@rosylea. How did you recognise that, if you don't mind me asking?
Sorry, my post last night wasn't phrased as I would wish (tiredness). I'll clarify. I don't know whether the video itself is fake (as in whether that really is a US senator), but I concluded that it's claims weren't genuine or were grossly overstated because:
- The report alleges fraud on the part of CPS, but provides no evidence for it. Hyperbolic claims without supporting evidence are a hallmark of this type of hoax. If a senator had evidence of fraud, they would have no difficulty pursuing it.
- The senator claims that SW's motivation for removing children is 'to increase their budgets'. This flies in the face of my experience of human beings. People don't take up thankless, poorly paid, public service jobs and then suddenly lose all their values to meet a quota.
- She makes claims that my experience suggests are untrue.
Her main argument is that US Social services should be defunded, and that these huge budgets have to be justified; but the US spends paltry amounts on SS compared to other countries.
Her conclusion is that families should never have children removed. I know first hand the awful abuse that leads to children being removed in the UK- I can't imagine this doesn't occur in the US with it's greater social problems.
- The video and report only seem to be referenced on sites with no credibility. If there was even the remotest evidence in support of these claims then (at least) some main-ish news sites would pick the story up.
I have no direct experience of US adoptions, so ultimately I can only reach a conclusion based on a brief google. The bottom line is that big claims require big evidence, and there seems to be none.
I do have experience of parents who abuse/neglect their children, but fall below the threshold where SS would remove the child (i.e. far from the worst cases). In my experience the common factor is a complete inability to accept responsibility for their actions. Often they are very plausible and you feel a desperate desire to help someone who 'just doesn't understand the system' and you think it will be easy to support them to turn things around. With many cases the support doesn't work, because they don't want to fix the problems, they want to blame everyone else.
I wish SS had more money to try to intervene earlier, and more effectively, to stop adoptions being necessary- but that is much easier said than done. When a child is being abused I would far rather they are kept safe than left with an abuser.