In California, parents may soon effectively lose custody of kids 12 and older

By Katrina Trinko | The Daily Signal

In California, “stranger danger” may be about to acquire a whole new meaning.

Forget warning kids. It’s the parents in California who will need to be terrified of strangers if a new bill passes.

Snuck into AB 665, legislation ostensibly about extending mental health care to lower-income California youths, is a provision that effectively would terminate parents’ rights over their kids as soon as they turn 12.

The California Family Council warns that this bill “would allow children as young as 12 years old to consent to being placed into state funded group homes without parental permission or knowledge.”

As long as a mental health professional signs off on it, the kids can go to such a group home—and it doesn’t matter what their parents think.

“This bill gives a stranger, a school psychologist, power to decide whether a sixth or seventh grader comes home from school that day, and that’s terrifying,” Erin Friday, a California mom of two teens, tells The Daily Signal.

“This bill is essentially stating that parents are criminals that have to prove their innocence to get their child back,” adds Friday, who is a leader of the parent advocacy group Our Duty.

Seriously?

AB 665, which passed out of the Assembly Judiciary Committee last week, builds on a 2010 measure signed into law by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican. That law, the Mental Health Services for At-Risk Youth Act, allowed California children 12 and older to receive mental health care without their parents’ knowledge if a mental health provider determined it was best not to involve the parents.

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That provision was no accident. The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, celebrated the California law in a 2010 report as a “useful model for state or federal legislation to address mental illness among LGBT youth.”

“LGBT youth are likely to avoid using public mental health services if they believe that doing so will cause them to have to reveal their LGBT status to their parents or peers,” the Center for American Progress report said.

That same report also made the case that mental health services were vital for suicide prevention for LGBT youth: “Providing LGBT adolescents with access to mental health services is essential to helping them cope with the extreme pressures that have led many of them to consider suicide.”

But the data suggests that California’s Mental Health Services for At-Risk Youth Act hasn’t had the effect its boosters hoped for. In 2010, the year the legislation passed, 92 minors in California committed suicide, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Nor was 2010 an outlier: Looking at the years 2000-2010, an average of 82 minors a year committed suicide. From 2011-2020, the last year for which data is available, 106 minors a year on average committed suicide in California.

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So much for the success of the 2010 law.

Yet instead of reexamining and reforming the old law—which did allow 12-year-olds to access psychological care without parental permission or knowledge, but not residential services—California legislators are now seriously considering expanding the 2010 law and allowing 12-year-olds to go to residential treatment without parental permission.

Of course, that’s an outrageous slap in the face to parental rights.

But it’s also unlikely to help the kids who are troubled and seeking treatment. Pamela Garfield-Jaeger, a licensed clinical social worker since 1999, wrote on her Substack: “In my experience, working with youth in a school setting without parental involvement was ineffective. It was when the parents gave input, shared their point of view and communicated with their teen, [that] the real healing began.”

Garfield-Jaeger, who testified against the new California bill, also warned about the dangers of placing minors in new residences.

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“I worked in group homes I know what they are really like, and they are far from ideal,” the social worker said in her testimony. “Residential facilities lead kids to adopt new harmful habits, such as drug use, self-harm, and violent behavior.”

“Youth residential facilities are usually unlocked, and many kids run away into the hands of sex traffickers,” she added.

Why are California lawmakers trying to make it easier for kids to face such horrible fates?

The unspoken reason seems likely here: California lawmakers know that plenty of parents have concerns about minors who pursue gender transition. These are valid concerns: gender transition medical procedures, even for minors, can be extensive—and some of it is irreversible.

The growing “detransitioner” movement highlights how some people receive transgender treatment, and then have regrets.

“I shouldn’t have been allowed to go through this,” Chloe Cole, a detransitioner who regretted her gender transition after having breast removal surgery at 16, told “The Daily Signal Podcast” in January.

But California lawmakers don’t want parents to be able to stand in the way of their minor children making these life-changing decisions.

