(click on the link above to download a copy)
Tag Archives: assessment
Sample Letter To Social Services
If your children have been removed from your care and it has been several months since then, and you are experiencing delays on the part of the social worker(s) in providing you with services and or having the children returned to you even though you are diligently completing your case plan, I suggest you write a letter to the worker with a cc: to the supervisor AND the Director or Assistant Director. Here is a good example if CPS has recently changed workers and causing a delay in what they are supposed to do. You can copy this letter and change it to fit your situation. I have witnessed the effectiveness of these types of letters. Always be sure to send a copy to your attorney as well as file it with the Court, especially using it as an attachment to a Declaration in the event you file a Contempt of Court against CPS.
Dear Suzy Social Worker:
I understand the Department’s goal is to protect my children while providing me and my family with the tools and services we need to overcome our difficulties. [Name of husband, wife, partner] and I have been dedicated to strengthening our family by engaging in all of the services that the Department is providing us. We are working diligently in completing the case plan because we firmly believe that it is in the best interests of our children and family. We are dedicated to complying with whatever the Department deems necessary for the safe and timely return of our child(ren) to our home. As we can sympathize with the Department’s caseloads, this is no excuse for failing to diligently perform your duties and responsibilities. The Standards of Practice as well as the State’s Policy Manual clearly regulates the Department regarding the children’s permanency. {name of husband, wife, partner] and I are meeting our responsibilities without delay and we expect nothing less from the Department. This letter is to notify you that the Department is failing our family with excessive delays in their service functions which is not meeting regulatory policies in regards to providing our children with permanency.
Over a month ago, I was told that we would be provided with overnight visits. I had spoken with our previous worker, [name], four times prior to the change in workers however, I was repeatedly told that our case was being transferred to you and that as soon as you reviewed the file that the Department would be providing the court ordered overnight visits. I spoke with you a week after you received the file and you told me that you had not reviewed it yet. I called again three times last week and was unable to speak with you personally so I left several messages. To date, I have not received a return call. I find this unacceptable and unprofessional not to mention not in the best interests of our children, who ask me everyday I speak with them while in foster care, when they can stay the night. Our children cry and exhibit signs of severe emotional distress. This can be verified by the foster family.
This letter serves as an official request and demand that the Department adhere to the Court’s Order and provide my children the benefit of familial association before the emotional damages become worse, immediately. If the Department fails to respond to this request and demand within 48 hours of receipt of this letter, we shall have no other remedy than to proceed with a Contempt filing.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
cc: [List of names of other recipients, i.e., worker’s supervisor, the Director and/or Assistant Director of DPSS (or ACS/ACFS/DCFS, etc.), your attorney, other parent’s attorney, minor’s counsel
HERE IS A LINK TO CALIFORNIA CPS POLICIES
YOU CAN GOOGLE “CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES POLICIES ___ (NAME OF YOUR STATE)
http://www.childsworld.ca.gov/res/pdf/SDM_Manual.pdf
NO MALTREATMENT IN FOSTER CARE: CALIFORNIA COUNTIES ARE NOT REPORTING ABUSE
If your child is hurt while in foster care or you believe there is a “substantial risk” that your child will be hurt in foster care (AS THEY HAVE APPLIED IT TO YOU being a PREPONDERANCE of evidence) MAKE A REPORT TO THE HOTLINE, REPORT TO LOCAL POLICE, REPORT TO THE DA’S OFFICE and to the Foster Family Agency. IF THEY DO NOTHING make ABSOLUTELY SURE YOU FILE COMPLAINTS WITH SECRETARY OF STATE, ATTORNEY GENERAL, AND TO HHS (Health and Human Services). After researching the number of children maltreated in foster care, it is obvious that the injuries and maltreatment in foster care ARE NOT being reported anymore and swept under the rug as a part of their “Improvement Plan”. We parents and family members know that our kids are being hurt and mistreated in foster care so we also know that their reported “No maltreatment in foster care” numbers are bullshit. We all need to report the abuses so they stop lying, making themselves out to be better than us. If, during a visit, your child has a bruise, a cut, a lump, lock of hair missing, is dirty, is wearing the same clothes to every visit, has lost weight, acts differently, winches at sudden movements, tells you about being hit or yelled at all the time, or screams when it is time for them to leave with the foster person, MAKE A REPORT. Remember, FOSTER HOMES ARE SUPPOSEDLY PERFECT AND BETTER THAN YOU. We all know that no one is perfect but they are claiming to be, DO NOT MAKE EXCUSES FOR THE FOSTER PARENTS BECAUSE YOU MAY UNDERSTAND BEING A PARENT MEANS THAT CHILDREN FALL OR GET PICKED ON BY OTHER CHILDREN, do not believe anything they say as the reason your child has that bruise or cut or chunk of hair missing, assume that they are being abused. That’s how parents are treated right?
