Husband Ordered Out of the House Due to Positive Drug Test

My question involves child abuse or neglect in the State of: Texas

Someone called in a report on us to CPS. The allegations we were told about were: no food in the house for the children-it all belongs to the uncle; the house is a wreck; and the mom and dad do drugs. The caseworker came for the initial investigation, and had us sign a plan to clean up the house some and to take UAs.

During the second inspection (less than 48 hours later), she said the house was "magnificent and immaculate".

We did not hear from her for almost 3 weeks. During the phone call, she stated that my husband had come back over 300 units positive for marijuana and he needed to leave while they got him into substance abuse classes. He does not use anything other than over the counter sleep aids, energy drinks containing Riboflaven, and something they gave him in the ER the morning of the UA. The caseworker stated that they did not find any medications in his system, and refused to pull the ER records. She then said to get our options together and to just wait to do anything until we hear from her. It has been a week now since we have heard anything from her.

We are involved with Early Head Start, Humble Area Assistance Ministries, and have regular (weekly) meetings with our 8 year old's teacher. Neither of us have any drug use history, CPS history for ourselves (husband's father had a case and my mother had a case), and my husband has literally no criminal record. I have a class c misdemeanor DV against my abuser in 2004.

Since this has started, my entire family has been affected mentally. My husband, my 8 year old, myself, and my roommate are all having trouble sleeping. Our 1 year old is picking up on our distress, and is not sleeping her normal schedule. My 8 year old is receiving poor marks in school and her grades are dropping. My husband is manic depressive with suicidal tendencies, and we are his literal life support system. He has fallen into a depressed state that will only become worse with either removal of the children, or removal of himself from his family.

We need to know if there is anything we can do to protect ourselves in this situation. Please let me know if you have any suggestions, and thank you all for reading.

P.S. The first contact about this was a child wellcheck from the sheriffs department on March 21st.

The first thing, would be to go request a copy of the hospital reports.

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Quoting loupsgarou333

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The allegations we were told about were: no food in the house for the children-it all belongs to the uncle; the house is a wreck; and the mom and dad do drugs. The caseworker came for the initial investigation, and had us sign a plan to clean up the house some and to take UAs.

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You indicate later that it's not just CPS - that it was the Sheriff's Department that received the report and, following their conducting a safety check, it was the Sheriff's Department that decided that CPS should become involved based upon the conditions they found? You have objected here only to the suggestion that you and your husband use drugs - should we infer that the rest of the allegations were, more or less, accurate?

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Quoting loupsgarou333

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During the phone call, she stated that my husband had come back over 300 units positive for marijuana and he needed to leave while they got him into substance abuse classes. He does not use anything other than over the counter sleep aids, energy drinks containing Riboflaven, and something they gave him in the ER the morning of the UA.

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Unless they gave him Marinol, which is exceptionally unlikely, none of that is going to cause a positive for THC. You haven't told us about anything that would create a false positive for marijuana, and there's no reason to believe that they would have been testing for anything but common street drugs. With a 300 ng/mL test result, the chance of a false positive is very low, but if your husband is in fact not using marijuana that would be the only reasonable possibility under the facts you've shared.

If your husband believed he had a false positive, the best thing to have done would have been to promptly obtain an independent drug test from a source CPS would trust. He could have also asked CPS to retest him or, if they retained the sample, to have the sample independently tested to verify or refute the result.

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Quoting loupsgarou333

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It has been a week now since we have heard anything from her.

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What steps have you and your husband taken to follow up?

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Quoting loupsgarou333

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Since this has started, my entire family has been affected mentally. My husband, my 8 year old, myself, and my roommate are all having trouble sleeping....

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I'm sorry to hear that, but having CPS tell you to clean your house in the interest of the health and safety of your children, asking you to take drug tests to confirm your sobriety for the safety of your children, and having them express significant concern when a test comes back positive? That's their job.

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Quoting loupsgarou333

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We need to know if there is anything we can do to protect ourselves in this situation.

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Get your husband back in with his psychiatrist and counselor, keep your house clean and appropriately stocked with food, continue to abstain from drugs, be polite and cooperative with the case workers, and stop engaging in behavior that makes your children anxious.

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Quoting Mr. Knowitall

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You indicate later that it's not just CPS - that it was the Sheriff's Department that received the report and, following their conducting a safety check, it was the Sheriff's Department that decided that CPS should become involved based upon the conditions they found? You have objected here only to the suggestion that you and your husband use drugs - should we infer that the rest of the allegations were, more or less, accurate?

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- We believe that the sheriff's department came to investigate as to the safety of the CPS caseworker prior to her initial contact. The caseworker guide book states that if there is a history of mental disability, or a report of drug use, that the police may be sent out first. The sheriffs said that everything seemed to be in order. There was food in the kitchen, the house was tidy, and no sign of drugs or paraphernalia.
The caseworker said that we needed to get the toys off of the floor, pick up the laundry (2 baskets of clean clothes that I was in the middle of folding-along with the stacks of folded clothes around the spot I was folding in), and that there could be "NO" feces in the litter box. I explained to her that the box is scooped nightly and changed out once a week. It is also kept behind a baby gate so my 14 mo old cannot get to it.

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Quoting Mr. Knowitall

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Unless they gave him Marinol, which is exceptionally unlikely, none of that is going to cause a positive for THC. You haven't told us about anything that would create a false positive for marijuana, and there's no reason to believe that they would have been testing for anything but common street drugs. With a 300 ng/mL test result, the chance of a false positive is very low, but if your husband is in fact not using marijuana that would be the only reasonable possibility under the facts you've shared.

