Cps investigation help!

[gandulfy]

Hi I am writing this to see if I should maybe be concerned and need to contact a local lawyer or if my concerns are possibly not that big of a deal. My family situation is as follows, My wife of 2 years has 4 children that are not mine, their ages are 13, 12, 9, and 7. I have 1 child with her that is almost 1 year old now. In january of 2007 our youngest daughter (the 9 year old), suffered from lice that we believe she got from school or her grandma. She was sent home from school on Jan the 22nd with a note stating she was to rid herself of the lice and then return to school. We immediatly purchased commercial lice products and treated her hair. On january 26th she also came down with a flu therefore on January 30th she returned to school. On or around Febuary 12th we recieved a visit from CPS, the social worker stated that they were investigating concerns on the fact that the daughter had missed so much school. We explained the situation to him and he seemed to have no problems. We told him exactly what had happened and that we did not understand why the school was concerned. He told us that she needed to be in school and we said ok. We thought this was the end of it. On March 22nd we recieved a certified letter in the mail from DSHS this letter states my wifes name and says that on 2/6/2007 cps recieved report(s) alleging that she had abused or neglected a child. It goes on to say that they determined the allegations as either unfounded or inconclusive as to her. Below this there is a line that states 1. Referral ID : xxxxxxx The allegation of negligent treatment or maltreatment is unfounded.

It told us that state low required they send this letter out and that we could obtain a copy of the report if we wrote them. We were rather relieved and placed the letter in our records. On March 30th and 9:30PM at night 2 uniformed and 1 plain clothsed policemen/women showed up at our door. They asked if they could come in, we let them in, (even though now from what i read online that is maybe not a great idea), and the woman started explaining the situation to us. She told us that when the daughter had missed school she was questioned by the CPS worker at school (something the daughter had already told us), and that she had told the worker that she was home because she had to watch the baby, and because of this cps had called them. This obviously is crazy as we don't even let her hold the baby unless she is sitting down much less watch him. We told her that perhaps she was talking about the fact that while she was at home she got to sit on the floor and play with him. And assured her that we do not ever leave any of the children alone with the baby especially the 9 year old. They asked if they could see the children we agreed with the exception of the youngest boy, he had thrown up on himself and was in the bathtub. They also asked to look around in the kitchen etc we said no problem, our house isn't super clean giving we have 5 children but we keep it rather clean and were not concerned. After this the female officer said that they were done and they left.

Now my question is should we be concerned about this police visit, since we got an unfounded letter from cps? Or is this standard operating procedure in this sort of situation. It seemed to us that the letter from cps had stated that everythign was fine, our concern is why the police are now showing up a month later. Do we need to start talking to a lawyer? Or am i possibly just being over concerned here? I love my children as much as any other father does and want to make sure nothing happens here.

I am pretty familiur with CPS and they start alot of crap. If I was you I would talk to a lawyer just to have that support. It would probably be in your best interest. Also document everything.