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From 2000 to 2004 - 256,000 children were adopted and another 624,000 languish in foster care waiting.

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Georgia CPS News Archive

The Georgia news section is your source for the latest in family rights news items, CPS reform efforts, open court demands, abolition of confidentiality laws that judges hide behind, foster care deaths and issues, legal cases and more... Please Email Kidjacked with news and information from the state of Georgia and I will include it here in our coverage.

If you need assistance with a current case, please consider starting your own blog or submit your article for publication, please see our posting guidelines. Chat it up on the Jacked Up Blog. Refuse to be silent!

[Skip to Georgia News Coverage   |    Additional Georgia Resources]   |    [National & International News]  

Georgia News Coverage

by G.G. Rigsby

A state House bill meant to address the deaths of two Effingham County teenagers was changed Thursday to answer concerns of parents who homeschool their children and dislike government intrusion.

"This won't catch every one," the bill's sponsor, state Rep. Bill Hitchens, R-Rincon, said during a Juvenile Justice Committee meeting Wednesday, but he said it will be worthwhile if it saves one child. "I don't believe it's significant in terms of numbers but if it's you, it's pretty significant." House Bill 530 is meant to prevent another case like the one in Effingham County, where siblings Mary and Elwyn Crocker Jr. quit attending public school and were found buried behind their family's house in the Guyton area Dec. 20.

savannahnow.com

March 7, 2019

by Victor Porcelli

The Georgia SB-375 bill utilizes religion as an excuse to discriminate, reducing same-sex couples to second-class citizens.

For starters, there are almost 14,000 children in foster care in Georgia. Of the 49 foster care and adoption agencies in Georgia that may aid these children, 14 are religiously affiliated. Georgia is home to a large LGBT population, with about 300,000 LGBT citizens and over 21,000 same-sex couples. Furthermore, about 29 percent of the LGBT population are raising children.

nyunews.com

March 4, 2018

by Kashmira Gander

The bill also could be used against single parents and divorcees, warned advocacy groups.

Georgia's Senate has passed a bill that could enable child welfare organizations to stop same-sex parents from adopting on grounds of religious beliefs, in what rights advocates have called a "dangerous step backward." In the latest chapter of the debate on religious freedom and freedom from discrimination, Georgia's Senate passed the Keep Faith in Adoption and Foster Care Act on Friday.

newsweek.com

February 26, 2018

by Deb Belt

rom a Mableton boy repeatedly sexually assaulted by a babysitter to a former star college football player convicted of locking his son in a basement for nearly two years as punishment, all have something in common...

"Without any oversight, there is nothing to ensure a child is receiving an education or is seen by mandatory reporters," Coleman said. "Homeschooling parents could lock a child up and no one would ever know." Oversight of homeschooling in some states is non-existent. In most states, oversight is weak, at best. Nowhere in the United States do homeschool laws require welfare checks on the children involved to ensure they aren't being abused or tortured.

patch.com

February 21, 2018

by Alyssa Spirato

A new report shows that Georgia's child protection agency has identified serious problems in how the agency investigates reports of child abuse and neglect.

The newspaper reports that the admission appears in a new report analyzing deaths in 2014 of children whose families had histories with the Division of Family and Children Services, or DFCS.

newschannel9.com

February 14, 2016

by Christopher Ingraham

Georgia police raided a retired Atlanta man's garden last Wednesday after a helicopter crew with the Governor's Task Force for Drug Suppression spotted suspicious-looking plants on the man's property.

The officers eventually apologized and left, but they took some of the suspicious okra leaves with them for analysis. Georgia state patrol told WSB-TV in Atlanta that "we've not been able to identify it as of yet. But it did have quite a number of characteristics that were similar to a cannabis plant."

washingtonpost.com

October 19, 2015

by Tosin Fakile

Communication among child welfare groups and foster parents will soon improve thanks a welfare system reform law.

Senate Bill 138 was signed into law by Governor Nathan Deal on Tuesday. It gives the director of the Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) a more direct line to the governor. The new law will create district and state level advisory boards that will help with making rules and delivery of services in DFCS.

wfxl.com

May 5, 2015

by Sarah McCammon

Several foreign students taken from a Christian school in southeast Georgia remain in state custody after a juvenile court hearing Friday morning in Long County.

