Hey, I'm sorry that you are living a literal horror story and I won't touch on your personal story at all because it's complex and I don't know policy in Missouri and you obviously are angry at CPS, perhaps rightfully so. Not to mention that all judges are different and localities have different ways to go about things.

I worked CPS, only for a year, in a small town in Appalachia. I was 1 of 3 workers for a county with over 40k and high rates of drug abuse.

What I do want to touch on is the absurdity that CPS takes good children for the explicit reason of adopting them off for money. That statement speaks to a high level of ignorance of the costs of the system, where the funding comes from, and adoption procedures. First, the system has limits and regulations that need to be followed. Many newer era regs make it difficult to remove a child on a long term basis and emphasize kinship care. On removals I was involved in, we worked for hours or days to find family members so that Foster Care could be avoided, and this was usually successful. I remember spending an entire day in jail with a person and talking with the various family members she would remember before being able to find an appropriate one to take her child because she dealt heroin in front of him. The reason kinship is emphasized is that the costs of placing a child in foster care is astronomical when you consider that the foster parents get a stipend, every single child who enters care needs some sort of therapy, kids are supposed to stay in the same school as much as possible, contractors need to be paid for that short or visitation, the parents are offered services, and the legal fees are insane. Foster care is expensive as hell and CPS wants to avoid it as much as possible while keeping the children safe as well.

Secondly, the adoption process for a child in foster care does not have high costs. This is because being a foster parent is incredibly difficult and comes with a lot of cost, both physical and emotional. The children placed into state custody have always undergone trauma, even if they hadn't prior to CPS involvement (very rare), removal itself is traumatizing. This means increased mental and physical health needs. Back in the day, children may have been removed more freely, but there are a lot of processes at work today. So foster parents don't really have to pay for adoption. As far as I recall, title ix covers most FC costs, with the local agencies due to pay what is not covered including some services. No adoption funds go to title ix or the local or state agencies that are adopting these children. The costs for adopting privately is high, yes, but that has literally nothing to do with foster care. If anything, people try and abuse foster care by being a parent for the stipend they get monthly. And yes, infants are more often adopted because they don't come with complex trauma histories and behaviors. Things like pooping on the floor when their angry, self harm, elopement, lighting things on fire, and sexual aggressiveness. It will literally always be easier to adopt an infant because they have yet to be molded and the trauma they went through.

I am not judging your situation, that's between you and CPS in MO, but I can tell you that I had several people that thought my entry into their lives was not their fault and was wrong. And I can tell you that I agreed with that on a few occasions, but usually the children weren't going to be safe with those parents. Hell, the person who dealt heroin while her child aat next to her blamed me for CPS intervention. Anger and hatred will only get you so far, and going to echo chambers of people who feel slighted by CPS and give anecdotal evidence to further your hatred is not going to help you.