God, do I wish the ranting was enough to make a difference. ;) Worked in CPS for years in the investigative division. (The damned if you do, damned if you don't job.) I've seen way too much, and trust me, you don't want to know it. To grylin...honey, you need to call and keep calling. Call your local CPS, call the foster care agency if it isn't through CPS (every state, and even county, could be different, so I don't know.) But keep calling. If that is going on, sooner or later there will be some proof and they will get the bastard for it. Unfortunately, the curse of CPS is the proof, and since nobody is going to be honest and admit what is going on, CPS has a hard time sometimes progressing with the case, even if they know that the parents/foster parents are full of shit. In many areas, such as where I live/worked, we really have no authority till we go to the judge and get a court order. To do that, we need rock solid proof, which is difficult to get when parents lie out their backsides, and children are too afraid to tell on them. Just gets to be bad all around. But on the original subject...while I would have loved to buy the syrup for the poor child, we need to watch doing stuff like that, unfortunately. Experience has taught me that if something makes the parents angry or feel bad, even if it is something important like that, they will take it out on the child. :( Probably best way to progress is get the make/model/license of the car. Call CPS. They can trace the car in conjuction with the police and launch an investigation. There is probably a lot more going on in that family than just cough syrup. :( Angela