Department of Child Disservices: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|'''Mrs. Stevens''': I promise, it'll never happen again.

 

We all know that in fiction, [[There Are No Therapists]] and [[Social Services Does Not Exist]].

See [[Don't Split Us Up]], [[Promotion to Parent]].

 

 

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* Subverted in the ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' episode "Plight of the Children". While the social workers do get too heavy-handed in their attempts to bring in the orphans, at least some of them genuinely want to help them. The oldest orphan and leader of the group Pigero eventually realizes this and allows the younger orphans to be taken away.

 

* ''[[Black Panther]]: [[Daredevil|The Man Without Fear]]'' has a CPS social worker who grows so disillusioned with her own department's apparent inability to protect young abuse victims that she takes to murdering abusive parents herself.

 

* The ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' [[Alternate Universe Fic]] ''[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7189428/1/Prison_Island_Break Prison Island Break]'' plays this straight. Convict Shadow Robotnik was taken away from his eccentric father-creator Gerald, but Social Services itself accidentally knocked down his sister Maria while doing so, fuelling a life-long resentment towards The Man. He was then passed around a series of foster homes which had trouble coping with him due to his emotional trauma and the fact that he's the Ultimate Lifeform. He was finally passed into the care of foster parents who physically and sexually abused him, and who he eventually murdered. Different from many other abuse fanfics in that Shadow clearly avoids bringing it up and will try to change the subject if it does.

{{quote|'''Silver:''' What... ''happened'' to you?

'''Shadow:''' Nobody ever came when ''I'' screamed. Nobody sympathised with me when ''I'' did what had to be done. Why should I help you, knowing there's nothing you can do for me?! }}

 

== Film ==

* Looked at objectively, it's arguably not the '''worst''' decision Child Services has ever made: in ''[[Raising Arizona]]'', Hi and Ed are denied adoption because Hi is an ex-con.

* ''[[Lilo and Stitch]]'': Inverted. At first it seems kind of unreasonable to demand Nani get a new job within three days, not to mention the scene where Lilo has locked Nani out of the house (preventing her from getting to the burning dinner, etc) and the social services worker looks on with disapproval, keep in mind...

* Occurs in ''[[Lackawanna Blues]],'' when the (white) social services agent comes to question the living conditions of the (black) main character. [[Positive Discrimination|The social services agent is portrayed entirely unsympathetically.]]

* In [[Charlie Chaplin]]'s ''[[The Kid]]'' the Social Service workers are again portrayed as villains, who want to take Chaplin's adoptive son away because of the poverty they live in.

 

== Literature ==

* ''[[The Sisters Grimm]]'' is the epitome of this trope. Sabrina and Daphne have been stuck with crazy man who is obsessed with his ferrets, people who locked the girls in bathrooms, and ex-convicts. That's just naming a few of the places they had to run away from.

* ''[[White Oleander]]'' is built around this trope.

*** And that book also pointed out that, at least in Dumbledore's opinion, the way the Dursleys shamelessly spoiled and indulged their own son Dudley was arguably ''even more'' damaging than the way they neglected Harry.

** Dumbledore sent Mrs. Figg to spy on the Dursleys and report that they were abusing Harry.

* Most of the plot of ''[[The Tomorrow Series|Circle of Flight]]'' is Ellie fighting to regain custody of Gavin after he is removed because there is dog faeces on their lawn, his bedroom is untidy and their dog is sleeping in there, and there is too much soft drink and too little milk in their refrigerator.

* ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' uses this trope quite frequently with Mr. Poe, who places the Baudelaire orphans in one abusive home after another for the first seven books (with the exception being book 2).

** Especially notable is the first book, in which the sole criteria he uses to choose the children's guardian-to-be is how far out of his way he has to go to drop them off.

* Dante from ''[[A Rush Of Wings]]'' was deliberately put through this by the [[Government Conspiracy|shadowy government conspiracy of mad science]] for the express purpose of turning him psychopathic. Ironically, he's [[the Messiah]]. Seems the government really can't do anything right...

* One of the ''[[Babysitters Club]]'' Mystery Specials was about the girls investigating mysterious events while on a work experience trial at a shopping mall. They eventually discover that three young children are ''living'' in the mall because [[Don't Split Us Up|social services had threatened to separate them]] after their mother had to go into hospital.

* In [[Andrew Vachss]]'s Burke books, the protagonist, after being left to the State when his (apparently?) prostitute mother abandoned him, experienced the horrors of an at best ineffectual, at worst actively malicious system firsthand.

* One episode of ''[[Person of Interest]]'' involved a social worker framing ex-cons with children for various crimes so that he could take the children away as part of an embezzlement scheme.

 

* One episode of ''[[Bones]]'' that deals with this - they must depend on abused foster children to help solve a crime, and the good doctor complains about this to a CPS Agent.

** And of course, Bones herself had a rather nasty time in foster care as part of her backstory.

* In many [[Lifetime Movie of the Week]] plots, social services will inevitably be portrayed like they are incompetent. Both types 1 and 2. Alternatively, it will be portrayed as way too easy to adopt children if it moves the plot along.

* Averted in the fourth season of ''[[Queer as Folk]]''. When Ben and Michael are granted custody over teenage [[Dark and Troubled Past|former prostitute]] Hunter, they are told that a social worker may show up unannounced at any time, and they spend quite som time worrying about not making a good impression. When she finally shows up, Hunter opens the door dressed only in his underwear (which is something they have told him to stop doing because of that very reason) and Michael and his [[My Beloved Smother|mom]] are having the screaming match of the century. They are horrified, convinced that she's going to take Hunter away from them, but she comes back later and tells them they have nothing to worry about, since she realizes that a family that love each other enough to feel comfortable yelling like that is not necessarily an unhealthy environment for a child, and she compares them to her relationship with her own mother.

 

== Music ==

* [[Eric Bogle]]'s "Daniel Smiling" is about this.

 

== Web Comics ==

 

== Web Original ==

* In ''[[Dept Heaven Apocrypha]]'', what serves for Social Services in Asgard proved so ineffectual that {{spoiler|Nessiah}}, a victim of severe sexual abuse, was basically ignored until it was almost too late. It didn't help that the perpetrator happened to be a [[Villain with Good Publicity]] and ''considerable'' political power, who was pressuring them to keep out of his way.

** Even now, it's hinted that they might give in to that pressure; they've been investigating for a few months but can't seem to decide what to do with the evidence they have that {{spoiler|Hector}} is a rapist.

 

== Western Animation ==

* ''[[South Park]]'': The kids manage to get all their parents arrested by claiming they were molested by them. The Department of Child Disservices never shows up, even as ''all'' the adults in South Park are taken away when the kids make further accusations, and apparently the state of Colorado never bothers to care even as the town dissolves into chaos (since the kids aren't capable of taking care of themselves).

* ''[[Family Guy]]'': There was an episode devoted almost entirely to this where Meg took a part time job and milked her customers' sympathy to get bigger tips by claiming to be the unwed mother of a crack baby (with Stewie playing the part of her "son"). One of said customers was a Social Services agent, and interestingly enough, said social worker actually conducted an investigation, though she removed Stewie and had Peter and Lois' parental rights terminated without any actual evidence, or for that matter ''knowing who his actual mother was''.

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[[Category:The Parent Trope]]