"In February 2015, DCFS received an anonymous referral indicating that the
mother regularly left Julien for several days a week with his grandmother who smoked
cigarettes in the child’s presence, left prescription medicine accessible to him and
allowed him to eat candy."
Wait. That's all it takes to get a DCFS referral?! Cigarettes and prescription pills in the house, and (gasp!) eating candy? Gonna be a lot of calls on Halloween, I'd imagine.
Ultimately, when the DCFS worker actually tours the home, it turns out that there are all sorts of other problems, which ultimately leads to this appeal.
But I read a lot of these cases, and I can say without exaggeration that the allegations at issue are usually way worse than the fact that the grandmother smokes and the kid eats some candy.
Way.