Complaint Review: DHS of Craighead County Jonesboro Arkansas - Jonesboro Arkansas

My family (myself, husband & 3 kids) was visiting Arkansas while I was 6 months pregnant. We were only 5 days into our trip when it was discovered that my husband had stage 4 kidney cancer. He was hospitalized & not given much time to live, but we were searching for every possible treatment for him. Mean while, I had been to the OB floor several times, because I was experiencing severe pain and just knew something was wrong, but they’d just check the heartbeat, give me pain medicine and send me on my way. However, I had a high risk pregnancy and had given birth to my last child at just 32 weeks, not even making it to the hospital in time.

My husband was discharged just over a month later, with no hope of survival. As we were trying to determine whether or not it would be safe for me to travel home, I went into labor and we were 40 min away from the nearest hospital with a maternity and an ambulance rushed me there. When I arrived at St Bernard’s Hospital in Jonesboro, I was seen by the same Dr who had previously sent me away. He stated that something was very wrong, that the baby and I were in danger, and he’d need to do an emergency C-Section. They put me under general anesthesia, then I flatlined a total of 3 times, once being without oxygen to the brain for over 4 minutes during CPR, then put on life support.

My baby was medi-vacked to Children’s Hospital in Little Rock before my husband arrived. He was told that I was brain dead, to say goodbye and terminate life support, but he refused, insisting that I was still in there. I woke up nearly 3 weeks later, shortly after he took our 3 girls out of state to stay with family. I was paralyzed at first, but was able to regain strength to the top half of my body fairly quickly. I asked about my baby boy many times and got little more than, "I hear he’s fine” or "I’ll check into it”.

I was discharged rather quickly from the hospital, simply because I asked for a male physical therapist, since the female had dropped me, so the Dr viewed this as me being "unwilling” to participate. They wheeled me over to the Annex, a connecting hotel for Cancer or NICU families, but I couldn’t move from the waist down, so I called 911 after being trapped in the chair. I saw the same Dr who had discharged me the day before, he stated it was all in my head and sent me away. I received a little bit of physical help from church members, but had to go back to the hospital again.

This time they did a CT scan with IV contrast, it showed that I had a DVT in my leg & PE in each lung, and this was the reason that I couldn’t move my lower half. After being readmitted, my husband had returned and was readmitted as well, also our baby was brought back to our hospital. However, no one took my husband to see him and I only got to see him once, before CPS arrived. They told me he was being discharged in a couple days, I told them I was flying my mother out from California, so that she could take care of him until I was discharged the following week.

She told me that she couldn’t take my son, because I she was out of state. When I asked her why CPS was even involved, she said it was only because I was hospitalized, that once I was discharged they’d return my son. Then they held a court hearing without me, even though I was told I could attend by the phone since I was in the hospital. Also, I had a court appointed lawyer that nobody told me about. The following week I was discharged, yet, they still didn’t return him, stating I was homeless! When I clearly showed them I wasn’t homeless, they told me that I’d need to have a home in Arkansas!

Why would I need to live in Arkansas, I gave birth on vacation during an emergency, that’s ridiculous! Although, my husband had actually rented a house in the neighboring county a few weeks prior to that anyways, because he didn’t know how long I’d be in a coma. So, after all of this, we had to fly home, because we had stayed another month and they still were asking ridiculous things, like I needed to have a house in Craighead County for 12 months and then they’d return my son. But, my husband was hanging by a thread, it was amazing he lived as long as he had, his 3 girls needed to see him again before he died, plus he had 2 adult sons that needed to see him.

He lived less than a month after that, then DHS now says at this point that I was choosing my 3 girls, all minors mind you, over my son! It got to the point where the social worker from Arkansas called my local police department in California and asked them to do a welfare check, with absolutely no basis, in fact she had CPS come out prior to that and they reported that everything was fine. The police came in and sat down, because they couldn’t believe someone from Arkansas would call them and they called her back while standing in my kitchen and told her everything was fine here and that she shouldn’t be calling them again.

Over a year of court hearings in which the social workers not only lied on the stand, but were called as witnesses more than one occasion and changed their stories on the stand twice! I have some of this on recording, since I was appearing over the phone, because I live in California, also I had a very serious situation with a blood clot being stuck in the IVC filter and was told that I absolutely could not fly! By the end of the hearings they took away my parental rights stating "abandonment” and that I had "chosen my other children over him”. They put my son up for adoption, never once allowing him to live with family!

I only received a few pictures during all of this. I learned later that Arkansas, and neighboring states, were getting money when a child was adopted out to anyone others than family, and that the individual social workers got bonuses as well! Of course this was technically law in all states, but it was prevalent in states or areas that got little government money. I was low income, received disability benefits, which made me a prime target, because they knew I couldn’t afford a lawyer and I was also just visiting when these unfortunate events originally happened. Dates are as follows: 11/19/2014 husband diagnosed with cancer 12/31/2014 baby delivered @ 32 wks gestation I’m in coma on life support 01/19/2015 awaken from coma 02/01/2015 baby discharged into CPS care 03/30/2015 husband passed away from cancer 05/08/2015 parental rights permanently removed.