Child Protection Team [CPT] really needs citizen oversight.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It wasn’t a great solution but you don’t always get to make perfect choices.<\/p>\n
Anyway, my problem has nothing to do with the necessity of having a citizen sit on that weekly committee.\u00a0 The CPT committee must have a citizen representative who is personally outside of the system.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0 Many statutes, regulations, and proprietary methods help keep everything proceeding toward a correct outcome.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 They draw their legal authority from separate and distinct sources that are not synchronized.\u00a0 Their corrective and curative interests are not quite the same.\u00a0 Their constitutional foundations are different.\u00a0 Their evidentiary standards are not the same.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Each system professional will raise their own level of justification and thoroughness when under citizen scrutiny.\u00a0 It’s just human nature.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Citizens need to do this oversight.\u00a0 This job protects everyone, both inside and subject-to the system, and there’s no other way to do it.\u00a0 Contact one of the Elbert County Commissioners to be one of those people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Child Protection Team [CPT] really needs citizen oversight.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1655","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-child-protection","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}