Oh No!

I just lost the top half of my last, colorfully-illustrated, and highly annotated, sarcastic scatalogical post,  “Thrusting Abstinence Education on the Unwary Public”  (as summarized, with links, by Wikipedia, in about 2005).  It’s coming.  I’ll expose it soon.  It exposes the money that traded hands in private before the PR professionals, using their media connections, pushed two policies that are now coursing through the bloodstreams of the 2 largest United States Executive Branch departments and affecting, I say, all of us.  These were the Healthy Marriage/Fatherhood/Abstinence Education initiatives (as to HHS) AND . . .. AND . . . .the “No Child Left Behind” policies (as to Educ.)  

Regarding that. . . . .

I figured, since the Bush Admin public servants want to Push its way into the public’s thoughts (first) and pants, skirts, or burqas, etc.  as to trying to regulate whether (let alone with whom!)  we (or our children) do or do not engage in sexual intercourse, whatever they find where they don’t belong is their own problem, and any tone of response communicating “get out!” is appropriate.  The moral being, #1, don’t take rides from strangers promising Health, Human Services, or any other ecstatic experiences or transportations, or accept candies from them, either, and #2, more of us need to restructure our lives so as to keep better track of our track of our Congressmen, and whatever % of them are Congresswomen who vote on how to dispense $$ collected from us through taxes.  If these are being used Inappropriately (and failing kids K-12, then trying to back track and teach an abstinence Congresspeople themselves do not exhibit, either as to finances or their personal sex lives (not unilaterally for sure is most definitely INappropriate).

Who knows, the candy {whether in form of ideas, or psychotropic, as in Ritalin, etc. through the school systems, etc.) might have drugs.  Besides which, anyone calling you, or people in general “Human” probably isn’t.   Would such a person call their own offspring, or spouse, a “human”??  Then how come other, more distant people of the same species become suddenly “humans” and need “servicing.”  

Marriage affects health, sure, but in definition is a commitment between two individuals who have exchanged vows, generally in front of witnesses in their community, and have also a certain public document.  By definition, and usage, it’s private!  Where it becomes public is only where an individual in it breaks a law, particularly as to domestic violence and child abuse, but also any others.  

Similarly, a nation is not a living, throbbing organism to be run from the top and have its temperature taken by elected officials and parts re-arranged at (its will).  We are not bees, we are not ants, we are not to be treated like them either.  Our elected and/or appointed officials are not bee-keeprs or ant farmers, even if and (when) they may think they are and such activities have apparently given their otherwise meaningless lives purpose, by labeling others misery or happiness.  

In PARTICULAR, we mothers are not to be bred for our children, and then judged as to our health by virtue of whether the “sire” of the kids is in the house or out of the house.  And that, friends, is what this nation is currently (at our own expense) in the business of.  Studying itself.  The top half is studying the bottom half, only it’s not even close to “half.”  The bottom half (sic) exists to serve, and pay the top half (sic) to study it.

That’s how I read the situation currently, anyhow.  I may be jaundiced by my particular run through the last 20 or so years, but I have networked, read, studied, and collaborated plenty, as well as read what others are networking and collaborating about as well.  When it’s one own’s life & kids (as opposed to, say, job) at stake, one tends to study more closely.

Moroever, the columnists promoting this already had their hands in the till by taking money from the public in the form of grants.  So the hand was ALREADY in our pockets financially.     Moreover, it appears the infamous (to me at least) “No Child Left Behind” (which takes the cake for vague, amorphous rallying cry if I ever heard one.  First of all, it’s false — what about private schools?  What about where are we going?  what about the talented children already being held back in the schools, which is from what I can tell, probably the majority of them.  What about keep your hands off my kids too, until you can talk sense?  This initiative also started in similar manner — a man was paid to promote it, but failed to mention the pay.)

So, as to Abstinence Education, thus I figure anyone (promiscuous, married and faithful, or married and hot-Mike-Duvall, or abstinent, or celibate, or in fact ANYONE) should be able to give them a hard time about this.  Especially because what was NOT exposed was whose $$ (ours — federal grants) was in whose pockets before the inspired (by $$) PR eulogies began.  I guess you get the general idea of how I felt about that.  The moral there, and with this Access and Visitation grandiose talk is, when someone on the federal dole comes up to you UNSOLICITED especially, saying “you need a ride?  You look lost, you need some direction?  You look poor!  I’ll help you — just sign on the line (and give me your offspring) here.  Come, let me give you a (mind/face/family-) lift — then the appropriate response is to ignore the talk and survey the surroundings, particularly for the closest exit.  And any other strangers (to you) in the vicinity behaving oddly.

