At least 1,000 Golden Valley residents gathered at the three area fire stations Wednesday evening to see hands-on demonstrations and learn more about fire safety.

The open house is a yearly event, but this year, the Golden Valley Fire Department is trying to recruit new fire fighters. Upcoming information sessions are scheduled for June 23 and June 27. Visit the City of Golden Valley website for more information.

To varying degrees, Golden Valley residents would feel the effects of a state government shutdown.

City Manager Tom Burt told Patch Thursday the city’s efforts to reopen the motor vehicle licensing department could be delayed. The Minnesota Department of Public Safety has to sign off on reopening the DMV and that the state will likely conduct its own audit of the department before that happens. A shutdown would delay both the audit and signoff.

The Golden Valley DMV office has been closed since April 1, days after the arrest of a clerk there on suspicion of falsifying vehicle registrations.

Aside from some permits and inspections licensed by the state, a state government shutdown would have no impact on the city’s day-to-day operations, Burt said.

The shutdown would, however, affect the Perpich Center for Arts Education in Golden Valley. As a state agency, the school’s training programs for educators would come to an immediate halt, though the schools 300 students wouldn’t feel the impact unless the shutdown drags into the scheduled start of the school year, in September.

This weekend was an eventful one in the ongoing struggle to prevent an all-out government shutdown of Minnesota state services.

Gov. Mark Dayton met with the Republican leadership extensively on Saturday and, according toSession Daily, reached consensus on a number of issues including state government finance, K-12 education, transportation, public safety, jobs and economic development.

Read full story on Golden Valley Patch.

And no, I’m not alluding to remembering the Sabbath or the whole chastity thing.

The way society forces us to choose a one-word definition to characterize our faith often leaves many to use the terms Catholic or Methodist to encompass a far more intricate truth. Each of our belief systems is complicated beyond the scope of a simple denomination.

Enter Facebook … duh.

We now have an unlimited amount of space, or at least all we can fit beside “Religious Views,” to give the world a detailed history of our nuanced beliefs. I scanned my friends’ answers to the loaded question.

“Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster” gave me a good chuckle.

“I went to Catholic school for 12 years, so it’s hard to say,” hit a little close to home.

But joking aside, the words “Christ follower,” “believer” and “my heart belongs to HIM alone” are far more telling than simply typing in Baptist or Mormon. It implies devotion in a way that a title cannot.

One of the responses I found was so honest that it speaks to a whole generation’s stance on the idea of religion: “Cafeteria Catholic/Pick ‘n’ Chooser.” Another one, “currently building a new one,” imparts a similar sentiment.

This generation of the faithful doesn’t want the rigid constraints that don’t allow room to breathe. They don’t want to align themselves with a particular denomination when they disagree with half of the tenants.

A Pew Forum study published in February pointed out that very fact. The group that has seen the largest increase in “members” is the unaffiliated. Much of that group is comprised of people who say religion is important to them-just not organized religion. And Bible churches, non-denominational and “mega-churches” (a la Willow Creek) have capitalized on the younger generation’s disenchantment with doctrine.

But if everyone really can pick and choose the attractive attributes from each faith to best fit his ideals or, worse, his personality, what does that leave us with? Congregants unwilling to challenge the status quo or question doctrine fleeing the church in search of a more appealing alternative? Churches left to those rigid in practice, loath to change?

If we only lean toward the faith of the feel-good, what does that really mean for our spiritual lives? Perhaps it’s youthful rebellion or experimentation and not a generational characteristic. It’s possible the “unaffiliated” will find a more established path.

Until then, we can peruse our friend lists to find interesting options.

And what does my Facebook profile say, you might ask? “Lutheranish.” But that’s a whole other story.

See blog post on Windy Citizen. 

Already reeling from the Great Recession and a challenging fundraising climate, nonprofit leaders are bracing for the blow a shutdown will strike.

Many nonprofits receive local, state or federal government funding. In some cases, federal dollars are dispersed through state agencies and if there’s no one at the state level to receive receipts and allocate money, nonprofits are left without that funding.

The Wednesday ruling of Ramsey County District Judge Kathleen Gearin stated which service categories are considered “essential” and therefore funded during a shutdown.

But the ruling wasn’t specific enough for employees of WorkAbilities Inc. of Golden Valley to know how much funding they will receive. WorkAbilities provides day training services to adults with developmental disabilities.

“The next hurdle for us will be to learn how much our revenue will be reduced,” said Luana Ball, executive director. “We are fully anticipating about a 4.5 percent reduction, but it certainly could be more.”

That would mean layoffs, the loss of partnerships with businesses and changes in quality of life for the people WorkAbilities serves, she said.

“Long-standing community work sites and work contracts could be lost— possibly forever,” Ball said. “This would be such a huge regression in the progress that has been made to integrate individuals with disabilities into our communities or in providing them with meaningful work in our programs.”

Minnesota’s 3,750 nonprofits employ one of every nine workers in the state, according to theMinnesota Council of Nonprofits. Those workers earned $13.2 billion in 2009. Slightly more than half of those workers—about 153,000—are in the Twin Cities metro area.

