When The Department of Children and Family (DCF) begins investigating your family, one of their first requests will be for you to sign various releases. These forms allow a DCF investigator to speak to people outside your family about you and your children.
When you sign a release, the people the DCF investigator speaks to will learn that you are under investigation. This can be embarrassing and harmful to your reputation. Talk to a DCF defense attorney at Mark Sherman Law before signing releases in a DCF investigation.
A lot of information about you and your children is legally confidential. DCF must have your consent to access confidential information about you and your children. The way they obtain your consent is to ask you to sign a release.
They may request that you sign a release allowing communication with your children’s pediatrician or family doctor. If you or your children receive care at an emergency room, they may ask that you sign a release to access your hospital records. If anyone in your home is receiving counseling or mental health treatment, DCF will likely seek a signed release from you that allows communication between DCF and the mental health professional.
The DCF investigator will also want a release to access your children’s educational records. With a release, they can examine your child’s IEP, if they have one, and speak with teachers, guidance counselors, and others at your children’s schools. Never sign a release before first speaking with a Darien DCF defense attorney.
Talking to doctors, accessing your child’s education records, and speaking with counselors or therapists provides a DCF investigator with a wealth of information. They are eager to get this information and may pressure you to sign releases.
You are not legally obligated to sign any release when you are under a DCF investigation. Resist any pressure to sign a release and immediately get in touch with a Darien attorney.
It is DCF practice to ask for releases and speak with anyone who could conceivably provide information to them. But a release is often not necessary to their investigation.
A Darien DCF defense attorney will get the investigator to state specifically what information they are seeking. In many cases, a legal professional can act as the intermediary and arrange to provide the information to DCF without giving the investigator the right to speak with doctors, teachers, therapists, and others.
For instance, if DCF is concerned about your child’s school attendance, they should accept a copy of the school’s attendance records, which you could ask the school to send to you, and you can provide them to DCF. Similarly, you could ask for a copy of your child’s medical records and provide that to the DCF investigator. By responding to the DCF’s need for information rather than providing a release, you can often avoid the stigma of people outside your family learning that you are subject to a DCF investigation.
DCF investigators are determined to get their hands on as much information about you and your children as possible. But you are entitled to protect your privacy, and signing releases in a Darien DCF investigation may be unnecessary.
The attorneys at the Law Offices of Mark Sherman will work diligently to keep DCF from overreaching and violating your privacy rights. Please read some of the reviews on our Avvo profile to see what past clients say about us, then reach out to schedule a meeting.
