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Dorchester mother leaves children alone--DCF investigates
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Should children be left home alone?
A 25-year-old Dorchester mother of two and her friend, also a mother of two, left their four children alone at approximately 2:20 a.m. this morning to get cigarettes, only to come home to the children having been taken by the police, who received a 911 call from someone reporting a barefoot child under the age of 6 wandering the streets looking for his mother.
When the police arrived at the home, they found four children, all under the age of 6 in the home with no adult supervision and promptly removed the children from the home. Although the children seemed healthy and well-fed, The Department of Children and Families was brought in to investigate the situation. When the two mothers arrived back at their home, they found the children had been taken by the police and went to the Area C-11 police station, only to find out that the children had been sent to Boston Medical Center to be examined. DCF has placed the children with relatives, as of right now, until it can be determined whether these women are fit to retain custody of their children again.
There seems to be some kind of debate as to whether DCF had the right to remove the children from the home, and whether leaving your children home alone for 30 minutes to go to the store makes you an unfit parent. Perhaps we should bring to light all the possible scenarios that could have occurred while the parents were gone to put into perspective the severity of this issue. What is there was a fire? What if one of the children began choking and was left with no one to intervene for 20 or 30 minutes? And think of the myriad of things that could have happened to the small child that was allowed to roam the streets of Boston at 2:30 in the morning.
It is our responsibility as parents to protect our children to the best of our ability at all times. Putting our children first is a sacrifice we must make to be sure that these fragile, vulnerable creatures survive this scary world we live in. Hopefully the Department of Children and Families will take this into consideration when deciding whether this woman should be given her children back.
What do you think? Do you think that this is a forgivable "mistake" on the mother's part or the unacceptable behavior of an unfit mother? Let's hear from the Boston moms on this issue. Leave a comment and let the debate begin!
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