The summer between my Jr. and Sr. year of high school, I took a job
working as a desk clerk in a local hotel. My boss was the manager,
and her husband was the maintenance man. These people also had 6
foster children living with them. Imagine my horror when I realized
they were bringing the kids in to clean rooms and fold laundry! Only
ONE of them was old enough to have a job, and none of them were on
the payroll. This wasn’t a “family run” business, this was a national
hotel chain. The reward at the end of the day was getting to swim in
the hotel pool. I’m all for kids learning responsibility and working,
but these were little kids putting in a full day’s work for a swim!
After realizing this “foster home” was just a cover for child slave
labor, I made an anonymous phone call to children’s services, then
gave my notice.
If it happened once- to teach them responsibility, I guess it’s not so bad. If it happened every day, that’s terrible.
MY gf is a social worker and has seen it (and other cases that would break your heart) before.
These cretins (the foster parents) also get (depending on where they live) several hundreds of dollars a month per kid from Social Services to “care” for these kids. So in addition to the free (and illegal) labor (if that was the case), the foster parents also get PAID.
were you ever able to hear what happened from there??
Good for you. I’m afraid this kind of thing happens all the time.
I don’t see whats wrong with that. I have been working since I was 6 years old at my fathers auto shop. And now my 5 year old daughter works with me at my restaurant (she folds aprons and helps me with my paper work. he reward at the end of the day is anything she wants off the menu and a feeling of accomplishment)
Do you have something against people treating their foster children like their own children ?
It sounds like they aren’t being forced to be there, but want to swim in the pool so they are asked to help out.
To be completely honest, any child with two working parents (especially a foster child) would give anything to spend the day with their parents and to feel like they are needed. Sounds pretty amazing for the childs self worth to me……
anonymous calls to child services are pretty cold.
im with kay on this one… the kids probably werent there every day (or all day) because im sure they went to school. if the foster parents provided a good home in every other way, theres no reason to take the kids from that home because they have to fold some laundry. if BOTH parents worked there like you said, where else are they supposed to go? perhaps these people shouldve gotten in trouble with the hotel chain, but now 6 more kids need homes and it doesnt seem like it was necessary…oh and money they pay these people would hardly cover the grocery bill.. its not like they were buying *bling*bling* and going on vacations with it.
If they weren’t doing anything wrong, then the call to Child Services shouldn’t be something to fear, right?
@Kay – You’re talking about easy, age appropriate work. This was obviously work that was way too much for young kids. Besides that, the kids would be forced to dispose of things like used condoms, deal with sex toys, and other crap that adults do in motels. Then use harsh chemicals to scrub toilets, they’d have to life heavy mattresses to change the sheets, etc.
It would be one thing if the kids were running the vacuums after an adult did all the heavy and disgusting work. Quite another if the kids had to deal with bedsheets covered in some stranger’s bodily fluids.
Kay- the OP mentioned this was NOT a family-run business like your father’s auto shop or your restaurant, this is a national chain and has to follow protocol and laws.
Also, there is a difference between treating Foster children like your children, and child slaves. Again, What the managers did here was uncalled for- even if it was their own children. Even for a child under 16 (in some states) there are ways to give work permits to the underaged but they are not allowed to work past a certain time/amount of hours a week, etc. They also get paid- with money, not with a chance to swim in a swimming pool otherwise free-for-use to anyone.
This happens in small or family-run businesses, to which I don’t mind, but what they did was illegal. Good call in my opinion.
@Kay, I’ve also been working for my parents at their pediatric office for over half my life (I’m 16 now), but I think the problem with this story is that the OP references a full day’s work. Kids should help out, but this sounds like the kids are literally working a full time job, which is not okay. I would have called child services too.
Just one thing to say
School? Some of them must be more then 5. And it clearly happened more then on weekends by the way the OP wrotte that. Thats kinda bad.
i agree 100% with kay
@kay
Like they said, this was not a family run business. Having young kids working in the laundry room or cleaning rooms is not good, it is scary.
Your kid gets to fold aprons and play… these kids are dealing with chemicals and heavy duty work.
Stop being such a self righteous bitch. The OP did the right thing.
Were these kids not in school? Or doing it after school? Kay, I understand teaching kids how to help with the family business but there is a line and obviously OP felt her employer crossed it.
Bravo for calling CPS, but they usually ignore anonymous calls. Hard to back up those claims. Plus most states are so hard up for foster families they don’t care.
To Kay,
Your 5 year old needs to be interacting with kids her age during the day not working for you at your restaurant. There are child labor laws for a reason.
