Protect Tennessee's Families/Improve DCS

To:  Tennessee Legislation

For those who haven’t read about us or seen us on the news, Tennessee Family Rights Advocates is a collection of people who believe they have been wronged by the Department of Children’s Services. We sponsor support groups, Victims of DCS; provide parents with information about their rights; educate parents about researching for their own cases; and, hope to make permanent changes that will affect future families. Although Viola Miller, DCS Commissioner, is diligently working to improve the Department of Children’s Services and has made commendable progress, we feel some things are being overlooked and want to do something about it. As one of our goals is advocate changes in legislation and assist the Department of Children’s Services in identifying options that we believe would improve the program, we have identified six (6) options that would produce more positive results and minimize risks.

We would like to see the following addressed and considered by legislation and the Department of Children’s Services:

1. Create specific definitions and guidelines for Imminent Danger, Reasonable Expectations to Prevent Removal and Child’s Best Interest. This includes specifying that the Department of Children’s Services involvement is limited to cases of abuse and neglect, not conflicts between parenting choices and opinions of case workers.

2. Laws governing the accountability of caseworkers where it is proven that the caseworker has perjured him/herself, manipulated evidence, lied to parents or otherwise been involved in unethical and/or unprofessional behavior.

3. The need to establish protocol for gathering complaint information provided to the Ombudsman, or separately designated agency, in order to assess possible problem caseworkers or offices. Upon establishing legitimate patterns, a course of action to rectify or eliminate the problem needs to be outlined.

4. The creation of an unbiased committee, not employed by the Department of Children’s Services or involved in business or agency with ties to the Department, to review disputes about cases.

5. Provisions for more extensive training to include differences in family dynamics, parenting and child-rearing styles. All families have different beliefs, personalities and priority systems. Provided that none of these result in the abuse or detrimental neglect of a child, parents need to be able to make choices about how to rear their children based on their own morals, beliefs and wishes.

6. The designation of one DCS employee or CSA position to act as a Special Needs Liaison. Position specifically designed so that one person can be educated and trained about children with special needs: conditions, assessment and considerations required to properly care for that child’s needs.

We want to get as many signatures as possible but our overall goal is to get 10% or 250,000 Tennesseans to sign the petition by January 3, 2006 so we can present it to legislation before their first meeting on January 10, 2006.

We are currently engaged in a letter writing campaign for the same so anyone interested in being heard today by legislation, DCS, governor and special interest committees should visit our website at http://tnfamilyrights.bravehost.com (News page).

Thank you for your time and consideration in this paramount matter.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Protect Tennessee's Families/Improve DCS Petition to Tennessee Legislation was created by Members of Tennessee Family Rights Advocates and Victims of DCS and written by Laura L. Smith (victims_of_dcs@yahoo.com).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.

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