The last month has been very busy. We are still
looking for an attorney. We do have some law firms looking at helping us.
We have been wondering if Sheila Crabtree had taken
our oldest daughter of her seizure medications. She took Angel and Catrina off
their medications for Mitochondrial Myopathy. She will not allow them to use
their medical equipment. Once we found this out, we started looking to see if
it was violating our rights, judge had not assigned a court appointed attorney
after the last two were no longer handling our case starting February 2012.
This does violate our Constitutional Rights. The DA sent me an email which
stated the law. Here are excerpts from two emails:
DA email (November
2013): Second, I am aware that you and your husband are currently represented
by counsel – whether or not you have been in touch with your respective
attorneys of late. I am not aware that the representation by Mr. Hagan
and Mr. Dickson has been formally terminated.
Third, because
you are both still represented by attorneys, under Rule 4.2 of the Kansas rules
related to the discipline of attorneys, I cannot communicate with any person
represented by an attorney about matters concerning the subject matter of that
representation.
Court
Service Officer(CSO) email: Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 10:25 AM
Subject: RE: court case file
Teresa,
You are correct at this time the judge has not appointed a new
attorney to represent you and David unless we go back in to court for some
reason. I do want to make it clear that there have been no court hearings
held without your knowledge. The only action taken by the court was the
Administrative Review held this January then there is another one scheduled for
January 2014. At this time the next scheduled court date is an
Administrative Review set for January 2014.
We are working to get them home now because Angel
had a grand mal seizure since being taken off all of her medications. She does
not spend much time with the adults in the home. Angel and Catrina must stay in
the basement. They are only to come upstairs to eat meals, use the bathroom,
and get ready for bed; otherwise they are punished. Angel and Catrina are being
treated like property. If Sheila Crabtree had spent any time with Angel, she
would know what her petit mal seizures and partial seizures look like. The
grand mal seizure could have been prevented. Can Sheila Crabtree, social
workers, and the court workers explain why our daughters’ health are getting
worse not better? Can they explain the dramatic change in their vision? Can
they explain why Angel is having seizures because she does not have epilepsy?
The court violated laws by refusing to read the requests sent by their
specialist stating they need to go home for medical reasons. The Crabtrees,
social workers, and CSO are guilty of medical neglect; possible criminal
medical neglect. Does the state attorney and GAL know about our daughters’
health? The CSO did tell us the judge will not accept any doctors’ reports
which states their health is not good. He obviously is not interested in doing
what is best for our daughters. Sheila Crabtree is also using our daughters as
pawns. Here are some statements from her emails:
On Sat, Nov
23, 2013 4:07 PM PST Jeff Crabtree wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I wanted to let you know that last night Angel had a grand mal
seizure. It didn’t last very long but I did call 911, better safe then
sorry. It is the first time since she has been with us that she has had a
grand mal seizure. She was fine by the time we got to the hospital.
>
>Since her last EEG was normal and she hadn’t had any seizures in a long
time they had at one point taken her completely off the one anti-seizure
medication. They did end up putting her back on it at a much lower dose
then she had previously been on after she had an incident of the small seizures
similar to the type she was having when she stayed with us back in September of
2010. With what happen last night they have now raised the level of that
medication again, although she is still on much less then what she was on at
the time she came to stay with us in June of 2011. They are working on
finding the right balance of medication to be enough to control the seizures
but not more than she needs. I will let you know if any other major
issues occur.
>
>Sheila Crabtree
>
Nov. 30
Sheila just
gave me the proof she is using our daughters as pawns.
Teresa,
As I recall and understand it, agreeing to abide by the safety
contract was a requirement for visitation with the girls.
For clarity on the issue now, are you going to abide by the safety
contract?
Sheila Crabtree
Here are the issues with this email:
1.
A child with seizures from a genetic
disease cannot have a normal EEG after their first seizure. I also have
insurance paper work which lists no EEG or blood tests for seizures.
2.
Saturday was the visitation. She did
not tell the social worker about the seizure as stated in the rules. This email
should have been a phone call.
3.
She did not time the seizure. How long was
Angel seizing before Sheila found her? Catrina has been told to ignore Angel
when she is doing any twitching or shaking because she just wants attention.
