Child In Foster Care Drowns

foster parent wrote:

if you want to blame someone, then why don't you all set up to the plate and be a foster parent?

Amen. I became a foster parent not because I wanted to but because I had too for the sake of my granddaughter. I may not always agree with all of the way that DHS handles things, but working in the legal field I know that there are laws and administrative rules in which they must follow.

Everyone blames DHS for not keeping the children safe when we should be blaming the parents first for not protecting their children from being placed in DHS custody and then our legal system and then in some cases DHS. Of course just ask any parent who has a child in DHS custody they did nothing wrong and it is DHS they took their children away from them and then the foster parents start getting a lot of the blame for everything.
Did you know that the year Kelsey Briggs died 51 other children (who were not in DHS custody) lost their lives to abuse by either a parent, boyfriend/girlfriend of a parent or other family member. Who do we blame for those deaths.

I'm shocked at what happened, more so at all the responses. Accidents happen in even the most careful environment. The unknown factor takes part and causes things to happen. My sister almost drowned when she was 3, never underestimate a child's ability or curiously and blame the state, parent or system.

It is sad, there is no doubt about it. But unless the foster parents OR real parents were there WATCHING her, no one can be blamed aside from the little girl's own curiosity.(Yeah, you can scream at me now). You can have the most 'child proof' house in the world.. and a child would still be able to find a way to hurt themselves. They will think of things you over looked and then it becomes your fault that the child thought of it.

Quit being idiots and use your minds and not your emotions. This isn't anything like the case of the girl who's mother left her to starve to death in her own room while the welfare workers ignored the obvious signs of neglect.