Category: Blog

April 24, 2018 By Ned Holstein, M.D. and Robert Franklin, J.D., National Parents Organization Board members

The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) claims that we should adopt even more draconian policies to collect child support than we already do by passing the Farm Bill currently before Congress. The National Parents Organization strongly believes that parents should responsibly support their children. But “cracking down” on parents who are poor has a long history of hurting children more than helping them.

Child support policy among the poor does not work for several long-known reasons.

First, state courts are incentivized by federal payments to the states to set child support orders at levels the poor cannot pay. For instance, in many states, a minimum child support payment of $1,200 to $1,800 per year is required no matter how little the payer earns; this is uncollectible from someone earning, say, $8000 per year. As a result, studies in both California and by the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) have shown that about 70 percent of all unpaid child support dollars are owed by parents who earn less than $10,000 per year. The federal OCSE has explicitly recognized since at least 2006 that these child support amounts involve the very poor are largely uncollectible, but we’ve seen little change in state court orders.

Read OP-ED…

April 23, 2018

Congratulations to Christian Paasch, Chair of the Virginia National Parents Organization Chapter, on his recent interview in Stand Magazine about his work in advancing the goal of shared parenting post separation or divorce.

April 23, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Apparently uncomfortable with his absurd take on the case of C vs. P & Others in the previous week’s blog, John Bolch revisits the matter here (Marilyn Stowe Blog, 4/19/18). As I said yesterday, Bolch managed to find that a family court judge was acting in the best interests of two children when she left them in the care of their mother who had denied all contact with the father and behaved abusively toward them. He did so because, in the nine months following those findings, Mom had improved her behavior. What didn’t occur to either the judge or Bolch was that the judge had no reason to believe the mother would change her ways, so, at the time, the judge was leaving the kids in the care of an abuser. That’s hardly acting in their best interests.

Now Bolch has been moved to address the comment to his previous post by Paul Apreda who’s a trustee of the organization Families Need Fathers (FNF). Much as I did, Apreda pointed out that Justice Russell not only allowed parental alienation to begin, she allowed it to continue.

An all too familiar story of the failure of the Family Justice system to act swiftly enough or with sufficient determination to resolve intractable contact disputes.

He went on to reveal a question by a father who’d just entered the family court fray in a child custody case and had sought the advice of FNF.

This man was in the process of splitting up from the mother of his children and had come along at the earliest stage to learn more about what might happen and how best to manage the process. He listened to the others at the meeting recount their experiences and progress of their disputes over child contact. When it came time for him to speak he said ‘So from what I’ve heard the only way for me to ensure that I remain in the lives of my children is to grab the kids, make allegations against my ex and refuse to negotiate.  

Apreda later related that event to the President of the Family Division, Sir James Munby.

I shared with Sir James that I had struggled to come up with a convincing argument against that approach as we all knew how effective it was. I asked the President what advice he would give me so that I could use that on the next occassion. Sir James said that he hoped that I would NOT encourage that sort of behaviour. Naturally I gave him that assurance BUT I couldnt help feeling that we all knew that such behaviour was the most effective for men to ensure they are not excluded from the lives of their children. It seems this case may re-inforce that view.

Apreda and several other commenters noted that mothers often use that tactic in custody disputes without undue pushback from judges or anyone else. They’re not supposed to, but they do. They do because there are seldom any adverse consequences for taking that tack.

So how should a father act? That’s what Apreda asked Munby, but interestingly received no answer. Munby told him what the father in question shouldn’t do, but not what he should do to avoid losing contact with his children. Apreda was asking for advice from the most important jurist in Great Britain’s family law system and got nothing. That invites the conclusion that there is in fact nothing fathers can do to achieve that humblest of goals.

Bolch? He’s hand-in-hand with Sir James.

Well, I can understand why some fathers feel that such behaviour may be their best approach, but I am fully with Sir James on this one, as I’m sure are all family lawyers, and indeed every professional involved in the family justice system.

There are many reasons why such an approach is wrong, not least because it is likely to backfire, as the court is likely to see through it and then take an extremely dim view of the father’s actions.

