http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2245898,00.html
Some teenage British girls were subjected to awful treatment when their mother got pneumonia while vacationing in NYC.
This is just un-freaking-believable. Just proves that unfortunately the Nanny State crap is not confined to the UK or Canada. We’ve got plenty of this crap here too.
Yes, in an ideal world they would have had the freedom to sleep on the floor of the intensive care unit, like all good American children.
In an ideal world they’d have been hooked up with a room at a nearby motel.
Yeah, The Plaza, maybe, or the Waldorf? Round the clock adult supervision and unlimited use of the minibar, as well as an open check at the restaurants. Maybe some tickets to a couple shows and a carriage ride around the park. It almost makes you not heart NY.
Or maybe a hostel near the Village? They could browse the bookstores on Bleeker. It’s not like orphanage stays don’t cost the government anything, and I’m not of the opinion that 15 is an age requiring 24 hour supervision.
The system is imperfect therefore it must be subjected to dynamite. Is that basically the logic of outrage to something like this?
It’s funny because the system is losing its ability to deal with children who are not dangerous.
You don’t think we’re done yet, huh?
hahahahahahahhahahahahahahahbreathehahahahahahahahhahahahahahahaha.
Brilliant. (not for the kids, obviously)
Since returning home, Bray has received a letter from the US Administration for Children and Families, notifying her that, because the children were admitted to the orphanage, she is now “under investigation.”
what?
errr… shouldn’t she have had travel insurance that would have covered putting the kids in a hotel for a few days? I don’t get how the hell they got into this. But why the hell were the kids strip searched? was this guantanomo bay and I misread the title?
What’s more scary is the idea they treat American orphans like that on a regular basis. Strip searched and forced to shower in front of guards? Put in little cages? Watched 24 hours a day?
Yaeh, I’m horrified that this is apparently how orphans are treated and that there’s no middle ground, no ‘minimum security’ orphanage for them to just get basic room and board without the Guantanamo sidedish.
But I agree with cliffski that some blame lies on the mother. You’re a fool to go to the US without travel insurance - within the EU she’s fully covered except for transportation, but getting sick outside the EU can ruin you and just the most basic insurance would cover having family from the UK flown in to mind the kids while she was in hospital as well as a hotel room.
This hardly fits into a “NANNY STATES RAR” mentality - in a system with better-funded, better-regulated social services this wouldn’t have been a problem. This happened because the rusty, broken-down wheels of bureaucracy couldn’t figure out what to do with the kids on a temporary basis, and the orphanage either didn’t know or didn’t care that their stay was just a temporary arrangement until their mother got better.
How about if the state doesn’t seize your kids for starters?
So what, exactly, do you think is going to happen if the state doesn’t get involved with a couple kids from out of the country, with no local family or connections, while their sole available guardian is incapacitated and doesn’t have travel insurance? Is the hospital going to put the kids up pro bono because businesses really have the best for humanity in mind? Are they supposed to count on some employee taking pity on them and letting them stay at his or her house? What’s the good alternative to the state handling it?
Yeah, I’d like to hear your solution, Spoofy.
given some of the maniac kids on the streets here in the UK, I wish the state would seize a lot more of em.
Well, if I ran the zoo, I think I would have first tried to contact relatives. If this lady was well off enough to fly across the Atlantic to go shopping, surely she should know someone who could wire a few hundred dollars to put the kids up in a cheap hotel. Then I would have given the kids Pizza Hut’s number and asked the police to send someone around to check on them a couple times a day.
If the situation persisted for longer than two or three days, I could see looking at a more permanent solution, but the story says it was only 30 hours.
What do you tell the family when their corpses are found raped to death?