When you are in foster care, some foster parents treat you like garbage. I think this person saw that in this and that was their concern.
kay, way to blow things way out of proportion while simultaneously missing the point.
There’s a big difference between having one child help out at a family business, like you and your daughter, and what these people did, which was take on a whole bunch of foster kids for the seemingly the express purpose of forcing them to do illegal labor. Most people do NOT treat their children, foster or not, like that. An anonoymous call to child service was the LEAST of what those people deserved.
I have to agree with Kay. I am a single parent of 2 boys, ages 5 and 14. My second job is cleaning at our church and the boys go with me more often than not and help out. My older son is in charge of mopping floors and occasionally cleans bathrooms. My younger son is a whiz at dusting. They work with me because we’re a family and we help each other out. I pay them a little bit, but it’s more about the extra time we get together and teaching them responsibility. Working one day wouldn’t teach them much, but having a list of things that need done on a weekly basis, that they are responsible for making sure get done – out in the real world – is teaching them a LOT.
I’m with Kay on this one. Too many parents think it is wrong for a child to work. Having resposibilities and expectations is much better for their development as people than sitting at home getting a high score on Mario Bros. The feeling of contributing to the family is also priceless. I would hope that you would seek a deeper understanding of their motivations and the overall dynamic and happiness of the family before attempting to destroy them. Calling Children’s Services was remarkably arrogant and cold (unless you did have that deeper knowledge and it just didn’t come across in your posting).
Kay, have you ever cleaned a hotel room? Do you have any idea what people do in them, much less how little they care about how they leave it? I had that miserable job for a summer, and people are disgusting when they know for sure that someone else will clean up their mess. I’ve seen rooms where people pooped on the bed, vomited all over (literally – every surface) of the bathroom, left $12 of half-empty beer bottles and cans lying all over the room after a 3 day bender, smeared lipstick all over mirrors, and just about every other juvenile prank you can imagine. And yes, adults do it too. If they wanted the kids to come in and help fold laundry I can see that, but actually cleaning those hotel rooms?? Gross!
You are asking your daughter to help you fold aprons. These kids are being exposed to who knows what kind of germs and diseases. Remember, lots of people leave behind germs that can be picked up only with black lights in hotel rooms. No way in hell would I expose my kid to that. And I would have called child services, too.
It sounds like the owners were too cheap to hire qualified people to do the work and were trying to cut corners. There is a difference between a child “helping out” in the workplace versus doing a job that you would normally pay an adult to do. Maybe they thought they were doing something positive for the kids by teaching them about the value of hard work, but I’m dubious. Especially given that they were foster parents to 6 kids, I think the OP was right to call the authorities. Then it’s up to a trained social worker to decide whether the arrangement is harmful to the children.
I think the OP pretty much differentiated between the two…
This is not a family-run hotel, it was a major hotel chain. That’s why companies hire _employees_. You do realize that the hotel (not the family) is responsible if something happens/goes wrong and a child is hurt. Its’ the hotel that would be found to be breaking labor laws if this wasn’t stopped.
As stated kids at that age (again, all were listed under the age of 16, according to the OP) should be out intermingling with kids their own age, not being worked in a job at a major hotel chain like they appear to have been according to this story.
I highly doubt these kids were doing disgusting work. They were “cleaning rooms” and folding laundry. They were most likely helping out the staff by helping them make the beds, fold towels, vacuum carpets, ect. I doubt they would be cleaning up shit and condoms.
I also doubt they had “full time hours” at the hotel. Did they not go to school? It sounds to me like they were more so working an entire day on the weekends because they wanted to swim in the pool.
Childcare is expensive and I agree with what “hater” said, You get hardly anything to take care of foster children. It wouldn’t make finical sense to “collect” these kids for “slave labour”, especially if they weren’t even on the payroll.
And BTW, my daughter gets social interaction at school, thank you very much. Instead of paying for a baby sitter, I bring her to work. She wants to work instead of just sitting in the staff room, so my staff and I create work for her to do. There is nothing wrong with giving a child a sense of pride by helping out and then rewarding them at the end of the day with a swim or a fancy meal or some candy or whatever.
Im more shocked with parents who believe their children are incapable of doing laundry , yard work, vacuuming, changing the trash bag, using an oven or even using craft scissors!!
You can defiantly tell when a child was babied and when a child was shown responsibility. These people sound like they were creating sound and well rounded future adults.
An understaffed hotel chain franchised by some prick that wants their 6 kids to do the job that they should be hiring people to do is bs.
Im also with the thing where if the child isn’t old enough to be working period, they should most DEFINATELY not cleaning hotel rooms.