About 30 percent of the clients of The Courage Center in Golden Valley depend on state-based programs to pay for their services, according to Mary Small, communications director. The nonprofit provides rehabilitation services.

While Small said health care is considered essential, she is concerned how future budget cuts could affect their services.

“A shutdown could be devastating for these vulnerable people and on their ability to get personal care-attendant services, transportation, rehabilitation and other services that maximize independence,” Small said.

The Greater Twin Cities United Way has nearly 200 agency partners and helps fund more than 400 programs.

“If (the shutdown) lasts more than three or four weeks, I think it’s at that point that you’re going to start seeing nonprofits getting into the next phase of their contingency planning,” said Frank Forsberg, senior vice president of community impact.

Forsberg said United Way officials have helped organizations create multiple contingency plans and put cash-flow resources in places to bridge any unforeseen or significant losses of funding, from the state or otherwise.

With the writing on the wall, he said planning became more intense a month ago when a shutdown seemed inevitable.

Ball said the continued funding at WorkAbilities would be determined on a case-by-case basis.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t think it’s going to be a very clear-cut or definitive answer, and it doesn’t look like it will be an ‘all-or-nothing’ proposition either,” Ball said. “Whether or not a (facility like ours) is going to be paid for service to a person is dependent upon that person’s individual funding source.”

Rep. Ryan Winkler (DFL-Golden Valley) said Wednesday that Judge Gearin’s decision to fund Gov. Mark Dayton’s list of essential functions was the “lesser of two constitutional evils.”

“(Gearin) deferred to the governor’s definition of the core functions of his branch of government, and did not give the special master authority to stray beyond that limited definition,” Winkler said. “She respected the separation of powers as best she could.”

Read full story on Golden Valley Patch.

Golden Valley residents age 65 and older now total 20.3 percent of the city’s population, according to 2010 census numbers.

The city is adjusting to meet the needs of the growing number of senior residents.

Fidel Eckes, 97, said he’s been attending the city’s cribbage group at Brookview Community Centerfor years. The group meets Tuesday afternoons, trading barbs and catching up on the week’s events. Eight members convened one Tuesday last month, but member Evan Johnson said some of the usual attendees opted out to play golf.

“There has been a steady increase in more active seniors,” said Jeanne Fackler, Golden Valley senior citizens coordinator.

Fackler said the Seniors Program—which will celebrate its 50^th anniversary in October—reaches out to about 10,000 seniors per year, and the program is seeing an increased attendance in non-traditional programming like Tai Chi classes.

The group partners with the library, Calvary Center Cooperative and other agencies to offer a variety of programs from a monthly speaker series, blood pressure screenings, defensive-driving courses, and one-day and multi-day trips.

“We have a little bit of everything,” Fackler said.

City Planner Joe Hogeboom said the city has seen an increase in the numbers of people calling to look for senior housing in the area as well. The Golden Valley Planning, Zoning and Development Department has been working on a variety of projects that would expand senior housing capacity in the city.

Read full story at Golden Valley Patch.

Originally published June 16, 2008 

On Thanksgiving Day 2004, William McCarthy had a hard time finding much to be thankful for. As in years past, he could have reflected on his loving family, his successful company–his happiness.

But on that day, all he thought about was how his daughter’s accidental fall on the back porch two weeks before led to an investigator from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services telling him that he and his wife had to pack their bags and leave their home.

The next thing he knew, he was having a dinner with his extended family–not because it was a normal Thanksgiving tradition–but because he and his wife weren’t to be left unsupervised with their two children.

“Thanksgiving was depressing,” McCarthy said. “At a time when we were supposed to be thankful for all the blessings that we have in our life, and we had many blessing, it was impossible not to be worried and scared. It was impossible to talk about anything else other than what might happen.”

His daughter’s fall produced an arm fracture that led one doctor at Children’s Memorial Hospital–two days after she had been treated and cleared at the hospital–to believe that she was being abused and that her father was the likely abuser.

A DCFS investigator told the McCarthys she was putting in place a preventive measure to safeguard against any further abuse. The measure was called a “safety plan,” and it would require McCarthy to leave his home for 24 hours.

The suspicious doctor thought 24 hours wasn’t enough. He was so convinced that he called DCFS–weeks after McCarthy returned home–to tell them his opinion. This led to another safety plan that required both McCarthy and his wife to leave the home during a follow-up investigation. The only other option was to place their daughters in foster care.

Ultimately, the DCFS investigation revealed that the allegations against McCarthy and his wife were unfounded, and they returned to their home. A final opinion from a doctor indicated that they had not harmed their daughter.

But, that did not mean the McCarthys went unharmed.

“[During the safety plan] my wife cried herself to sleep every night and I just didn’t go to sleep during the night,” McCarthy said. “There’s this cloud that hangs over you and you worry all the time about what might happen if DCFS shows up at the door and they decide what they say isn’t exactly what they want to see, and take your kids away.”

