Overweight boy, 8, and mother feel state’s weight
Sept. 3, 2004
By Michelle Holmes
Post-Tribune Northern Indiana

No matter what the scale may say, Dakota Main is still a little boy.

Not physically. Not when the scale tips 175.

But inside, says his mother, Cody’s just like his peers.

“He’s 8 years old and he wants his mom,” says Sara Main, sitting in her apartment on a tree-lined street in Valparaiso. The place is small, unlike Sara and Dakota.

But there’s no rambunctious little boy to take up room on this Thursday afternoon.

Cody’s gone.

It’s been a month already, and there’s no telling when he’s coming home.

The whole thing makes Pat Tuttle angry. It’s clear that’s out of character for a woman better known for work with her clown ministry, Smiles Unlimited.

Right now, though, her heart hurts for her friend, and for Cody, who’s starting a new school in foster care.

“He shouldn’t be with strangers when there’s people who love him,” said Tuttle, shaking her head at Main’s kitchen table.

Main, who works midnights at Porter hospital, recognizes her son has some problems:

He’s a happy active boy, she says. He rides his bike, and plays outside.

But still — he’s fat. Too fat. Look at the photo on Page 1.

Couple that with a medical condition that leads to involuntary bowel function, and the grade school had a problem on its hands. Officials set up a plan with Sara for doctor visits. It wasn’t new: They’d seen specialists before. Laxatives and tests, diet and more tests.

Of course every story has another side. But Indiana won’t tell theirs. With the never-ending chant of “privacy,” state law obscures whether caseworkers are friend or foe to kids in trouble.

But here’s how Main explains it: She was starting her new job, and was waiting for insurance to kick in.

They missed two appointments with a doctor. Then they moved — a few blocks, really, but enough to miss a notice on her door. One day last month, her mother got a call.

Sara had missed a hearing — one she says she had no idea had been called.

“The lady said you need to come in and bring Dakota,” her mother told her.

“A couple of hours later, they put me in one room and him in the other. Then they took him away.”

It would be days before they spoke; a week and a half until she’d see him, briefly, at the Family House.

“They call it medical neglect” said Tuttle. “But why didn’t they let her talk to him? How can you medically neglect someone over the phone?”

Six days later, they had a hearing. Friends and family overflowed the hearing room.

“I thought we won,” Tuttle remembers. “I thought we were taking him home.”

The judge, though, sided with the welfare folks. The state says family’s always the first choice for placement, but no one’s called Cody’s Grandma, much less come to visit.

The International Size Acceptance Association started a campaign called “Free Dakota.” “The war on obesity has gone too far when they start taking children away,” reads the call to action at www.size-acceptance.org

I tell this story the best I can with what I know, because I have children too.

In some strange way, I hope Indiana hasn’t erred this bad — that there’s something more dangerous than incontinence at work here. Yes there is- CPS is harvesting the CA$H for "$pecial Need$" children.

Something more threatening than the round, red cheeks that look up from the pictures spread out on the kitchen table.

All with the same big smile.

Contact Michelle Holmes at 477-6011 or mholmes@post-trib.com

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No tidy ends to her stories, nor tidy bowls, or tidy holes
By Michelle Holmes
Post-Tribune Northern Indiana
Sept. 17, 2004

...Dakota still isn’t back in Valparaiso, and no one seems to have an answer why.

A state spokeswoman says obesity is never cause to rip a child from his mother.  No, it's the EXCUSE.  The object is to rip as many kids from their homes as possible, because that's what the Feds are paying for.

Other medical problems, she added, cause the state to work with, not against, a family. HaH! But mother Sara Main said she’s been shut out and cut off.

“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do. What can I do to get my son back?” she asked me. But I don’t know.

Apparently, there’s no big hurry for the state to tell her, either. A hearing scheduled this week was pushed back until November.

I may not know the details of this case yet, but I do know something: In the eyes of an 8-year-old without his mother, November sounds something like forever.

Contact editor Michelle Holmes at 477-6011 or mholmes@post-trib.com. 
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Future fix for flawed agencies not enough for families today
By Michelle Holmes
Post-Tribune Northern Indiana
Oct. 1, 2004 

Gov. Joe Kernan knows there’s something terribly wrong with Indiana’s social service system.

That’s why he’s proposed sweeping changes that would redefine the agencies charged with protecting children and their families.

So far, though, it’s not clear he’s stepped up to help the victims of this failed bureaucracy.

For some, of course, it is too late: kids who die at the hands of abusive parents —

or in foster care. Kids who even now are starved or harmed or left for days alone. But there are quiet victims, too. Families who need help, but end up with children taken.

Children like Dakota Main.

It’s not the first time I’ve told his story. But now I have reviewed the details — from court documents to medical and school records.

There are no dirty secrets.

Sara Main’s mistakes began when she signed paperwork from school and Child Protective Services officials, agreeing to a specific steps to manage the medical and social consequences of her son’s incontinence condition.

Though he’d seen specialists in two states and three counties, had inpatient and outpatient treatment, it was not enough to make them happy. “At the time we initially became involved with this family, mother was very, very willing to cooperate,” the case manager told the court. Volunteering for CPS "help" always ends up the same way.

But when Dakota missed two routine checkups while waiting for new insurance to kick in, CPS officials alleged neglect. Main wasn’t at the hearing to defend herself. She’d moved and notices went unclaimed.

They knew how to reach Main after they’d decided to detain her son, though — they called her mother and soon had Dakota in a foster home. At the next hearing, an attorney came, armed with proof of years of doctors’ care. So CPS changed its tactics.

Though obesity was hardly mentioned just a week before, this time it took center stage.

“I think the major problem in this case is the obesity of this child and the fact that because of that obesity he is not able to keep up with his peers,” testified the case manager.

“My concern here is not that mom doesn’t love her child or that mom doesn’t do what she can for her child — my concern is that mom is not consistent,” she told the court.  See? This fascist says "think" and has "concern", and the judge falls all over himself letting her have her way.

So the magistrate agreed to take the boy from this “inconsistent” mother — though not a shred of evidence suggested he was in danger at his home.

Two months later, no plan of action has been set to reunite this family.

Despite the magistrate’s urging to move the process quickly, the next hearing’s in November; all Main can do is wait, and see her son four hours every week.

Meanwhile, Dakota’s still not with his grandma — despite regulations to try place with family first.

Sara Main is not alone. Other mothers have other stories: The official who presided over a Porter County woman’s case took her children without allowing her (or her attorney) to say a word in her defense, though they sat there in the hearing room. Which flies in the face of the Constitution, doesn't it?

It was 4:30 and he was ready to go home. It’s been weeks and she’s still waiting for her babies. Meanwhile, in Indianapolis, parents are marching in the street, waving protest signs.

Yes, Joe Kernan, something’s greatly flawed here. I’m glad you want to fix the system. But first, we have to help mend the families that this state has helped to break.

Please, Joe, tell me where the buck stops, so I can send these mothers there.

Contact Michelle Holmes at 477-6011.

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http://www.size-acceptance.org/dakota/