Today, I got a bunch of views from someone had looked up in a search engine “Austin child protective services suck.” This is terrible. Looking up x thing sucks is what people do when they are angry and see no redeeming qualities in a service so they just want to hear bad stuff about it. This means that whoever was making that search sees CPS as a hopeless institution (they weren’t googling “how to get CPS to be more effective” or anything like that), they just wanted to hear that other people hate the organization just as much. And this person is not alone. I know a lot of people who have dealt with CPS and the children in danger have not been helped at all. It has actually made things worse that CPS got involved because it enraged the parents. So, this search makes it very obvious that something needs to change if the system is so broken that people are not even looking up “cheat sheets” to get it to work but are looking for commiserators in how useless it is. It’s time for change. And person in Austin, I am so sorry about whatever is happening. I don’t know if you are the victim or someone who knows a victim and was expecting the government to do its job in protecting your friend. All I can really say is that you have stay hopeful that one day you/your friend will leave home and in the mean time people who love you/your friend will help and make things much more bearable. And there are tons of people out there, strangers even, who just want to help. There are call lines if you need someone to listen, blogs like mine, and your doctor/teacher/any decent adult will listen and try to help.
USA: 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453)
UK: 0800 1111 or 0800 731 4080 (only got 18 and under)
Australia: 1800 177 135
Child Abuse Advice 