The McCarthys’ story represents thousands of Illinois families who have argued through state and federal courts that “safety plans” implemented by DCFS strip them of their rights as people and parents.

These families say they are part of the 75 percent of families whose relationship disruptions are based on unfounded reports of abuse. This stark figure found by the Family Defense Center, a Chicago-based legal advocacy group, is one of the driving forces behind a child welfare case that the group took to the U.S. Supreme Court that sought to find safety plans unconstitutional because their implementation denies parents their constitutional due process rights.

A history of “safety plans”

A string of fatal or near-fatal incidents in the early 1990s involving children who were in DCFS care prompted the state to require that the department develop and implement a standardized protocol that would prevent abuse during DCFS investigations.

In 1995, DCFS developed and began implementing a Child Endangerment Risk Assessment Protocol, or “safety plan.” Independent research on CERAP protocol is now submitted annually to the Illinois General Assembly, and DCFS employees are required go through training on the CERAP process.

In a court memorandum, a DCFS official defended safety plans, saying “the CERAP process is the best way to provide workers with a mechanism for quickly assessing the potential for moderate to severe harm immediately or in the near future and for taking quick action to protect children.”

But families and lawyers who have observed the CERAP process contend that it is fatally flawed.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has been clear that it is to be presumed that a parent is acting in the best interest of his or her children,” Melissa Staas, a Family Defense Center lawyer, said. “So if the state is going to be intervening and interfering with that relationship, the state needs to be able to overcome that presumption.”

Rather, she said, parents face an ultimatum–accept the safety plan or risk losing your children–based upon “mere suspicion.”

The move to file a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court was spurred by a plethora of court battles–the first dating back to 1997–between the Family Defense Center and DCFS. Each of the cases challenged some aspect of the department’s investigation procedures.

In 2005, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer ruled that safety plans lasting more than a few days violated the procedural due process rights of families.

“When an investigator expressly or implicitly conveys that failure to accept a plan will result in the removal of the children for more than a brief or temporary period of time, it constitutes a threat sufficient to deem the family’s agreement coerced, and to implicate due process rights,” Pallmeyer wrote.

A unanimous 7th Circuit Court of Appeals panel saw it differently. In an opinion written by Judge Richard Posner, the court found no constitutional problem with the safety plans, noting that parents could “thumb their nose at the [safety plan] and the agency can do nothing but continue its investigation.” Posner went on to say that safety plans are voluntary, offering this analogy:

“We can’t see how parents are made worse off by being given the option of accepting the offer of a safety plan. It is rare to be disadvantaged by having more rather than fewer options. If you tell a guest that you will mix him either a martini or a manhattan, how is he worse off than if you tell him you’ll mix him a martini?”
The martini reference was hard to swallow.

“Posner comparing this type of ultimatum that a parent is given–this horrible, horrible ultimatum of either leave your home or we’re taking your children into foster care–comparing that with a contract negotiation and just really reducing the family life down to a commodity was really insulting,” Staas said.

Nonetheless, on June 16, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to take the case.
Threshold of evidence

Mary Broderick holds to this day that she was never afraid back in 2003 when hospital officials,as mandated reporters,told her they were required to call DCFS about the head injury that her son, Ryan, sustained after her husband, Tom, fell off their back porch with the 4-month-old.

She knew she had nothing to hide. But her investigator apparently didn’t think so.

“I think why we got slammed so hard is because we weren’t afraid,” Broderick said. “We were afraid of Ryan being hurt, but not of DCFS.”

Broderick said she and Tom were peppered with questions about the injury. After they recounted the incident word-for-word and numerous times, the Brodericks’ investigator found that, “there [was] reasonable cause to suspect that the caretaker caused moderate-to-severe harm or has made a plausible threat of moderate-to-severe harm to the child.”

This was one of 15 “safety factors” that DCFS uses to assess whether a home is “safe” or “unsafe” for the child.

When a report of abuse is made, DCFS investigators use a CERAP form to assess these factors. The form, which resembles that of a medical questionnaire, leads the investigator through a 4-step analysis during which he or she goes through a checklist of 15 “safety factors.”

The investigator checks a “yes” or “no” box indicating whether he or she observes factors ranging from the parent’s behavior to how the family interacts during the time of the investigation. According to DCFS procedures, the “yes” and “no” decisions are to be based on “clear evidence or other cause for concern that a factor is present.”

But in court testimony, John Goad, former deputy director of the department’s Division of Child Protection, said that while investigators are expected to look for a  ”reasonably extreme version” of a listed safety factor. He conceded that “investigators need neither a certain level of evidence nor evidence confirming that it is more likely than not that a safety factor is present in order to check the factor ‘yes.’”

This unbridled use of power is what disturbs families.

“Once they become involved in your life–no matter how–if they make the decision, it is up to an individual investigator what happens in your life,” Broderick said.

