Title: Support "The Children of Incarcerated Parents Bill"

November 24, 2013: 6:30am: Listening to: "Hero of War" By: "Rise Against"

Hi everyone. My mind is all over the place right now but I want to talk about a few things. A few people have responded to my blog and explained the parental rights issue, how children and family services work. Now my heart and mind are at ease since meeting my daughters social worker Hannah, and now her county social work from D.C.F.S Tanya, she has helped also. But I was reading an article from a lawyer who is involved in these kinds of legal battles. This article was written by an attorney names "Matthew T. Mangino (www.mangino.com). It's about a new bill trying to get passed in legislation. Today there are over 2.3 million people in prison in the U.S.A. 77% of all mothers in prison were the primary care giver of their child before going to jail. Child service agencies will lie and say that "reunification" is the goal for the child and the incarcerated parent but over a staggering 80% of them are in prisons over 100 miles away (myself included) from their child and the average prison stay is 80-100 months. But parental rights are usually terminated by the child service agency and the courts after 15-24 months of foster care. Children of incarcerated parents go through problems of economic distress, anger, depression, shame, guilt, abandonment. They also suffer in the schools as well. When these children go through the trauma of abandonment and insecurity, and the depression, these issues can last for a very long time. Federal law requires parental rights to be terminated after the 15-24 months time frame. When parental rights are terminated, the child is the one who is forced to forfeit the most sacred and fundamental rigths of all, the right to remain in a family, to be loved by that family, to have their own identity.

Anyone in Pennsylvania who reads what I write, I urge you, beg you, I implore you to speak up. Inform your local senators to support the children of incarcerated parents bill. Make it law. When my parental rights were terminated, the last social worker Michelle, she sent me a letter stating that all rights were terminated and all contact would cease between myself and my child and that she would not be facilitating any further contact. Maybe thats her job, but thats still a very cruel and inhumane thing to do to a parent and their child.

My next topic is President Obama and another broken promise. I am quoting a newspaper paragraph "Obama says he supports a higher minimum wage but he caved in and abandoned his campaign promise to put for the "Employers Free Choice Act" which would go a long way to restoring workers rights and to forming unions to protect workers. Minimum wage is $7.25, it should have been pushed to $9.00. In here, minimum wage is 19c per hour. Thats what the average prisoner makes. Maximum wage is 42c per hour. But thats only for the guys who work in the shops where they make cheap clothing, soap, and maintenance repairs. Our cost of living in here continues to rise, the food is getting so bad, we continue to suffer. This morning we had scrambled eggs (powdered eggs) and cream of wheat that was so watery it was like soup. Prisoners who work in PA prisons, our pay is not fro