Thursday, March 28, 2024

Letters: ‘Drama, waste, incompetence’ within Department of Child Safety

Letters: ‘Drama, waste, incompetence’ within Department of Child Safety

Arizona residents and taxpayers are reminded weekly of the drama, waste and incompetence of what is now called the Department of Child Safety (renamed after the scandals of the Children’s Protection Service became too hot for our former governor to handle). The year old DCS (in theory) currently holds 17,000 children in their custody under the leadership of former cop, Greg McKay, and thousands of employees, according to news reports.

What news organizations failed to report is that, as is the case with many Arizona agencies, most of the hands-on day-to-day custody of the 17,000 children held hostage in this system, is actually handled by private agencies calling themselves “non-profit” (but aren’t). These “sacred cows” have a financial interest in bringing more children into the system and preventing them from being adopted or kept in stable foster care. When someone considers how many people up and down the food chain are earning a living off these children, there are almost as many as there are children. Social workers, “therapists”, lawyers, etc.

There are reliable estimates that many of the children should not even be in the system and the state spends millions of dollars fighting lawsuits brought against the state by loving parents whose kids have been kidnapped by the state and their cronies in private industry. When children are brought into custody, private corporate people evaluate the children to determine whether they need “therapy.”

Not surprisingly, many are getting it whether they really need it or not, because there’s money involved and nobody from the state actually monitors these private contractors. These private contractors are also in charge of foster parents and are paid by the state, as are the volunteer foster parents themselves, to care for the children. The children deemed to need “therapy” end up in “therapeutic” foster homes and taxpayers pay more for the services. Because these private agencies purposely shift kids from foster home to foster home, preventing them from bonding with foster parents, friends, or school mates, more of them move up to “therapeutic” care and ultimately psychiatric care and drugging. Kids in this system are four times more likely to be drugged than kids outside the system. Taxpayers foot the bill and further damage the children who may have been relatively normal when originally brought into this corrupt, corporate welfare system.

Children whose parents’ rights are “severed” are supposed to be available for adoption, but that rarely happens. Prospective adoptive parents, who must pass a very thorough background examination and take months of training to be certified to adopt, find that the private agencies in charge of the children fight tooth and nail to prevent or stall adoptions. These loving prospective parents are seen as rustlers, riding into the corral of these “non-profit” agencies to take their “cash cows” away. Many people simply give up. They can complain to state officials, but their complaints fall on deaf ears. The private “non-profit” agencies are the tails that wag the dogs in the system. Nobody dares to challenge “non-profit” agencies.

I urge local, state, and federal officials to investigate what’s going on in the name of “child protection” in this state. I urge grand juries to open the books of these huge interstate corporations that run this rotten system. Follow the money. I also urge the lawyers, paid by the state to protect the interests of these children (who actually don’t), to file class action lawsuits on behalf of the children and bring an end to this corruption. Save these children. I urge prospective adoptive parents to join together with me and file lawsuits against the state and their cronies in private industry. I urge parents, who are individually fighting to get their children back, to join together and file lawsuits to regain custody of your children.

Richard D. Manuel
Green Valley, Ariz.

Moving from reactive to a proactive behavior

One thing this environmental disaster in the Animas River illustrated all too clearly is that it is time for a change of policy in the current administration and the council. We need to take action, instead of being forced by tragedy into reaction. It should not take more horrible accidents for us to address problems that we know currently exist.

It doesn’t take a long drive around the nation to see that there are infrastructural issues in dire need of repair, communities that aren’t safe and other threats to the safety of Navajo communities that need to be addressed before more devastation is caused by neglect and inaction. In other words, the succession of reactive leaders we’ve had to date have shown that we do not have the foresight to move the Navajo Nation forward.

More to the point, as I talk with other Navajo voters most agree we have not seen anything from President Begaye nor Vice President Nez that might provide a clue that they’re different and they might just possess proactive leadership qualities we need at this point in our history. No vision equals no leadership. Leaders satisfied with the status quo, or who tend to be more concerned about survival than growth won’t do well over the long run. The best leaders are focused on leading change and innovative to keep their organizations fresh, dynamic and growing. Bottom line: leaders who build a static business doom themselves to failure.

When I heard our leaders communicating with the families in Aneth regarding the devastation of youth suicides, they both ended up suggesting to the community they needed to live in a certain way or accept that we live in hard times and they needed to adjust their lifestyles accordingly.

Mr. President and Mr. Vice President, I believe people wanted to hear what you’re doing in Window Rock to address the suicides and related youth issues, like creating meaningful jobs, increasing tribal revenues, and improving tribal government services. This would have been a great opportunity to spell out your vision (which we have no idea what that is) for addressing these and other major Navajo people issues you were elected to work on.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that you need resources, highly trained people, and a more forward-looking tribal government services to directly attack these problems — and yet you suggest to people “change your lifestyles”.

When are we going to see an example of some quality strategic planning that you are up to the job, so far it is business as usual and more reactive type responses that force you into an emergency mode all of the time.

Moving from reacting to behaving proactively requires that you let go of the notion that you are only valuable if you’re in problem-solving crisis mode at all times. Am I expecting too much?

Maybe this is not a part of your training. If that is the case, get the training and do some real planning.

Wallace Hanley
Window Rock, Ariz.


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