Sellars says the church-run school began its international student program about four years ago as an offshoot of its religious mission. "These students would have an opportunity to get an education, participate in extracurricular activities, but it would also provide us an opportunity to share the gospel with them," Sellars says. About 30 students - most of them older teenagers - were living in the school gymnasium's second floor until this week's raid by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Sellars says they came from countries including the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and the British Virgin Islands, although he says some were U.S. citizens.

gpb.org

March 27, 2015

Georgia's child protection agency is facing a $1 million lawsuit in the death of a malnourished 14-year-old girl who weighed 43 pounds when she died in June in Smyrna.

WSB-TV reports that the administrator of Markea Berry's estate filed the seven-page complaint. It alleges that the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services made several missteps in its handling of the case.

onlineathens.com

June 17, 2014

by Andy Miller

Georgia is hiring 175 case workers for its troubled DFCS program, with the new employees all expected to be on board by July 1. They can't arrive soon enough for some areas of the state.

"As of last week, there were a small number of caseworkers in Cherokee, Gwinnett and Cobb [counties] with caseloads of approximately 100,'' Ravae Graham, a DHS spokeswoman, said in an email to GHN. These caseloads were mostly combinations of investigations, family support or family preservation cases, she said. In the last six months, the number of reports of abuse or neglect made to DFCS has risen from an average of 6,000 reports per month (March 2013 through August 2013) to 7,300 per month (September 2013 through March 2014), Graham said.

albanyherald.com

May 30, 2014

by Elly Yu

A push to privatize the child welfare system in Georgia failed in the final hours of the state's legislative session Thursday.

The bill, which was introduced by the state senate in February, aimed to begin contracting out most child welfare services - like adoption and case management - to private agencies by the summer of 2017. But the state House pushed for a scaled-down version of the bill, calling for two-year pilot programs in three of the state's districts to test the waters. While the state Senate agreed to the pilot programs, the bill fell short of passing in the end.

youthtoday.org

March 21, 2014

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - A 10-year-old girl weighed just 32 pounds when her burned body was found last week in a trash bin, a Gwinnett County police detective testified Friday.

The father and stepmother of Emani Moss have been charged with murder, concealing a body and child cruelty. Both were in court for a probable cause hearing Friday.

chron.com

November 8, 2013

FaithBridge Foster Care, a Christ-centered foster care placement agency, invites the public to learn about the Hall County "foster care crisis" at one of three meetings this month at Concord Baptist Church in Clermont.

Foster care is a large problem, but the Christian community is even bigger. We want to engage members of the community in the foster care ministry and share its impact on families and children, said Bill R. Hancock, co-founder and CEO of FaithBridge.  Churches can partner with established agencies like FaithBridge and together, we can provide a safe, stable solution to the needs of hurting children and families.

accessnorthga.com

August 12, 2013

by Garrett Therolf

Spurred by a deathbed promise to her grandmother, a woman wins a 15-year battle with social workers to be reunited with her younger siblings.

When Marilyn was 4 and her brother Aubrey was 3, she packed peanut butter and they ran away from their abusive foster home. Racing across California desert roads, they imagined reaching Barbie's house and a world of play and safety. But authorities returned them to the home a few hours later. Their foster families changed frequently after that, as well as their surroundings. As they packed and unpacked, Marilyn carried a few fleeting memories of her real family. Aubrey had none.

latimes.com

April 17, 2013

by Maggie Lee

In far north Georgia, 17-year-old "Brandon" lives in a group home. He has been the ward of two states in his short life. Put up for adoption in Tennessee, adopted, then abandoned in Georgia. He's been in foster care for eight years.

There are somewhere between 250 and 300 kids like Brandon in Georgia: foster youths whose lives are stuck in a slide toward aging out of the foster system and into potential homelessness or prison, and with no connection with any family. They also risk a plain lack of success.

youthtoday.org

April 8, 2013

A 12-year-old child's mother thought she was taking all the right steps to protect her child from the dark side of the internet.

She never allowed her daughter on Facebook alone. She was in charge of the password and the content that was posted, but police say that didn't stop Brian Sikes, 23, from messaging her child with the intent of meeting for sex. The mother began working with police immediately and posed as the child on the phone to see how far Sikes would go.

wbtv.com

March 29, 2013

by Chelsea J. Carter

In what has been described as one of the largest cheating scandals to hit the nation's public education system, 35 Atlanta Public Schools educators and administrators were indicted Friday on charges of racketeering and corruption.

The indictment is the bookend to a story that was once touted as a model for the nation's school districts after the district's test scores dramatically improved in some of its toughest urban schools. Among those indicted by a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury was Beverly Hall, the former schools superintendent who gained national recognition in 2009 for turning around Atlanta's school system.

cnn.com

March 29, 2013

by Lindsay Field

Farming in Cobb County was once done on rural landscapes and wide-open vistas populated by a few far-flung silos and farmhouses. Not anymore.

