Kids at Risk Action (KARA) – Children's Rights Advocacy Network
Invisible Children (The American Cycle Of Abuse & Its Cost) Free ebook & audiobook
http://www.invisiblechildren.org/our-book/
An informative & compelling look at the shameful treatment of vulnerable children, how it impacts our communities, and what we can do about it.
Listen, Read. Pass it on (a great gift).
Kids At Risk Action needs your support for its successful launch of televised public service announcements building awareness to the issues surrounding child abuse.
In collaboration with award winning Salo of San Ramon CA, & the Academy on Violence and Abuse www.avahealth.org KARA is working to create and place public service ads that bring attention to child abuse on national TV.
These ads will reach millions and create interest and understanding of the children impacted by abuse.
Contact KARA with your questions and support. Please contact us with your questions, referrals, and donations.
The KARA team.
ps… pass this on to those you think might appreciate the opportunity;
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Support KARA buy our book or donate
Become part of KARA’s email network by sending a request to join to;
amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com
When I began as a CASA volunteer there were not many sanctioned ways to help the struggling children I was working with. Many restrictions applied (children were not allowed in my car, no hamburgers, no toys, etc).
I understood the liability issues but could not abide by so many fearful regulations and did generally what seemed like the right thing to do for the very unhappy and disoriented child in my caseload.
Today I see more and more CASA programs thinking outside the box and providing ways for their volunteers to get more involved with the youth they serve as this Voices For Children Program in California demonstrates
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jul/22/volunteers-act-parents-foster-children-never-had/
Looking back at the overly stressed child protection system I volunteered in, children need a consistent caring adult in their lives.
For several of the children in my caseloads, I was that person as the other adults (social workers, foster parents, educators and health care people people) came and went over the years.
As economic chaos continues to shrink nonprofit & community resources for abused and neglected children, the need for CASA volunteers, staff, and directors to build successful programs that can put a consistent caring adult into the life of the children they serve is ever greater.
CASA is most often the only voice a child has once in our overburdened court system. The program is perfect for discovering people that want to help children. Do you support the CASA program in your community?
Many new and useful possibilities are being provided to children caught up in the child protection system as organizations like CASA to fill these needs.
Often, the CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) is the only consistent adult in the child’s life and can make a world of difference just by being there.
CASA Minnesota
CASA National
Voices4children.com
CASA volunteers are making a huge difference in the lives of abused children. Tell your friends.
Continue reading ‘The Evolution of CASA volunteering’
The article below outlines a positive approach to educating a public and service providers to what is working and what needs improvement to insure a better practices approach to serving the needs of abused and neglected children in your community.
http://www.ldnews.com/news/ci_15513594
Getting more people involved in gathering and disseminating information about the issues of child abuse and what can and should be done to protect and serve vulnerable children has to be a good thing.
After many years as a volunteer guardian ad Litem it is clear to me that most folks don’t have a very good concept of the needs of abused and neglected children. It is also obvious that abused and neglected children are not being well served in our nation today.
Too many of them do not receive the help they need and are going lead dysfunctional lives. They hurt themselves and the community they live in.
Supporting positive change for the hardworking people that do the work to improve the lives of abused and neglected children and appreciating that results will always be a product of effort and an efficient application of resources is sound policy.
The focus must remain on improving the quality of services to children, and not politics and name calling.
This process can add accountability and provide a positive source of insight and overview of the complex system of children, courts, foster and adoptive parents, and service providers.
The downside is that if the panel is not well constructed and well managed, it can become a negative force of unsupportive, nonconstructive people that will not help build a more effective child protection system in your community. Be certain to bring only positive well meaning people that care about the needs of children on to your panel.
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Become part of KARA’s email network by sending a request to join to;
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Continue reading ‘Citizen Review Panels Advocating For Abused & Neglected Children’
Recently a class action lawsuit was filed in Oklahoma claiming that children are being mistreated within the child protection system. http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=14&articleid=20100708_14_A1_Marcia556191
It was filed against various DHS officials in Tulsa federal court in February 2008. The judge is unhappy that DHS is taking too long to prepare for the trial.
The plaintiffs (children) ask for improvements in the following areas:
Lower Caseloads for DHS workers and supervisors.
Education and training for agency employees, foster parents and adoptive parents.
Monitoring of the safety of children in state custody.