Court documents indicate that DCFS admitted the safety factor that led to the Brodericks being separated from their children for 43 days was met, “even where there is no evidence that the parent or caretaker is unable to ensure the safety and supervision of his or her children.”

Broderick said she consented to the safety plan, and admitted that looking back she would make the same choice.

“It’s not about the choices they are giving people as much as that there isn’t a threshold of evidence necessary before starting to give the options,” Broderick said.

But some families say it’s not an option to begin with.

“Martini or manhattan”

Faith Kumar, whose two children were placed in protective custody, said she didn’t realize a safety plan was even in place until after reading court documents.

DCFS documents read that Kumar was not supposed to allow contact between her daughter and her boyfriend, Cristo Patino, who DCFS had indicated for abuse. Kumar said when a DCFS worker came to her home to investigate a hotline call, Patino was there; her daughter was with a neighbor. The investigator then removed her two children–Kristof, then only a few months old, and Maya, then 5–without speaking to Kumar about the situation.

“[Maya] was really afraid,” Kumar said. “I didn’t know when I would see her again, so I took a picture, and the look in her eyes–she was just so terrified.”

Kumar called her ex-husband’s parents to take the children, which, she agreed was much better than foster care. But she claims she never signed a CERAP form and was never given the opportunity to speak before her children were taken into protective custody.

The signature page of the safety plan form states that “we understand that failure to agree to the planor to carry out the plan may result in  ”possible protective custody and or/referral to the State’s Attorney’s Office for a court order to remove my children from my home. I will then have the opportunity to plead my case in court.”

Unlike Kumar, Broderick was given a safety plan that said she and her husband were not to be left unsupervised with her children. She also was told by her investigator that it was voluntary.

“I asked him, ‘if we don’t sign this, what happens?’” Broderick said. “He said very plainly, ‘If you don’t sign this, we’re taking your kids into protective custody and they’ll be placed in foster care.’ So, we did.”

This is a choice that parents said they make when a safety plan is implemented–just not by choice. According to the latest CERAP report to the General Assembly, 7,946 safety plans were implemented between May 2005 and May 2006.

“What we’re arguing is that this situation is coercive just by the nature of being given this ultimatum of either leave your house or we’ll take your children into foster care,” Staas said. “That, by its very nature, is a coercive situation. And therefore no decision that a parent makes in that, under those circumstances, is going to be voluntary.”

The CERAP report shows that a safety plan was implemented in 100 percent of the cases deemed “unsafe” by investigators between 2003 and 2006. The data shows no family refused the plan. Lawyers for the families say that fact shows the plans are not voluntary.

But experts, who in their respective professions find themselves giving the same kinds of options, disagree.

Dr. Carl Bell, a psychiatrist and president of the Community Mental Health Council, intended to testify on DCFS’ behalf in the federal trial but never got the chance because he was removed from Pallmeyer’s courtroom when he–admittedly–made a crass statement in response to a medical witness who testified against safety plans.

Nonetheless, nearly five years later, Bell still thinks that there is a shared responsibility of anyone in the business of welfare, and that DCFS investigators and medical professionals face the same decisions in the interest of saving lives.

“Working out a safety plan is not coercive,” Bell said. “The argument that I never got to make is when you have a patient and they give you evidence that they are suicidal and homicidal, you can automatically lock them up in a hospital. You have enough evidence, and it’s your responsibility to do that. But though you can lock them up, you can also say, ‘look, I can give you a chance to admit yourself, and it can be a win-win situation.’ That’s not coercion.”

Bell continued, “An investigator can go in and say ‘we have evidence that we can take your child because they have five iron cord marks on their arms, but if you can find your auntie or your uncle to come stay with you, we can work something out.’ Working out a safety plan is not coercion.”

But Bell admitted that there is a downside to the decisions to implement safety plans.

“Now, I understand the problem with how long they take and when investigators didn’t check up,” Bell said. “I have a problem with that and have said as much, and would have said as much had I not been thrown out of court.”

Facing time

Families and the courts have grappled with the issue of what is worse–families being separated or how long it takes to reunite with them.

According to DCFS, safety plans “must be adequate to assure the child’s safety, but as minimally disruptive to the child and family as is reasonably possible.”

But some parents have a hard time with DCFS’ definition of “reasonable.”

“Every week, [the investigator] came, and would say it would be done within a week,” Broderick said. “And then towards the end [he] said, ‘I can’t tell you that it’s going to be done in a week anymore.’ It ended up being 43 days that we were out of the house.”

According to the Brodericks’ safety plan, the investigator set a zero-to-30-day time frame.

Before 2002, DCFS kept no statistical data indicating the duration of safety plans, according to court documents. When families alleged that they were held under safety plans for unsubstantiated amounts of time, the courts found that at least 33 percent of the safety plans reviewed were indefinite in length.

In 2002, DCFS was required to develop a standardized and timely duration in which safety plans could be implemented. The amendment set a safety plan of no more than 60 days, and a weekly review of the safety plans to assess whether they are still necessary.

But even 60 days is too long for those who find out that their cases were unfounded.

