying cars or improving homes."
Read more at:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2842917.ece
Share |
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