The original plaintiffs were nine children who are alleged to have suffered in DHS placements. The case has since become a class-action lawsuit with thousands of children in DHS custody as plaintiff
How many states have caseloads that are just too high to provide a realistic safety net for the children they support? How many states need more training and education for the agency employees, foster parents, and adoptive parents?
Without educating judges, court workers, and criminal justice people, this nation is still on the path to maintaining excessive prison populations and disastrous school performance among the population of abused and neglected children.
This is the tip of the iceberg. Legislators in many states ought to be finding money to make these changes without class action lawsuits. To think that we are a nation forced to sue on behalf of abused and neglected children because legislators did not see the need to provide the services or resources to keep children safe shows a deep failure within our system.
To those social workers and supervisors that will be made to look bad as this case becomes news; you need to stick together and make your arguments clear and concise. Support each other and recognize that it is a glaring fault of an uncaring institution that would make the people doing the hard work look bad when failure is almost guaranteed as resources are stretched too thinly. Stick together, support each other, and make your arguments to the public. The size and scope of this problem has become too large to keep buried and silent.
America’s child protection systems need help at many levels. Like all of us, social workers do the best they can with the resources they have.
Children need this victory. They will have more resources and support if the case is resolved fairly (& maybe legislators will see the wisdom of avoiding class action lawsuits and vote for more child friendly programs).
There needs to be more money for training and services.
Without it, abused and neglected children will continue to become preteen moms & felons and lead dysfunctional lives in and out of our institutions, costing our nation a multiple of what we might have spent saving them with the price of training and services when they were young.
America is on trial here. Oklahoma is not the only state to abandon its abandoned children.
Here are a few other examples;
http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/06/01/cant-make-this-stuff-up/
http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/06/18/the-state-of-child-welfare/
http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/06/30/tip-of-the-iceberg-abused-children-dying-due-to-county-backlogs/
Lori Sturdevant points out in her July 4th Star Tribune column how Minnesota “has been missing the biggest public investment opportunity – early education” and how Art Rolnick’s extensive studies as director of research at the Federal Reserve Board have made those investments measurable.
Just like investing in the stock market or tax increment financing, putting money into early childhood programs brings solid financial and social returns back into a community.
As a negative example, just look at states and nations that have not (failing schools, filled prisons, high crime, poverty, preteen pregnancies, & unsafe communities).
At every level, this state has benefited from a smart, educated workforce that created opportunities (out of genius and thin air) with lasting impact.
Medical alley, which has had a huge impact on this state’s fiscal well being, launched giant successful med tech companies and would not have done nearly so well without the very smart people that came through this states many fine schools and school programs because they were important at the time and well funded.
Children in Minnesota have had a friend and champion in Art Rolnick, who well understands Pliny’s 2500 year old observation, “What we do to our children, they will do to our society”.
It is easy to see the relationship between healthy, adjusted children and productive citizens.
Healthy, adjusted children do well in school and go on to lead lives that contribute to the well being of our community (and of course, the opposite is just as true).
There is no return on investment from children that we abandon in our system and the cost of crime and incarceration is a triple negative that can cost our state for a lifetime (five hundred million dollars for prisons in MN this year does not include the medical costs, the cost of crime, fear, or blighted neighborhoods). The relationship between success in school and crime and preteen pregnancy is well established.
Art refers to medical costs driving state deficits. A growing body of evidence from the medical community proves that the chronic disease and medical costs of at risk children is another extreme cost to our communities (www.avahealth.org – this site is worth spending some time on)
I met Art Rolnick a few years ago when he graciously allowed me to use his work (as chapter five) in the writing of my book INVISIBLE CHILDREN.
It was my purpose to draw attention to the behavior problems and learning ability that I see in abused and neglected children that continue to negatively impact our schools and later on, the safety of our communities.
Art’s Federal Reserve Board research clearly demonstrates the high return on investment in children (8% to 16%)
There is even a higher return on investment for Invisible Children (three million children are reported to child protection services in this nation each year in this nation) to make them ready to learn and prepare them for a place in our community.
These are the children I continue to watch and hope for as budgets and services are cut and policy makers think they are saving money by not investing in programs that could change the lives of the weakest and most vulnerable among us.
On top of all this positive financial and socially important evidence, it is the right thing to do.