ANYHOW, another post.  THIS one, is on a grants system set up back in, I gather 1996:

•  2  years after National Fatherhood Initiative (1994)
•  One year after Clinton wrote the (in)famous, “let’s revamp the Exec. Dept. to include more Dads (1995).  
• 3 & 4  years before Congress voted”inexplicably” that the true crisis for the United States was fatherlessness, and they “resolved” (National Fathers Return day being one such resolution) to DO something about it  (in both houses:  1998/1999)
•  only 5 years before the half-bald, mustached, slightly-smiling, white guy to the right (see photo) was “unanimously” appointed Secretary of the HHS (2001-2007), and I gather in 2007, he kinda sorta was encouraged (??) to step down.  At least he resigned.
• But not before the ball was really rolling on this idea that the REAL problem is Kids Minus Dads.

 Since he’s white, middle-aged and half-bald,(and right-wing conservative), (and apparently well-off)  why doesn’t he limit his concern to what he actually has lived?  But know, he and his NFI prominent thinkers are going for the usual suspects, African American mothers who aren’t married to their children’s fathers.   But attacking African American mothers, unmarried, isn’t QUITE PC enough, so the circuitous route is to express for or the kids lack of ROOTS (as defined , to their Dads).  

DO YOU think I’m kidding?  I’m not!

JUNE 17,1999, Congressional Chronicle(tm)

Topic:  National Fathers Return Day

Mr. LIEBERMAN. (speaking)  Mr. President, I want to say just a few words on the jarring statistics from that report and column for my colleagues. Of African American children born in 1996, 70 percent were born to unmarried mothers. At least 80 percent, according to the report, can expect to spend a significant part of their childhood apart from their fathers. 

(in some cases, those fathers got shot, in some cases those fathers were not interested in them to start with.  In some cases those Dads may have been in a war and gave their lives for the country.  In some case those fathers were violent.  Perhaps in some cases those fathers may have been sports idols and are on the road.  Does THAT put them at risk, per se?  In some cases those fathers were womanizers.  Should we put the Dads back with their sons and daughters to learn that this really doesn’t matter, when it’s Dad?  In some cases, perhaps Mom OR Dad had a religious awakening, mabye like Mr. Horn’s, in which case the uninterested (in that brand of God) spouse may wish to continue (or re-act) by doing drugs or watching pornography, or being promiscuous.  

I know one family (not African American) whose Dad decided to come out of the closet, with his new paramour, while his offspring were adolescents.  Guess what.  Those kids didn’t sleep in his home.  Those poor (well, they weren’t poor) kids would have fallen under the Access Visitation grants definition programs.  They had a noncustodial parent.  If their Dad were nasty, or either parent poor, he could’ve been recruited through the child support program to further harrass her or impoverish the kids.  It only takes one bad apple to get the whole family ensnared til kids reach age of majority.  

Suppose Mom finds a second, healthy marriage.  According to these theories, the kids are still at risk, because it’s not “Dad” in the home.

 

(LIEBERMAN, to CONGRESS, 1999, con’td.) We can take some comfort and encouragement from the fact that the teen pregnancy rate has dropped in the last few years. But the numbers cited in Mr. Kelly’s column and in the report are nonetheless profoundly unsettling, especially given what we know about the impact of fatherlessness, and indicate we are in the midst of what Kelly aptly terms a “national calamity.” It is a calamity. Of course, it is not limited to the African American community. On any given night, 4 out of 10 children in 
this country are sleeping in homes without fathers.

We are NOT amused at what’s actually taking place in government grants la-la-land. 

Well, since all my technical (wordpress) wits was far below the level of the rhetorical wit, this crudely dropped the readers midstream, with no buildup or momentum, into the usual back-story commentary on the Wikipedia entry on the not-exactly-breaking-news that columnists and PR sorts sometimes do pay attention to what side their bread is buttered on be for buttering up the ideas of the person with the butter.

Ah well. . . . . 

 So I decided to “punt” and go to this topic:  ACCESS & VISITATION GRANTS, where the real “conflict of interest is” in the courts.  

