Child Protective Services protest rally at State Capitol: Can foster care lead to abuse?

"Kidnapping is illegal by Child Protective Services." "Our constitutional rights are violated." "Foster care more dangerous than family care." Those are some of the slogans you can expect to see during a noon rally at the State Capitol. Govabuse.org organized the rally as part of the site's nationwide protests (all happening today) against Child Protective Services, which Denver co-organizer Robin Cash says is unconstitutionally taking children from their parents. CPS then put the kids in foster care, which Cash alleges makes them vulnerable for abuse.

"We want more awareness, and more help," Cash says. She specifically calls more mediation services and an ombudsman who doesn't directly report to CPS.

Other demands of the group include making family courts and records public, the abolition of adoption incentive payments, more effort made for children to stay with grandparents rather than foster care and allowing family members visitation rights when children are put into foster care. "Taking a child should be the last measure, not the first." she says.

"[CPS] used to never help anybody," she maintains. "Now they help everybody even if they don't need help,"

For Cash, the fight is personal. All four of her own children have been taken away from her and she's currently in a legal battle to get back two of her children. She claims her youngest two kids are being abused in a Colorado foster home, where they're currently living. Her other two, older children, live in Texas and will both turn eighteen in September.

"I've seen kids taken from their homes because of a broken window. Social workers, instead of fixing the window, take the kids," she says.

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