A unique child custody dispute is playing out in North Texas. It’s between Child Protective Services and a woman who took in three children last year. She says they were literally put out on the street by a woman who was supposed to be caring for them. According to the woman who took in the three children, who are 4, 5 and 11 years old, the woman she assumed was the foster mother “said she was done dealing with the system and dealing with the oldest child.”
A CPS spokesman says the children were not in state custody, but instead were in something called “parental child safety placement.” This, according to CPS, is done when parents agree “to place the child with a friend or family member while the case progresses.” It was not reported why the children’s parents did not have custody of them.
Now CPS has moved to take the children away from the woman who has given them a home since last year. The agency told a court that they would be better off in foster care. The woman asks why there was seemingly no concern by the state for the children’s welfare when she took them from a family who didn’t want them anymore. She asks, “Where was all this passion and concern and all this stuff then? Y’all tell me that.”
Shortly after the Texas woman told her story to a local news station, Dallas police officers came to her home and removed the children. She vows, however, that this is not the end. She says, “I’m never gonna give up fighting for these three.”
While most Texas child custody cases involve the children’s parents or other family members, sadly, too many children in our state and throughout the country don’t have family who are willing and/or able to care for them. In those cases, the state and the courts have to determine what is best for the child. Whatever the situation, people who believe that a child is better off in their custody can work through the legal system to try to gain or maintain custody of that child.
Source: KDFW, “N. Texas woman vows to fight to keep unrelated children in her care” Shaun Rabb, May. 16, 2014
