To some degree your children are your property. Not in the sense that you can do anything you please with them. They, too, have certain Unalienable Rights by virtue of their existence. But you, as a parent, have not only the responsibility for their well-being, but a right to take reasonable action to provide for their care, training and the direction of their life while they are minor children.
You can lose your rights over the care and custody of your children. If you abuse them physically, refuse to educate them or fail to provide them with reasonable supervision or necessities of life, you can be charged with child neglect or abuse. If proven via due process of law, the Court may declare the child a "Ward of the Court" and take over supervisorial duties and assign them to a child welfare agency or foster home.
There is another way you can lose custody of your children: Voluntary surrender! To voluntarily give up your custodial rights over your children, you will have to enter into a domestic dispute (divorce action) in which the Court is then given authority to determine which of the parents should have custody. There have been instances when the dispute was so bitter between the divorcing couple that the Court refused to grant custody to either of the parents. Their Rights were not violated since they were in court voluntarily to have the terms of their marriage contract set aside. The only way to avoid this is to make certain you and the other parent come to a realistic agreement regarding child custody, support and visitation rights BEFORE your lawyers go in front of the judge. If you do not ask a direct question and give the judge a choice regarding custody, it is doubtful that the judge would try to assume such authority.
Children have been subjected to all manner of physical and sexual abuse in detention centers and even in Court approved foster homes. The people who run such facilities are usually good people, but there are enough bad ones to fill a book with horror stories. Some children have even died in such facilities while concerned parents fought with Juvenile Court Judges and Child Welfare Workers to take their child out of court's custody and return them to their home and family.
You must be proven UNFIT or VOLUNTEER your child for such a facility. If you are having problems with the child and seek counseling from some agency, they may suggest that such an incorrigible child might be better off if they were put into the "juvee" home (Juvenile Detention Home) for a while. To do this, you will usually have to sign papers granting the agency or a Court authority to take custody. You cannot rescind that permission or authority as easily as you can grant it. Once you grant jurisdiction over your child to that agency, you have serious problems. Do not let anyone trap or trick you into voluntarily surrendering authority over or custody of your child. Just because they have an official sounding title does not mean they know what is best. The fact that they work for the government might be reasonable cause for you to treat whatever advice they give you as suspect. Government believes it has a "compelling interest" in protecting minors from just about everything. Before "compelling government interests" can hold water, you have to agree.
Do not sign any such authority or papers without your lawyer looking them over first. Do not be stampeded into doing anything just to "get your child out" of the detention center.
Sometimes a child is taken to a youth detention center by the police if they are caught doing something illegal. That something "illegal" today might have been a "dumb thing" to do when you were a kid and nothing more than a "prank" in grandpa's day. But today it is considered a "criminal act" and the child is declared a "juvenile delinquent" just for pushing over an outhouse on Halloween.
Usually parents will be called by a child welfare officer to advise them that their child is in custody. Anxious parents usually make a beeline for the center to take the kid home. It is at this time you must be careful what you sign. You will always be asked to sign some document to get your child back. That document will usually be an agreement to "acknowledge authority of the state over your child" and you are merely being granted temporary custodial rights until the matter is resolved in court.
DO NOT SIGN SUCH AN AGREEMENT!
Call your lawyer and, unless your child has actually been charged with a felony crime (murder, armed robbery, etc.), the juvenile authorities have no right to detain him or her. To hold a child who has not been charged with a crime, THEY must go to a Court of competent jurisdiction and ask for temporary custody until such time that a hearing is scheduled where they can try to prove you are an unfit parent. If you think you should be able to get a Public Defender under such circumstances, you can forget it in most states. Since a child custody action is not a criminal complaint, you will have to hire your own lawyer.
If you ever feel compelled to sign such a document without first getting informed advice of an attorney, do so only after you clearly print "Signed Under Duress" in the space just above where you will affix your signature. That will at least give a lawyer something to work with if you do hire one.
Do not let them turn the tables by tricking you into signing away your Rights. They know how to apply the rules of procedure and when you are being intimidated regarding your child, chances are you will do whatever it takes!