Position on Safe Child Placement

We define the child placement system as all individuals and organizations, both private and public, that are directly or indirectly responsible for the movement of children from one family or institution to another, as well as those families and institutions in which a child is placed.

The root principle of the child placement system is the child's best interest. Its workings are based upon the premise that the family or institution in which a child is to be placed, is better suited to provide safety and care, than the family to which the child was born.

Despite the proclaimed interest of the child, the child placement system may serve its own interests, for example: profit, job security, self-sustenance, political compliance or ambition, and the demand for children.

To protect the interest of each child we define the following four focal points:

• Safety from entry into the child placement system;
• Safety from being kept within the child placement system;
• Safety within the child placement system;
• Safety upon leaving the child placement system.

Every child should be safe from unnecessary or wrongful entry into the child placement system.

• no parent should be offered money, services, or be coerced by any method to relinquish a child;
• no child should be separated from his/her parents against their will, based on false or unsubstantiated charges of neglect or abuse;
• no child should be separated from his/her parents against their will, based on poverty, or lack of services;
• no child placement agency should attempt to permanently place a child who may have been kidnapped or otherwise wrongfully separated from his/her parents.

Every child should be safe from being kept unnecessarily or wrongfully within the child placement system.

• Every child has the right to be reunited with his/her family, unless it is not in the interest of that child;
• No child should be kept in the child placement system for any reason other than the interest of that child.

Every child within the placement system should be safe.

• Every child within the child placement system should be safe from abuse, neglect and exploitation;
• Every child within the child placement system should be safe from unnecessary, wrongful or experimental medications, therapies and treatments;
• Every child within the child placement system should be accounted for; no child should ever be missing from the child placement system.

Every person leaving the child placement system has the right to do so in a safe fashion.

• No child should be returned to his/her family, unless in the interest of the child;
• Every person leaving the child placement system has the right to a safety net; no one should age out of the system without proper aftercare;
• Every person leaving the child placement system has the right to know his/her original family so that genetic and historical information can be obtained;
• Every child who entered the child placement system from another country should be safe from deportation later in life.