Arkansas Senator Alan Clark

Child Welfare Secrecy “Scary,” Above the Law

How Can “Inexperienced, Underpaid, Overworked” Social Workers Make Life-changing Decisions in Removing Children from Parents?

DCFS’ belief that they can operate in complete secrecy is downright scary. What can be so secret, that DCFS would ask that a state senator be excluded from the courtroom? The law seems to be clear. I have been invited to the exact same courtroom in the past, to view the exact same kind of cases, when the court was interested in my help. I can’t tell the public what happened there. What is it, that your representatives should not see happening? What makes an agency believe they have that kind of unbridled power?

Let’s not forget that I became involved in investigating DCFS when the agency refused to give me information about a case. The law clearly states, it turns out, that they have to. It is peculiar how they memorize the secrecy parts and not the sharing parts.

Most do not know that I had to hold the DCFS budget to get that information and the whole Arkansas legislature had to back me to force them to comply. They are clearly more secretive than they have to be. They are clearly more secretive than the law allows. If we saw this on the evening news going on in another country, we would for a moment be thankful that our country did not allow secret police that could disrupt our lives without due process. We would be thankful we are Americans.  READ MORE…