“Rolnick has been sounding the alarm about early ed since 2003… Little kids don’t vote…Early ed has a champion in Rolnick. Now it needs one in the Governors office”.
The Los Angeles Times article below points out the tragic preventable death of 2 year old little Joseph due to a backlog of 12,000 cases. There are not enough social workers to visit the families. The public outrage leads to blaming social workers when we should be looking at ourselves.
Blaming social workers for murdered babies is like blaming the police for who rides in the squad car and it won’t solve anything. Until the caseloads become more reasonable and the departments get the resources they need to improve the lives of the children they visit, the suffering and death of innocent children will continue to rise.
It is a terrible indictment of our society (what is it we value?)
What frightens me most about this story is the counties move to hide information about the continued death and abuse of children in the county system. Their argument is that it puts the family on trial and brings terrible publicity to the department.
The counter to this is that until the public and policymakers understand the numbers, the suffering, and the hopelessness these families are living in, the cycle will continue to expand generation after generation as it has for about fifty years. Change will not come without awareness of the need for change.
The topic is uncomfortable so we avoid it.
The truth makes us look bad so we hide the information.
Child sex abuse, neglect, and violence against children in this nation have grown exponentially and by not reporting this bad news we are only delaying the reckoning that we must face (and helpless children are dying because of the hiding and underreporting of information). Get the real information from the medical community; www.avahealth.org
A Minneapolis baby suffered the exact same type of bathtub drowning death last year after 14 calls to child protection. I was called by the Minneapolis Star Tribune reporters who were surprised when I told them that as a volunteer CASA guardian ad Litem one of my cases had 49 police calls to a home before the children were removed from the home (and then, only because the seven year old tried to kill the five year old in the presence of the police).
Abused and neglected children have no voice but the social workers and police that visit their homes. When a worker has a monstrous caseload, babies die and children suffer. Abused children suffer their traumas for life and communities bear that cost in the courts, schools, and unsafe communities that result from their double abandonment.
We have money for wars, big stadiums, and even in times of economic downturns we afford what is important to maintain our lifestyle.
Funding programs for abused and neglected children is the very least we can do to assert ourselves as a civilized people.
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Become part of KARA’s email network by sending a request to join to;
amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com
Continue reading ‘Tip Of The Iceberg; Abused Children Dying Due To County Backlogs’
A British Medical Journal Journal article (below) points out the confusion in doctors duties regarding child protection. In Britain the welfare of the child is place highly only when a decision is governed by the Children Act statute, which has created an atmosphere of increased complaints against paediatricians. Doctors may be avoiding work related to abuse because of this.
As a guardian ad Litem in the U.S., I often found medical professionals unresponsive to the violence and dysfunction responsible for the condition of the child before them.
In the U.S. there is an organization trying to change that; The Academy on Violence and Abuse, www.avahealth.org is working diligently to better educate the medical profession about the signs of abuse and how to respond effectively.
Visit the Academy’s website and watch their videos, it is compelling.
Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/KidsAtRisk
Support KARA buy our book or donate
Become part of KARA’s email network by sending a request to join to;
amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com
An article from the Economist Magazine demonstrates how the teaching of Swedish rules and social behavior in nursery schools are helping children to be strong and make decisions for themselves, making some immigrant families uncomfortable.
As practical as subsidized daycare and growing a child’s self confidence and decision making ability is, there has been a backlash from parents tied to old ways.
Critical thinking and Swedish values are causing conflict in families steeped in cultural traditions. It will be interesting to see how this story develops. Continue reading ‘Big Nursery School Debate in Sweden’
The boy suffered from severe malnutrition, starvation, open lesions, bedsores and uncontrolled seizures. In school when he was examined, he could not walk or feed himself and he lay on a cot in the fetal position. http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/health/96573529.html Thank you Paul Walsh for reporting on this important community event and writing a strong article. Please follow up and let us know how the story ends.
The story caught my eye because it similar to what happened to a child in my guardian ad-Litem caseload except that my young friend got immediate relief from a toxic environment when the care provider quickly determined that this condition must be investigated.
Starved, beaten, tied to a bed and sexually abused, my seven year old needed an advocate. The damage lasts for a lifetime. Nothing makes it disappear. Catching and treating horrific abuse early allows a greater chance at recovery.
The only voice a young child has when being terribly abused is a teacher, a social worker, a medical person or some other caring adult.