“It is apparent that one result of this bill will be the removal of trans-identified children from the family home,” Garfield-Jaeger said in her testimony. “In the dystopian nightmare we are in, if a parent doesn’t use the child’s chosen pronoun or name, they are labeled dangerous.”

In an interview with Fox News, Friday referred to this legislation as “state-sanctioned kidnapping.”

She’s right—and it’s terrifying that California lawmakers are considering legalizing, not penalizing, kidnapping.

Image courtesy of Public domain

36 thoughts on “In California, parents may soon effectively lose custody of kids 12 and older

  1. I’m not a parent of transgender children I don’t even know any transgender people but my opinion is that people are letting their children make life changing permanent decisions at such a young age it’s crazy. Makes me wonder what’s really going on behind closed doors and I can’t help but to think when they are so young and going through this if it the parents pressure. You just never really know but it’s sad.

    • Every ‘gender confused’ child needs legal protections such as an impartial guardian ad litem.

  2. Honestly, this article made me cry. You want to give children the choice to be whisked away from their family, even their brains are not fully developed enough to understand the impact that will make? So they want more kids in foster care, but they won’t give inmates in prison a wage raise from .08 cents but will gladly raise canteen prices? It takes and inmate at least a month to be able to afford a deodorant or toothpaste but liberals want to create more mouths for the government to feed? Make it make sense guys!

  3. Born and raised in California, loved the state. Saw what was happening and thank God, was able to move away. This political crap will not stop until the good people rise up and take control by any and all means necessary . If you don’t use your freedom to defend your freedom, you will lose your freedom. Are you willing to die to defend right over wrong?

  4. California just keeps getting more horrible every year! ALL OF THESE RIDICULES, MINDLESS PEOPLE NEED TO LEAVE FAMLIES AND CHILDREN ALONE!!
    NO ONE IS SAFE ANYWHERE ANYTIME! EVERYONE NEEDS A GUN!

  5. Bring it on!! The kids will be the first to say I want to go home. Then maybe the transgender cult will start to unravel. It may be the kids themselves who start a revolt.

    It could even bring on a federal charge against the state.

    There’s no painless way to turn this madness around.

  6. I CANNOT BELIEVE HOW F….ED UP THIS SYSTEM AND THE LAW HAS GOTTEN. OUR CHILDREN WOULD NOT BE SO SCREWED UP IF THE SYSTEM WOULD JUST GO BACK TO THE WAYS OF THE PAST. IT GETS WORST EVERY YEAR. I BLAME IT ALL ON THE GOVT.

  7. I think that the law coming up about taking Children away from their for NO reason is crap.

  8. This is a deliberate move by the leftist agenda to facilitate more children into the transgender and/or the LBGT communities. As the one girl in the article stated “I should never have been allowed to make these decisions” after she regretted having her breasts removed at 16. The left is all for the acceptance of the LGBT lifestyles and wants to ensure our complete cooperation/normalization of such so that we will be far less combative when they start to roll out their next agenda which will be the normalization and acceptance of pedophilia. This is the logical next step and while I can see you all shaking your heads and thinking “Not in a million years!” I can tell you that is EXACTLY what my generation said 50 years ago about homosexuality and transgenders. We didn’t even know what a transgender was! The left has no faith, no God. They have no belief that ANYTHING is or can be WRONG. If there is no God to see into your heart or to witness your actions, why would anything you do ever really matter? You won’t be judged if you can make it legal, Right? THIS is the final agenda. To make ANYTHING legal for the wealthy. If you can afford it then you can have it, do it, etc.. Eventually slavery and murder will be legal as well. The extremely wealthy are often jaded and bored. Why shouldn’t they turn the world into their own private playground (for them, but He’ll for us) it is happening now.

