What CPS Can and Cannot Do
Child Protective Services Can:
- Advocate for your child’s best interests
- Interview your child without you being present
- Show up at your home unannounced
- Get a court order to enter your home and interview your child
- Try to get your child placed with someone you want the child placed with
- Deny the placement you prefer
- Promise that they’re going to allow visitation
- Limit visitation and require supervision during visitation
- Work with law enforcement to investigate someone who is maliciously reporting you to DHS
- Guarantee that a particular qualified person can be allowed to petition for adoption
- Agree not to object to a guardianship
- Bring up the fact that you aren’t working your Individualized Service Plan in court during your reviews
Child Protective Services Cannot:
- Advocate for your interests as a parent
- interview your child without notifying you that they did so
- Show up and forcibly go into your home and interview your child without a court order or exigent circumstances
- Promise you that an initial placement is going to remain the child’s placement
- Promise you at the outset a placement will be available for your child
- Promise that your child is going to be placed in the same county you live in
- Give you the name of the person who reported you
- Guarantee the people that have your children will be the people that get to adopt your children if you relinquish your parental rights,
- Unilaterally, own their own, deny visitation between you and your child without a court order or exigent circumstances.
- Agree to a guardianship
- Force you to take a drug test
- Make you actually work an Individualized Service Plan