Today's Cobb County farm is only a few acres and likely to be surrounded by strip shopping centers and subdivisions. When the cock crows at one of these "urban farms," someone's going to hear it. When manure is hauled out of a coop, someone's going to smell it. These two worlds can coexist, say those who follow the organic and eat-local movements, but that doesn't mean tensions won't rise on occasion, as they did last week at a public hearing on the county's chicken ordinance.

mdjonline.com

January 30, 2013

by Columnist

CANTON - A physical education program for homeschool students is gaining momentum by offering similar programming seen in traditional schools for children who are educated at home.

The homeschool P.E. course, offered at G. Cecil Pruett Community Center Family YMCA in Canton, has more than 50 local homeschool students participating after fewer than three years of operation. YMCA Aquatic and Wellness Director Peggy Donaldson said the program started out with fewer than 20 students and has seen a jump in the last year for the two-day-per-week program.

cherokeetribune.com

January 18, 2013

by Tim Chitwood

Seven-month-old Alejandra Molina lay dead so long in the summer of 2011 that insects had begun to feed on her skin by the time her teenaged sister discovered the baby's body.

The infant died under a blanket, in a baby car seat set in a crib, in a room with a malfunctioning air conditioner as temperatures outside soared into the upper 90s.

ledger-enquirer.com

January 8, 2013

ATLANTA - Over the last decade, the federal government has withheld money from four states and Washington for the poor performance of their child protection systems.

The effectiveness of those federal reviews and the wisdom of penalizing cash-strapped child welfare agencies has been a matter of debate among experts in the field. That issue remerged in September when two child protection workers were arrested and accused of manipulating data so it would appear they were meeting internal guidelines related to the federal review process.

washingtonpost.com

November 4, 2012

by Trevor Aaronson & John O'Connor & Kate Howard Perry

Student-teacher ratios at K12, the nation's largest online educator, are nearly twice as high as Florida's state-run virtual school.

A high school teacher working for K12 may have as many as 275 students, compared to Florida Virtual School, which has a maximum class size of 150. According to company documents, K12 provides better student-teacher ratios to schools that pay more per student, though even the best ratios are higher than the state-run competitor's. K12 has come under fire for high student-teacher ratios and poor student performance in Arizona, Georgia and Tennessee.

jacksonville.com

October 6, 2012

by Joshua Ninke

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation teamed up with local agencies to serve a search warrant at the Muscogee County Offices of the Division of Family and Children Services Wednesday morning.

The Department of Health and Human Services issues federal grants to help DFCS programs, but only when they comply with federal requirements. Georgia DFCS failed to meet requirements, including the failure to meet the timeliness of initiating child maltreatment investigations.

wtvm.com

September 5, 2012

The success of any governmental subsidy depends on whether it increases provision or crowds out existing supply.

Universal preschool policies introduced in Georgia and Oklahoma offer an opportunity to investigate the impact of government provision and government funding. Using difference-in-difference estimation frameworks, we examine the effects of universal preschool on the supply of childcare providers.

cepa.stanford.edu

August 18, 2012

Georgia implemented a new law on July 1 that requires homeschoolers to submit their declaration of intent to homeschool to the Georgia Department of Education instead of the county school systems.

While some homeschoolers were satisfied with the new law, many homeschoolers had trepidation regarding the implementation of this law and the potential challenges that might arise with changing the current system. Many homeschool lists received a letter from Senator Loudermilk's wife, Desiree, clarifying the law's guidelines and implementation.

examiner.com

August 11, 2012

Alert Kidjacked to Georgia CPS news!

by Nancee Crowell

Nancee Crowell, California and Nevada State Director of 'National Foster Parent Coalition for Allegation Reform' responds to an article written by Craig Schneider regarding Georgia CPS, expressing her outrage at the treatment of parents by Child Protection Agencies

Kidjacked

September 8, 2023

by Nancy Schaefer

In this report, I am focusing on the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services (DFCS). However, I believe Child Protective Services nationwide has become corrupt and that the entire system is broken almost beyond repair. I am convinced parents and families should be warned of the dangers.

Kidjacked

June 24, 2012

by Annette Hall

Hi my name is Brandy and I want to warn all parents away from Oconee County, Georgia.

Kidjacked

May 15, 2010

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