    • Bravo my thoughts exactly; very well said and so true! They want to control everything even our children for their own depravity regardless the cost to children, families and society. Kill all that’s innocent good and pure to exploit it as they please bc they’re immoral depraved bored sickos without a conscious or fear of God. I was born in the 50’s and what l see today is so alarming and I’m so glad l had my children in 75, 88 bc l got a taste of this screw the parent generation from the niece l raised for 10 yr born in 2001, with the internet, gaming and cell phone era where every kid thought they were entitled to a phone. NO, . My niece at 12 would sneak in discarded old device her pals gave her and stalk men on the internet right under my nose and social works would say, “Oh, kids experiment with sex early these days.” Like this was normal and l was the problem! She stole my credit card# and rung up over 2k and the cops wouldn’t even talk to her like in past times they’d do. When l reported this fraud with all the investigation paperwork and proof of it, the WCPD cop at the window shoved it all back at me saying they didn’t need it. The detective called and told me he wasn’t doing anything, l asked why? He said, “Bc I’m not.” Well, at least can you talk to her and give her a scare, so she won’t do it to another person? “No.” That was it. This state CA is going to hell in a hand basket and they blame it on parents. They hiked up housing so high for more taxes and blamed it on greedy realtors. Always causing distraction and blaming everyone but themselves. With no term limit we have these greedy power hungry brain dead corpses out of touch with reality and the real citizens of USA issues not being dealt with or acknowledged and deviling around our personal live and that of our children’s as if they have a right to run our personal business and families, all the while opening our borders for every drug dealer, jijadi terrorist, extortioners, sick and poor pouring in here causing decay, danger, welfare exploration and every moral corruption and lawlessness to occur here unabated as law enforcement get lazier and more complacent everyday as they harass innocent citizens. These good for nothing corrupt entitled politico leeches still get their hefty raises, free perks, and slush money, bribes and corrupt dealings with our most dangerous country’s worse enemies that want us wiped off the face of the world and taken over since l could remember. China, Iran, Russia just to mention these 3 are building an alliance together to retailate and come against the US, pointing nukes at us that could reach us in a few minutes. But you don’t hear a peep about this in the US popular news owned by these power playing nuts mentioning it to the citizens in the daily news. No, it’s not for us to know, just throw out more noise and distractions and keep them all so worried and busy with life they have no time to figure out the truth. They created this financial mess to get mother’s out of the homes to work so they could cause more hardship for parents and less control of their kids. True story. I could go on forever. I feel so bad for our country, ppl, and the whole world and the citizens of our great country being exploited used for their own gain alone to control all eventually and have all of humanity inslaved and our beautifully created world God made for all ppl destroyed bc of greed. Yes, sister, you are so correct in all you stated. Unfortunately

  9. The Family Court System in California is Broken beyond repair. The legislature continues to pass laws that make it increasingly difficult for good parents to stay connected to their children, while placing an ever increasing source of revenue into the pockets of Lawyers, Mental Health “experts”, Group Home Facilities Operators and other members of the “Children and Families Industrial Complex”. My guess is that Cartel was the primary behind-the-scenes supporter of this bill.

    All California Taxpayers contribute to these people, since the State usually pays the bill and funds the Legal System.

  10. Our leaders (?)…who were elected by the people of this state…are giving
    children the right to leave their families and go into group homes for mental health issues without the parents involvement? I remember the older California, not the demoralizing state it has become. Is this a joke. Highest taxes in the US…gender change , drugs and homelessness….”Do whatever it’s ok….” Makes me sick….Save our children..

    • Believe me, the parents will be involved in one way. Those group homes aren’t going to pay for themselves. So imagine this; not only has your child been stolen without your knowledge or consent, your gonna have to start shelling large sums if money to the county to pay for it all. It’s legalized kidnapping and extortion.

  11. Hitler took control of Germany’s youths with the agreement of most German parents, for the good of Das Reich
    The rest is history.

    In California, the all-knowing bureaucratic state, wants to take control of children so it can pollute their minds with various nonsense doctrines.

    Does history repeat itself?

  12. They are coming after the children. Innocent children are the targets and parents have no say – according to the cloak wearing government ghouls. Nightmares are coming true – protect the children!

