Emily Fields: Mom-of-3 says social workers threatened to put kids in foster care if she let them play outside
PEARISBURG, VIRGINIA: Emily Fields, a Virginian mother-of-three is constantly worried that her children will be taken away from her by Child Protective Services and now can’t allow her children to play outside after her neighbor threatened to call on her, accusing her of negligence. It was after her son, then aged 4, kicked a soccer ball toward a neighbor’s cat and since then she’s scared of losing her young ones’ custody.
Emily lives in Pearisburg, Virginia, and claims she is being harassed by social workers who have been urging her to sign a form disallowing her children, a six-year-old son, and two daughters, aged 8 and 9, from playing outside without continuous supervision. The mother adds that one of the social workers is a local and holds animosity toward their family. In an incident that took place in May 2021, her son had kicked a football across the road in the direction of a neighbor’s cat but didn’t hit it. When Emily took his son to apologize, she said, “They began to scream and yell. They said that everyone in the neighborhood thought I was a horrible mother, and that my children abused animals." The next day, two caseworkers visited her home and not knowing what else to do, she signed what they called a ‘safety plan’. As per the documents, she now requires "to supervise the children at all times when playing outside. If safety plan is violated, a protective order will be filed."
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Emily further said she’d been told that the children were seen by a caseworker knocking on doors in the neighborhood while asking to come inside people’s houses. She clarifies that the children were in fact going to houses on just their street to sell Easter Eggs while indulging in a childish scheme to make some money. “At no point were they out of my sight. And at no point did they go inside,” she claims. Another incident took place in 2018 when the family returned from a walk to find two CPS workers in a car on their drive. The kids loved to play outside, and now they could only play in the backyard without supervision, as the family has been told that they need to be under constant observation until they turn 13, reports Daily Mail.
Emily checked with authorities recently if there were any charges against her, and she found the case was never officially opened. The story was published for Reason Magazine by Lenore Skenazy, founder of the non-profit Let Grow, an advocate of childhood independence.