Nowhere does either Munby or Bolch respond to the question. Neither says some version of “As long as you’re a good, loving father who’s not a drunk or a drug addict, who doesn’t abuse the children or your wife, you’ll be OK if you do such-and-such in court.” You’d think it would be simple, but of course it’s not. The silence of the two is deafening. It fairly shouts “Dads, there is nothing you can do to ensure continuing contact with your children. Nothing!”

Having nothing to say on the topic raised by the father Apreda quoted, Bolch of course falls back on his usual boilerplate.

It is absolutely fundamental, and there is no excuse for not knowing it: in a dispute about children, the single most important issue is their welfare. Everything revolves around what is best for the child’s welfare.

That is arrant nonsense as countless cases demonstrate. It is not “best for the child’s welfare” to lose its relationship with one of its parents, absent unfitness or abuse. And yet British courts march resolutely forward tossing fathers aside like yesterday’s trash while crowing to the heavens that it’s all for the good of the kids.

As a growing mountain of science demonstrates, that is simply false. Children need both parents and it’s long past time that family courts got the message and acted on it. There is no excuse for not doing so.

Bolch of course is another matter. The man hasn’t a clue and I see no prospect of his finding one.

 

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National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#child’sbestinterests, #parentalalienation, #fathers

April 22, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Here’s another gem from John Bolch (Marilyn Stowe Blog, 4/12/18). Truly, the man is so in thrall to courts and judges that critical thought unduly taxes him. Fortunately for all of us, he seems to be doing less and less of that, mostly allowing the judges to speak for themselves. Even so, he gets it wrong.

The case he refers to is called P vs. C & Others. In it we have two children who were 13 and 11 last year when the case was initially tried. Ms. Justice Russell presided and found that the mother (C) had engaged in much detrimental behavior.

“I find that C has never wanted contact to take place and has constantly and repeatedly tried to stop or undermine the time the children spend with their father.” …

“…by manipulating her children, C has achieved what she has always wanted and stopped contact with their father. She has done so either because she cannot help herself or because she had quite deliberately set out to expunge their father from their lives. These children have suffered significant emotional harm as a result of their mother’s manipulative actions…”

“The fact is that these two children have been emotionally abused by their mother.”

In other words, the children’s mother actively alienated the children against the father. She did so “constantly and repeatedly” and “stopped contact with their father.” Parental alienation is child abuse and Russell so found. That was last April, one year ago.

But Bolch didn’t write about that hearing. No, he wrote about the more recent one. Why was there a more recent one? Because last year, having found the above-stated facts in the case, Ms. Justice Russell apparently did nothing. She didn’t switch custody to the children’s father, she didn’t give him a lengthy period of makeup time for all the time he’d missed. She apparently never used the term “parental alienation.” She seems not to have ordered the children or C to therapy. She seems to have simply told Mom to try to do better and Dad to come back next year if he’s not happy. Meanwhile, she left the door open for C to continue her abuse of the two children.

She did all that in the face not only of C’s alienating behavior, but of the recommendations of both the local authority and the children’s guardian ad litem.

As a result of these findings it appeared that it would be in the children’s best interests for them to be removed from their mother’s care, and go to live with their father, who resides in Sweden. Indeed, both the local authority and children’s guardian recommended this.

In short, Russell ignored her own findings and the recommendations of two separate independent parties in order to keep the children with their abusive mother. Needless to say, John Bolch approves.

He does so because, in the intervening year, C cleaned up her act.

But many things changed between April last year and the final hearing of the case in February this year. Firstly, contact between the children and their father was re-established, and appears to be proceeding reasonably well. Secondly, the children had become even more deeply ‘fixed’ in their lives in England – the younger child in particular having gained a place in a highly sought-after local secondary school, and both expressing a clear wish to remain in this country. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the mother’s behaviour and attitude towards the issue of the children’s relationship with their father had improved significantly, she apparently having realised the error of her ways vis-à-vis her previous behaviour.

Now, it never occurred to either Bolch or apparently Justice Russell that maybe, just maybe, C realized that her alienating behavior had put her in bad odor with the judge and decided to put a prettier face on things. Who among us will be surprised if we learn that, the final hearing behind her, she reverts to her former ways?

