Health Impact News

Earlier this year we covered the story out of Philadelphia regarding City Councilman David Oh, who presented testimony before the Philadelphia City Council regarding abuses in the state-run child protection services (DHS – Department of Human Services), and how they were continually breaking state law, while not admitting to any wrong-doing.

Councilman Oh states, on the record, that he was threatened when he began looking into cases of CPS abuse:

There have been threats made, threats intimated, that there will be retaliation, that there will be political consequences – all types of threats.

And I wonder why? Why is that, when all we are doing is our duty to provide an oversight to an administrative agency that is responsible for protecting children.

Why the threat, why the problems?

See:

Philadelphia City Councilman Endures Threats To Expose Corruption in CPS and Child Sexual Abuse

According to Megan Fox of PJ Media, the Philadelphia City Council has now passed a resolution to look into the matter.

Philadelphia to Investigate Child Welfare Department for Illegal Child Seizures

by Megan Fox
PJ Media

Excerpts:

It all started when the Department of Human Services in Philadelphia investigated Councilman David Oh for child abuse when his son broke his collar bone in martial arts.

Before this incident, Oh said that parents:

“had been coming to me for months and months prior to when I took my son to the children’s hospital, but at the children’s hospital I experienced exactly what they had been complaining about.”

Oh said his caseworker was prejudiced against his parenting style.

Of Korean descent, Oh had taught his sons martial arts from a very young age.

The DHS investigator could not answer Oh’s questions as to why she thought the injury wasn’t accidental.

“And when I pressed her for a reason, she made a comment: ‘You’re a grown man, you shouldn’t be teaching your son judo. He’s 8.’”

The department found no wrongdoing in its investigation and dropped it, but it should never have been opened in the first place.

The experience gave Oh a renewed interest in finding out what Philadelphia’s child welfare office was up to. Oh has called for hearings on DHS policy and protesters, whose own children had been taken, started hounding City Hall. Their stories are hard to read.

Due to Councilman Oh’s determination to do something about the lack of oversight for Philadelphia’s DHS, a resolution was passed “authorizing the establishment of a ‘Special Committee on Child Separation In Philadelphia’ to investigate the child welfare system and develop recommendations to ensure compliance with state child protective services laws to protect children and the due process rights of families and to prevent the unnecessary breakup of families.

The committee will investigate unfair child removals and recommend policies to prevent them.

This is a good first step toward creating oversight over agencies that work in secrecy and are not required to show records to anyone, including media, or even sometimes lawmakers, to justify their decisions that destroy families.

The resolution doesn’t go far enough, however, to solve the problems, as it does not appear to have any power over cases where children were wrongfully removed.

Someone needs to be able to reverse the bad decisions that resulted in the separations.

Read the full article at PJ Media.

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