Across the States
Parents Accused Of Withholding Milk And Education
A Home School Legal Defense Association member family in Sherman called our offices after they received a visit from a caseworker.* The caseworker indicated she had received a tip that the family was not homeschooling, and that the parents were depriving their children of milk. The caseworker asked to enter the family's home and interview the children.
The parents suspected that the tipster was a disgruntled relative who was using the social services system to get back at them.
HSLDA Senior Counsel Christopher Klicka wrote a letter to the caseworker, declining her request to enter the family’s home and interview the children. He explained that the accusations were false, maliciously made by the children’s aunt. The children did not have milk because some of them were allergic to it, he said, but the family was providing them with adequate nutrition through other types of food. Additionally, wrote Klicka, the parents were legally homeschooling and were not guilty of educational neglect.
Klicka’s letter also discussed the federal Keeping Children and Families Safe Act, which prohibits caseworkers from breaching a family’s 4th Amendment rights.
Instead of allowing the interviews, Klicka had the family provide the caseworker with letters of reference from people who could vouch for the parents’ innocence; the family also sent the caseworker a doctor’s report which confirmed that the children were not abused.
The family has not heard from the caseworker since.
— by Christopher J. Klicka
* see “HSLDA social services contact policy”
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