Protecting children is everyone’s job

Since running a front-page story Tuesday on the June 30 town meeting in Wasilla between Office of Children’s Services leaders and affected families, our phones and email boxes have been deluged with pleas from people seeking help with their individual cases.

These calls and emails tell gut wrenching, complex and hard-to-fathom stories of children removed from their homes and their families’ struggles to be reunited with their children.

For the most part, all we can do is listen. Most of the time we lack the legal expertise necessary to provide the sort of help needed.

But we are aware that a large group of local families are engaged in ongoing struggles to win the right to be their child or grandchild’s, niece or nephew’s primary caregiver.

Beyond listening, we believe we can help by bringing to light our neighbors’ concerns and encouraging all parties to listen to one another and put the wellbeing of these children ahead of their own wants and wishes.

Perhaps Isaac Newton’s Theory of Relativity says it best: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Though in this case, it is our children who often suffer from the consequences for our bad decisions and poor choices.

Being a parent is a precious trust granted us by our Creator. There is no harder job or more important work than parenting a child.

As a parent, the needs of the little ones in our care must take precedence because it is our job as a parent to see that our children inherit their full birthrights of love and safety.

Sure, you’re going to make mistakes. No parent is perfect and no child is either. But if you choose to bring a child into this beautiful — but sometimes hard — world, you must be extra diligent to be sure your own personal hang-ups, weaknesses, addictions, baggage and eccentricities are kept in check so you can set a healthy, positive example for that future teen, future adult and maybe, future parent.

When children are taken from their home, their parents and their families because authorities believe they are being harmed, we must be able to trust these authorities are acting in the child’s best interest and are acting as professionally as possible.

After the June 30 Wasilla meeting, it seems clear that the system itself is also guilty of making some poor choices. We were heartened to hear OCS leadership admit they’ve made mistakes and pleased they seemed to really be listening to the concerns of our frustrated neighbors. We hope OCS will follow through with similar meetings in our community, too.

For this commitment to listen, learn and change, we applaud the leadership at OCS. We encourage all parties to keep in mind that it is innocent children who are at risk here.

Caught in the middle is a premature baby ripped from the arms of its drug-addicted mother. There in the middle is a 5-year-old who doesn’t understand why he can’t play in grandma’s yard anymore. And there in the middle sits a tiny coffin that contains the remains of a little girl left too long with the wrong people.

When a child is brought into the world — whether by “accident” or with all the love and good intentions possible — it’s every adult’s job to nurture that child.

We hope this meeting will prove a catalyst to change the way the local OCS office interacts with families and their children.

If we want the best schools — academically — in the nation, we must backup and address what is happening to our children before they arrive for their first day of school.