But that real possibility aside, what Bolch really wants readers to understand is that the orders issued by family court judges are all in the interests of children, so any second-guessing of Justice Russell’s patently wrong original ruling must go for naught.

As I said at the beginning, the final decision in a children case is not always obvious from the start. But then this is a natural consequence of the principle that the welfare of the child is paramount.

This raises an urgent question: Is it possible to be that stupid? John, the matter is simple; if the “welfare of the child” had truly been “paramount,” Justice Russell would long ago have put a stop either to C’s behavior or her custody. Parental alienation doesn’t happen overnight and I suspect Russell had ample opportunity to act against it in C’s case. She plainly did no such thing as her own findings strongly suggest.

Last April, she found a long and unbroken pattern of interfering with the father’s access. She also found C to have been emotionally abusive to the children. At that point, if the welfare of the child had been paramount, she’d have done something to stop the abuse, such as changing custody. But she didn’t.

Fathers in the U.K. complain about this sort of thing non-stop, but without success. And every time they do, John Bolch is there with some threadbare argument to the effect that judges always act in children’s interests even when they plainly don’t.

I’ve read and criticized many, many of Bolch’s blog posts. I’ve never once seen him go to bat for a wronged father. Not once. He invariably justifies the most outrageous actions by mothers, judges and others. He’s so desperate to justify the British family court system that he routinely simply doesn’t make sense. This case is one of those times.

#parentalalienation, #child’sbestinterests

April 20, 2018 The following post was contributed by a friend of NPO.

The US Supreme Court recently decided an immigration case titled Sessions v. Dimaya that has received extensive press attention because Justice Gorsuch cast the deciding vote against the Trump administration. The opinion is available here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/15-1498_1b8e.pdf.

Justice Gorsuch’s concurring opinion is also noteworthy because it has significant implications for family law. Justice Gorsuch held the statute in question violated the Due Process Clause of the US Constitution because it did not give parties fair notice of what the law required and was, therefore, void for vagueness. As Justice Gorsuch said:

“The implacable fact is that this isn’t your everyday ambiguous statute. It leaves the people to guess about what the law demands—and leaves judges to make it up. You cannot discern answers to any of the questions this law begets by resorting to the traditional canons of statutory interpretation. No amount of staring at the statute’s text, structure, or history will yield a clue.”

Of interest to family law attorneys, the statute that Justice Gorsuch held was void for vagueness is considerably more precise than the “best interests of the child” standard that is used in child custody cases in every US jurisdiction. Many commentators over the last 50 years have observed that the “best interests of the child” standard does not provide any meaningful guidance. According to a brief that was submitted to the US Supreme Court in the seminal case of Troxel v. Granville:

The best interests test has long been the subject of academic as well as judicial criticism for being indeterminate, providing little guidance on how to weigh the different needs of individual children, especially as they change over time; Robert H. Mnookin, Child-Custody Adjudication: Judicial Functions in the Face of Indeterminacy, 39 Law & Contemp. Probs., 226, 257 (Summer 1975). Best interests operates as “an empty vessel into which adult perceptions and prejudices are poured.” Hillary Rodham, Children Under the Law, 43 Harv. Ed. Rev. 487, 513 (1973).4

4. See also Mary Ann Glendon, Fixed Rules and Discretion in Contemporary Family Law and Succession Law, 60 TULANE L. REV. 1365, 1181 (1986) (The “best interests” standard is “a prime example of the futility of attempting to achieve perfect, individualized justice by reposing discretion in a judge. Its vagueness provides maximum incentive to those who are inclined to wrangle over custody, and it asks the judge to do what is almost impossible: evaluate the child-caring capacities of a mother and a father at a time when family relations are apt to be most distorted by the stress of separation and the divorce process itself.”); Gary Crippen, Stumbling Beyond the Best Interests of the Child, 75 MINN. L. REV. 427, 499 (1990); Annette R. Appell and Bruce A. Boyer, Parental Rights v. Best Interests, 2 DUKE J. GENDER LAW & POL. 63 (1995) (analysis of cultural, class, religious, ethnic, and racial biases that pervade totally discretionary use of “best interests”).

