Many of you are praying for the welfare of the young children that have been taken away from their mothers and appear slated for the Texas Foster Care System. Some of you might be praying that the kids miraculously avoid the painfully large percentage of foster situations where children are physically and emotionally abused. Thank you! You might want to also add Texas doctors to your prayers. Since 2/3 of children in the Texas Foster Care System end up being required to take mind-altering drugs (according to a TV story by NBC displayed at Day of Praise), the doctors will face the difficult challenge of picking the right psychotropic drugs for most of these kids. And sadly, they have to do this with the annoyance of pesky outsiders second-guessing their work, outsiders like NBC News. It's a lot of stress for these healthcare workers.

Kudos to Day Of Praise for posting a YouTube with the NBC story about the use of mind-altering drugs in the Texas Foster Care System. Kudos also to Dave's Mormon Inquiry for some great coverage - and tough questions.

Given the well-known problems with foster care, I hope that it will only be used as a last resort when a child can be proven with reasonable evidence to be in genuine physical danger if allowed to stay with parent or relative. I think justice here requires attention to individuals, case by case, and not blanket treatment of groups.

Along these lines, Dave points to one of the painful ironies of this case with a tongue-in-cheek observation about rounding up Catholic kids, using the same logic (but perhaps with better factual evidence) that was applied to FLDS families. Ouch! (And remember, Dave's not being serious. No more serious than I was in calling for raids on those poor Bunnies at Hef's mansion. Humor-impaired and overly sensitive readers beware.)

Update: And yes, I know Child Protective Services folks are generally good people sincerely trying to protect children, having to walk a painfully difficult line between protecting children and respecting parental rights. Here in Wisconsin, they seem to be very careful. Based on what I know - yes, what little I know - I can't imagine our Wisconsin agencies hauling away over 400 children from a community on the basis of such weak evidence. There are times when I think our folks could have taken more vigorous action, but in general I have pretty high respect for them. Maybe what happened in Texas was the right thing, but there are a lot of questions remaining to be answered. And I think it's fair to ask, given the trauma now being inflicted on young children suddenly removed from their parents, perhaps permanently.
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