Kumar spent an entire year away from her children while DCFS investigated the alleged abuse.

“They continue and they continue and they continue. Every time you think, ‘I’m going to present information’ — no movement,” Kumar said. “They say ‘come back in another month.’ Not another week. Not another three days. Another month.”

The Brodericks said all that they were waiting for was for DCFS to process a second medical opinion that would prove or disprove whether her son had a previous brain injury, which one doctor had alleged was due to abuse by either her or her husband.

The doctor, who had 13 malpractice lawsuits pending against him at the time and later left the state, had made another mistake with the Brodericks’ son. They found out 63 days later that there was no previous brain injury.

“It could have been done in less than a week,” Broderick said. “It could’ve been done in 24 hours. You never wait over two months to get a second opinion from a doctor–ever–under any circumstances.”

DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlow declined comment under departmental restrictions on commenting on pending litigation. The DCFS website indicates no further amendments to the 30-day timeframe for safety plan investigations.

The fallout

Even when parents are cleared of suspicion, the emotional and financial tolls continue.

Because Kumar was under investigation, she could not continue working with children at her psychology practice or as a substitute teacher, and she spent a year without income. She has been forced to move out of her home, which she can no longer afford, and is living with friends.

But she considers the psychological impacts on her and her children to be worse.

“I couldn’t sleep ever, and I couldn’t eat,” Kumar said. “No one should have to go through that.”

Some families said they have tried to bounce back, but there will always be lasting effects.

The Brodericks said once they were reunited with their children, they became overprotective to the point that they inadvertently were stunting their children’s development. They said that they didn’t allow their son to do basic things like walk up and down stairs, or any basic childhood activities like riding a bike that would welcome the occasional bump or bruise.

“There was no way that we were going to let anything else happen to him and have him go back to the hospital and have to deal with [DCFS] again,” Tom Broderick said. “And there’s always that fear that once you go through it, you never want to go through it again.”

Additionally, they still worry that the misdiagnosis that led to their investigation–and later cleared them of child abuse–has them on edge about Ryan’s childhood development.

“It took away from [Ryan's] childhood,” Mary Broderick said. “And I still worry about Ryan. Even though they ultimately found that the hemorrhage was a misdiagnosis, I still feel like something could be wrong with him.”

And some families said they don’t know what lasting effects their safety plans will have on their children. For example, McCarthy said he doesn’t know if his daughters will remember their somber Thanksgiving.

“We had dinner at home primarily for the children,” McCarthy said. “[But] they knew something was wrong. Their aunts were showing up unexpectedly. Their mom was crying a lot.”

But ultimately, there is simply the worry of some families that they will never escape the implications of their unfounded allegations.

“My wife worries about the fact that we’re in some system somewhere, and isn’t sure about how they may or may not come up in the future,” McCarthy said. “The lasting impact that this situation has had on me is that it’s forced me to have an unfortunate view about how our government works. It’s my opinion that DCFS is wreaking havoc on innocent people’s lives and it’s the exactly the kind of scary, government abuse that we’re supposed to be protected from. But we’re not.”

Seeking constitutional refuge

It has been done before.

In 1996, a family won an appeal against a county child welfare system in Pennsylvania after an investigator, acting on an anonymous tip, removed a child from her home and accused the father of child abuse.

Though the allegation proved unfounded, the parents asserted that their rights had been violated.

In the case, the court found that the lack of evidence used in removing the child constituted “an arbitrary abuse of government power. Based on [the investigator's] lack of an opinion regarding whether sexual abuse had occurred, we hold that [investigator] lacked objectively reasonable grounds to believe the child had been sexually abused or was in imminent danger of sexual abuse.”

However, the court opinion did explicitly state that “whatever disruption or disintegration of family life the Crofts may have suffered as a result of the county’s child abuse investigation does not, in and of itself, constitute a constitutional deprivation.”

With the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to pass on the Dupuy case, the core legal issue is resolved for now.

As the case was being appealed to the Supreme Court, experts on both sides said it was an issue worth serious consideration. Richard Epstein, a legal scholar at the University of Chicago who sided with the families on the original Dupuy case, was disturbed by how the appeals court analyzed the issue.

“It is a very hard case, to say the least, but the gist of the problem is the question of what kind of choice is received by parents who are told that they have to move out or to risk loss of custody of their child without any process at all,” Epstein said.

Epstein continued, “I regard it as a due process case, and reject the view that just because there is some choice there is no coercion. Your money or your life is a choice, but if it is a choice between two entitlements you should not be forced to choose between them. The risk of abuse is so great in these situations that some independent and neutral party should pass on the penalty before the sanction is imposed.”

But others disagreed and saw risks in overturning Posner’s decision.

“It would be very unfortunate,” Bell said. “That would be like declaring polio shots unconstitutional. Everyone had to get one, but it protected you.”

Bell also worried about the effect it could have had on the thousands of children DCFS is trying to protect by not placing them into foster care. He believed that there could be a significant impact on the number of foster children in the state.

