Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema:
> In New York State the child protective agency may remove a child perceived to be
> in "imminent danger," but must petition the Family Court at the earliest
> possible opportunity. When the agency removes the child, the parent must receive
> formal notice in the form of a document that informs him/her of the location of
> the Family Court, the right to oppose the removal, and the right to legal
> representation.
But the removal has already occurred. When I lived in the Lower East Side, this almost happened to a woman whose children got out on a (second-floor) fire escape and were reported by a hostile neighbor. Some sort of persons in uniform were already at the door when I happened by and breathed the upper-middle-class word "lawyer" whereupon they instantly evaporated. God knows where the children would have been taken otherwise, or what it would have taken to get them away from the bureaucracy without upper-middle-class magic words (and money and connections). Another case involved the ten-year-old grandson of the building superintendant, who was taken away from his parents in Harlem because they were busted (for drugs, I believe, but it doesn't matter) and was sent to Spofford.* Ever heard of Spofford? He escaped and was hiding out with the grandfather. He told my wife he was planning to kill himself if they (the authorities) caught him, rather than go back to Spofford. He visited our apartment and wrote things in green ink on the flyleaves of some books which I may still have somewhere. I don't know what finally happened to him; he hung around the neighborhood for awhile and then disappeared.
*http://bronx-beat.jrn.columbia.edu/2000-issues/february/021500/jail.html