The twitching is petit mal seizures. Is this the first? Angel’s first grand mal
was July 4, 2002. Her next grand mal was August 2, 2010. This is eight years
between seizures. Sheila Crabtree is claiming there has been more grand mal
while at home. This was not true. There have been two EEGs done while Angel was
in custody. The doctor told the court in letters and testimony that these EEGs
are very bad. They do not follow the progression of the disease like the
previous EEGs did. These EEGs show signs of status epilepticus (fatal seizure,
no medications can stop it) and the previous EEGs did not show this as a
possibility. He explained the longer Angel is out of the home, her life is at
risk. The last grand mal was Nov.22, 2013. This is only 3 year 3 month span.
This scares me.
4.
Angel and Catrina are not seeing their
specialists.
We know that there has been meeting and possibly
hearings held without our knowledge and no attorneys for us. This also violates
our Constitutional Rights. Here is part of the email from the CSO which talks
about the meetings:
CSO email: I do want to make it clear that there have
been no court hearings held without your knowledge. The only action taken
by the court was the Administrative Review held this January then there is
another one scheduled for January 2014. At this time the next scheduled
court date is an Administrative Review set for January 2014. Those are
not in court hearings, but they are done administratively by the judge.
If you hire an attorney and they file a motion then the judge can set the date
for that motion to be heard before January.
The investigations of DCF and Sedgwick County
Juvenile Court has been in the news. The judge is blaming DCF. DCF is blaming
the judge. What about the children?
Kansas officials
investigate complaints about Wichita child welfare group
Legislators and
others concerned that FaithBuilders organization is overstepping boundaries
“What really upsets me about this is that it
appears that DCF and FaithBuilders are picking on people who are the most
vulnerable, people who have no one who’ll fight for them,” said Mary Dean, a
social justice advocate in Wichita.
TOPEKA — State officials say they are investigating a faith-based group’s role in
some child welfare cases after a Wichita legislator raised concerns that the
organization might be undercutting efforts to reunite some of the children with
their parents.
“The Kansas
Department for Children and Families has more than 6,000 children in its care,”
Theresa Freed, a spokesperson for the agency wrote in an email to KHI News
Service. “The safety and security of each child is our number one priority.
When concerns of their welfare are brought to our attention, we take those
concerns seriously. DCF has been made aware of accusations regarding
FaithBuilders. We are looking into the matter at this time.”
Freed said, “no
time estimate is available for when our research will be complete.”
FaithBuilders is
a nonprofit organization with about 30 foster homes licensed by the state in
and around Wichita.
According to the
group’s website, its mission is “…to be the hands and feet of Jesus to children
and families in crisis here in our community. Our goal is to honor God’s desire
that we serve the least of these.”
Andrea Dixon, the
founder and director, said FaithBuilders' efforts were backed by more than 30
Wichita-area churches.
She said she was
aware of the agency inquiry, which apparently began after State Sen. Oletha
Faust-Goudeau, a Wichita Democrat, relayed complaints from constituents and her
own concerns to DCF officials.
Dixon declined to
say how many children were in FaithBuilders’ foster homes or to respond to the allegations.
“I work hard to
serve kids and families all day long and I go to bed at night with peace,
knowing that I did the best I could for that day. And I move on,” she said.
Complaints
Faust-Goudeau
said she began receiving complaints in August that Dixon was encouraging
at-risk families to circumvent the state’s foster care system by putting their
children directly into FaithBuilders’ homes before or without a judge’s order.
Generally, when
children are taken by the state and ordered into foster homes as the result of
parental abuse or neglect, court-appointed attorneys represent them in a
confidential hearing. The parents also are allowed legal representation in the
custody cases. A judge then decides where to place the child based on evidence
presented during the hearing.
Faust-Goudeau
said she had three constituents tell her that after they had informally agreed
to let FaithBuilders temporarily care for their children due to family crises,
Dixon soon urged them to sign away their parental rights so FaithBuilders’
families could adopt the children.
Parents who
declined, she said, were told their children likely would end up in state
custody anyway with slim chances of being returned.
The state’s
policy is to promote the return of foster children to their parents whenever
that is considered possible and appropriate for the child’s well being.
Faust-Goudeau
said officials at the DCF regional office in Wichita appear to have the
endorsed FaithBuilders’ methods, preferring that children, most of them living
in poverty, be adopted by well-to-do FaithBuilders’ familes rather than
rejoined with their biological families.
“I want to know
how much power these people have,” Faust-Goudeau said of FaithBuilders. “And I
want to know who gave them that power.”
She said a DCF
official from the agency’s Topeka headquarters notified her earlier this week
that the situation was being investigated.
