Child Protection Team [CPT] really needs citizen oversight. I’m not doing it anymore because I ended up getting poached on by the sheriffs department for revenue and the only way I could send a message to the powers that be that poaching on citizens is wrong was to withdraw my services as that citizen. It wasn’t a great solution but you don’t always get to make perfect choices.
Anyway, my problem has nothing to do with the necessity of having a citizen sit on that weekly committee. The CPT committee must have a citizen representative who is personally outside of the system. That means one who is not in any law enforcement agency, not in the provision of mental health services, not in the department of social services, not in the child advocacy program, not in the district attorney’s office, not a school counselor, and not a local physician. CPT is the nexus where all of those powers cooperate, and taken together, they can bring a tremendous amount of power–force–to bear in citizens’ lives.
There are a number of safeguards built into the various processes that all of these professionals and agencies use to deal with the public on child protection matters. Many statutes, regulations, and proprietary methods help keep everything proceeding toward a correct outcome.
Still, without a citizen representative in the room, everyone else in CPT is either adversarial, or in an imposing or curative juxtaposition to citizen subjects. They draw their legal authority from separate and distinct sources that are not synchronized. Their corrective and curative interests are not quite the same. Their constitutional foundations are different. Their evidentiary standards are not the same. The citizen representative voice in CPT, even if it is largely passive, is necessary to help keep the performance bar high for system professionals from an objective, non-interested party’s point of view.
Each system professional will raise their own level of justification and thoroughness when under citizen scrutiny. It’s just human nature. You put your best foot forward when someone else is watching, especially if that person is not an insider–and you definitely want agents who are wielding power to put their best foot forward every time they take a step.
Citizens need to do this oversight. This job protects everyone, both inside and subject-to the system, and there’s no other way to do it. Contact one of the Elbert County Commissioners to be one of those people.