er makes a decision to preserve the integrity of the family, and a child ultimately suffers harm, child protective services is condemned for not removing the child from the family environment. Conversely, when a human services case worker decides, for the best interests of the child, to remove the child from the family environment, the state is frequently criticized for being "heavy-handed" and insensitive to the concept of family. In the Susan Smith case, the family, the children, and the mother were to all outward appearances both emotionally and physically healthy. No member of the family came to the attention of child protective services. It is all well and good to state that if child protective services of the State of South Carolina had intervened to provide Susan Smith with personal counseling, or to provide her with financial assistance to care for her children, or to arrange for some relief for her in the day care of her children that these actions might have prevented the deaths of Michael and Alex Smith. American society, however, does not tolerate governmental intrusion into the lives of ouwardly health individuals and families without apparent and probable cause. The same people who contend after the fact that state child protective services might have prevented this tragedy would have been up in arms denouncing a meddling bureaucracy if an attempt had been made to intervene in the lives of the members of the Susan Smith family given the perceptions by extended family and friends of that family prior to the events of October 1994.
2. Child protective services organizations are expected to respond to and monitor a growing number of domestic problem situations. At the same time, the public sector is continually battered by special interest groups demanding reduced levels of taxes. Child protective services in the State of South Carolina does not have the resources required to seek out potential problems in seeming...