Sen. Forrest
Knox, an Altoona Republican who has said he plans to introduce foster care
reform legislation for the 2014 legislative session, seconded Faust-Goudeau’s
concerns.
“I don’t like
that people might feel like they’re being forced to sign over their rights to
their children,” he said. “It sounds like there ought to be some formal
procedures for helping families and for helping them get their kids back,
because if those kids aren’t in state custody and the parents can’t get them
back, I call that kidnapping.”
Knox and his
wife, Renee, have nine biological children, two of whom still live at home. The
couple adopted four brothers — then ages 5, 7, 8 and 13 — two years ago after
having cared for them for two years as foster parents.
The foster-care system
In keeping with
state and federal laws, DCF is charged with investigating reports of child
abuse and neglect and with sharing its findings with local prosecutors. In
cases in which a judge decides to place a child in foster care, DCF is
responsible for the actual placement.
The laws are
meant to protect parents’ rights while also ensuring safe environments for
children to grow up in.
In Kansas, most
foster care services were privatized in 1996 after the then-Department of
Social and Rehabilitation Services failed to settle a lawsuit that accused the
state of not doing enough to protect foster children.
DCF currently has
foster care contracts with two nonprofit, nongovernmental agencies: St. Francis
Community Services, based in Salina, and KVC Behavioral Healthcare, which is
headquartered in Olathe.
St. Francis and
KVC, in turn, have subcontracts with several organizations that have affiliated
foster homes.
In Wichita,
FaithBuilders homes are affiliated with DCCCA, a Lawrence-based organization
that until July had administered a statewide contract for family preservation
services. That contract has since been taken over by St. Francis.
Colleen Pederson,
contracts administrator at DCCCA, said Dixon is well known for her ability to
rally quick and substantial support for low-income families in crisis.
“She has an
extensive system for getting whatever a family needs, whether it’s housing,
money for utilities, diapers, cribs — whatever,” she said. “She knows lots and
lots of people.”
'Hearts in the right place'
But some
Wichita-area social workers said they were troubled by what they considered a
too cozy relationship between Dixon at FaithBuilders and top officials in the
DCF Wichita office.
“They are a very
Christian-based group. They try very hard to help families and there’s
absolutely no doubt in my mind that their hearts are in the right place,” said
Connie Mayes, a 20-year social worker who supervised the Wichita DCF office’s
foster care liaison operations until she retired in May.
“But there have
been concerns about them in regards to boundaries — it’s enabling versus
accountability,” she said. “By that I mean that they put so much into these
families, but, at the same time, they don’t hold them accountable when it comes
to making positive changes. Once they begin working with a family, the
perception is that that family belongs to FaithBuilders and that FaithBuilders
will be the primary voice for that family.”
Mayes said Dixon
had an unusually close working relationship with Diane Bidwell, who runs the
DCF office in Wichita. She said Bidwell often took a direct role in decisions
regarding FaithBuilders’ homes in instances that typically would be left to
lower ranking social workers and their supervisors.
In separate
interviews last month, four licensed social workers in Wichita told KHI News
Service that they suspected Bidwell had inappropriately shared confidential
information with Dixon and that she allowed Dixon to overrule case workers’
recommendations on where children should be placed and whether children in
foster care could return home.
Bidwell did not
respond to a request for an interview and DCF officials would not discuss
details of their investigation, so it remains unclear if the social workers’
specific concerns are being looked into by the agency.
The social
workers also said they believed there were cases in which DCF, at
Faithbuilders’ behest, had not done enough to place children with other family
members willing to care for a relative’s child.
Each of the four
social workers asked for anonymity, saying they feared DCF reprisal.
There need to be
some clear parameters on what their role is,” Mayes, the former DCF supervisor,
said. “No one has a problem with their being faith-based or with FaithBuilders
being a church-run organization. The problem begins when they start running a
case and when DCF lets them.
“I know these are
well-meaning people,” she said. “But they’re not child welfare professionals,
and the decisions that are being made in these cases need to be made by
professionals who are responsible to a code of ethics and policy.”
'Lawsuit waiting to happen'
Another
allegation raised is that DCF officials in Wichita were steering children
ordered into state custody to FaithBuilders’ foster homes with the goal of
seeing them adopted rather than reunited with their families.
Many, if not most
of the children placed in FaithBuilders homes, according to the social workers
and others, were black, many of them infants. And most of the foster parents
were white.
