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RE: Our Homeless Experience Part 6: The Shelter, Part 1
I have been homeless to, lost everything, my 2 oldest live with the father thanks to cps and me, my boyfriend and then 3 month old daughter fled from Holland to Spain to escape from the hell we went trough.
A friend of mine lost her daughter to foster care (she got divorced, the granny of the child hated both her and the step-father and was almost daily in touch with the Norwegian CPS). Her immediate gut reaction was to send her younger son to her grand parents in Belo-Russia.
oh my .. sorry to hear that about your friend.. but her daughter did fall in the claws of cps ? its a bit like us in a way.. we fled out of the country to make sure our daughter (from me and my boyfriend so not the dad of the 2 oldest) would escape from this. they will.not stop investigate and always find something.. my gut feeling also said I needed to get away.. and so we did.. always trust your gut feeling.. ive learned this the hard way..
This is the Norwegian CPS, Barnevernet. I've heard rumors they are internationally known for being one of the more agressive child protection agencies ... it's particularly an issue for many immigrants (just google for "norway stole our child" or "barnevernet stole our child", plenty of bad press there). Quite much cultural issues, conflicts where the Norwegian staff in the CPS has very different opinions than the immigrants on how to raise a child. Some things are just absolutely not OK in Norway, including spanking a child or female genital cutting - and I do tend to side with the CPS under those two circumstances.
There is always two sides of a story - we have of course heard one side of the story extensively, which includes an evil and mentally unstable granny that was doing her best to get the CPS to intervene, and some very stubborn employees at the CPS, in the end it seemed more important for them not to lose face than what was the best for the child.
Once (long before the CPS intervened) the mother was away, and the daughter was staying with me for a week. She was so different from my son - she was always positive, looking forward for going to the kinder garden and still dropping everything yelling ... "hurray, uncle Tobias is here to pick me up" upon home-going time. It was a wonderful time - at the end I delivered the child to the said granny, and I didn't get any good impression of her indeed ... it was like an aura of disrespect hitting me as I entered the door.
In this case the step-father of the child was accused for being violent towards her. If their accusations were true, then I believe it's right to intervene. Now their daughter is 13 or 14 and old enough that she can witness in court, and as far as I heard, the latest court decision was that she can move back to the mother if and only if the step-father moves out.
I got the feeling that the couple (and particularly the step-father) from the start chose to fight with the CPS rather than cooperate, that probably didn't make things better.
We've also had encounters with the CPS, and we've chosen to cooperate. I'm not sure the case is finally closed, but at least they conclude that it's sufficient with some parental guidance (PMTO).