File these reports with anyone who will listen. This county has been falsifying reports of treatment in foster care basically glorifying foster care and anyone of us can tell you nightmares about foster care by people who just get paid to be a babysitter. The last person these courts would ever consider listening to is the victims of CPS and these CPS workers know it and abuse it to get as much federal funding to the county as possible.
If anyone is truly representing children and FAMILIES you can’t tell by the wealth of information which is given out for foster parents and people looking to adopt children from the system. If you read all the appellate decisions you will find that 98% of the appeals in California do not rule in favor of the parents. Dependency cases are so class bias with evidence in support of parent completely ignored.
For those parents and original caregivers who have recently been intimidated by CPS and they removed your child(ren), and if I were to experience that again knowing what I know now, I would object to everything untrue said in the reports, provide evidence to the contrary and file it with the clerk. When doing so, you must serve all parties with it and then file a Proof of Service with the clerk. Nothing you have to say will ever get on record unless you do this AND YOUR ATTORNEY WILL NOT DO IT EITHER. If I could do it all over again, I will drill this into my head and NEVER UNDERESTIMATE DPSS’s creativity when it comes to making shit up about you. They are very sick people out to get you so don’t let them get away with ruining your reputation along with ruining your family. PARENTS DO NOT RECEIVE PROPER REPRESENTATION. EVER. It is up to you to be put on record to have any chance at beating them. BUT UNDERSTAND THAT they will coerce you into ‘submitting’ to the allegations and cooperating with the ‘case plan’. If you are fighting them tooth and nail they will ‘amend’ the petition but only slightly. Then they will bring up all the issues that were stricken from it and use it against you again. Appealable issues must be raised at each hearing. We will post more about that soon. Even if you lose getting your self on record with a good argument has a much higher chance of ruining their self-esteem which comes from in part by the arrogance they get from railroading the parents on the record without a fight. Look for our article, “Hit ‘Em Where it Hurts” which explains how to remove the funding they receive in your case. This will weaken them and end the tyranny of the JV court.
A Message to a Juvenile Court Judge, Respectfully
Letter to Judge from William Burns:
If I were to write to the judge who terminated my parental rights I would tell him that I am so sorry. I’m sorry that he took on more responsibility than he could handle as it is obvious that he has had NO TIME TO READ THE DEPARTMENT’S REPORTS OR QUESTION THEM WHATSOEVER.
I am also sorry that you believed their bullshit they spewed from their filthy mouths that I was such a bad parent. If you had the TIME TO READ you may have noticed that Rushton let CPS submit documents that were completely fabricated and forged. I would also like to apologise for taking up your precious time since you were so busy that you didn’t have it (time) to READ the reports that the social workers wrote or the attachments which included fabrications as well as another man’s criminal record being misrepresented as mine. If you hadn’t been so busy maybe you would have been able to save my son from the loss of his ENTIRE FAMILY and the love he received from them. Maybe if you had the time you would surely noticed that the criminal record submitted by the Department in February 2012, was the wrong William Burns who has a different middle name but same first and last, was born 10 years before me and/or noticing that, in fact, that I was in custody on the date of that man’s latest crime. I am so sorry that CPS mislead you by tricking you into believing that I had a very long drug history by using that man’s record. What a shame, you have been duped, Sir. You see I have never been charged or convicted of any Health & Safety Codes including under the influence, possession, sales or manufacturing of drugs whatsoever. I submitted test after test the entire time my case was open and not one of them was positive. This is why I was awarded full custody at the end of our first case well, that and I had proven to be a protective parent and the children were safe in my care. In December of 2010 Kristine Vernier submitted a falsified document that didn’t 
even have a name on it. In fact there was no information whatsoever that indicated it was any person’s test. No name, no ID, no lab, no specimen ID, no collection site, no certified scientist or doctor, no chain of custody, but the words on it said positive and despite a letter written by Vernier on CPS letterhead and left on my front door which stated, “Your drug test came back negative.”. I did give my lawyer a copy of this letter but it is not in the official record. I was told that it wasn’t relevant. But that document with no name was the reason Rushton removed my children after having returned them at the detention hearing. I know that you were not on the bench for that hearing but if you were afforded the time to READ the whole case you would
have surely seen it and questioned the Department because you are a good and decent person and I know you wouldn’t tolerate the Department fabricating evidence. You would never just stand by and let a family go through this kind of torture from malicious acts by people just sucking the federal government dry. That would be immoral and unethical, not to mention a violation of your oath. The stripping of one’s parental rights without reasonable cause or due process (fabricating evidence and committing perjury does not constitute due process, its an abuse of power) is extremely devastating to the parents, of course, but the poor little children are the VICTIMS. The public entrusts that Child Protective Services are REALLY doing what they say and Juvenile Dependency Judges are supposed to ensure parent’s rights, children’s rights and hold the Department accountable. Without enough time to READ you are truly doing the public a DIS-SERVICE. I do have one question though, now that you have been on that bench for over a year, have you been able to get organized 
enough to have more time to READ? I SURE HOPE SO because the most precious gift from God in a parents life, to me, my wife and my whole family, is their children. I hope you have discovered by now that CPS is so blatantly against people, other than themselves, raising children. That is just what it seems like anyway. But perhaps its just job security that they do what they do.
