A California Mother is known to the local child welfare agency as a drug user. Mother has had other children taken into protective custody and placed into foster care.

Mother wants to avoid that happening to coming Baby. Mother arranges for this Baby to be adopted through a private adoption.

All is in place. Mother gives birth to Baby at hospital.

And then … local child welfare agency takes newborn Baby into protective custody from the hospital … with a view to placing Baby with a different prospective adoptive mother.

The agency could not care less about the private adoption. It insists that its juvenile dependency case supersedes the private adoption – even though it appears that the dependency case was filed after the private adoption paperwork was completed.

The dependency case is entirely premised on the danger to the Baby if returned to live with the Mother – which was not going to happen.

A court will soon decide who gets the Baby. The child welfare agency has refused to divulge why it removed the Baby before the Baby could be placed into the physical custody of the adoptive parents.

Prrivate adoption attorneys suggests that the local child welfare agency is being punitive toward substance-abusing biological parents like Mother, while their charge is only to protect children. Punishment, where appropriate, should be left to other governmental agencies. If provision is made for the private placement of an otherwise dependent child, a dependency case is a waste of public funds.

The private adoptive parents are angry. And so is the biological Mother, who wanted to insulate this Baby from the foster care system.

Read more in this Ventura County Star article: Custody of local baby in dispute.