The unconstitutional vagueness of the “best interests” standard is apparent once people discover the outcome of a particular case often depends less on its facts and more on the judge to whom it is assigned. There’s a good reason the first question most family law attorneys ask when interviewing a prospective new client is “what judge is assigned to your case?”

Recent surveys of child custody cases, including those in Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska and North Dakota, uniformly show that similar facts often produce vastly different outcomes. A recent study of “North Dakota Child Custody Determinations by Judge” found wide variations in outcomes even among judges in the same jurisdiction. Here’s a link to that study: http://lw4sp.org/north-dakota-analysis-by-judge/

Facts that might result in joint legal custody and 50-50 parenting time before one judge often result in sole legal custody and 80-20 parenting time from a judge across the hall in the same jurisdiction. This demonstrates that the standard being used – the “best interests of the child” – is unconstitutionally vague. It’s so vague, in fact, that it’s not a standard at all.

Other legal scholars have observed that judges have used the “best interests” standard to make custody decisions based on parents’ speech and to issue orders restricting their speech, which is unconstitutional for different reasons.

Judicial decisions regarding legal custody and parenting time implicate fundamental Constitutional rights. As a result, judges must use the least restrictive means available to decide the case – this means the judge must protect each parent’s constitutional rights to the greatest extent possible. The easiest way to do this, of course, is to treat both parents equally. Fortunately, this Constitutional standard is consistent with a strong consensus in the mental health research, which shows joint legal and joint physical custody (also referred to as shared parenting) provides the best outcomes for children in most cases.

In light of these constitutional standards and mental health research, trial courts should be required to start every case from a position of joint legal custody and equal parenting time. Any deviations from this position must be based on the specific facts of the case before them (and not the personal preferences of the judge or gender stereotypes) and must be the least restrictive means available. This means, for example, that parental conflict should not automatically preclude an award of joint legal custody. Instead, the court could use tie-breaker provisions to divide the final decision making authority between the parents rather than creating a winner-take-all outcome. Not only would this comply with the Constitutional requirements (because this is less restrictive than awarding sole decision making authority to one parent), it also incentivizes cooperative behavior and discourages litigation gamesmanship, which the mental health community has found produces better outcomes for children.

When reviewing trial decisions, appellate courts should apply the same standard of review they apply to other cases involving fundamental constitutional rights – strict scrutiny. This means they should give little deference to the trial judge and should ensure that, if the decision does not treat the parents equally, the trial court adopted the least restrictive means available. In practice, this means the court should apply progressively more scrutiny to trial decisions as they get farther away from equal time and equal decision making. In other words, an appellate court should give more scrutiny to a trial decision that awarded sole legal custody and 80/20 parenting time than a trial decision that awarded joint legal custody and 60/40 parenting time.

 

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National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#bestinterestsofthechild, #Constitution

April 19, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

In Texas, girls in foster care are over five times as likely to become pregnant as are other girls (Texas Tribune, 4/16/18). To anyone with a clue about teen pregnancy, that’s news, but no surprise. Girls in foster care have probably been abused or neglected at home and traumatized by the process of being taken from their parents and placed in foster care. Those multiple traumas are associated with a range of dysfunctional behavior by both sexes, so it’s no surprise that teen pregnancy is among them.

Predictably, the Tribune hasn’t a clue. It’s a sure sign that a writer doesn’t know her subject when she asserts a particular claim and then backs it up with a quotation that, well, doesn’t back it up. So the Tribune writer Sydney Greene, asserts

[A pregnant girl in foster care] said her foster sisters, especially the ones who had their children taken away, struggled with the complexities of becoming parents, being in foster care and carrying the weight of sexual and abusive trauma — all before reaching adulthood.

Note that the writer assumes that the girls have been both sexually and physically traumatized. She offers only their presence in foster care as evidence, but of course most kids in care weren’t physically abused, but neglected. She compounds that error by quoting the girl thus:

“They were depressed a lot because they didn’t have their child with them,” [the girl] recalled. “They were emotionally wounded from that.”

