The Department of Children and Family Services: An Evil Organization
By Manny Vazquez, M.S., LMFT, Premier Child and Parental Advocate, Thought Leader in the Mental Health Treatment of Children and Adolescents
Saturday, July 25, 2026
Friends, there are many things the government should never get involved with because the bureaucracy of that same government often leads to evil outcomes for the citizenry of our nation.
First, I must explain the nature of evil. What makes something evil? Well, evil is simply a lack of God, just like cold is a lack of heat, and darkness is a lack of light. So, anything that is evil is by definition devoid of God.
One such organization that is supremely evil is the Department of Children and Family Services, or DCFS, for short. When DCFS was formed, the social workers who advocated for it had the best of intentions, to protect children from abusive parents. I have always said that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Somewhere along the way, DCFS has lost its way. There has been more evil perpetrated by DCFS in the name of protecting children than any good the organization has ever done.
Oftentimes, families who come to the attention of DCFS are treated unjustly by a system that is very broken, and not just broken, but supremely evil. I have personally witnessed the mental health of children as young as 1 year old destroyed by a DCFS system that is supposed to protect them. The evil in this bureaucracy is mind boggling.
I have counseled many parents whose children have been literally ripped from their arms and placed in a poorly run foster care system, which is almost always overwhelmed. Don’t get me wrong, some foster homes are good and are even Christian.
I told the story in an earlier blog about how I once worked with a young boy, about age 6, who had been taken by DCFS and placed far from his family. What I witnessed with that child and family should not happen to any child and family. I evaluated a child who was severely depressed, a depression caused by an organization that was supposed to be protecting him. This child languished in foster care for months because his parents committed something that DCFS thought was egregious. I can tell you from my assessment of the situation that that child did not need to be
removed from his family. What the family needed was support; what they did not need is to be ripped apart.
And this situation is repeated more times than I care to count. The vast majority of children removed by DCFS do not need to be removed from the care of their families, where they feel safe and loved. A child will never feel loved by a foster parent who means well. That foster parent is not that child’s parent; he or she is a complete stranger, someone who doesn’t love the child, and the child knows it.
Yes, there are some children who are in untenable situations, where they are being severely abused, or even trafficked. My firm belief is that if DCFS stopped worrying about parents who might spank their child, or parents who have addictions, or parents who are stressed and suffering mentally and emotionally; and they focused on the traffickers or the parents who are selling their children to pedophiles, they would be a much more effective organization.
There is one thing I must point out: many of the social workers who work for DCFS are Christian. They care about the children in their care, but their hands are tied by a system that does not understand the first thing about children’s mental health.
If DCFS understood anything about children’s mental health, they would know that you don’t rip a child from their parents’ home, just because the parent committed an error in judgment or in their behavior.
Before you start complaining that I am throwing out the baby with the bath water, I must say that DCFS is the one tossing babies aside, and people like me are working very hard to rescue them.
DCFS is evil, not because its workers are evil, but because it has a mission of removing children first and asking questions later. As a child psychotherapist, I have worked with thousands of children and families whose lives have been destroyed by DCFS and the idiotic judges who support DCFS in everything they do.
I am calling on the current Administration to reform DCFS, to stop it from indiscriminately destroying families because of some misguided mission they have to protect those same families, a mission saddled by a mish mash of rules and regulations that don’t help children and families at all.
I plan on running for political office someday, God willing, and my first order of business will be reform the evil organization known as DCFS. Amen.