Reading:
Shows the nationally regarded Judge Leonard Edwards, Santa Clara County, in how he struggles to do something fair and just for the vast numbers of children in the court's jurisdiction. Today retired, Judge Edwards still leads the way in this struggle.
This is the same John Hubner who wrote about Jim and Artie Mitchell. I believe he was with the SF Chronicle, but then later with the SJ Mercury News.
SJG
Dave Bruebeck
So Leonard Edwards is the son of our most highly regarded 32 year congressman Don Edwards.
SJG
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So John Hubner had written his awesome book about Jim and Artie Mitchell and MBOT and the development of Lap Dancing:
He was with the S.F. Chronicle.
But then he was with the S.J. Mercury News, and writing about the juvenile dependency court and the nationally recognized judge Leonard Edwards.
But before any of that he was a probation officer with the Cook County Juvenile Court, in Chicago.
In his book:
He changes names, but otherwise the cases are real, not composite.
The first is Jenny, a 17yo girl who has grown up in the Foster Care system, and is now pregnant.
The Second is a newborn, Nicky, born addicted to alcohol and cocaine, 9 weeks premature, and needing tubes down his throat and an IV in a vein in the back of his hand. He needs moisture added all the time, as his red skin is not yet ready for dryness, and the cocaine and alcohol have caused all kinds of problems.
But does this mean that he should be permanently removed from his parents. Less than a year later they are putting on a really good show in trying to get him returned.
SJG
So Hubner is getting into discussions of attachment theory, and of John Bowlby, and of course of Harry Harlow and his monkeys.
SJG
SJG
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Well, the County Social Services is extremely busy. Police or Child Protective Services intercede in a situation and have to remove a child. This happens all the time. For one thing, when the adults are being arrested. In other cases it is just because a child is not being supervised. In other cases it is over substance abuse.
So the child falls into the jurisdiction of social services, and they have to make the argument to the court as to whether the child needs to be removed, or not. So one person handles most of this, she is the Dependency Investigator. Most of this starts with her.
Beyond that, if the child is in the care of Social Services, then there are various case workers who will be assigned to the case as it runs its course. Most are returned to their parents or legal guardians. On thing which makes a big difference are the CASA volunteers ( Court Appointed Special Advocates ). Judge Leonard Edwards considers them extremely important, as with them they can allow far more families to stay together, as the child has someone they can call anytime, and this person is always monitoring the situation.
As I see it, we need to move in the direction of something like Israeli Kibbutzes
SJG
This book is disturbing. Seems that more and more children will end up in the jurisdiction of the juvenile dependency court at some time.
Then social services has to decide what to recommend, that the children be returned, that they be sheltered or places in foster care, or at some point that they be made available for adoption.
I feel that it would be possible to offer some better options than what is currently available.
SJG
Reading:
This deals with the actions of the juvenile dependency court in Santa Clara County CA, a populous US county. Though written now 20 years ago, it is extremely moving.
Now they are talking about this subject of 'bonding' and all, and John Bowlby and of course Harry Harlow and his monkeys.
While I follow their logic and can see that a lack of bonding with a care taker, or a compromised sort of bonding, is going to make one very different from one's peers, I don't really go along with their view that this is something to try and avoid or ameliorate.
Yes, some of these kids in the foster care system they describe are really tough. Soft on the inside I should say, but real tough on the outside, and they get booted out of foster home after foster home.
But they were exposed at a young age to parents running around cutting their forearms in suicide attempts and all, people on drugs and alcohol, etc. So Social Services wants to remove these children at an early age so they can still bond to care takers.
And then in the book, based entirely on factual characters, a 17yo really case hardened girl has just had a baby girl. So they want to work the system to make sure this baby gets to bond with her mother.
I don't see anything wrong with this. But I also see that there should be other options. Asking people to bond when it is beyond the point where that is practical, there should be other options.
Bonding is what makes one part of the herd, a Muggle, like a fish that has to live in water because it is afraid to try and live on land, bonding is what makes you a conformist.
For further evolution, moving beyond being the Last Man, I say that we have to move beyond mother love.
I say that we who oppose the middle-class family should make our own foster care group home. Instead of telling children how deprived they are because they do not have a family, we will tell them that they are a revolutionary vanguard.
SJG
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Yes, this book deals with disturbing things. Girl Jenny, 17yo, grown up in foster care. Now has baby of her own.
Some are saying that she cannot care for the baby. And based on what they have seen, there is strong evidence to support this view.
But others are saying that you must let her care for the baby and they lead by threatening a lawsuit.
Jenny does not do well when it feels like people are scrutinizing her and judging her, and this is indeed what is happening.
I feel that the middle-class family is something originally invented to exploit and abuse children, something quite challenged even at best. And this is what is being held up as the norm.
And this idea of 'bonding' is derived from that, thanks to John Bowlby.