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-I don't believe it was Marinol. I called the testing facility yesterday morning to ask them about procedures. They stated that the type of testing they do will only yield a positive/negative result (>50 units/<50 units), and that CPS would not have been notified of a specific amount of THC found. They also stated that the test done does not test to verify the use of any medications.

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Quoting Mr. Knowitall

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If your husband believed he had a false positive, the best thing to have done would have been to promptly obtain an independent drug test from a source CPS would trust. He could have also asked CPS to r etest him or, if they retained the sample, to have the sample independently tested to verify or refute the result.

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-We had no reason to believe that either of the tests would have come back positive, so we did not go to an independent testing facility. However, he was given a blood test earlier that morning in the ER. CPS refuses to pull the result of the blood test. We asked for CPS to do a retest. They refused on the grounds that too much time had passed and the supervisor "did not want to hear that stuff). We were not notified of the test results until 3 weeks after the UA to begin with.

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Quoting Mr. Knowitall

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What steps have you and your husband taken to follow up?

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-I have called the number the caseworker left on her business card multiple times and left voice-mails questioning the status of our case. I have gotten no answer, and no return calls. This same thing occurred during the 3 weeks after the UA.

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Quoting Mr. Knowitall

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I'm sorry to hear that, but having CPS tell you to clean your house in the interest of the health and safety of your children, asking you to take drug tests to confirm your sobriety for the safety of your children, and having them express significant concern when a test comes back positive? That's their job.

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-I do understand that it is their job and I am not questioning that. I just need to know why we are playing the waiting game and not being informed of what is going on. The caseworker told us just to wait until we hear from her to do anything.

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Quoting Mr. Knowitall

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Get your husband back in with his psychiatrist and counselor, keep your house clean and appropriately stocked with food, continue to abstain from drugs, be polite and cooperative with the case workers, and stop engaging in behavior that makes your children anxious.

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-He sees a psychiatrist annually due to the disability, but has otherwise been cleared unless there are any problems that arise. We are in the process of getting into family counseling to try and help everyone cope with this situation. We pick up any toys, do dishes, scoop the cat box, and vacuum nightly before bed as we have always done-I don't know what else we can do to keep it any cleaner honestly. There is never a day where there is not food in the refrigerator and pantry (we have 2 cases of Ramen just in case we were to run short). Abstaining from drug use is not a problem. Neither of us use drugs, and have no drug use history in the legal system. I experimented when I was in high school, and my husband has been 100% clean for the last 3 years. As for the children being anxious, none of this started until the caseworker started saying that either my children or my husband had to be removed from the home. My 8 yo is worried now that either she, her sister, and their soon-to-be brother will never be able to see us again, or that daddy will die because he gets taken. I don't know how to fix this.

-Also, the title of the post was supposed to be "CPS in TX is causing mental trauma for the entire family". I don't know why it changed and I don't know how to fix it on this site.

Thank you.

a head hair test will show the drug presence, or lack of it, for approx 90 days. A body hair test will show results for approx 1 year.

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Quoting jk

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a head hair test will show the drug presence, or lack of it, for approx 90 days. A body hair test will show results for approx 1 year.

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-Can hair tests only go back that far? CPS tried to say that if we ask them to pull his ER records, they will hair follicle test him from the date of my 8 yo birth, and that if the test was dirty, they would remove the kids. I don't feel that this should be legal because he was not with me until 2010, and she was born in 2005. If it can only go back a year, we need to get them to do it.

Btw, I love the tag line at the bottom. "I am not an attorney and any advice is not to be construed as legal advice. You might even want to ignore my advice. Actually, there are plenty of real attorneys that you might want to ignore as well."

that was gleaned from a website that does hair sample drug tests.

I believe that is a standard time frame that is utilized. From my understanding, that is done by cutting the hair as closely to the head as possible and using 1 1/2 of the sample closest to the head. Hair grows at a rate of approx 1/2 per month so that would calculate to be 3 months, or 90 days.


From my understanding, they can test any portion of the hair. For them to be able to test 8 years ago, the hair would have to be 1/2 X 12 X 8 or 48 inches long. I do not know the dependability of testing hair that old though. There might be an issue with that due to the weathering the hair experiences.

was your husband's hair 48 inches long? I suspect not. Heck, there aren't too many women with hair that long.

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Quoting jk

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From my understanding, they can test any portion of the hair. For them to be able to test 8 years ago, the hair would have to be 1/2 X 12 X 8 or 48 inches long. I do not know the dependability of testing hair that old though. There might be an issue with that due to the weathering the hair experiences.

was your husband's hair 48 inches long? I suspect not. Heck, there aren't too many women with hair that long.

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-They may not be able to go back quite that far then, but it could still be a concern maybe. His hair is to the bottom of his shoulder blades, however, he dyes it regularly so it does have a tone of weathering to it.

We still haven't heard anything from the caseworker. Is there a time frame for how long they have to contact us with the next step? How long do they have to close a case if they are not making contact? Thanks!

We finally got a call from the caseworker today. She asked us, again, what states, cities, and counties we have previously lived in. I told her. That has been 3 times now I have given her this information. You would think it would be in our case file by now. Our safety plan ended on the 10th, and here she is contacting us 3 days later. She then stated that she would be by to see us "sometime soon". Is there anything I need to know or ask on this upcoming visit? Thank you.

Just that you appear to have them in a stalemate situation and they appear to be waiting you out, to see what happens. They are good at games.