I have been a parent for 29 years. I have never been an absent parent, I was awarded full custody of ALL six of my children. I have always worked and supported them with the exception of the year that I took off so my second son, Stephen, would not be forced to take Ritalin. When he was in first grade, a teacher wanted me to put my son on this drug (which is an amphetamine) but I fought tooth and nail to stop it. CPS got involved too. I would do anything for the safety and protection of my kids so I offered to go to school every single day and help out this teacher. You cannot dispute this fact, just ask Sherron Logan (if you do not know who she is ask McPhee). I can list about one hundred more things that make me a decent father. How the hell could I have ever been considered a “danger” to my son, for what, drugs? Do you have any idea how crazy that is?
I will be damned if some stressed-out, overworked, unlicensed social worker, being pushed by superiors, comes into my life and within 5 minutes thinks they have some kind of supernatural power to determine that I am a “danger” to my child. But that is not really what they do, they just have a goal which is $$$$$$. So, they steal children for federal funding and 
to ensure them the money when they have NO EVIDENCE whatsoever they fabricate it. Meanwhile, they know full well that the children are safe. These people write fantasy reports, creating imaginary people in them because they do not describe the real people. Let’s assume for a moment, that you were falsely accused of doing drugs and perpetrated as a “dangerous” person simply because you rescued your child from these people who completely railroaded you. What would you do, sir, if this had happened to you and YOUR children? Don’t say it wouldn’t happen, just IMAGINE.
Yes, I rescued my son from CPS but you called it “kidnapping” and “abducting” and everyone claimed it happened twice. My father-in-law was there to tell the truth but no one called him to the stand and that was because it would have been detrimental to the Department’s case. With all due respect, that if you paid any attention to the countless abuses and deaths that occur (more often) in foster care you may have done the same in my position. Sir, if you truly have any decency or moral bone in your body, which of course you do, the Department is just tricking you, you would have acknowledged that my acts were that of PROTECTING him, even the cops stated, on the record, that they did not feel he was in “danger”. I was prosecuted, falsely, because Rushton, McPhee, Purnell and Loew made some phone calls. What really baffles me, Sir, is that it appears, from the transcripts, that you were extremely favorable to and bias toward the Department and Purnell, sustaining all of her objections and overruled all of LaCiliento’s and Casey’s objections. As I re-read these transcripts, it appears that you judged me without any thought about the cause of my extraordinary actions of rescuing my son or whether or not there could be any shared responsibility. Maybe, if the case was before you now and you had more time to READ, you would think to yourself, “Gosh, this man is really attached to his son and for some reason he felt that CPS was not doing the right thing and he was so desperate that he risked his freedom to protect his son possibly from being abused in foster care. I should ask him what the problem was. The child was obviously never hurt or abused and the Department’s entire case rests on “risk” due to an alleged dirty hair follicle test. I should look into this a bit more.”. Maybe now you would have more time to consider my ordinary actions as well such as 
whether or not I can maintain employment whether employed as a W-4 or a 1099, whether I can and do provide for my family and whether I have other healthy, stable children. Sir, there are far more “causal” alternatives to intentional explanations, and I was faced with a decision to hold people responsible for their behavior. It’s important to me that society stops ignoring the crimes of social services which has directly affected my entire family and me, to the brink of self-destruction. I never assumed I would be “let off the hook” and have no problem with the actual “punishment” of jail but then on top of that I can never see my son, ever, BECAUSE I LOVED HIM AND PROTECTED HIM TOO MUCH. WHY CAN’T ANYONE SEE THAT????? I don’t need a neuroscientific explanation to defend myself either.
