Child Protective Services is a specialized social service for
children who are believes to be neglected or abused, and to their parents or
others adults having permanent or temporary care, custody, or parental
responsibility, or to household or family members, to decrease the risk of
continuing physical, sexual or mental abuse or neglect. In instances
where a child can be safely protected in his or her own home through the
provision of services or other assistance to the child's family, such an
alternative is preferable to foster care placement.
The goals of CPS is
to protect the child and assist the parents in providing proper care and
attention to the child and to remedy and decrease the risk of continuing abuse
and neglect. To provide an alternate plan of care for the child when
parents are unable to provide proper care and attention to the child.
CPS
is not designed to address all issues related to family dysfunction nor the
whole range of parent-child problems. The focus is on protection children from
abuse and neglect. Protecting children is a community
responsibility. Resources should be coordinated thorough team
efforts.
CPS attempts to assure the safety and welfare of
children through various strategies. A CPS worker enters into a
relationship with a family to identify, control, and reduce the risk to
children. Factors relating to the origin of the risk are identified
and matched with client outcomes. The treatment process is a
deliberate, reasonable, mutually agreed upon strategy to reduce the risk which
required CPS intervention. It involves planned action to move the
family toward desired goals.
Most CPS clients can change their behavior
if provide sufficient help to motivate and empower them. Personal,
social and societal factors may lead to inadequate parenting and to child
maltreatment. Most often, they represent examples of failure and
despair, rather than willful premeditated behaviors. Therefore, child
abuse and neglect are principally social rather than legal problems.
It
is best to keep children with their parents when safety can be assured and
maintainable for prevention, intervention, and treatment of child abuse and
neglect.