Yes, I can imagine. Many girls from poor homes become pregnant as a way of giving their lives meaning. From where I stand, it’s not the smartest way to do that, but they do it anyway. So an area that’s ripe for exploration in this article would be how the girls come to give up their children to the foster care system. What role does the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services play in encouraging/coercing the girls to give up their children? After all, if the writer is really interested in these girls, you’d think she’d pay attention to what they say about their situation. Greene couldn’t care less.

What else escaped her notice? A lot. Principally, it never occurred to her to inquire about the girls’ fathers. Did they have one actively engaged in their lives? If not, why not? The data on fatherlessness is clear that there’s a high correlation between teen pregnancy and father absence. That correlation holds across most, if not all, cultures. But again, the Tribune had no interest in that most pertinent of all issues.

What’s the role of foster care in a girl becoming pregnant while in her teens? What part does fatherlessness play. Those are interesting concepts to most people; too bad the Tribune writer isn’t one of them.

Indeed, her article moves on to list boilerplate approaches to teen pregnancy in foster care that no serious person believes address the problem. So, according to the article, the girls need sex education, learning about healthy relationships and access to health care. Fine. I promise you, those will not solve the problem or even come close. Meanwhile the Tribune relies on typical bureaucratic gloss to cover an issue it hasn’t begun to truly illuminate.

"The Department of Family and Protective Services, caregivers, medical providers and Preparation for Adult Living (PAL) providers work together to ensure that children in our care are educated and have access to the healthcare they need," Department of Family and Protective Services spokesperson Lisa Block said in an emailed statement. "We are continually evaluating and working to improve the programs provided to youth in our care."

Could anything be more anodyne? Anyone the least bit familiar with the Texas system of foster care knows the statement is so much bunk. The Texas foster care system is a mess and has been for years, with foster parents barely vetted by the state and children being abused as a matter of course and sometimes dying. Does the Tribune writer even know that a federal judge wrote an opinion in 2016 saying that children typically exit that system in worse shape than when they entered? I suppose not.

As empty as the article is, it at least quotes the previously mentioned girl again, although now she’s 26.

“The situation calls for the mother to receive additional health [care] to get her to a place to be able take care of her children,” [she] said. “I think that the children should be with their mothers.”

And that of course is what the Department will never allow, regardless of its effect on the mothers or their children. But again, the Tribune isn’t interested.

 

Donate

 

National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#fostercare, #teenpregnancy, #Texas

April 18, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Terry Brennan’s fifth article in his series on fatherlessness takes on communications media depictions of Dad, both now and around mid-century (Daily Caller, 4/17/18). That of course seems always to be an issue. Have movies, television programs, advertising and the like improved over the last, say, 20 years? They have. Nowadays, fathers are often shown to be loving, caring and competent. If we weren’t paying attention, we might think that the issue of denigrating fathers in popular culture was dead. As Brennan shows, it’s alive and kicking.

For example, there’s a recent McDonald’s TV spot.

How does McDonald’s feel about fatherhood?

The company’s recent commercial depicts an African American father who orders, saying;

“I’d like the ‘My Wife’s Out of Town and I’m in Over My Head Meal.’”

He’s later bewildered at seeing his daughters and their friends in their room, leaving without speaking. Finally, he’s mocked by his daughter while on the phone, as the other children laugh.

That the man is black is a particularly low blow. African-American fathers are far more likely than all others to be sidelined in their children’s lives. Over 70% of black children are born to single mothers, a clear harbinger of growing up without Dad. Apparently McDonald’s likes it that way. Otherwise, why would it portray a black father as a bumbling fool? Recent research shows black fathers who are involved in their children’s lives to be more hands-on than their white counterparts, but the McDonald’s ad doesn’t let on. Why not show a black dad taking his daughter and her enthusiastic friends to a pleasant dinner out at the golden arches?

Brennan is merciless.

The McDonald’s website states:

“Our belief is rooted in “Diversity IS Inclusion,” a bold and seismic value proposition where EVERY individual feels their culture, identity, and experiences are valued and respected.”