  13. This is one more horrifying aspect of living in this Naziesque state. I seriously fear for my young grandchildren and I can’t wait for the day my son can move out of this state I grew up in and used to love so much…

  14. Seriously ❣️First of all children may be very smart but they’re incapable of making these decisions with and especially without parental consent. 18-21 are considered adult they can’t make a decision that will change their life. And kids can’t be taken away from their parents. Maybe they can live with a relative

  15. So far one of the worse states to live other then VT but our commie idiots are working hard to rectify that…

  16. I remember being scared to death of children’s services when I was raising my kids 20 years ago people would send their kids to school and when they would go to pick them up they would receive a card stating who took them and you’d have a year to figure out how to hire an out of area attorney and how to pay to prove your innocent and get your kids back. I remember I was told that as soon as they got on the bus in the morning basically they were school property until they were dropped off at night trust me the school’s hated seeing me coming. Now this is Oregon but I do wonder how it feels to some of you parents that may think you’re in a different situation see I was a single mom of 3 girls but I bet some of you are married and living a more middle class lifestyle and to have your children tell the school they’d rather go to a facility than home alot of you are going to be shocked because teenagers are a whole different breed of people hormones, secrets a lot more drama than even 20 years ago and a lot of you parents are thinking you know your children and you don’t because you’ve been busy, we worried because our children were being wrongfully stolen from us due to what ever circumstances cps could come up with but you people your children are the ones saying take me so what does that say about our society.

  17. It’s very interesting that mine are children are allowed to make the decision about altering their bodies, yet parents are held responsible for any of their actions that happen and the greater society whether it be for seth, brutality, etc. Yet we don’t give them the right to smoke until they’re 21 or by smoking paraphernalia lighters anything or alcohol until they’re 21. So it makes no sense to me how they could legalize this when yet if that’s the case why can’t they join the military then if they want to, buy cigarettes, buy liquor, by pornography or any of the other things that they could possibly buy but yet the statute says they are underage so they’re not allowed to but this gender issue is allowed unbelievably ridiculous

  18. This is absolutely absurd. No one and I mean No One has the right to take a child from their parents unless the child is being abused. This gives the state power over the parents in raising their children the way they see fit. This cannot happen! Keep your transgender BS out our house! Anyone who does this will reap the wrath of our Lord!

  19. Jesus! Stop the madness already. If I could afford to move, I’d be gone.. The people who need mental health? They’re the ones pretending to Care about the youth

  20. This law definitely needs rethinking. I think this law is to wide in scope. I understand protecting children from abuse both physically and mentally. Children at such a young age should not be allowed to make life decisions that could ruin themselves. Brains are not fully developed and their are no life experiences. Most of us learn by trial and error under parental supervision. Parents keep losing their rights. How is a parent to learn parenting with so much government control. This all needs rethinking.

  21. This is a SAD BILL!!!
    We need to tell the Truth about these
    spirits that attack not only our Youth,
    but Mankind in general!!!
    No such thing as Mental Health!!!
    These are demonic spirits that tries
    to control us…A Liquor Store sells what,
    Wine & Spirits/ Drugs Stores sell what,DRUGS…You Teach on these tormenting spirits,and You go to The BOOK that has the answers…GOD BLESS…

  22. What a shocking despicable law now they enforcing because is favor the politicians who there left agenda is conveniently for them what a shame líderes in our government speak out parents don’t let the government decide for our kids ,enough is enough

  23. What a messed up Bill! It’s disgusting to think a child can be taken from a parent at 12 years old because the state wants to step in. I can see in cases of physical abuse, sexual abuse, or where the parents are using drugs, alcoholism or unfit to be parents. I’m shaking my head at the State of California in the ignorance behind the bill such as this!

  24. I have 5 kids !!! Is this a joke ? You are making a law ? But they can’t smoke tell 21 can’t vote tell 18 . Where do all your heads go ???? Like come on !!! Common sense!!! No ???

  25. This is horrible! A 12 year cannot comprehend the severity of this! California needs to let parents parent THEIR children!

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