When the court gets involved in a Child Protective Services (CPS) case, the bureaucracy immediately gets a lot thicker and the case timeline gets a lot longer. Whether or not your child(ren) are removed from your care, the court adds to CPS involvement a very slow-moving element with immense power and authority. Generally, CPS cases have up to three stages: intake, investigation and child welfare services. Intake stages are brief and last as long as it takes for a report to be accepted, processed and forwarded to the local office for investigation. Most CPS investigation stages last a maximum of 30-90 days depending on the state, but a child welfare services stage (which does not have a deadline) can be opened within the overall case and remain open indefinitely. Child welfare services stages, which along with investigation stages, include court-ordered supervision, serve one of three purposes:
- Provision of prevention services as defined in the Family First Prevention Services Act provided by the local CPS agency or a 501(c)4 non-profit contractor paid by CPS with a combination of local funds and federal funds delegated by Title IV-E of the Social Security Act.
- Provision of foster care services provided by the local CPS agency or a 501(c)4 non-profit contractor.
- Court-Ordered Supervision provided by CPS when court is involved and neither reasons 1 nor 2 apply.
Court-ordered supervision is CPS supervision of a family while the court is involved. The terms and conditions of court-ordered supervision are often outlined in the case plan. Most commonly, this occurs when services are court-ordered and in cases of domestic violence where one parent is forced out of the home due to CPS involvement that is being litigated with CPS in the court. In these cases, CPS essentially watches the family to ensure child safety and compliance with all court orders by making regularly scheduled and/or unscheduled visits and in cases of domestic violence with a parent out of the home, supervising or approving others to supervise visitation. This will continue until the court is no longer involved. However, because the court is known to be especially slow, this is how simple CPS involvement that should last less than two months ends up persisting for two years or more.
Even if the alleged subject is no longer in the home, CPS will continue to make home visits checking on you and the children, as they are required to check on the safety of the children as long as the court case is open (whether or not the alleged subject currently resides in the home). Not only is this invasive and often feels like punishment of the victim(s), if CPS identifies any safety concerns at just one of these home visits, you could end up losing custody of your child(ren), too! Thus, avoiding conditions under which court-ordered supervision may be required is crucial.
In cases where services are court-ordered, we at CPSprotect Consulting Services recommend you try to seek out your own equivalent services provided by community-based organizations (CBOs) either provided for free, covered by your insurance or within affordability to you- rather than accept CPS-provided or CPS-contracted prevention services. Prevention services are typically provided in the home and with CPS controlling the purse strings, CPS controls the conditions. However, make sure the court approves of your equivalent provider and services before starting, as you don’t want to find out the court doesn’t approve of it after you’ve done all the work. The longer CPS is involved without sufficient progress as determined by the court, the more severe the consequences can be. The setback in time and effort alone can be devastating!
In domestic violence cases, we at CPSprotect Consulting Services recommend you act early to secure an order of protection that protects you and your child(ren) against the alleged offending parent and that the alleged offending parent vacates the premises until CPS involvement ends. If those conditions are not met, CPS will get its own order protecting the victim and his or her child(ren) and take over supervised visitation, resulting on court-ordered supervision and long-term CPS involvement. Even if the alleged offending parent is not an issue, this should still be the case. Once CPS is gone, you can let the order lapse and reunify. Courts are often reticent to prosecute those who are protected by an order for violating it on their own accord (unless CPS is actively involved and they do so on the grounds of child(ren) protected by the order). As painful as such an arrangement may be, it is still much quicker and less stressful than having CPS hang around for years on end.
Court-ordered supervision causes unnecessary stress and elevates risk of even more invasive CPS involvement. It can extend CPS involvement by years, which can have long-term adverse effects on a family’s overall physical and mental health. With some smart planning, though, you have a higher chance of avoiding court-ordered supervision entirely, getting CPS out of your life faster and moving on to bigger and better things. The more you know, the better prepared you’ll be.