Cocke County DCS “Bad to the Bone”
This story is several years old and as far as I can tell no changes or improvements have been made to DCS, they have become so powerful and well funded that they seem to answer to no one. If they can treat a respected, professional woman with such contempt how are they treating the innocent children and the accused families that they have unlimited power over?
Have you ever called a government agency for help only to be chuckled at and made fun of? Then chances are you have never had to contact the Cocke County Department of Children Services (DCS) located on Heritage Street in Newport, Tennessee.
Such was the case on Monday, July 6, when Renée Lynn, Editor-in-Chief of “The Knoxville Journal,” needed to discuss a dire situation with Kim Ramsey, a case worker at the Cocke County DCS. Mrs. Lynn tried numerous times to reach Ms. Ramsey or anyone in the department to no avail.Finally, Mrs. Lynn got in touch with Ms. Ramsey to converse about a very serious issue concerning information relevant to two foster children under their jurisdiction.
Apparently the information was ignored.
When asked very pertinent questions about the care of these children, Ms. Ramsey began laughing over the phone along with other employees. They just kept on laughing. Ms. Ramsey made no effort to correct her rude behavior with an apology. Mrs. Lynn then informed Ms. Ramsey that this was not a laughing matter, but was a grave set of circumstances. Again Mrs. Lynn was met with snickering.
It just so happened that Mrs. Lynn’s telephone was on speaker phone and at least one other person witnessed the outrageous behavior of Ms. Ramsey.
Mrs. Lynn commented, “It is a sad day when upstanding citizens are being subjected to such disrespect from government employees.”
This is not the first complaint lodged against the Cocke County DCS. This reporter knows of at least one other incident in which the Cocke County office has overstepped their bounds.
Ms. Vicki Hodge, supervisor of the Cocke County DCS did return a call to Mrs. Lynn on Tuesday, July 7, but did not apologize for the offensive conduct of her employees.
--Myra Wheeler
From left, front row, are Amy Clevenger, Kim Ramsey,
Mabel Greenlief, Virginia Harmon, Shedenna Dockery, Rikki Small, Amber Latham,
Karen Thomas, and Laura Forbes. Middle row, from left, are Amy Ball, Pam Henson, Brandy
King, Shirley Ingle, Barbara Ingram, Savannah Hendrickson, Wendy Williamson, and Amber
Barrett. Back row, from left, are Becky Lakins, Rani Good, Todd Mink, David Slagle,
Amanda Dunn, and Duane Powers.
If you have any information about the Tennessee DCS you would like to share:
dcs.tn.putfamiliesfirst@gmail.com
I am sure they would be interested in all the stories in TN, give it a shot.
Nothing has changed. We were foster parents several years ago, I inadvertently broke a policy, and our home was closed "not in good standing". While I am not proud some of my actions, and lack of foresight, I certainly didn't realize I was actually doing something that could get our home closed. We are a happily married couple, 17 years, with no children. I took responsibility for my actions, and I reported what was going on myself. This didn't involve any kind of abuse, neglect, or danger to a child. We begged to be allowed to retrain, to be put on probation, but no, our home was closed, that is the way the system expects to retain foster parents. Anyway, it's been almost 5 years, and we have a cousin in foster care in KY. We asked to be considered for placement. KY filed the papers for an interstate application. Those papers crossed the desk of Vicky Hodge in Hamblen County. Vicky knows us, she's been in our home. She denied the application, never even bothered to call us, we have not even so much as received a formal written notice of denial. This is our family, and that is just not right. I can accept not being able to foster strangers' children, I can accept not being able to adopt a stranger's biological child, but that is hard in itself. But to not be able to foster or adopt from our own family? We took care of over children in our home, now we can't help one of our one, thanks to TN DCS and Vicky Hodge.
ReplyDeleteI meant to say that we took care of 14 children in our home, and now we can't even take care of our own, we are being prohibited from caring for our own family member... ??? no wonder the children in our country are messed up. Family First, yeah right.
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