Should African-American fathers feel their “identity, and experiences are valued and respected” by McDonalds? How will the ad impact African-American boys’ perception of fatherhood? Or is it simply that fatherhood is of less value than a Happy Meal?

Indeed.

Meanwhile, the New York Times considers this all good fun. A 2012 analysis of television advertising concluded,

“Ad after ad makes doltish Dad the butt of all jokes. He’s outwitted by his children. He’s the target of condescending eye rolls from his wife. He’s a dumb, incompetent, sometimes even selfish oaf—but his family loves him anyway.”

The Times justified those portrayals as “turnabout is fair play.”

“The portrayals began as a clever reversal of traditional gender roles in campaigns, prompted by the ire of women and feminist organizations over decades of ads using stereotyped imagery of an incompetent, bumbling housewife who needed to be told which coffee or cleanser to buy.

Nope. I was around during those days and I remember no such ads. A housewife shown as “bumbling,” “incompetent” in her domain, i.e. house and home with children? Never. Yes, she could sometimes be seen erroneously using Brand X instead of the brand being advertised, but it was always an honest error. Housewives and mothers were never, never shown in the way fathers have been. The Times’ claim is a fraud designed to let readers laugh off fathers’ anger at the way they’re depicted.

That of course is a point of view that goes well beyond the limited realm of advertising to include sex roles generally. Brennan quotes one woman interviewed by Media Post thus:

“I hate commercials that make fathers look like the lesser parent. It’s not funny. It puts out the message that men are incompetent and irresponsible at home. It’s a subtle message that men belong at work and women belong at home.”

Right. We’re supposedly in an era in which members of each sex are encouraged, and in some ways expected, to take on at least part of the other sex’s traditional role. That may or may not be a brilliant idea, but it’s what’s being advocated far and wide. So anti-father messages actually do the opposite.

And Marketing Week pointed out that anti-father ads turn everyone off.

The suggestion that dads are clowns, or worse sideshows, in the parenting department is the final faux pas that marketers make. Sixty per cent of women say their partner is just as involved in parenting as they are — and there is no difference between the opinions of mothers who work and those who do not, so it is important not to isolate fathers but to communicate to the ‘parenting unit.’

In short, it’s not just hateful, bigoted advertising, it’s bad advertising. What exactly is the value of alienating one’s entire audience? Don Draper would cringe.

And of course, as Brennan concludes, the more messages we receive showing fathers to be incompetent at the job, the more we encourage them and others to believe that that’s just what they are. And that tends to keep fathers from being the parents they want to and can be. It keeps mothers as primary caregivers and disserves children. Everyone loses. Nice.

 

Donate

 

National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#popculture, #fathers

Dear Members and Supporters

Shared parenting and parental alienation advocates are gaining a foothold in PA. National Parents Organization of PA is hosting Parent Alienation Awareness Day on April 25th. Now is the time to give children what they most want: time with both parents! To learn more about the event, go to the National Parents Organization Press Release.

Tittle of Event: Parental Alienation Awareness Day
Date: April 25th
Time: 11:00am to noon
Location: Harrisburg, PA State Capital Rotunda
Opportunity to tell your story: Affected family members are invited to prepare a 3-minute testimony and bring empty shoes representing alienated children.

What you can do?
1. Show up to the event and bring a pair of shoes and a 3 minute testimony.
2. Complete the following GoogleForm to consider becoming a County Level Representative.

We at National Parents Organization look forward to seeing you at Parent Alienation Awareness Day and encourage you to invite those benefiting from shared parenting as well as those in need of support.

If we show there are Pennsylvanians who care, we win! If we let up, we lose!

Call me with questions!

Warm Regards,

Stephen Meehan
Chairman, National Parents Organization, Pennsylvania Affiliate
Email: steveameehan@gmail.com
Mobile: 301-992-0963

April 16, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

As we’ve seen from California to Arizona to Texas to Mississippi and South Carolina, the serious business of protecting children from abusive and neglectful adults isn’t taken very, well, seriously by states. Now we know the same is true in Erie County, New York (Buffalo News, 4/15/19).

