Picture two families. Same kind of apartment. Same empty fridge at the end of the month. Same kids, sleeping on blankets on the floor. One family gets their case closed. The other family doesn’t have their children at home again for two years. What’s the difference? According to a woman who used to do this job, the difference isn’t the family. It’s the caseworker who happened to knock on the door.

This is the Father’s Advocacy Network podcast. I’m Adam Neuerburg. Today’s episode comes straight out of our newsroom. Her name is Lisa Border, and what she said should make every family court judge in this country uncomfortable.

Lisa Border worked in child protective services for years. But she didn’t learn about the system from a textbook. She grew up in it. She was a foster child, and she was later adopted. So she has seen this machine from both sides of the table. Recently she wrote a public post responding to Dean Tong. Tong is a forensic trial consultant based in Florida. He’s testified as an expert in at least ten states, and he’s often hired to pick apart CPS and police investigations, including the way children get interviewed. Tong has been saying something parents have been saying for decades: parents should be allowed to tell their side of the story in court. And Border agreed. But then she went further, and said the part that people inside the system usually only say to each other. In her words: it doesn’t matter what the family does or doesn’t do in ninety-nine percent of the cases. It’s the worker, and the agency.

Let that sink in for a second. A former caseworker is telling you that the single biggest factor in whether your children come home is not your housing, not your parenting, not your drug test. It’s the luck of the draw. And if you’ve been through it, you already know she’s right. We hear it at FAN every single week. Same facts, opposite outcomes. One county closes the case. The next county over files for removal. One worker sees a tired mom. Another worker sees a neglect finding. So the obvious question is: who are these workers, and how did they end up with that much power over your family?

Here’s what the numbers say. According to the Child Welfare League of America, child welfare agencies lose about thirty percent of their caseworkers every year. Casey Family Programs puts the median time a caseworker stays in the job at about one point eight years. Less than two years. That’s the typical person deciding whether your kids sleep in your house tonight. And it gets worse. Border wrote that many agencies, especially smaller counties, don’t require full training until six months to a year after a worker is hired. Think about what that means. The person who removes your child may never have been trained in safety assessment at all. They’re already making the call, and the training hasn’t even started. She also made a point that surprises a lot of people. A social work degree, or even a license, doesn’t fix this. Those programs mostly prepare people for clinical and therapy settings. They don’t teach you how to walk into a stranger’s home and decide whether a child is in danger. Now, I want to be careful here, because this is where the system always tries to steer the conversation. They’ll tell you the answer is more money, more staff, more funding. That’s not what this is about. The problem isn’t that the agency needs a bigger budget. The problem is that the agency has handed life-changing power to the least experienced people in the building, and then made sure nobody on the family’s side gets heard.

Border raised one more issue that should alarm anyone who cares about getting the truth: how workers talk to children. She said most workers aren’t trained in forensic interviewing. So they ask kids leading, closed-ended questions. Questions that point toward an answer. Did daddy hurt you? Is mommy mean to you? Questions that confirm the allegation instead of letting a child explain what actually happened in their own words. And this isn’t just her opinion. CPS training materials say the same thing. Investigative interviews take specialized skill, and the more leading the question, the less you can trust the answer. Young kids often try to give an adult the answer they think the adult wants. And yet those answers end up in court reports as if they were facts.

Now we get to the part of her post that hit me the hardest. Border wrote that most workers start out wanting to help. But many of them are young. Many come from middle-class or higher-income backgrounds. And a lot of them have very little experience with real poverty, or with cultures different from their own. That gap, she argued, shapes what they label as unsafe. Then she described a case she said she handled herself. A single mom. No beds. A few blankets. The kitchen is almost empty. Rice, beans, eggs, ramen. A worker who has never been poor walks into that apartment and sees neglect. Check the box. Write it up. But Border saw something else. She saw a mother who had left a violent relationship. A mother who kept a roof over her children’s heads by herself. Who took free comforters and folded them into pallets, so her kids slept on padding instead of the hard floor. Who was using food stamps, WIC, food pantries and school meals, exactly like she’s supposed to. The worker just happened to show up at the end of the month, a few days before the family’s benefits reset. Were those children unsafe? Her answer: absolutely not.

Agencies are not supposed to remove children for poverty alone. Border says they do it anyway, and then find another reason to put on paper. The parent’s mental health. A so-called lack of motivation to engage in services. Something that sounds better in a court report than, this family was broke on the twenty-eighth of the month. And here’s what nobody in that system wants to say out loud. Taking a child away from a loving mother because she’s poor doesn’t fix poverty. It just adds trauma on top of it. A family like that needs a bed frame, not a case plan.

So what does Border think should change? Her fix is simple, and it’s the same thing Dean Tong has been pushing for. Let parents speak to the judge. Let them enter their own evidence. Let them call their own witnesses, whether or not their attorney is willing to. Because right now, in a lot of courtrooms, the judge hears one version of your family: the agency’s. The report written by the worker who may not have been trained, who may have asked your kids leading questions, who may have mistaken an empty fridge for neglect. Border called that what it is: a one-sided view, and a violation of due process for both parents and children. When you give that much power to the least-trained people in the system, and you keep the parents from being heard, the result isn’t child safety. It’s removal by chance.

Before we go, if CPS is in your life right now, here are a few things you can do today. This isn’t legal advice. FAN is not a law firm. But these are things we’ve seen make a difference. One. Write everything down. Every visit, every phone call, every name, date and time, and what was said. Do it the same day, while it’s fresh. Two. Get the full name of your caseworker and their supervisor. If something goes wrong, you’ll need to know who made the call. Three. Build your own file. Your lease, your benefits, your kids’ school attendance, their doctor visits, photos of your home, and the names of people who know your family and will speak up for you. Don’t wait for the agency to tell your story. Their version is already written. Four. Tell your attorney, in writing, that you want your evidence and your witnesses in front of the judge. If they say no, ask them why, and get that answer in writing too. And five. You don’t have to do this alone. Go to fathers advocacy network dot com slash case help, and tell us what’s happening.

The full story on Lisa Border, with every source we used, is on our website, at fathers advocacy network dot com. The transcript and links are in the show notes. If this episode made you angry, good. Share it with one person who still thinks the system only takes kids who deserve to be taken. And follow the show, so you don’t miss the next one. I’m Adam Neuerburg. This is the Father’s Advocacy Network. Let the silenced speak.