“I predict if they find it unconstitutional, that number will go up,” Bell said.

DCFS’s numbers bear that out. In Illinois, about 16,000 children were in foster care in 2007, a number that has steadily decreased since CERAPs were implemented. According to the December 2007 report to the General Assembly on CERAPs, the recurrence rate of abuse and maltreatment has consistently declined since the implementation of the CERAP process.

The overall number of children who were allegedly maltreated, too, steadily declined from CERAP implementation until recently. However, numbers for 2006 show the largest number of reports in 10 years.

Several states employ safety plans or a similar method of investigating child abuse and neglect, but it is found that in many instances, parents and children have more rights.

For example, Karen Freedman, executive director of Lawyers for Children in New York City said that New York’s child welfare system, while flawed, employs a critical opportunity for families.

“If a child is displaced in any way by the state, they have to go to court within 72 hours,” Freedman said. “Whether they are removed voluntarily, the parents have the right to be heard and present the facts to see if that removal is justified.”

This process is what families and the Family Defense Center see as the missing link in Illinois.

“There needs to be an opportunity to go before a judge without the threat of foster care,” Broderick said. “They need to raise the bar above mere suspicion. And they need to have some sort of due process where you can get in front of a judge and tell your side of the story without being held hostage for weeks, months, or years.”

But more than a speedy process, Freedman said that in New York there are fundamental legal processes that need to take place.

“It’s really critical that there be an open forum and objective fact-finder–which in these cases would be a judge,” Freedman said. “When all of the parties are accurately and aggressively argued, the facts really come out.”

Freedman continued, “I personally have found that when a determination of imminent danger by the city worker or investigator is made, once that witness is in court, they can’t identify what that risk is. Once they are held to a legal standard, it turns out that there are no grounds for family intervention and family disruption. So, the process works better for both families and children.”

Even with the Supreme Court deciding to pass on the case, Staas said the center’s efforts will not stop there.

“We are starting to put the wheels in motion for some legislative advocacy, so we would probably attempt to go that route,” Staas said. “It is in the preliminary stages, but we are being mindful that there is a possibility that the Supreme Court will decide not to hear this case, and we want to keep some other avenues open and not just concede this ground.”

And while the Family Defense Center fights now for legislation and public education, families who have been through safety plans fight to rebuild their lives and hope other families will be spared.

“I spend a fair amount of time thinking about the fact that we were lucky because we had resources,” McCarthy said. “And we were able to retain a lawyer right away. We were educated enough and confident enough that we were willing to argue with the investigators, who said that we had to sign a safety plan. We were willing to say no, and were able to negotiate.”

But, McCarthy added, “There are all too many people in this country who don’t have resources, and those people are being abused by the government on a daily basis. And those people are experiencing abuse that I don’t think too many people ever consider–the government is literally tearing families apart. It’s unconscionable.”

June 2008

Postscript

At 9 a.m. on June 16, the Supreme Court announced it would not consider the Dupuy case. It was a surprise to staff at the Family Defense Center, and it was heartbreaking for the families involved.

“I’m outraged,” Mary Broderick said at a news conference following the decision. “I can’t believe that this can happen here in the United States.”

But Diane Redleaf, executive director of the Family Defense Center, said her staff will not stop fighting for the families they represent.

“We need to publicize the fact that families are vulnerable and our laws need to be strengthened to protect them,” Redleaf read from a prepared statement.

Redleaf said the group plans to regroup and come up with a legislative platform by September.

With the recent surge of retail-based health clinics in the St. Louis area, doctors are taking notice and some aren’t happy with what they see.

Retail-based clinics are run by nurse practitioners who diagnose and treat minor acute illnesses, such as strep throat, and provide other services such as school physicals and adult immunizations.

Some pediatricians have raised concerns. In a statement released by a group of St. Louis area pediatricians and hospital administrators, some doctors spoke to the importance of a “medical home” – or primary care physician – for children.

“Pediatric medical care should not be treated like a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk,” the statement reads. ” … The quality of a pediatric medical visit is lessened if not provided at a central location, termed ‘the medical home,’ where a child’s comprehensive medical records are available for review.”

Owners of retail-based health clinics in St. Charles County say they agree that having a medical home is very important, and their clinics facilitate that.

Peter Miller is CEO and co-founder of Conshohoken, Pa.-based Take Care Health, which operates Health Corner Clinics in two St. Charles County Walgreens.

“We are a huge supporter of a medical home,” Miller said. “Our aim is to supplement that care.”

Doug Sohn, CEO of instaClinic inside a Schnucks in St. Peters, agreed, saying his clinics aren’t trying to take the place of a patient’s medical home.

“That is not the intent of the model,” he said. “The intent of the model is to provide a convenient point of entry into the local health-care system.”

Nurse practitioners at both Health Corner Clinics and instaClinics refer their patients to primary care physicians if they don’t already have one. And if they do have one, Sohn said their nurse practitioners fax a copy of the patient’s chart to the primary physician.

