Can A Family Attorney Get Kids Back From CPS? – Part II

In Part I, we discussed the first part of any CPS investigation — the part where they do their best to prove that you’re a horrible parent, potentially using all kinds of tricks that would get the police in huge trouble if they did the same thing. But what if it’s too late, and you’ve already been deemed unfit by CPS?

The ‘Voluntary’ Service Plan
Unless the threat to your children is deemed an emergency, your CPS agent should offer you a Voluntary Service Plan (or, in some states, Voluntary Safety Plan) (VSP). This essentially amounts to a checklist of things you need to do in order to keep (or, in some cases, get back) your children. It’s called ‘Voluntary,’ but that’s a misnomer — the fact is, if you don’t take some form of VSP, you will end up in court with CPS suing for custody of your children. The key is to get CPS to write a VSP that you can actually achieve. That can be difficult.

The first reason it can be a challenge is that CPS workers regularly write requirements into a VSP that you as the parent have almost no control over. For example, they have been known to write requirements that obese children lose X pounds over the next Y months — but anyone who has struggled with their weight knows how unlikely it is that you’ll be in control of your exact weight at an arbitrary point in the future. CPS also often writes GPA-improvement requirements for children that are doing poorly in school — but your child’s GPA can suffer for any of a HUGE variety of reasons (say, they were recently taken away from their parents by the government and they’re having issues with authority.)

You as a parent don’t have a huge amount of control over what the CPS writes into a VSP, but you do have control over whether or not you accept any particular version of the VSP. You absolutely have the right to negotiate, and most CPS caseworkers are willing to listen to a parent who has a reasonable objection to specific clauses in a VSP. So if you see something in your proposed agreement that you don’t think is within your control, point it out, and propose an alternative.

For example, rather than “Child will lose X pounds in Y months,” most CPS workers would be quite happy to include a clause like, “Parent and child will attend weight management seminars and work with their doctor to establish a diet that will help child gain control of the obesity problem.” The more active you promise to be — as in, the more time and energy you are willing to put in — the more likely they are to accept your proposal.

One clause that you absolutely must insist upon is a strict time limit for the VSP. Most VSPs by default are written for a duration of one month or the parent completes “all items on the list have been achieved.” But it’s trivially easy for the CPS agent to, even unwittingly, write an item on the list that is literally never achievable. For example, what if that weight-loss clause was simply written “Child will lose 5 pounds,” with no time period attached? All that’s necessary is for the kid to keep growing like every normal kid does, and the VSP will last until the kid turns 18. So insist that there is a clause that states that the entire VSP ends at the end of one month (or three, or six if it seems more reasonable), at which point the CPS agent must re-assess the family.

Court Might Be a Better Option!
There is one important thing you need to know about signing a VSP: by signing it, you are giving up your Constitutional right to due process. If you sign a VSP and then don’t follow it, CPS no longer needs to sue for custody of your child — they have only to go to a judge and say “enforce this contract,” and the judge will do so without argument, and you will have your children legally taken from you.

So if CPS won’t agree to the time-limit, or to a list of items that are actually achievable, bite the bullet and get ready for court. The good  news is that, in court, they have a much higher standard of evidence to meet in order to take your child away. The bad news is, you’re going to have a lot of work ahead of you, because court-appointed lawyers aren’t going to be a whole lot of help. We’ll cover all that next time.