Do you have any idea what kinda nasty, kinky and disgusting things us adults have done in hotel rooms? I wouldn’t want some random kid cleaning up man juice covered sheets… that’s just nasty.
I cannot believe the number of people that thing what this couple was doing was ok. What I liked about what the poster said was how much detail she went into. This is NOT ok. The children were made to work numerous full 8 hour shifts of work cleaning rooms at a hotel. This is not ok. There are child labor laws that limit how much time any child can work, let alone the age at which they can work. As someone else mentioned, the hotel chain itself would get into big trouble, facing huge fines for this. Add to this, they weren’t being paid….they got to swim in a pool at the hotel which is generally reserved for hotel guests, I would imagine.
I can understand it both ways
my parents had their own business, my younger brother and I would go in on the weekends/after school and help out by doing the filing, answering phones, coffee runs etc. For our help we were allowed to use the internet (which we didn’t have at home, very very expensive at the time) and we were given like $1 each (enough to go get a bit of chocolate over at the local shops when we took a break).
This sort of work was _nothing_ compared to the stuff my brother and I did otherwise (eg when we needed money) – we used to wash cars, boats and vans and do gardening for the people in the neighborhood so we could afford to go see a film – and we started doing this when I was 10 and my brother was 8. Doing some work with your parents helps a child develop skills you otherwise wouldn’t have (eg for a 10 and 8 yr old to start a little _business_ that covered like half a suburb where we even had business cards we made ourselves and fliers etc to drum up business)
On the flip side:
hotels can be disgusting places. My friends mother works at one of the most expensive hotels (the one at the casino) on the gold coast (australia). I have heard some horror stories of the state she’s found the rooms in (poo EVERYWHERE except for the toilet) so I would _never_ let a child near a room in that sort of condition, neither would I allow the child to touch soiled sheets/towels, but putting fresh towels in the bathroom, putting on new pillowcases vacuuming and filling the minibar would all be fine!
The other thing is the older children probably appreciated having an ‘excuse’ to not be able to go out with mates to things that cost money – if the family was struggling financially (like mine was when I was a kid) it can get really horrible at school when your mates realise you can never afford to go out with them – having a ‘sorry mate, I’ve got t work, next time aye?’ excuse would really help in that situation!
A lot of people are talking about how these kids would be at school, and could only really be working weekends. READ THE FIRST SENTENCE FROM OP. This was the SUMMER. Those kids could very well have been there EVERY day working. I think the OP did the right thing.
@ Kay
WTF? Did you even read the story??? 1) A hotel chain is NOT a mom/pop business….It’s a corporation. 2) Forcing kids to do chores is one thing, but forcing them to work long hours for nothing is a completely different story. Child slave labor is not something to be taken lightly, esp. if it’s a large family of foster children.
Have you ever seen a child work 8 hour days, 6 days a week…….when they’re only 8 years old?!? What a great childhood! Glad Kay is fully supportive of child slave labor! Good Job Kay!
Kay, I think you are making the mistake of assuming that because of your own experience, that this story is the same as yours. Whereas I was forced into slave labour as a child, I can see how bad it really is.
Getting your child to help out is fine, and chores are good for kids (as long as they are really within the child’s capability). But when I read this, it seemed to me that the children were being made to work 8 hour days, 5 days a week, during the Summer. And yes I have heard of a number of people who have gotten a brood of foster children to be worked like this, and while you may think they cannot possibly get enough money from the government to care for them all, the people who do this are quite adept at making a lot of money out of it.
I’m all for kids learning responsibility, and I think parents who baby their children are idiots. But this to me definitely sounds like child slave labour and the OP did the right thing by calling Child Services.
I really dislike it when people comment without understanding what they’ve read. Young children working as free labor is illegal. It is not character building or a boost to self-esteem.
I also just checked foster care stipends for several states. The average is about $450 per child – so with 6 children providing free labor they make just from that about $2700 A MONTH. (If they were in D.C. they’d be making just under $5400). Add to that their wages from being the manager and maintenance man. They must be making over $5000 a month…So for all of those in support of the pricks using these children for financial gain, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
I don’t want to imagine how these children were treated behind closed doors either. Kudos to the OP being concerned enough to make the call.
As a child I worked all day, everyday.
I worked at my fathers grocery store everyday in the summer and in the spring and the fall I would take time off school to work on my grandfathers farm.
Even though this is not a mom and pop establishment, it sounds far from child labour.
and $450 a month to take care of a foster child? seems really excessive. My aunt gets $210 per month per child (hardly covers the cost of food, never mind clothes, toothpaste, school…).
I’m a social worker in the child welfare field, working with foster children waiting to be adopted.
