Shining the Light on Child Services

The Pardo family in Texas was finally reunited after several months, all accusations against the parents dropped. (They had been accused of seeking medical care their 4-year-old didn’t need, though the court would later find that every treatment he ever received had been prescribed by his attending physicians.)

A group in Minnesota is currently working out a settlement in a class action lawsuit against Hennepin County to correct unjust practices in the county’s Child Protection System.

And in Illinois another group of parents are advancing a lawsuit of their own against a hospital where babies were taken away and given the vitamin K shot without the parents’ approval, even though state law guarantees to parents the right to make that decision.

Such is the trend in America today: more and more eyes are being opened to the improper handling of children through the violation of parental rights. More and more people are taking a stand to demand the changes that need to be made.

The system has been broken for decades, but its dysfunction has been hidden in shadows. Things begin to change when more and more light reaches those recesses.

This year was ParentalRights.org’s twelfth year in being a huge part of shining that light.

In the first half of the year we coordinated with a bipartisan coalition and proposed real changes to Congress that could be employed through the reauthorization of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, or CAPTA.

Congress has so far failed to pass any meaningful change, but in the process we fine-tuned what it is we’re looking for, and discovered additional ways to go after it.

So over the summer we started drafting model state statutes that could have the same effect, a state at a time.

In the last quarter, we finalized that language in preparation for the 2020 legislative sessions.

In the last month, we spoke with lawmakers interested in prefiling these parental rights bills.

In the last two weeks, our president attended the policy summit of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to present our concerns and encourage state lawmakers to take a stance protecting families. His presentation has resulted in new contacts—new state lawmakers looking to take up our ideas.

Now, even as things wind down for the holidays, we are gearing up for the legislative session coming in January. States like Colorado, South Dakota, Kentucky, and Florida will be taking up bills to protect parental rights and save children from unnecessary intrusion and trauma.

Thank you for standing with us throughout 2019, and for continuing the journey together in 2020.

Together we are shining a light and making a difference!

Sincerely,

Michael Ramey

Executive Director