“About 40 percent of patients we see do not have a primary care provider, and we work in the spirit of our support of a medical home,” Miller said.

Sohn said his clinics don’t pursue pediatric patients, and children actually are a very small percentage of the patients they see, and they don’t treat patients under the age of 2. He said typically the only times they see children is in the evenings or weekends when a doctor’s office is closed and parents don’t want to trek to an emergency room for a minor illness.

“The bottom line is, there are limited options after hours and on weekends,” Sohn said.

Health Corner Clinics have a policy of not treating children younger than 18 months.

Sandra Ryan, Take Care Health’s chief nurse practitioner – a pediatric nurse practitioner – said they chose that age because they felt children younger than that needed to be seen in a medical home.

“What we’re providing is a limited scope,” Ryan said.

Sohn said the poor responses the clinics have received from some physicians and hospital administrators doesn’t surprise him.

“This really is nothing new,” he said. “… Each market has really acted in a similar manner.”

But he said in other markets, those initial concerns subside with time as the clinics find their place in the health-care continuum.

Miller agreed, saying his company is getting very positive responses in Kansas City.

“Over 10 percent of patients (in Kansas City) that we’ve seen come on referrals from their primary care physician,” Miller said.

He said his Kansas City clinics, hospitals and primary physicians have found a way to coexist, and he hopes to achieve the same in the St. Louis market.

Members involved in the statement include doctors and administrators from Pediatric Care, LLC., SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center, St. Louis Children’s Hospital, St. John’s Mercy Medical Center and the St. Louis Pediatric Society.

Who would Jesus vote for?

When Christian magazine Relevant asked its young evangelical readers that question, it spawned an interesting response: Barack Obama beat out Baptist minister Mike Huckabee, 28 percent to 24 percent.

The drift from the right highlights the vastly different viewpoints within the so-called evangelical voting bloc.

While Pat Robertson inexplicably threw support behind former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has dropped out of the campaign, leading evangelicals–Jerry Falwell Jr., “Left Behind” authors Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, Vision America Action’s Rick Scarborough–are rallying around Huckabee.

But what are young evangelical voters looking for?

“There’s so much more than just the social issues,” said Ovi Tisler, a 23-year-old computer engineer for Zebra Technologies in Chicago. Traditional evangelicals, he said, “don’t really talk about the economic part and national security.”

The concern ranking highest among Relevant readers age 18 to 34 is illegal immigration with 39 percent of the vote, followed by abortion and bioethics. Ranking as the least important issues were gay rights and church and state.

Tisler said he considers himself part of the evangelical vote on issues such as same-sex marriage, “but for different reasons.”

“First of all, government shouldn’t be involved in marriage,” Tisler said, adding that too often the line kind of gets blurred between religion and government.

Tisler grew up Romanian Baptist in Chicago and now attends the non-denominational Moody Church, calling himself a “reformed Baptist.” He said he would consider social issues as just part of a host of other things he’s looking for in a candidate.

“It’s an interesting bag of things that people are starting to bring to the table,” said John Kimbrough, a volunteer for the University of Chicago’s Intervarsity Christian Fellowship group. He said social justice issues are of great concern for many of the college students in the group.

Kimbrough, 32, said a president’s faith is not important for garnering his vote, adding “for me personally, it’s a nice thing, but I’m electing a president, not a pastor.”

Jenny Cota, a member of Campus Crusade at Northwestern University, said the electability of a candidate is important. Cota, 21, decided to support Mitt Romney over her first choice, Huckabee, because Romney was more likely to be the Republican nominee.

Alan Gitelson, a political science professor at Loyola University Chicago, said the movement over the past couple of years has been for evangelical voters to shift their base of issues.

“In the past several years there is a growing belief [among] young evangelicals that there are other social issues that evangelicals have to deal with from the environment to poverty,” Gitelson said.

But he added that it isn’t necessarily a shift to the left. Rather, he sees the movement as two polar sides finding more things in common.

Relevant publisher Cameron Strang said that common ground is found because young evangelicals tend to be morally conservative but don’t think that morality should be legislated.

“On moral issues, a majority of the respondents label themselves conservative. Only 14 percent identified themselves as conservative on social issues,” Strang said. “Barack Obama would fall in line with that appeal.”

Strang said if a morally conservative, yet socially progressive candidate emerged, America would have “millions of voters coming out of the woodwork.”

About 8,500 readers responded to the survey, which was published this month but conducted in October and November. Strang said if the question–who would Jesus vote for?–was asked today, he believes U.S. Rep. Ron Paul would likely be at the top.

“[Paul] has definitely struck a chord with younger voters across the board, not just evangelicals,” said Lisa Wogan, Illinois communications coordinator for the Ron Paul campaign.

Wogan attributed his appeal with evangelical Christians to the fact that many of Paul’s policy ideas are based on the Golden Rule, and he “believes our freedoms are granted by God and not by the government.”

Of the readers surveyed by Relevant, 71 percent said they vote in every election.