To put this argument to a rest, what this family was doing was against foster care licensing rules and regulations. There is no way that their foster care worker would approve of this. Having kids help out is one thing – it’s good to teach kids responsibility, and have them earn their own money (I just gave my 4 year old daughter a nickle and a piece of chocolate for picking up the living room), but you cannot use your foster children as child laborers.
The job of a foster parent is to provide a safe, healthy, and caring environment in which kids can recover from the abuse and neglect that caused them to enter foster care in the first place. These kids are often forced – by their parents neglect – to take on the responsibility for caring for themselves and their siblings (and their parents). Making them clean a hotel is never okay, and i ‘d like to commend the OP on calling CPS. Many people are afraid to do so, or think it’s not their place.
There are numerous books written by former foster children detailing the abuse and neglect they’ve experienced in their biological homes as well as foster homes – all because no one felt they should “butt in” and call CPS.
The OP was VERY specific, yet some of you still managed to project your own experiences on the situation and totally ignore the specifics of this post. I hate people who can’t read, or read objectively.
She says “summer,” “full day’s work,” “cleaning hotel rooms,” “I’m all for teaching kids responsibility, but these were not normal circumstances.”
L2R (Learn to Read). And stop projecting! “My 5-year-old folds aprons after school” is NOT the same situation as “my six foster children clean hotel rooms all summer.” *rolls eyes*
Okay okay I’m seeing fifty different sides to ONE story. Here’s the deal. Places like the Econolodge and Motel six can be a chain, yet independently owned… so… they didn’t say if we’re dealing with a chain like the Hilton, or an independently owned chain… so… this could really swing either way.
@Kay, Deb, Robert, and anyone else who seems to think this was okay…
First of all, I have worked in the hotel industry. Mostly fixing their computers at the front desk or working on their server, but I have had to go into rooms while they are still occupied, to do something like update the BIOS on the television (yes, modern televisions DO have an equivalent to a BIOS… or Basic Input/Output System, for those who are less computer savvy).
All I can say is: Oh, My, GOD. Body fluids on every towel and bedsheet, and sometimes on every surface. Poop everywhere BUT the toilet. Condoms and bottles of alcohol all over the place. And in one case, the couple was still having sex while I was there! I like porn as much as the next person, but could you PLEASE lay off the spooge for 5 whole minutes while I’m trying to work? And this is in a major, RESPECTABLE hotel chain… I won’t even bother trying to describe some of the things I’ve seen in some of the “mom & pop” hotels I’ve been in.
Not to mention that some of the chemicals they use to clean these messes are unsafe for developing children to be exposed to. And you seem to think that this is a SAFE working environment for children? Um… no. It most definitely is NOT safe.
And as @maesie said: what this family was doing was against foster care licensing rules and regulations in EVERY state. I’m not a lawyer, nor do I work in child services, so I don’t know the child labor laws in other states (Google them if you really want to know), but in Texas, the laws are VERY clear. I’m just going to post the most relevant one:
“This chapter does not apply to employment of a child employed:
(1) in a non-hazardous occupation;
(2) under the DIRECT SUPERVISION of the child’s parent or an adult having custody of the child; and
(3) in a business or enterprise owned or operated by the parent or custodian.”
SO:
Even if this is a hotel chain like Motel 6 or Econolodge where you can independently own the hotel but still be part of a chain, and even if you could convince me that cleaning rooms is a non-hazardous occupation, you would have a very difficult time convincing me that those two people would have been able to DIRECTLY SUPERVISE six kids that entire time, given that the average Motel 6 has 112 rooms, and Econo Lodge has a *minimum* of 40 rooms (the largest, in Orlando, has 672).
In Texas, that makes it expressly illegal to employ those six children in that way. And, despite how hard up most states are for foster families (as @T says), CPS *never* ignores a call, at least not in Texas or Arkansas. I’ve seen CPS come in and remove children for far, FAR less than what these two were doing. When you hear about some of the cases I’ve heard about – my roommate actually works for a ranch for abused boys – you’d understand why CPS sometimes seems to be a little TOO overzealous.
Any idiot can see that this story lacks sufficient details for we readers to make appropriate judgements on what’s going on in thus family. How old were the kids? Were they on school holidays? Were they there 5 days a week? What part of the world did this occur in? What is the exact nature of the work they were doing? What else was going on in this family?
The take home point, I think (and I also work in child welfare) is that if you see something going on with children that doesn’t feel right, report it and let the welfare agencies investigate it. True, welfare agencies may not investigate one single mild complaint, but your call may end up being one of many that is enough to prompt action, especially in the case of foster familes.
YOUR call may be to one that makes a difference.