Is CPS allowed to publicize their reasoning for taking children away from their guardians?

No. CPS issues are only accessible by another CPS worker. It’s supposed to be confidential, so if I am aware of someone having an indicated report, or other issue, I am not supposed to reveal it to anybody else. In fact, if I want to look someone up (someone I don’t have a case with) the lookup will be sent to someone somewhere who knows I don’t have a reason to look up that person, and people have been arrested for that (for looking/accessing information they had no reason to).

Quite often, the news agency releases the information with getting it through CPS. They simply figure it out from the circumstances.

@YARNLADY: Or the people being investigated admit they’re being investigated. You’ll be surprised how much people like to talk about themselves.

It’s often in the best interest of the child to keep things confidential, so it’s the policy of CPS to keep everything confidential. People can deduce from arrests or events what went down, but you never really know.

And that’s why people get the misconception that you can have your kids taken away for one silly little reason. CPS isn’t going to publicize the laundry list of things that were bad at the house and of COURSE the parents are going to focus on the “minor” thing that brought CPS to their house and gloss over the other things that were going wrong at the same time.

And to add to what @keobooks said very well, CPS really just reports to the court. It’s up to the court (in other words, the Judge) whether or not a child is actually, ultimately removed. CPS removes the child but the parent has their day in court within a few days, and when the case is revisited over and over in court, every time there is a chance the Judge will return the child. In the meantime, the parent has to comply with the Order and do certain things to get the child back.

@jca – That reminds me. My friends are adopting their foster son because the father never complied with the Order. Instead of getting off drugs, staying out of jail, going to parenting classes, he decided to threaten the social worker’s life, slash her tires and get really drunk on visitations so he wasn’t allowed to see his son at all.

The courts worked HARD to get this guy back with his son. He had several “last chances” and even though his mother abandoned him at birth, SHE almost got custody even though weeks earlier she was ready to sign a paper to relinquish her parental rights. Turned out dad had threatened her and wanted her to get the son back and give him to the dad. Crazy.

My friends are very relieved to start the adoption process. That’s why they went into foster parenting in the first place. They always intended to adopt the child they fostered. I think they are more typical than most people think. For some reason everyone thinks group home and scandal.