It’s the same litany of problems. Low pay means too few caseworkers who are then overworked. That leads to high turnover rates that mean inexperienced caseworkers handle most of the load, or try to. Predictably, that all means children who need help don’t always get it and those who don’t need it often get state intervention into their families.

Here’s how it goes in Erie County:

Up to one-third of front-line CPS caseworkers leave their jobs each year because of stress or burnout, or they couldn’t meet the job requirements. Others found easier jobs, often for more pay.

The caseworkers, who feel undervalued, say their low salaries and high turnover make it difficult for the county to hire and retain enough staff to protect children.

Cases are constantly reshuffled among those who remain, many of whom are inexperienced. More than half of the current 118 CPS caseworkers have been on the job for under three years. About one in four have less than a year’s experience, according to Social Services data.

A recent survey of CPS employees, administered by the workers themselves, asked how they feel when they get ready for work. About half picked the same word: dread.

"The thought of coming to work keeps me up at night," wrote one CPS employee. "Even on the weekend, I get anxiety over the work I haven’t finished and the work that’s yet to come. This job literally gives me diarrhea."

"People are often crying in the bathroom and feel they have no support," another wrote.

Other employees said they love the nature of their work. They just need help.

Social Services administrators acknowledge attracting and keeping workers is a problem. Jobs remain unfilled.

"We don’t have enough people taking the exam," said Deputy Commissioner Mary Ellen Brockmyre, "and people aren’t accepting the job if they do get it."

Of 65 people who could have been hired after the most recent civil service exam, only 20 took the job.

It’s a familiar refrain. What’s different is that Erie County caseworkers took their complaints to the state Legislature.

County employees started showing up at County Legislature meetings in August wearing red clothing. That month marked the start of an aggressive campaign by Child Protective Services workers for more respect and more pay. They distributed white binders filled with pay research and job expectations. They testified.

Then they came to Health and Human Services Committee meetings, and they met with individual legislators over the next seven months.

At least one legislator was impressed.

"Nobody in my six-plus years in the Legislature has ever brought forth a more well-reasoned, evidence-based and researched proposal, and they’re getting the cold shoulder by the administration," [Legislative Minority Leader Joseph Lorigo] said.

So how did Erie County respond to the best-reasoned, “evidence-based and researched proposal” Lorigo had ever seen? Officials refused even to look at it or meet with caseworkers. As Lorigo pointed out, nothing in the law prevented them from doing so, but that’s what they did – nothing.

It’s not hard to see where this is headed. Indeed, if the truth were known, it’s probably already there. The children of Erie County are being badly served by the agency that’s supposed to look out for them. That’s true because the county refuses to offer salaries sufficient to attract and keep enough qualified people. Those who do hire on soon leave due to the stress of too many cases and too little pay. And the beat goes on.

What will it take for the county to improve its CPS agency? In Texas and elsewhere, it took a massive class action lawsuit plus the deaths of several children that received much attention from the press. Is that what it’ll take in Erie County? Do children have to die before those who didn’t receive the attention they deserve?

I suppose we’ll see, but there’s an old lesson to be found in all the bureaucratic language and non-responsiveness. It is that we don’t really value children very much. We say we do and certainly the overwhelming majority of parents love and care for their children well. But the assumptions behind public policy toward children are unmistakable. From CPS to family courts to adoption law to child support laws and on and on, we regularly do the opposite of what’s in children’s interests. I’ve spelled it out many times. Erie County is just the latest example of so, so many.

 

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National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#childprotectiveservices, #childabuse, #childneglect, #ErieCounty

April 15, 2018 by Robert Franklin, Esq, Member, National Board of Directors, National Parents Organization

Prime Minister Theresa May isn’t very popular in the U.K. She’s made a number of missteps and misstatements on a range of subjects that have enriched ophthalmologists forced to treat legions of Brits for terminally-rolled eyeballs. Her speech to Parliament, reported on here, won’t improve matters (Evening Standard, 4/8/18). But, cockeyed optimist that I am, I perceive what I think to be a silver lining to the cloud.