Anyone that doesn’t like my profiling Wade Horn according to his race, gender, state of follicle challenge, age, and demeanor can go jump in a lake.  I don’t like being profiled according to my gender, or having my household profiled according to how many adult males biologically related to my children in it, rather than to whether or it has a violent, battering, assaulting, property-destroying and chaos-inducing male (biologically or not biologically related to my children) in it.  He can’t change his race, I suppose.  He could even change his gender, if this were part of his right-wing religious preferences which I bet it ain’t.  

I can’t change my DNA, nor can my ex, nor can my kids.  But what I CAN change is whether or not I am going to sit around my home being slapped because I’m female in front of children, and mine happened to be female.  Then let some (male) _______  (or female) come to me, after having ignored years of that, and then push this dogma that the real problem is, there’s not a “man” in the house.

There WAS a man in the house, and that was solved with a restraining order, temporarily.  

I don’t feel like changing my gender either.  And it makes equally as much sense (i.e., NONE) for a bunch of men (and some women) to get up there and saying, it’s a GENDER problem, starting with African American children (of either gender) — and they did!  See below! —  not having their OWN fathers living with them as it does to say it’s a RACE problem.  I dare a bunch of Congressmen to get up there and have a national white folk day.  And get it nationalized, with a straight face.  CALL it that.  Push it all over the state, county, and nonprofit institutions just like fatherhood and healthy marriages has been.  State that as a lot of black folk are in prison, obviously the problem is their race — not the prisons, not poverty, and  not communities, not behavior.  And not racism.  I am waiting for the day.  

With President Obama now, no one would dare (let’s hope!)  But one profile we CAN all gang up on is mothers, especially single mothers.  Good grief!  In another day and time, this would be Jews.  In another, Tutsis.  In another Hutu.  In another Armenians.  But the gender for all times to hate (and particularly if it stops hating its own, or protests) is for sure female.  They must give up their kids and make sure that they have contact with Dads, even if Dad kills them (and this has happened), kidnaps them (and this has happened) and even if the ongoing conflict with a chaotic or controlling personality introduces years of needless conflict — AND more poverty — into the children’s home.  And if Dad can’t restrain himself, or might rape, kidnap, beat, or hurt the kids during a visitation, no matter.  There is ANOTHER government-funded and/or free-market-niche to make sure they still have contact:  “Supervised Visitation.”  

Now that’s not really safe either.  No matter.  There’s ANOTHER program to train the supervisors.  How’re they going?

2008:

“Danger Zones:  Battered mothers and their children in Supervised Visitation“

Supervised visitation centers (SVCs) have developed rapidly across the United States. Increasingly, courts are restricting contact between abusive intimate partners and their children by ordering visitation or exchanges to occur at SVCs. This article describes some of the key lessons the authors learned over 18 months of planning and then another 18 months of implementation at a SVC developed specifically to serve families for whom domestic violence was their primary reason for referral. The authors have organized their experiences around five major themes: (a) battered women in supervised visitation, (b) how battering continues during supervised visitation, (c) how rules at the SVC evolved over the first 18 months of implementation, (d) the importance of well-trained visit monitors, and (e) the need to embed SVCs within a larger context of coordinated community responses to domestic violence.

 Key Words: battered women • batterers • children • supervised visitation centers

 This version was published on November 1, 2008

 

2004:

Six Crucial Issues in Supervised Visitation

There is no way to predict whether a specific batterer is likely to kill his partner. {!!}}  Even though data are available about batterers who actually commit such murders, the batterer’s violence behavior alone does not provide enough information about accurate predictions about which batterers will go on to kill the partners. Psychotherapists can use a variety of checklists and other instruments to help determine the level of risk for a lethal incident, but these assessment devices have not been validated by empirical research. ^[16^]

Who conducts risk assessment?

Despite their close ties with domestic violence shelters in their communities, many supervised visitation program staff do not have the level of expertise necessary to conduct formal risk assessments. Therefore, it should be domestic violence professionals who should conduct the assessments, not visitation personnel:

For those who haven’t “got” this yet, the majority of these studies are, (I finally “got” this) not about our safety or our children’s safety, or our children’s best interest, or to prevent family violence.  From the front lines, and a front lines person who knows many families going through this AND has attended conferences, and probably reads as much as a lot of the professionals (at least to pass for one in a number of situations; all I lacked was the degree) on this, and has a REAL vested interest — my life, my family’s lives, my livelihoods, the safety and well-being of the communities I was in during all this stuff (before and after separation) and so forth — I pay attention, and try to place accumulated information in a growing database and I refile as necesary when stuff “doesn’t fit.”  