“As more and more of these people come into voting age, the tide’s going to shift,” Strang said. “It’s going to catch the political arena off guard.”

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has news for you: You are not alone.

Forty-four percent of adult Americans have switched religions at least once in their lifetime, according to a new comprehensive religion study on religious affiliation in the United States.

The numbers show that the religious landscape in the United States is in flux, with forces like immigration, decline in birth rate and even consumerism at play.

What it boils down to, improbably, is this:

“Everybody in this country is losing members. Everyone is gaining members.”

That’s the word from Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. At the release of the survey on Monday, Lugo said. “It’s a very competitive marketplace.”

But who are the winners and losers in this competition?

“It does appear to us that evangelical protestant tradition is still growing, but as it’s growing, it’s becoming more diverse,” said John Green, senior fellow at the forum, in light of figures that reflect an increased fragmentation within Protestantism.

According to the study, there are hundreds of Protestant denominations “loosely grouped around three fairly distinct religious traditions: evangelical Protestant churches (26.3 percent of the overall adult population), mainline Protestant churches (18.1 percent) and historically black Protestant churches (6.9 percent).”

This diversity prompts Americans to evaluate their beliefs and line them up with a church, a trend popular especially among the young.

Mike Niebauer, 27, is a lay pastor at the Church of the Redeemer at Northwestern University, an Anglican church that he says “tries to find the middle way between Catholicism and the evangelical church.”

Raised Catholic in rural Pennsylvania, Niebauer said that as a child, he “had never thought of Christianity as something that was a choice of mine to make.”

When he encountered evangelical Christianity in college, he began to attend churches out of a “practical sense of wanting to be involved with a community of people who are intentional in following God.” He said he later found his niche within the Anglican Church.

Niebauer isn’t unique in making such a jump. According to the study, adults under 30 have a greater inclination to switch between traditions–for instance from Catholic to Protestant–than older adults.

But Niebauer said he’s aware of the downfalls of each man creating his own faith.

“Part of it is the sense that there’s this American, individualistic sense with the evangelical church where people switch denominations all the time,” Niebauer said. “That is really based on the one person’s decision on what is right for their life.”

For some people, that decision is to leave organized religion entirely. According to the survey, the group showing the largest gain in “membership” was the unaffiliated, who make up 16 percent of the American population. That group includes atheists, agnostics and those who don’t identify with any religion but say that religion is somewhat important or very important in their lives.

Competition for believers is a longstanding fact of the American religious landscape, said Dr. Vincent Miller, professor of theology at Georgetown University and author of “Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture.”

But the cultural acceptance of individuals seeking their own religious identity outside of a longstanding tradition is new.

“In terms of liberation, people are freer to make intentional religious choices, so they actively embrace the teachings of a religious community rather than just passively accept them because they were born into that [tradition],” Miller said.

On the other hand, Miller added, “When religious communities become communities of choice, they become enclaves of the like-minded.”

And Miller said that when dissenters flee “rather than challenging that community and going deeper into the traditions, communities harden.” As a result, churches become less likely to engage their congregants’ questions.

For the second time, Adalberto United Methodist Church in Humboldt Park is in the middle of the immigration debate after offering sanctuary to an illegal immigrant.

Flor Crisostomo, who left her three children in Mexico seven years ago to seek better wages, was arrested in a 2006 raid at IFCO Systems on the Chicago’s South Side. She was supposed to report for deportation Monday. Instead, she asked the church for help.

“I am not leaving,” Crisostomo said in Spanish at a news conference at the church on Monday.

At a symposium on the immigration issue Tuesday at Loyola University Chicago’s law school, some speakers discussed the reasons why churches offer a place for illegal immigrants to escape deportation. The concept of sanctuary is centuries old.

“Faith communities think there are some laws that should not be enforced because they are unjust and broken laws,” said Jeanne Butterfield, executive director for the Washington, D.C.-based American Immigration Lawyers Association. “The whole faith-community idea of civil disobedience is reflected in that. Obviously [offering sanctuary] is not a solution, but it highlights the problem.”

Rev. Walter Coleman, pastor of Adalberto United Methodist, said sanctuary is not a political process. Rather, it is a metaphorical and physical place in which Christians bear witness.

“For those who are willing to come forward, the church provides space in which this witness can be made,” he said.

But offering sanctuary is not without consequences, according to Butterfield.

“It can invite backlash,” she said. “People are accused of being complicit in breaking the law. I think they can be effective in highlighting that the laws are broken, but sanctuary is not a solution.”

Gail Montenegro, spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Chicago, said in a statement that the government has given Crisostomo time to return on her own since her arrest in 2006. But she “has chosen to continue to violate our nation”s immigration laws and the judge’s orders and is currently considered to be an immigration fugitive.”

For Coleman and other members of faith communities, offering sanctuary is also a matter of living out a Christian mission.

“It is unacceptable before God that this country should maintain a permanent underclass of 12 million people,” Coleman said. “Where governments fail, then faith must stand apart.”

Read full article and see photo slideshow at Medill Reports Chicago.