I think this whole philosophy smacks of Eugenics or something. What exactly made it better to keep this family together? Was the social worker frustrated with the system and hell-bent on proving how badly wrong it can be?

We're sort of in a distant-relative thing right now, and I will say I am not impressed with the goals of family preservation when the children's rights have been repeatedly violated. Where was the Guardian ad Litem here?

That story is just heartbreaking. I don't get it. As someone who was abused as a child, I would not have WANTED family reunification if I had been lucky enough to be rescued in the first place. I don't understand why society thinks it is okay to continually return a child to an abusive home, as if the child is ever going to feel safe again.

- Faith

It doesnt make sense to reunify such a small child. He was receiving great care and love and kindness but was removed in effort to get him off the books and make the department look good. This makes me angry! Everyday I think about going to city hall in Los Angeles and demanding that the mayor do something to help reform the system.

I am in total agreement. We have had our foster daughter since she was 5 months old. She was severely beaten, almost to death. She had head trauma, two very black eyes, and some kind of inner ear damage done by her beating. This beating took place without the fathers knowledge (because he was incarcerated the entire time the mother was pregnant with her). The reason why he was in jail was due to domestic abuse to one of his family members. Also, the mother has also been beat up by the father. We just went to a hearing to see how the parents were doing on there services. Both parents have now been ordered to take domestic violence classes. How often do they take these classes? Once a month? Once a week or what? Come on. It takes more than 1 class a month to "work" through all your life's problems to even try and get your child back. Of course, they are now going to try and send "our foster daughter" to either the paternal grandmother in New York (who has never even seen this child) or to a kinship person who lives in the local area (who has also never seen this child). Yes, it is all about trying to resolve this case as quickly as they can so that CPS can close another book on another neglected and beaten child. My husband and I fell in love with her the moment she got to our house. Our families have bonded with her very well. She has also bonded with us. She calls us "ma ma" and "da da". When she visits with her birth parents, she looks at them like they are strangers. Once they get to the room in the back, they play with her and try and "bond" with her. Once they come out of the room, the baby reaches for me all the time and starts squirming as if to say, "I want my mommy to hold me now and let's get out of here and go home where it is safe". I am afraid if this child does get ripped from our home and placed with people she doesn't know, what they could do to her. If the father came from an abusive home, who's to say the family won't abuse her also. It scares me. Someone definitely needs to head up some kind of coalition for these children who do end up back in the system repeatedly.