Children have no voice of their own. They can’t understand what is happening to them and they often don’t know it is wrong.
They only know that it is their own life and that it hurts.
That terribly abused children can be turned away from hospitals and sent directly back into an abusive home speaks volumes about our community.
Today 2/3 of child abuse calls are being screened out of child protection in Hennepin County. The national average is 1/3.
Yes, I agree that providing more services to people that are screened out is a positive approach (the argument for the greater number of screened out calls). My experience has been that the system is overwhelmed and underfunded, and this young boy may be out of the home, but what about others like him that go unreported or untreated?
How do you think the hospital in your community would handle such a case?
I know people that refuse to believe that the abuse being reported could possibly be occurring (especially the sexual abuse of very young children).
There are three million cases of child abuse reported in this nation each year (when we count them).
Let’s implement procedures to make sure that this sort of error is minimized. “What you do to your children, they will do to your society”. Pliny 2500 years ago
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Become part of KARA’s email network by sending a request to join to;
amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com
How can those of us who care about at risk children, be more effective in bringing positive change to the politics, attitudes, people, and institutions that rule the lives of these children?
What has worked in your community?
What did not work?
Where do you go for help?
Share your comments here;
I’ve known the author of the following article for a long time and only now heard her story. It is a very sad story that happens when service providers are overworked, undertrained, and as you will read, unable to rise to their complicated tasks.
In defense of the profession, in the twelve years I worked as a guardian ad-Litem, this story did not happen to me. The social workers I was engaged with were truly committed and in this line of work because they loved kids and wanted to make a difference in their community. Social work is a calling (being a nanny pays way better and is much easier).
It is my belief that people want to do their work well, especially when it involves the welfare of abandoned, helpless children. This story does not reflect that.
When a person fails to complete a simple task, and a tragedy occurs, we (the system/management) should find the problem and insure that it can’t happen again.
The problem lies it a system that is not well designed to see to the well being of the children it is meant to serve. This system is being undermined by our current economic chaos, and children are suffering.
There needs to be accountability and a greater responsiveness built into our child protection system. This will not happen without public support and more resources.
Not valuing children reflects badly on our society and it is beginning to show.
If children were as important as expensive business machines, the doctor would have had the authority to save this child’s life (or some other fail safe process would have been in place.
KARA supports more training, better resources, and greater attention to the needs of social workers, teachers, and service providers to at risk children, because it is difficult work.
This unfortunately cannot change what happened to Portia. Continue reading ‘What Happened To Portia?’
Adoptees Have Answers Summer Event
The Minnesota History Center
(co-sponsor)
345 West Kellogg Boulevard
St. Paul, MN 55102
RSVP preferred to Anne C. Johnson by June 15, 2010
612-746-5122 or ajohnson@mnadopt.org
Walk-ins welcome
The world’s most advanced technical and military power, greatest economic engine (California ranked fourth highest GDP among nations at one time) & we are refusing to take care of our children.
25% of U.S. high school grads are functionally illiterate upon graduation, our drop out rates are the worst in the industrialized world.
America is sending juveniles into adult prisons at alarming rates. By privatizing service providers, overwhelming government service agencies, & not providing resources we are abandoning children at an institutional level.
Many third world nations treat prenatal care more seriously than we do. There are no industrial nations that suffer the sexually transmitted disease rates or early pregnancy rates that America does.
Talking to the people at The Academy on Violence and Abuse http://www.avahealth.org/ very important things have become clear to me;
1. Child abuse impact children for life. Chronic illness and early death are significant within the population of abused and neglected children as they age.
2. Dr Bruce Perry’s research indicates that 25% of all American’s will be classified as “special needs” within a generation if the mental health aspects are not addressed in a direct and meaningful way.
As a long time guardian ad-Litem, I have seen the evidence of the Academy’s research at a very personal level. I have lost friends and now know why.
Mental health becomes all important when you work with the population of abused children and understand the concept of violence, sex abuse, and trauma as it applies to two and three year olds (and what it will mean to them for the rest of their lives).
Children become citizens. Healthy citizens lead normal productive lives and are a benefit to society.
Children born into unhealthy homes and poor resources, are abandoned, abused, or ignored, end up in juvenile justice, criminal justice, pregnant without the ability to parent (just like their parent) lead painful lives and are a problem for society.
There is NO percentage is the communal abandonment of our children (it is sinking our nation).
