'HOW A CARELESS TEENAGER TURNED INTO A (STEP)MOM'

(life of a girl who survived domestic violence and stalking, fighting for a better life)

Welcome to the Twentieth day I'm participating in the #monthlyauthorchallenge!
I'm really excited to join the challenge! Why? Because I would love to share some bits of my life with you.
I think it might surprise you and even shock you 😉

DAY 20 Fighting CPS

-Today I'll write about what we did to fight CPS. I hope I can inspire and help people who are still fighting this big monster. Please notice that this is about the Dutch system. By CPS I mean Jeugdzorg Nederland. Some things might be different over here then in other countries.-

While I tried to get under Richards skin, @fitzgibbon started reading.

A LOT.

Some of the things he read:
-Child care national law (De Jeugdwet 1 januari 2015)
-Policy plans of CPS
-Guidelines Youth care and Youth protection
-Guidelines Sientific Research and Documentation Center (Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek en Documentatie Centrum)
-Reports ombudsman for children
-International statement for children's rights
-Complaint procedure Youth care
-Children's right monitor

Besides that he contacted people like:
-The ombudsman for children
-Youth care 'darkhorse'
-The writers of the guidelines for Youth care and Youth protection (Ed spruijt)
-Local authorities, because they payed CPS without checking the actual results!

@fitzgibbon started to write emails to the guardian. The guardian didn't take it to serious and told @fitzgibbon to stop being a smart ass and listen to him.

@fitzgibbon started to write emails to the Complaints Committee as well about the contract between the vision of the guardian and the vision of us, the (step)parents,
about how our upbringing was threatened bij the interference of CPS,
about the lack of a parentingplan,
about how the focus was always on the quantity of the visits instead of the quality and the developments-conditions,
about how the interference of CPS had a negative impact on our family and on the kids.

This was just the introduction..
Then he wrote down all the complaints we had..

There were 7 complaints about the treatment:
-Not taking the parents seriously
-Keeping the interested parties away
-The Lack of professionality
-The lack of consistency
-The partiality
-The lying
-The abuse of power

There were 2 complaints about the decisions and the treatment:
-No match between the guiding question and the approach
-Diagnosing done by an inexpertly guardian

And then there were the complaints about the procedure:
-Diagnosing done by an inexpertly guardian (again)
-The lack of seeking the truth
-Not keeping opinions and facts seperated
-Neglecting the guidelines and the investigations

This all together became a document of 80 pages!!

The Complaints Committee invites us for a hearing.
They invited the guardian as well.
He took his supervisor with him.

It's really weird to hear a woman say awful things about you as a person while you've never met her before...

The nasty thing about CPS is that the employees are not able to think for themselves.
If one of the employees has an opinion about you then that's the opinion of CPS.
So, if you can't get along with your guardian, you've got a problem, no matter who you talk to in the future..
They stick to that one opinion.

After this hearing CPS decided to add another guardian to the situation.
I have to be honest. I liked her in a way. I noticed that she wasn't approving a lot of the things that Richard did and said. She seemed to be capable of looking for solutions.
At least she wasn't in love with one of the parties..

It didn't take us long to report new complaints about Richard.
When we went to the Complaints Committee for the second time they gave Richard a rap on the knuckles. He should have left already. Why was he still on the case while there was so much friction between him and us?
I told them about the story I heard from the mothers from the schoolyard. Those gentleman were really curious to hear what that was about. You should have seen his (red!)face!

In the meantime we'd visited the court a couple of times. The judge allowed me to join the meetings, but I had to keep my mouth shut, because @fitzgibbons ex-ife coulnd't stand hearing my voice. (I'm not making this up..)
She was upset with me and said we were 'the devil', while her dad punched @fitzgibbon so hard, out of the blue in front of the courthouse, that he broke his nose 3 days before our wedding..

The last time we went to court the judge was fed up with it. He said he was very disappointed in CPS because they didn't achieve anything at all.

He decided to stop the supervision order!

The judge adviced us to sit around the table with the three of us, the lawyers and the guardians to make a new schedule for the acces agreement.
We did.
We put our best foot forward and set dates.
While our lawyers and we were getting on the same page, I looked up and saw Richard getting furious, frustrated, mad..

He lost. We won!!

Stay tuned!

-Thank you for your interest! I would love to hear something from you! Please leave a comment and I'll get back to you 😊 Hope to see you back tomorrow! Love you 😘!-

This story is part of a series I'm writing this month in the #monthlyauthorchallenge, here below are the previous parts:

Part 19 Threatened by CPS
Part 18: Stricken by fate
PART 17: Nothing is impossible!
PART 16: We doubled!
PART 15: The stalking continues
PART 14: A Life-changing experience on Valentine's day
PART 13: Getting to know myself again
PART 12: CPS-Mill
PART 11: The Attack
PART 10: CPS
PART 9: Stalking
PART 8: The divorce
PART 7: Running away
PART 6: Domestic violence
PART 5: Now what?
PART 4: Becoming a young mom
PART 3: Kissing and making out
PART 2: The first guy I'll kiss
PART 1: This is me