Parents, not government bureaucrats, know what is best for their own children.
The family is the foundation of a strong society. Government should protect families, not replace them.
Your children are not the state’s children, and raising them is not a privilege the government hands out and takes back.
What I believe
The right to parent is a right, not a permission slip
Short of a real danger to a child’s life and limb, government has no business interfering with a parent’s care, custody, and decisions.
And when the state claims that danger exists, the burden of proof belongs on the state. Every time, with evidence, not suspicion, paperwork, or a caseworker’s opinion.
Decisions stay with parents
Education, healthcare, and how to raise your own kids are parental decisions.
Schools and agencies should never withhold information about your children from you, and no parent should find out last what an institution already decided about their own family.
Real abuse is the target, not parents
Child protection should focus on real abuse and real danger to children.
Poverty is not neglect. A parenting style some bureaucrat dislikes is not abuse. A messy house, a missed form, or a parent who pushes back is not a reason to tear into a family.
Families deserve real due process
When the state moves against a family, parents deserve the same seriousness the system gives a criminal defendant: clear standards, real evidence, and a fair hearing.
I support a right to trial by jury in family court, because a parent should be judged by the community, not only by the system that brought the case.
Decisions should be made here
Decisions about LaGrange County children should be made by people who live in LaGrange County.
The people deciding a family’s future should know this community, live under the same rules they hand down, and answer to the neighbors they affect.
A child services system directed from Indianapolis, staffed by people who may not live here, and funded by outside money with outside strings is accountable to everyone except the families in front of it.
The evidence first: records requests I have filed
I am not asking voters to take my word for any of this. I am gathering the evidence, in public, through Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act.
I have filed two public records requests with the Indiana Department of Child Services:
1. LaGrange County DCS data
How many LaGrange County children are in foster care, how much federal Title IV-E money is tied to LaGrange County cases, our reunification rates, the guardianship and adoption assistance dollars paid out, what happens to children who are not reunified, and the reasons children come into DCS care here in the first place.
2. Who is making these decisions
How many of the family case managers and supervisors assigned to the LaGrange County DCS office actually live in LaGrange County.
The plan: LaGrange County independence on child services
Here is where this goes. I will use the evidence those requests produce, and the evidence still to be gathered, to build the argument and take it to Indianapolis:
LaGrange County should have independence in child services, with decisions about our children made here, by people who live here, accountable to the people who live here.
That is a state fight, and I am not going to pretend a county council seat wins it by itself. But the evidence has to exist before the argument can be made, and the evidence gathering is already underway.
The county can also do more than argue. The Council can produce a budget plan of its own: a working model, built from the numbers those records requests produce, demonstrating that LaGrange County can fund and manage child services independently, with local dollars accounted for locally instead of outside money carrying outside control.
An argument backed by a working budget is harder to wave off than an argument backed by a speech.
What I will do on the Council
Honest scope first: the County Council does not run DCS and does not decide custody cases. Anyone who promises you otherwise is lying to you.
What the Council does control is money, and money is leverage:
- Scrutinize every county dollar going to offices and programs that touch families, and ask what it is actually buying
- Demand a public accounting of state and federal money flowing into family-related programs, and the strings attached to it
- Refuse to rubber-stamp budgets for systems that will not answer basic questions
- Keep filing, keep publishing the evidence, and carry the argument for LaGrange County independence on child services to Indianapolis
- Produce a county budget plan demonstrating we can fund and manage child services independently, so the argument arrives in Indianapolis with the numbers already done
A government strong enough to decide how you raise your children is strong enough to decide everything else. I am running so LaGrange County families answer to themselves, not to a bureaucrat.
No coercion. No extortion.