A report released this week by two retired judges claims that county attorneys misled custody judges by not calling witnesses or omitting information in order to get more kids taken away from their families.
The report, critical of the Erie County Office of Children and Youth, is causing an unprecedented review of 74 foster care cases to see if any wrongs are worthy of taking the custody issue back to the bench.
The report may also become the catalyst for criminal charges against any in the agency looking to benefit from the dysfunction of others.
I’m sorry because none of this is new to me.
Several times a month, for several years now, I’ve been getting phone calls from various family members talking about the unfairness of the County’s parental rights system.
They complained because they felt that kids were being taken away too quickly.
They complained because the system wouldn’t consider sending children to relatives like grandmas or aunts.
They complained of a system both uncaring and unyielding when it came to the individual needs of a family’s individual case.
All of which are concerns addressed in the judges’ report.
It’s not that we didn’t try.
These are some of the toughest cases for the courts to decide, usually because no one is perfect and there has to be a fair amount of problems to go around before the County even gets involved.
Then there are the confidentiality laws which require agencies to protect the identities of the families, especially the identities of the children.
So when we asked about cases we were told that they couldn’t be discussed.
Somewhere along the line we stopped asking.
It got to the point where as soon as the caller revealed that it was an OCY complaint, the call usually got cut short.
“I’m really sorry for what you’re going through, but you might consider private counsel. There’s really nothing we can do.”
That isn’t good enough.
Many times callers forget to mention their own drug, alcohol or abuse problems and the time needed to follow that kind of paper trail might prove more than station resources have to give.
Still the smoke caused by the number of calls received should have warned us that a fire was burning someplace.
At least the callers deserved to be fully heard.
For that, I am sorry.