Ripped Off By The Child Support System In Stark County Ohio

by Becky
(Eremich)

I adopted a sibling group of four children in 1995 plus another child from Summit County a few months earlier. These five kids make up my second family. My first family is three adopted daughters and one biological son. All grown and we are still a family. There is lots of love and many grandchildren. The thought never enters my mind that my girls were adopted. These last five children are of a different race than I, and were all born addicted to crack/cocaine. One of the kids is hydrosyfalic due to the agency ignoring the situation. Most children would have died within the first few years of life. For 15 years I have struggles with raising these kids. Everyone is SEVERELY ADHD, one has Tourettes, one has seizure disorder, one bipolar, several with some Fetal Alcohol symptoms, and all qualify for MRDD services. These kids have grown into teens now.

They are the most destructive, self-centered, unreliable, disrespectful, unreliable, no social skills, etc.children I have ever seen. I was also a foster parent for 18 years. If you can imagine they are very very hard to raise. I am a single mother, but would not give up on these kids as the emotional abuse would be horrific for them. My life would have been much easier. Then one day the oldest of the 5 was 17 years old. He was fighting with his brother (through adoption) who is six months younger than he. I had to step in between them to stop the situation. The oldest grabbed my hand and deliberately tried to break it. Later that evening I spent time in the ER as my hand and middle finger were swollen and black and blue. The worker would not even look at the pictures of my had and neither would the Judge. Children Services had been to our house over and over again because of the things the kids would tell in school. These stories were about one tenth true and the rest was made up and made to sound worse than anything that ever happened. The workers came out. My home was clean in our living areas. The kids bedrooms were a mess. Not filthy, just messed up with clothes on the floor, dresser drawers handing out. Sheets and blankets on the floor.

She gave the kids two weeks to clean up their rooms. I told her they would not do it and they won't listen to me. When she came back out, again the downstairs was clean and neat. The bedrooms are still messy. The bipolar child's room had holes all over the walls. I had new drywall sitting there ready to replace the bottom half of the walls. They had broken their windows and I had put clear packaging tape over the cracks to hold the windows together until I could get some extra money to get them replaced. This social worker decided to remove all the kids. She asked if I would work with a certain program (name escapes me now). I told her we had already worked with them (I had been told they would not work with the same family twice). She whirrled around and said okay they are being removed.
My kids were taken off all their medications which was extremely dangerous to do. They manipulated the workers and anyone involved. The worker that removed the kids was African-American. As soon as she got the kids in her car she started telling them that I didn't care about them, I only wanted the money I got for them.

A couple of the kids told me she said that. She also told them they would not go home for at least a year. She gave the foster parents a copy of the alleged problems in the home. The foster parents kept throwing these things in the kids faces. The kids told them that was not true but no one would believe them. They only believed them when they came to remove them and that was one lie after another. Once they got them removed they would not listen to the kids. After several months they started sending the kids home one at a time. The first was the younges who was 15 at the time. The other were 16, 17, and 17. The oldest one had moved to Columbus to be with her biological mother. The 15 year old after another child came home, decided he didn't like it at home. He only liked it when he was with me alone, and he had all my attention. He went to school and said he was going to commit suicide. They removed him a second time. The worker would not allow any visits.


I went six months without seeing my son. He was playing a game with them and at the same time calling me saying he wanted to come home. They Children Services filed for child support. They wanted me to pay $500.00 and some dollars every month. I could not afford that. I spoke with the lady at the child support bureau. She said I did not want to pay child support. I did not ever say such a thing. I would pay for my son but it needed to be a reasonable amount, or I would lose my home. She never helped me on bit. I work for Summit County Children Services and I told her that my agency does not ask for child support. She said yes they do because I work with them all the time. I asked if they were adopted children and she said she didn't know. I told her I have never heard of our agency going for child support from adoptive parents. That is how she assumed I did not want to pay child support. By the time I went to court four times and they kept telling me to come back, my son was home again, therefore, all child support would be arrearges. They kept sending me letters changing the amount of support each time.

That alone tells me they don't know what they are doing. I owed them a little over $200,000.00. To date I have paid $1141.39 and the rest will come out of my income tax return.
I said all of that just to say, I cannot believe the agencies in Stark County and the social workers, would have the nerve to charge child support. These kids have almost tore my home out from underneath me. I constantly am repairing and repairing. I feel the agency should have been paying me a lot more than they were in subsidies just to keep up with these kids. Due to the financial crisis in our country, Children Services reduced all subsidies by $50.00. They started taking 400 plus from my pay check, the 74 a month. Then 200 and then back to 74. Now they are taking $220.91 starting this month. What in God's name is wrong with these people? I can't wait to get them paid off and out of my life. I am still putting up with the kids. They are 20, 19, 18, and 17. They are still very destructive and self-centered. I have learned to expect these behaviors from them. I do not think they will every change.