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We previously reported on the parents in Maryland who were being investigated for neglect after letting their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter make a one-mile walk home from a Silver Spring park on Georgia Avenue on a Saturday afternoon. Now the Washington Post that after a two-month investigation the Montgomery County Child Protective Services has found the parents responsible for “unsubstantiated” child neglect in a decision that has not fully resolved their clash with authorities over questions of parenting and children’s safety. "I think what CPS considered neglect, we felt was an essential part of growing up and maturing," said Alexander Meitiv. "We feel we're being bullied into a point of view about child-rearing that we strongly disagree with."
The finding of unsubstantiated child neglect means CPS will keep a file on the family for at least five years and leaves open the question of what would happen if the Meitiv children get reported again for walking without adult supervision. The parents say they will continue to allow their son, Rafi, 10, and daughter Dvora, 6, to play or walk together, and won’t be swayed by the CPS finding. “We don’t feel it was appropriate for an investigation to start, much less conclude that we are responsible for some form of child neglect,” says Danielle Meitiv, who said she and her husband plan to appeal and worry about being investigated again by CPS. “What will happen next time? We don’t know if we will get caught in this Kafkaesque loop again.” Asked how authorities would respond if the children were reported again for walking unsupervised, Paula Tolson, spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of Human Resources, said CPS would become involved if a complaint was made about the safety of the children. In such cases, “if we get a call from law enforcement or from a citizen, we are required to investigate. Our goal is the safety of children, always.”
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday March 11 2015, @09:27PM
More proactive means that for fire, we use less flammable materials. Make it so that many fires never happen. There are many, many things about housing that can be improved, and not using as much flammable termite food (aka wood) is only one. At least we have ditched some of the worst fire hazards, using gypsum wallboard now. For a brief time around 20 years ago, wooden shingles were popular, until a few fires broke out and spread to a lot more buildings than they would have if builders had stuck to other roofing materials.
Medical care in the US has been badly run for decades. Rather than regular checkups and early treatment, many people are pushed into waiting until a medical problem becomes an emergency, and multiplies, because they can't get affordable care. Sure, there will still be accidents, broken bones, cut off fingertips, heart attacks, kidney stones, and other emergencies, but there's room for a great deal more prevention than we do now. On that, a big source of injuries are automobile accidents. We've made good progress in increasing automobile safety, but our highways are still a killing field.
For police work, more respect and less uncritical love of guns would help. We've had many accidental fatalities from guns. They've certainly made the competition for food and sex more deadly.
All this would reduce the need for emergency services. We'll never eliminate emergencies, but we certainly can reduce the numbers and odds, and often for less money than it costs to handle emergencies after they occur.