How is it possible to be so wrong so often in such little space? May doesn’t know the most basic facts about her chosen topic. Don’t they have search engines over there?

Her speech is about the horrifying fact that women in the U.K. earn, on average, less than do men. This is not news. Nor is it news why they do. As in the U.S. and throughout the 36 nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, women earn less than men for two primary reasons – they work fewer hours and they work at lower-paying jobs. Those two factors account for all but about five percentage points of the wage gap. The rest is accounted for by a variety of factors like different levels of seniority, negotiating skills, etc.

Needless to say, as elsewhere, sex discrimination in pay is illegal in the U.K., so May had to find someone to blame other than the women who work fewer hours than men, choose lower-paying employment and do inexplicable things like taking time off work to care for their children. To no one’s great surprise, she found a villain near to hand – men.

Theresa May has called on fathers to share parental responsibility more equally to make it easier for women to have a career as well as a family.

Yes, it’s the same old song that we’ve heard so many times and it sounds the same discordant note. The assumption is that Little Nell is married to Snidely Whiplash who forces her to stay home and tend the children while he fiendishly goes off to slave and earn to support the family. Dastardly deeds, for sure.

Does it occur to May that men and women in relationships with each other decide how to arrange their lives? Does she understand that motherhood is a powerful motivator for women? Does she know that countless surveys, studies, etc. find women voluntarily opting out of paid work in favor of childcare? Has she read the study that finds that almost 70% of working American women would prefer to work less than they do, not more? The simple truth is that men earn more than women because they value resource provision more. That’s entirely predictable given eons of hominid evolution that selected for exactly that type of male. It’s even more predictable given that a man who slips in earning (as by, for example, losing his job) runs the single greatest risk of getting divorced.

Men prefer gainful employment to domestic work; women are the opposite. Is it possible that May doesn’t know this?

Whether she does or not, tinkering with laws isn’t going to change anything. In the U.K., men already have the right to a modest paternity leave. It’s less than women’s, but they still have the right. And yet we’ve seen numerous articles reporting that men don’t take the leave they’re entitled to. To anyone who understands the simplest, most basic facts about men’s and women’s employment behavior, that comes as no surprise. Theresa May seems to not understand it at all.

But there’s more. Specifically, May doesn’t mean it when she says she wants men to take more time to care for their kids. We know this because,

She said that the Government “must encourage fathers to share caring roles more fairly, through initiatives such as shared parental leave, and promote schemes for mothers returning to work. 

Yes, the country must do what it’s already done (parental leave) and that’s proven not to work. And it must “promote schemes” to browbeat women into doing what they don’t want to do. But that’s not the worst part. No, the worst is that May entirely ignored what could work – shared parenting. It is all but beyond belief that, amid such a whoop-di-doo about women and work, the Prime Minister managed to ignore the one thing that would in fact allow them to work and earn more. If British judges ordered equal parenting for mothers and fathers, women would have more of an opportunity to enhance their earnings, savings, career advancement, etc.

May’s speech in a nutshell was this: we must do what we’ve already done and know doesn’t work and not do what we’re not doing that probably would work. I suppose that constitutes an evil sort of genius.

Oh, about that silver lining. May’s speech was so absurd, so at odds with long-known facts, that any action taken pursuant to it will accomplish nothing. In short, no harm no foul.

This is what we’ve come to. The head of state of an important country manages to make a speech about which the best we can say is it probably will do no harm. And it’s fair to consider that a victory of sorts.

 

Donate

 

National Parents Organization is a Shared Parenting Organization

National Parents Organization is a non-profit that educates the public, families, educators, and legislators about the importance of shared parenting and how it can reduce conflict in children, parents, and extended families. Along with Shared Parenting we advocate for fair Child Support and Alimony Legislation. Want to get involved?  Here’s how:

• Become an official member of the National Parents Organization team.
• Join our Facebook Page.

Together, we can drive home the family, child development, social and national benefits of shared parenting, and fair child support and alimony. Thank you for your activism.

#Wagegap, #TheresaMay, #sharedparenting