Family Rights and Child Abuse News

Teen cancer patients need specialized care

Doctors say teens and young adults sometimes lack insurance in a health care system traditionally divided into pediatrics and adults, or can be incorrectly referred to doctors who don't understand their conditions.

Efforts to target teens came from the fact that survival rates for teens and young adults have remained stagnant even as they have improved for the very young and older adults. Doctors say targeting patients between the age of 15 to about 29 is as much about marketing as medicine. According to the National Childhood Cancer Foundation, about 95 percent of cancer patients younger than 15 are seen by pediatric oncologists, compared to about 20 percent of 15- to 19-year-olds.

MSNBC (PA)

July 13, 2006

Social Worker Charged In Car-Seat Case

by Colin Poitras

A state social worker faces charges of failing to properly use car seats after removing three young triplets from an Ansonia couple last March.

The March 8 incident became a cause celebre for families who felt they have been mistreated by the Department of Children and Families. Many parents who learned about the incident through media reports expressed dismay that DCF would endanger children it was trying to protect. Others said the case showed that DCF workers were guilty of the same kind of mistakes they often accuse parents of making without the same kinds of punishment.

Hartford Courant (CT)

July 12, 2006

Bush's Mental Illness Screening Squad On the Move

by Evelyn Pringle

The tax dollar funded mental health screening programs popping up in every corner of the nation represent an enormous gift to Big Pharma from the Bush administration.

After all, drug companies can't push drugs without a lucrative customer base, so the screening programs are a great solution for that little problem. On April 29, 2002, Bush kicked off the whole mental health screening scheme when he announced the establishment of the New Freedom Commission (NFC) during a speech in in New Mexico where he told the audience that mental health centers and hospitals, homeless shelters, and the justice and school systems, have contact with individuals suffering from mental disorders but that too many Americans are falling through the cracks, and so he created the NFC to ensure "that the cracks are closed."

The Sierra Times

July 10, 2006

Doctors Made Mom Flee, Dad Says

by Sam Howe Verhovek

Tina Carlsen hid her ailing son in a diaper bag and left the hospital rather than see him have surgery. She had been 'pushed,' his father says.

TACOMA, Wash. - Standing just outside Pierce County Juvenile Court the other day, Todd Rogers conceded that it was probably wrong of Tina Marie Carlsen to have taken the couple's 9-month-old son, Riley, two weeks ago from a Seattle hospital, as the child awaited what doctors said would be lifesaving kidney surgery.

Los Angeles Times (CA)

July 8, 2006

Abuse, or a ploy for custody?

by Elizabeth Neff

What 17-year-old Tiffany Ann Carver says she recalls most from the custody battles that raged during her childhood is not being listened to. The courts, she says, seemed more focused on her father's rights than hers.

Carver says her claims of abuse at the hands of her father were not believed by California authorities after her mother was branded a "parental alienator" who had brainwashed her. As a teen, Carver ran away from her father's home until attorneys from the Alliance for Children's Rights placed her in a foster home. A court gave her Utah mother sole custody last year. Her father has never been charged and denies the allegation.

Salt Lake Tribune (UT)

July 5, 2006