What you do to your children, they will do to your society (Pliny – 2500 years ago)
Let’s all agree to support child friendly programs and legislation (even if it costs money and takes effort).
An article appearing in the Star Tribune May 29th by Seema Jilani (Houston Pediatric physician) points out the stunning impact that the economic chaos and anti tax sentiment are having on the abused and neglected children that I came to know as a volunteer guardian ad-Litem.
It is painful to know that children who come from trauma and abuse, are now finding fewer services, more burdened staff, less resources, and inevitably, less chance of finding help in many communities.
Seema points out that a Hawaii program that had serviced 4000 families now services 100, South Carolina now has caseload ratios as high as 60 to 1 in some regions & that nearly half of the abused children murdered in Texas have been investigated by Child Protective Services.
I did know most of the financial problems facing the people and programs created to help abused and neglected children. I also know that eliminating those programs will not save communities any money*.
I did not know that children raised in families with incomes under $15,000 are 22 times more likely to to be abused and I am well aware of the dismal standing of certain states when it comes to how they treat children.
I hear mean things said about foster & adoptive parents, social workers, educators, and guardian ad-Litems too often.
Many people involved in child protection are receiving unfair treatment. This is why I became a guardian – a friend’s adoption problems prompted me to act). Now, as funding drys up and services are restricted or eliminated, results are worsening and more and more people are being mistreated by service providers.
It is easy to blame the teachers, social workers, and guardians ad-litem and argue for the dissolution of the system when we are mistreated by it.
How simple the solution; fire them all, kill the programs, and everything will be improved.
After working with service providers over a twelve year period as a volunteer guardian ad-litem, and knowing how impossible their tasks are, with the training they receive (and don’t receive), the resources they have (and don’t have) and the overwhelming amount of work they are burdened with each day, I know that the rest of us are missing a VERY BIG point.
America’s institutions need support and improvement and not destructive criticism*.
It is because programs are underfunded and and under-supported that training and standards are lower than they should be, which puts under-trained and under-qualified people into high stress positions without adequate training or tools to do the work.
NO, it is we the people that have voted to underfund our schools and social programs (and 35W bridge maintenance) that have created the painful failure we are living with today. The bridge fell in the river for the same reason our schools, jails, and child protection systems are struggling so mightily-we failed to maintain it.
It’s not the lack of commitment from the people that go to work every day trying hard to make a difference in their community and the lives of the children in their classrooms or caseloads (I’m really convinced of this).
It is America’s inability to face the fact that we have created monster problems that will continue to worsen until we support solutions that will fix them (and not just hate on the people doing the work).
Over my twelve twelve years in the system, I have found the teachers, social workers, and guardians, to be a very committed bunch of people. It is hard work and they are attacked from most sectors (troubled parents, the public, the media, and not much support back at the office). Art teachers have wept as they have told me their stories. Social workers on the east and west coast have it really hard when it comes to bad press and not much help back at the office (from comments made to me after the United Nations talk and my research).
I have experienced and written about the huge mistakes made and the great pain to all involved because of our failing institutions, but to listen to people demanding the destruction of the guardian ad-litem program instead of improving it, would leave children with absolutely no voice in an already cold and overwhelming system.
Foster and adoptive parents face a complicated system with unpredictable results due to the institutions we continue to band aid together to cope with the growing problems we are facing. The people I’ve met are sincere, many of them poor and trying to help children and their community with very limited resources and very troubled children. Many communities are barely able to make life tolerable for foster children. This may explain the recent statistic that 80% of youth aging out of foster care are leading dysfunctional lives.
To blame social workers when a baby is found in a dumpster is wrong. The case loads the American public demands social workers carry and the scarce resources that are available for struggling families and children explains why the vast majority of violent crime committed by youth came out of under 4% of Ramsey county family (A.C.E. study) and 90 percent of the youth in juvenile justice have come through the child protection system (according to former Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz). It also explains why American girls have among the highest STD and preteen pregnancy rates in the world.
Blaming Teachers for failed schools in like holding police officers accountable for the criminal in the squad car. Until children are ready to learn, we are making educators managers of out of control children, not teachers. The amount of Prozac, Ritalin, and other psychotropic medications proscribed to American youth (without therapy) is astronomical. Teachers would be astounded if they knew the data.
It is up to us who are working for positive change that we recognize who are friends are and quit throwing rocks at them.
