Tuesday, March 30, 2010

For decades, while parents thought that child protectors were there to help when very ill children failed to find help or older children got out of line; while parents believed that schools were mandated to educate their children, no matter how handicapped; while adult children assumed there was a safety net for oldsters…

…and these family members and friends turned their beliefs into dedicated advocacy and that ran afoul of those who were supposed to back families trying to stick together during tough times but they didn't have fiscal or emotional resources to do their jobs…

….there has been the harsh and immunizing stroke of a family court judge's pen to take a seriously ill child away from "doctor shopping" parents, a non-traditional learner with demanding parents permanently out of its home, and even the elderly are removed from caretaking children if advocacy becomes too vocal and annoying to those who cannot or will not follow existing rules.

Watch for any "reform" that cannot be cost-saving because of size or overload of new costly cases to fuel those same flames and pursue government policies—too many federalized against nuclear families—and for families to be dis-membered a la kill the messenger rather than allowing them to speak up for those who truly need health care and more and more of it.

How many children—some with undiagnosed inherited disorders but others manifesting the results of too many heavy metals in shots (will new and cost-saving multiple ones by ordered??), or even adverse reactions to prescriptions never tried on young people—will become "legal strangers" to their parents, perhaps never again to see siblings or grandparents or even aunts or uncles who would have kept them with no taxpayer expense?

For a long time parents and caretakers who pushed for promised treatments and benefits for those they love have been whacked by child or adult protective services investigations, some initiated by school systems tired of dealing with bothersome parents, others by vindictive family members or neighbors and those preferred "providers" who—whether defensive or incompetent—nearly always get a free pass, most "immune" and able to start expensive and eternal injuries to families under state laws and federal cover.

When new health care promises cannot be met, when critically, chronically and confusingly ill children as well as those already disabled and the aging and elderly ill look for "care" claimed to be available now or soon, when those bold assurances inspire unquenchable advocacy and, there is a near necessity for children and elderly ill to be written out of their relentlessly advocating families by "family" courts.

Having watched the practice—one in which states themselves and those with the new titles of ownership (along with new birth certificates and Social Security numbers) gain bounties for removing, reallocating and receiving America's human flesh, young and old—for decades, I'm just saying……

Barbara Bryan BHBryan@aol.com