It’s not about our lives, it’s about the professions.  Here is a statement from a real well-respected site, now 5 years old, saying that the issue is not that we are bringing supervised visitation into the picture at all, but that it’s just that the visitation personnel are not properly trained by professionals, domestic violence professionals.

Here’s a question raised (finally!) by someone addressing a(nother) conference of ALL kinds of professionals associated with this topic about preventing violence, protecting children, and all kinds of REALLY nice healthy topics.  I am thinking that PROBABLY the conference (Jackson’s Hole, Wyoming?) might have been an clean safe place. This (male) professional in the field started the first Domestic Violence Unit in Washington, D.C., he says in his opening remarks.  

He broaches again the question I’ve twice posted on this site, in articles from 1989 and 1992, as to whether children need relationships with their (abusive) fathers.  Let’s see if he qualifies in our eyes as a Professional.  But first, the quote.   

2009, June 2:

Do children need a relationship with their fathers even when their fathers have been abusive to them and their mothers in the past?

 

Even the question is a little “framed.”  “have been abusive . . . in the past” is not the typical situation of a woman trying to leave abuse with her children.  This mindset implies it was “over with” and that while broken bones, teeth, bruises,  and blood may indicate “being abusive” (i.e. COMMITTING a pattern of misdemeanor or felony-level domestic violence), stalking, property destruction, intimidation of relatives, or keeping one’s ex in a nonstop pattern of defense against allegations in family court arena do not.

Oh yeah, incidentally this was the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and his short speech is on the date link.

It appears to me to be the present policy (I include practice) that mothers moreso than fathers, are considered dispensable to children.  

Do children need a relationship with their fathers even when their fathers have been abusive to them and their mothers in the past?

Actually, by the time one sorts through how contradictory one policy is from the otehr, and then read about the conferences where organizations sponsoring BOTH sides of the contradictory policies collaborate together (but the parents involved are not invited, generally, nor their kids) I’d have to say that in the long run, one concludes that when it comes to dispensing TAX DOLLARS (my shorthand for grants, federal, local, state, and private) what’s really dispensable, and is being lost, are:

1.  Justice.
2.  Children.
(With justice, children will be safe, as long as laws against domestic violence and child abuse remain on the abuse, and SHOULD they ever start being consistently defined, and enforced). 
and
3.  OPM.  Other People’s Money AND OPL.  that’s other People’s Lives.

What really seems INdispensable, once underway, appear to be the systems dispensing 1, 2, and 3, above.

I am going to (re-)introduce you this concept  “Access and Visitation” and its costs, starting with the HHS own site describing it.  If the prose is lame and lacks vigor, just understand that I blew my wad on the first topic, so this is a pale second offering from a drained commentator.

However my commentary cannot possibly be as lame, nonsequitur, and incoherent as the concept of Designer Families at Public Expense, as executed by a centralized opaque bureaucracy  in cooperation with private and nonprofit businesses, not to mention religious organizations that haven’t quite yet “got” that hitting women ain’t legal.

This is where “Access Visitation” concepts meets the “Supervised Visitation” concept.  One encourages and ALLOWS certain services (this is the HHS source of grants) and the other DISCOURAGES but does not forbid, practically the same types of activity (this is the DOJ/VAWA source of grants, as I recall).  

One is the government paying a LOT of government institutions (you have no idea, but I assure you, I do!) to make sure “NONCUSTODIAL PARENTS” have “ACCESS AND VISITATION” to their children, even if it means getting them free legal help while in prison to modify their custody orders, something I don’t recall getting of one second past the time our case hit the family law venue.    

The converse of this is, when a parent is really bad and needs to be “spanked” or “supervised” somehow, then there is SUPERVISED VISITATION.  I could’ve used solme of this and requested it, in fact, one reason was, I didn’t want the kids kidnapped.  i asked for this in 2005 and was told No.  Then when my kids were taken on an overnight in 2006, and we show up in court, I asked for it again, and was curtly told, there’s no money (meaning WE didn’t have some to fork over) for this.  The result was, visits were so traumatizing I was hard put to get them.  There was also no real exterior witness or regulation of the fact that the second this man got our children, theyw ere basically, not going to be seen by me again, even when a court order had stipulated, every othe rweek.  So there you have it on SUPERVISED VISITATION.    

