SC Officer responds to 13 year old teens boy call in a way not in the manual.

It's not clear in the story whether the family is poor or austere?

Vince524 said:

Damn you Kuwi for using a word I had to look up.

I'm going to assume poor. If they had the means and didn't want the kid to have a real bed, they wouldn't have accepted the officer's gift. And I imagine social services might be called in if parents had the means to supply a bed but had their kid living on a defective air mattress.

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With the child sleeping on a defective air mattress, it seems social services might have been called in regardless.

Pushing back a little on your reasoning, the parents might "allow" this donation because they may not want to be seen as intentionally withholding necessities from the child.

A TV and a Wii are necessities? I hope my son doesn't read this. I don't need the DCFS hassle.

Come to think of it, I never had one, neither.

Pretty sure almost no-one thinks those things are necessities, Rob. Ben was talking about the kid sleeping on a broken air mattress.

That said, being poor enough to not be able to afford a bed isn't gonna be enough to remove a child from his home, AFAIK. I'd bet it's more likely that Social Services would work with the family to try to get needed help in before they took him away.

Cranky said:

That said, being poor enough to not be able to afford a bed isn't gonna be enough to remove a child from his home, AFAIK. I'd bet it's more likely that Social Services would work with the family to try to get needed help in before they took him away.

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If you ever want to sleep again, never research what it takes to get a teenager removed from his/her home.

Cyia said:

If you ever want to sleep again, never research what it takes to get a teenager removed from his/her home.

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It goes both ways, unfortunately.

Sometimes it takes nothing at all.

Sometimes it takes a dead child.

kuwisdelu said:

Sometimes it takes a dead child.

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And sometimes, their remains look like they came from a concentration camp.

Yeah, consistency isn't exactly synonymous with Family Services, true enough. That's the downside of the necessity of going case-by-case, I suppose (And I agree with that idea, btw)

Still, regardless, a very nice thing for the officer to do.

Cranky said:

Yeah, consistency isn't exactly synonymous with Family Services, true enough. That's the downside of the necessity of going case-by-case, I suppose (And I agree with that idea, btw)

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I think it's more of a regional thing.

Some places, people will think "no way child abuse could happen here."

Other places, people will think "of course they're abusing their children."

And I think there are absolutely systematic patterns of which places tend toward which, but I won't get into that here, because this thread doesn't need it.

Because this story seems to have ended nicely.

I'm glad this particular story had a happy ending, and I hope the family and the boy are able to benefit from others' generosity. (The cynical part of me worries that the family might decide to sell all the stuff they're being given rather than letting the boy keep it.)

On the Child Protective thing... A few years ago, I spoke with a social worker in Maine's child protective system. I was researching a novel I was writing in which the main character's arm was deliberately broken by her mother, who then refused to seek medical attention. In the story, the MC was taken to the hospital by her best friend and a concerned teacher.

I asked the social worker what the procedure would be from there to have the MC taken into foster care. She said, "In a situation like that, we probably wouldn't just take the teenager's word for it. Honestly, most of the time when a parent hurts a teen, it's a mutual thing. The teenagers bring it on themselves. Either that or they're lying to get their parent into trouble."

I was completely gobsmacked... and I wrote the story so that there had been previous reports to Child Protective from the school, neighbors, and the friend who took the MC to the hospital, so that CP would believe that the MC hadn't "brought it on herself."

One would hope, but it was unclear.

KimJo said:

I asked the social worker what the procedure would be from there to have the MC taken into foster care. She said, "In a situation like that, we probably wouldn't just take the teenager's word for it. Honestly, most of the time when a parent hurts a teen, it's a mutual thing. The teenagers bring it on themselves. Either that or they're lying to get their parent into trouble."

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The most soul-crushing response I think I ever saw when reading up on the same stuff was the CPS worker who said their area had run out of funding for teens, even though the teacher reporting the abuse was clear that it was on-going and severe.

The CPS worker told the teacher, they'd start a file, but until they had more money, it's all they could do for a teen. The younger kids got more attention because they were less likely to defend themselves.

Then she told her that it was probably okay anyway because "teens usually run" if they're abused long enough. That was a different department, and still had money for the year. Once the kid ran away, they could send someone to help.

I can't imagine working in an environment where a child fleeing abuse is the best-case-scenario. Having cases turn out like the one in OP have to feel like winning the lottery for the caseworkers.

KimJo said:

I'm glad this particular story had a happy ending, and I hope the family and the boy are able to benefit from others' generosity. (The cynical part of me worries that the family might decide to sell all the stuff they're being given rather than letting the boy keep it.)

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That's the kind of thing that I was wondering might happen, that the policeman's generosity toward the boy would be taken advantage of by the parents.

Cyia said:

The most soul-crushing response I think I ever saw when reading up on the same stuff was the CPS worker who said their area had run out of funding for teens, even though the teacher reporting the abuse was clear that it was on-going and severe.

The CPS worker told the teacher, they'd start a file, but until they had more money, it's all they could do for a teen. The younger kids got more attention because they were less likely to defend themselves.

Then she told her that it was probably okay anyway because "teens usually run" if they're abused long enough.

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Either that, or ... I don't want to go there.

That was a different department, and still had money for the year. Once the kid ran away, they could send someone to help.

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There's an out there for the teen, in that the social worker or teacher could have "advised" the teen to run away, and then help would be available. I wonder if something like that has ever happened.

I think sometimes giving a gift can just be giving a gift, not as some kind of micro example of a sociological strategy for intervening with at risk youth.