Bill Burns with son Donnelly, 3 weeks old.
“A better question is “how strong was the relation between the cause (whatever it happened to be) and the effect?” If, hypothetically, only 1 percent of people with a brain malfunction commit a seemingly irrational and extraordinary act, ordinary considerations about blame would still seem relevant. But if 99 percent of them do, you might start to wonder how responsible they really are.”
Five of my six children are now adults. ONLY my youngest was stolen.(According to Mahoney, Donnelly was very “adorable” and “adoptable” and she would have said the same about all the others too if she had been around.) He was stolen by Susan Loew, Bridgette Miller, Kristine Vernier, Antoine Coley, Amanda Spratley, Rushton, McPhee, Mahoney,Vinson and Jamila Purnell by tricking you and creating an imaginary violent person. The ONLY issue was alleged drug use however, I provided the evidence that the hair follicle test was fake yet, NO ONE stood
up for me, NO ONE said, “Look, your Honor, Mr. Burns has evidence that those drug tests were wrong, just take a look.” My evidence was ignored and they tricked you into believing that I was guilty. WHY??? You know why.
Hopefully you are no longer conducting yourself in a manner that appears to be 
more of a prosecutor rather than a Judge. It sure did seem like that last year and as it appears in the transcripts now. Hopefully, for the sake of other children and parents, you have more experience and time to READ so it doesn’t appear that you are favorable to Purnell. I hope you realise now that people are paying attention to your court. I apologise if it is causing you concern or irritating you but I am sure you agree that it must be done if the system is going to have checks and balances. I hope you have had more TIME TO READ THE SOCIAL WORKER’S REPORTS SO YOU WON’T BE DUPED INTO believing their lies. These people wouldn’t even write an honest report about their own mother but I bet they would if you made them. Please, take the 
TIME TO READ and don’t take what county counsel says as absolute truth, it is not helping children whatsoever. These people do not give a shit about anyone. Driven by greedy Department Directors, motivated by threats from their immediate Supervisors, social workers have plunged into the bottomless pit of denial which has created an entire new breed of humans or maybe just a rejuvenation of a species we thought was dying out. Throughout history, groups of people have targeted children (such as Pharaoh), exploited children for sex and profit (such as Cambodia, Thailand, Brazil and Costa Rica) and the infamous Chinese who duped parents into letting the government take their children during the war to “protect” them from the Japanese invasion. This was not a real invasion threat, it was a way to wash dirty money. The children were put into secret group “foster” homes where they were literally starved and beaten to death. Yeah, that species is no joke and If our country’s social workers are not in denial then they are just downright evil. People are waking up. I have shown about 10,000 people that there appears to be bias in Juvenile Court, especially S103. The people who ask me what kind of person you are I tell them, “Be patient with him, he is still learning how to READ [the reports].” However, it 
has been over a year now so I expect you are learning their ways. I know you are not stupid or ignorant. Respectfully, Sir, please pay attention to the publicity when the media reports crimes that occur in social services. So many social workers have been caught falsifying documents, ignoring apparent abuse and NOT removing children who are truly being abused just so they get hurt and the Department can swing the story to their advantage and ultimately, more funding. I am putting together as much information as I can find about abuses in foster care, funding scams, children molested and killed by adoptive parents, the doping up 3-year-olds, selling children to other countries for work as sex slaves, you name it, Social Services is GUILTY OF IT.
One would think that since the budget was practically cut in half that there would be LESS REMOVALS, LESS JUVENILE DEPENDENCY CASES but what has happened? Don’t you have MORE CASES?
So, if I were to write to John M. Monterosso, that is what I would say. I’m not sure if it would be so nice and respectful though. That would depend on whether or not I thought that he had TIME TO READ IT.
Written by WILLIAM BURNS and EDITED and REWRITTEN by Sharon Joyce-Burns
(The original words written by my husband might have gotten him in hot water. He doesn’t care about that but I do. I should warn you that he may not even ask me to read his posts before publishing them since I chopped this one all up and thwarted his intention to disrespect the judge which I would NEVER DO! hehehe)
donnellyjustice 