FacePalm Friday

Welcome to this week’s edition of FacePalm Friday.

This is where your hosts will list their top picks for this week’s FacePalm moment—something they learned or read about this week that caused the FacePalm to happen (you know, the expression of embarrassment, frustration, disbelief, shock, disgust or mixed humor as depicted in our Rally FacePalm smiley).

We invite you to add your FacePalm of the week to our comments. Go ahead and add a link, tell a personal story, or share something that triggered the FacePalm on the subject of child welfare or adoption.

Your Host’s Selections:

(1)Complaints Filed Against Adoption Agency: The Sans Pareil Center

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/woodlands/news/article/Criminal-complaints-filed-against-Woodlands-5135117.php?t=742f553960&t=742f553960

“Sheriff Tommy Gage’s office confirmed it has received at least 10 criminal complaints about the agency from prospective parents.

Czajkoski said the complaints include allegations that the agency charged couples thousands of dollars in living and medical expenses for birth mothers who had already been matched with another family.”

“Maggie Steffen and her partner, Kate, filed one of the 10 criminal complaints against Sans Pareil, according to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.

Steffen said she was ecstatic as she packed her new stroller, car seat and other newborn must-haves for a last-minute flight Nov. 4 from New Jersey to Houston. The agency had alerted the couple that they needed to come immediately for the birth of the child they had contracted for adoption, Steffen said.

Steffen said she and Kate spent around $19,000 for the adoption, plus the cost of the last-minute plane tickets.

When she arrived in Houston, however, Steffen said she learned that another couple, from Wisconsin, had been promised the same infant.”

“That couple, Rosie and Marlin Schrock, said they never made the flight because they were told the birth mother had decided to keep the baby. The Schrocks said they paid the Sans Pareil Center $16,000 in adoption costs.

In the end, according to the sheriff’s office, the infant instead went to a third couple from yet another adoption agency.”

“In 2012, the Sans Pareil Center lost its contracts to handle foster care placement for Texas juvenile probation and Child Protective Services due to financial irregularities, state records show.”

“Mary Jo Walker, a Nebraska mother with three biological sons and the hopes of adopting a girl, said she lost more than $30,000 trying to adopt from Sans Pareil. She said that apart from one small receipt, she has no other proof of how her money was spent.

Walker has filed a complaint with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, according to the agency’s records.

“My boys want to know why I cry all the time,” she said. “It’s just that I’ll never be able to afford an adoption now.””

(2) Reaction to 48 Hours Broadcast

https://bothendsburning.org/reaction-to-48-hours-broadcast/?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_campaign=hootsuite

“When there are failures of the type 48 Hours reported, the tendency is to blame the system as being inadequate. We have seen time and time again the disreputable actions of a few [A few ? ]leading to international adoption closures. This over-correction does tremendous harm by removing one of the most successful options available to children living outside of parental care. Over twenty thousand Guatemalan children would likely have found permanent loving homes had scandals not led to a shut down of international adoptions in 2008. [ Still Drinking the 

And hundreds of Congolese children already matched with adoptive families are now stuck in limbo as the DRC recently suspended all international adoptions. []

Writing about foreign aid in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Bill & Melinda Gates report that they have “heard plenty of people calling to shut down aid programs if one dollar of corruption is found. But four of the past seven governors of Illinois went to prison for corruption, and no one is demanding that Illinois’s schools be shut down or its highways closed.” The same logic applies here. Let’s not indict an entire system that does so much good because of the bad actions of a few. And let’s not deny desperate children the opportunity to come into a permanent loving family. If there is a bad actor, let’s remove that person, hold him/her accountable under the law, and make whatever improvements are needed to the system.”

(3) COA Complaints

https://coa.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/300000000aAUSKW3KgJaQWFxUBlC4qqyq7a7W9E=

220 pages of Utter Nonsense!