I wrote a long winded thing about my personal experience but deleted it because it was too personal and too depressing to think about.

The summary is that the risk of a CPS investigation of a kid playing or walking independently is probably 10-100x that of suffering a car accident. And the average car accident is way less traumatic than being ripped away from your family, tossed in a foster home, and feeling like your parents have abandoned you forever because they could not protect you from the state.

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Thorrez 4 days ago | parent [-]

That's terrible.

What's the solution though? Stop letting kids play outside? I think the solution should be to reform CPS so it's not so traumatizing, and have more governmental awareness campaigns of the benefits of kids playing outside. I see government billboards all the time about anti-smoking, eating healthy, prediabetes screening. There can similarly be billboards promoting kids playing outside.

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mothballed 4 days ago | parent [-]

1) Childhood independence protection

2) At the bare minimum, victims of CPS reports should be able to face their accuser. Currently laws anonymize reporters, this is not compatible with an open and balanced justice system. Also, needs to be heavy penalties and liabilities for abusing CPS reporting -- asymmetrical risks would end up with just getting the same result over and over again.

3) Cultural change. People that curtail child independence of others' children should be shamed, publicly. People that let their kids have independence, left the hell alone.

	▲	em-bee 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		there would not be any issue with anonymous reports if CPS would look for actual evidence before doing anything else, and reject any anonymous report as baseless if no evidence is found. innocent until proven guilty must hold here too.