If you set up something allowing for flexible and distributed care, like an Israeli Kibbutz, then it would work out fine.
But the juvenile dependency court is set up with idea of children belonging to parents. So they have to either open the child for adoption, or let the child stay with their biological parent(s). And they feel that it is wrong to just play it by ear and see how it goes. And of course challenged economics are what is usually driving this.
The Israeli Kibbutz system was designed to create freedom for women. It works.
It is only in more recent decades when Israel's Likud Party started steering things in the direction of neo-liberalism and started making the accumulation of private wealth the objective for living, that people started challenging the Kibbutz system and saying, "I want my baby home with me."
SJG
These are real cases, not composites or fictionalizations. So the cases are disturbing.
They just went through one case of familial sexual molestation. But the evidence turned out to be unclear, but this was a dual income sized mortgage, Little League, and Church Going ideal middle-class family.
Reminded me of my Pentecostal Molester.
All of the cases are interesting, and very difficult.
Our society has to find some other way. Children cannot be used to give identity and social legitimacy to adults. The middle-class family must be neutralized.
SJG
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@SJG: Sounds like your relationship with your mother was not good. Think it contributed to what a PSYCHO you are?
Talking to me? I don't want to be any Last Man.
SJG
Reading more of Hubner's book. Has talked about many cases. Now talking about one Jessie and Lynn, ages 15 and 16.
Described as throw away kids, rejected by all family members, and really for no reasons. Abusive homes too. So they can't be sent home. Not likely to be adopted. In foster homes, not likely to work that well. Substituting my own reading of this, these are kids that have had to raise themselves.
So, they have the foster care group homes. Usually these are presented as a negative. And there continues to be a problem with psychiatric drugging. But Hubner talks about how the quality runs the full gamut.
I feel that these are the future. I mean, the middle-class lives on Bad Faith, people who don't live up to their own values, and imposing this hypocrisy on children, having children so that they can do this.
So when the costs of this get to be too high, you will have children who have to reject it.
So a 16yo in a group home is about like a middle-class 22yo.
Thinking about this, I've met several strippers who were runaways, and they are like this.
So I feel that those of us who reject the middle-class family should start our own group home. And rather than showing pity to the children, we acknowledge them as those who have eyes to see, and who are a revolutionary vanguard.
And unlike foster care, we will offer a continuation program for those who have reached 18yo.
Some how we can set it up so that our youth can host a drop in center for the town youth. Our kids will really shine in that kind of an environment, and the town kids will undoubtedly be impressed.
SJG
John Hubner, on California Youth Authority youtube.com
Foster Care Group Home, Fullerton CA? youtube.com
Surviving A Group Home youtube.com
Growing Up In Groups Homes youtube.com
So I continue: amazon.com
Reading more about the boys in the foster care group homes. And then something really bad has happened, and so one of the boys is in juvenile hall, and will likely serve a very long prison term, maybe with the Youth Authority, or maybe even in adult prison.
It is moving and very though provoking. If a boy can't see that following the rules, and doing things like getting an education, eventually get him some place, how can he be expected to comply? Of course he will just follow the local thugs and bad asses. He pretty much has to.
For most of these kids, the parents do not want them back, not at all. Hubner had started with parents trying to go thru counseling and meet the court's conditions to get their kids back. But now he is dealing with the opposite cases, people's whose lives are so hard that they don't make any attempt.
And what could you really do to these people either? Make them into negative examples? They are already negative examples.
Go after their money? Well most of them have none and they probably never will. But for everyone like them, there are actually far more people who have money and there are these kinds of child exploitation issues in play. They are just better able to hide it. Taking these people's money would make a change in our society.
I believe that at many of these houses they do the best that they can. But what there is not is a political movement, a revolutionary movement.
These boys feel extreme pain and extreme fear. A large portion of those coming out of foster care group homes will end up homeless early on.
Social services tries to get kids into foster family homes. But with the older and more case hardened kids, this usually is not available, and it probably would not work either.
What is absent is a political movement, which such people could go into upon reaching legal age.
SJG
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Verizon just announced they are throttling back all of our unlimited data plans due to posts like this eating up all their bandwidth.
Finishing up with the book. These kids are really getting a shitty deal, and its because of the lies and denial our society propagates about The Family.
SJG
Finished with the book. These kids are really getting a shitty deal, and its because of the lies and denial our society propagates about The Family. Most of it is set in San Jose. The cases are real, just the names are changed. I know the places talked about and I have a feel for the people. These people are never being given a chance at life, and their chances at intimate relationships are nullified from the very start. Family relationships have no chance.
SJG
I had not know about this before, this AB 136, where Quackenbush was really making children into the scapegoat, with his get tough on crime stuff.
SJG
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stop hating your mother. we’ve been over this in each and every session. she’s not responsible for your mental illness