Sometimes this also is used to punish mothers by forcing them to pay to see their chlidren after they speak up about something (seems like it could be almost anything — child abuse, harm done to the kid by the other parent, or some other violation of existing standards) and are silenced by having their kids switched, SUDDENLY, to the other parent.  This has been described elsewhere better than I am summarizing here.  

But, til I find the missing witty intro to a version of BUSH-WhACKED around MARRIAGE INITIATIVE type post, I give you:

OCSE Access and Visitation Grants Information

I suggest filing this under Congressional Linguistic Cognitive Dissonance.

Overview

With an annual appropriation of $10 million, 54 States (*including the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Virgin Islands) have been able to provide access and visitation services to over a half million non-custodial parents (NCPs) and their families since the program became operational in 1997! In FY 2006, States contracted with over 300 court and/or community- and faith-based, non-profit service providers for the delivery of access and visitation services to NCPs and their families.

NCP is a “NonCustodial Parent.”  Primarily, fathers.  Note, that the CP (which obviously is another adult) does not even exist as an entity.  it’s NCP’s and “Families.”

“STATES CONTRACTED” — Yes, the feds pay the states, and we’re not yet QUITE sure what happens once it hits state level, although some diligent research DOES ascertain that it’s pretty darn hard to track after that.

I. Enabling Legislation

The “Grants to States for Access and Visitation” Program (42 U.S.C. 669b) was authorized by Congress through passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.

Goal: “..to enable States to establish and administer programs to support and facilitate non-custodial parents’ access to and visitation of their children…”

 

Cognitive dissonance:  “It’s about money.  It’s not about money, it’s about the children.  It’s about reducing welfare distributions.  No, it’s not, it’s about noncustodial parental access.  Aw heck, Im not really sure!  No it’s NOT a pay-per-hour-per child scenario (i.e., children as property), it’s about families.  Well, on the other hand, though we really need to entreat these men to get on the stick and get some work (including after they get out of jail) so we will help them for free, LEGALLY, to get back at those Moms, get more time with their kids, in exchange for which we will then lower child support obligations (but, listen closely, this is NOT, we repeat, NOT a pay per child per hour arrangement) (unless it refers to SUPERVISED visitation) and maybe then, if we treat the disgruntled — or unemployed — or incarcerated — NCPS nice, they will respond in kind, step up to the plate and pay the past due child support.

Alternatively, we can switch custody and put HER in jail if she doesn’t pay, because women don’t need to be BRIBED to support their own children, generally speaking.  And, again, we’re not ordering, we’re just “supporting and facililating’ (modification of custody orders).  Without telling the custodial parent in advance, of course.  

II. Allowable Services

According to the statute, States are permitted to use grant funds to develop programs and provide services such as:

• Mediation

Mediation is “premitted” for the States, but “mandatory” for the parents in many states, including mine, and that’s a PROBLEM when violence has been involved, already.  Typically by the time the order was obtained (at least I know my case and many others), attempts to “mediate” the concept of not being hit, abused, threatened, etc., have already failed.  Hence the protective order to start with.  For protection, not negotiation!  Well, mediation puts two parents in front of one mediator, which typically (given the little time he/she is going to have) will pick a side and stick to it, throughout the course of the case, which, given these factors, will probably stop when ALL kids hit 18.  Or one parent has worn out, given up, or simply gone homeless, meaning, can’t fight back.

Moreover, all the opposing, “NCP” has to do is start a debate on almost any issue between them, and then it goes to mediation. This is simpler than presenting facts and evidence in the courtroom, adhering to all those rules of court, etc.  All he/she has to really do is win the favor of the mediator, who then (although this isn’t strictly legal, it’s practice) sways the judge who then upends whatever the last status quo was.  Note, abusers are great manipulators, it’s kind of their profession, that two-sided thing, or the abuse couldn’t be kept up for so long.

• Development of parenting plans
• Education

(And a REAL market niche for the would be parent educators, therapists, and counselors (see next item)

• Counseling
• Visitation enforcement (including monitored and supervised visitation, and neutral drop-off and pick-up)

Development of guidelines for visitation and alternative custody arrangements.