The girl in the window

What blows my mind is what blows the mind of the head of the CPS guy who was quoted in the story: How does a social service worker not try to speak with the child once he becomes aware of the squalor in which the child is living?

Yes, there would have been a red flag there. A giant one, and that would have at least gotten the ball rolling toward a full-blown investigation. My girlfriend works in social services as a foster care social worker, and she has a fairly intimate relationship with pretty much all of her "kids." (She's the legal guardian of 15 right now.) I just don't know how you could walk into that house and see that child and not try to talk to her. Just don't get it.

Terminating parental rights is tricky business, and the court will do everything in its power to make things work with the birth parents. So I understand the thought that there might not be enough evidence to take a case on, and so on and so on. I also know how understaffed and overworked my girlfriend's department is, and that's in a city of 70,000. Hard to imagine how understaffed the office in Tampa is. Obviously a much larger area.

The adoptive parents are an amazing story of their own. Just goes to show there are still plenty of great, selfless people in this world.

 

That's the best newspaper story I've read in years. Lane did a profile of a hockey coach once, back in 1998, and it was of similar quality, though of course the material wasn't as emotional.

You can't excuse the mother, but I think it's pretty clear she has deep mental illness and/or mental retardation. Someone didn't treat her right when she was young and the cycle repeated itself.

 

Not when it's an incredibly written piece that serves a community purpose that deserves any awards it gets. There's a difference.

 

All well and good. I just see the "Poynter pointy heads" get condemned all the time. Didn't see anyone giving them an attaboy.

 

I happened to be in St. Pete most of yesterday and bought a Times from a street vendor at a stoplight. I didn't get a chance to read it until late last night, but needless to say, best $1 investment I've made in a while.

In the midst of all this gloom and doom in our biz, good to see work like this still has a place.

 

Yes, good to see that someone was allowed the time to do a quality treatment of this without having to justify their place on payroll with a daily "happy puppy" story.

I worry that editors would find out about this, have a writer work up 18 inches, a picture, done.

 

Just when you think the mother here is an outright anomaly...

"Couple told mid-flight they'd left child behind
Israelis remember duty-free and luggage, but forget 3-year-old at airport

JERUSALEM - An Israeli couple going on a European vacation remembered to take their duty-free purchases and their 18 suitcases, but forgot their 3-year-old daughter at the airport, police said Monday."

 

Yeah, but our legal system works in pretty funny ways. You never know if you'll get a judge who will do something really stupid if the birth mother decided to contest the adoption.

 

The other thing about this is that I can't understand how a home, no matter how run-down, no matter how poor a side of town it's in, can be allowed to get that filthy by the people who live there. I don't know what it is, but I know you can't typecast poor people ... I've been in homes of high-school recruits who lived in crap sections of towns, but their mothers had the place spotless. At what point did this birth mother notice you couldn't walk a step in her home without crunching a roach?

 

Major bump.

 

Brilliant, stunning, amazing piece of journalism.