“What really upsets me about this is that it appears that
DCF and FaithBuilders are picking on people who are the most vulnerable, people
who have no one who’ll fight for them,” said Mary Dean, a social justice
advocate in Wichita, who is black.
“We keep being
told these people are doing God’s work, but I think that’s a misplaced
concept,” Dean said. “I don’t think God wants these families separated.”
Dean communicated
her concerns to DCF Protection and Prevention Services Director Teresa McQuin
in phone calls, then following up with a lengthy Sept. 3 letter.
McQuin is head of
the Division of Prevention and Protective Services at the DCF central office in
Topeka.
Lynette Herrman,
a former Sedgwick County prosecutor who now represents parents and foster
parents in custody cases in juvenile court, said the issues raised by the
social workers warranted thorough investigation.
“Child welfare
investigations are closed,” Herrman said. “That’s federal law. If DCF is
talking about these cases to anybody but law enforcement, that’s a lawsuit
waiting to happen.”
The KHI News Service is an editorially independent initiative of the Kansas
Health Institute. It is supported
in part by a variety of underwriters. The News Service is committed to
timely, objective and in-depth coverage of health issues and the policy making
environment. All news service stories and photos may be republished at no cost
with proper attribution. More about the News Service at khi.org/newsservice or contact us at (785)
783-2529
Head DCF official in Wichita
resigns abruptly
Investigaton of complaints continues
By Dave Ranney
KHI News Service
Originally published Oct. 14, 2013 at 7:05 p.m., updated Oct. 15, 2013 at 6:05
a.m.
Diane Bidwell —
who runs the DCF office in Wichita — and Rep. Forrest Knox in a photo posted on
Twitter in early 2012 by the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services.
WICHITA — Diane
Bidwell, the head of the Wichita regional office of the Kansas Department for
Children and Families, resigned today.
She “…resigned
voluntarily. Her last day (is) Friday,” Theresa Freed, a DCF spokesperson in
Topeka, wrote in an email to KHI News Service.
DCF officials
in Topeka earlier this month confirmed that they were investigating
complaints that the Wichita office was steering children at risk of entering the
foster care system toward FaithBuilders, a faith-based group that some parents
said was undercutting their efforts to be reunited with their children.
The accusations
prompted Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, a Wichita Democrat, to ask DCF officials to
investigate.
“All I can say
at this time is that I don’t know if Ms. Bidwell’s resignation and my
requesting an investigation were related to one another,” Faust-Goudeau said.
“But if they weren’t, it sure seems like a major coincidence.”
Faust-Goudeau
said she was contacted by a DCF investigator last week.
“All I know is
that an investigation was, in fact, being conducted by the (DCF) secretary’s
office,” she said. “And that there seemed to be a lot of interconnectedness
between FaithBuilders and the DCF office here. As I legislator, I have to say
I’d like to know more. All any of us want, I think, are facts.”
Attempts to
reach Bidwell for comment were unsuccessful.
FaithBuilders
has about 30 licensed foster homes in and around Wichita.
According to
the group’s website, its mission is “…to be the hands and feet of Jesus to
children and families in crisis here in our community. Our goal is to honor
God’s desire that we serve the least of these.”
Bidwell’s
resignation was the subject of an internal memo circulated shortly after 2
p.m., even though DCF offices were closed for Columbus Day. It read: “After
serving the Kansas Department for Children and Families for two and a half
years, Wichita Regional Director Diane Bidwell is moving on. An interim
director will be named shortly.
“We would like
to thank Diane for taking on the tremendous responsibility of leading our
Wichita office. She was involved in many successful endeavors, including the
Business Process Redesign of Economic and Employment Services that has
significantly improved client care. She also played an integral role in the
collaborative effort to encourage employment through the Green Leaf Café. Most
recently, she has done a great deal of work to facilitate a move from the
Finney State Office Building to improve safety and efficiency for clients and
staff. These are just a few of her many contributions. We wish her well.”
The memo was
unsigned.
Article
on Judge Henderson sent by email
are you kidding me?
Henderson drawing attention away from himself ? he's the gatekeeper - he
is required to apply the law on cases before him - not take recommendation
without "clear and convincing evidence" to prove a parent unfit
DCF is refusing to give the reports of this part of
the investigation to Kansas Congress and news media. This violates laws.
One DCF head
social worker and Interim head CPS social worker have resigned from this part
of the investigation released to the news media.
When will DCF and Sedgwick County Juvenile Court
start following the federal and state laws plus stop targeting children and
violating Kansans’ Constitutional Rights?
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