Here are some positive suggestions, please add more through the comment section; Continue reading ‘Mad At The Wrong People (throwing baby out with bathwater again)’
http://aha.mn is an exciting new program to promote connections among adopted individuals of all ages, ethnicities and adoption types while maximizing their lifelong welfare and self-fulfillment
AHA believes…
…being adopted has lifelong consequences for those who were adopted at any age
…adoptees benefit from connecting with other adoptees in a variety of ways
…adoptees are the experts on adoption
…non-adoptees benefit from the knowledge and life wisdom of adopted individuals.
Congratulations on making a great idea come to life. Continue reading ‘Adoptees Have Answers New Website Launch’
“What we do to our children, they will do to our society” said Pliny 2500 years ago. Look hard at what we are doing to our children now and what they are doing to our society.
Rosalynn Carter’s smart article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/former-first-lady-rosalynn-carter/solving-the-mental-health_b_561747.html draws attention to the necessity of putting strength-based models in place to overcome the deficits that poor children are growing up with.
About three million children a year are reported to child protection services each year in the U.S.
Between 40 to 85 percent of kids in foster care have mental health problems.
As a guardian ad-litem, many of the children in my case load had multiple foster placements because they were so mixed up and badly needed help that just was not available. Many of those children still live troubled lives (the last study I saw, showed 80% of youth aging out of foster care leading dysfunctional lives).
Prisons, Jails, underfunded schools, and failing support for children’s programs and health support have stressed the last few generations of America’s youth to where we now hold world records for prison populations, poor health, and poverty stricken children.
As a long time volunteer county guardian ad-litem, I believe that America’s institutions should be defined by what it is they actually create instead of what they were designed to create; they must be seen as producing obese children, preteen moms, and adolescent felons, as we now lead the industrialized world measurably in these areas.
Our children deserve better. Our society deserves better.
Support programs that help children learn, heal, and keeps them out of the justice system (we now prosecute about 25% of juveniles at adults).
Let’s stick together on this friends.
Support educators, social workers, foster and adoptive parents and the people working with troubled youth.
Most of all, support children and programs for children in your community. It will be a better community because of it.
Continue reading ‘America’s Children, Mental Health, & Society’
Minnesota Orphan Train Riders of New York
Minnesota became the first state to host an official gathering of its orphan train riders and their families with an event that took place on July 1, 1961 with nine attendees. This event was organized by two women who discovered later in life that they had ridden the same orphan train to Minnesota as young children. This fall the Minnesota Orphan Train Riders of New York, the official Minnesota orphan train riders organization, will celebrate its 50th reunion, honoring the 11 surviving Minnesota riders and recognizing the many thousands of others who arrived in Minnesota during the Orphan Train Era. Adoptees Have Answers will also celebrate these amazing nonagenarians on Saturday, June 19, 2010, from 2:00 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Minnesota History Center (cosponsor). For more information about the event, contact Anne Johnson at 612-746-5122 or ajohnson@mnadopt.org
Continue reading ‘http://www.orphantrainridersofminnesota.com/’
It would be so nice if our community would recognize the issues facing abused and neglected children and make it easier for them instead of harder.
In most cases, it is would be a minimal cost (especially compared to the cost of not supporting them), but in any event, if there is a person deserving of some cost, it would be a child removed from a birth home for the trauma they have suffered.
This weeks Star Tribune article by Eric Roper http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/92467749.html?elr=KArks8c7PaP3E77K_3c::D3aDhUMEaPc:E7_ec7PaP3iUiacyKUnciatkEP7DhUr puts a child’s words to the experience of living in multiple homes and ten different schools and trying to lead a normal life. Not many of us could do that successfully.
My own experience as a guardian reminds me of the many county children that did very poorly in school because of the traumas they had suffered and the behavioral problems they brought with them to school, and to their foster and adoptive homes (and into the communities they lived in).
“You’re in a new home,. You don’t know these people”. “you feel like a burden”.
The powerful point of the article is that the system is broken and children are suffering.
Minnesota’s Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz has stated that “the difference between that poor child & a felon is about eight years” and “about 90% of the youth in the juvenile justice system have passed through the child protection system”.
We could provide more as a community to make the paths easier for abused and neglected children with programs and support from the community.
Or, we can go on producing preteen moms and juvenile felons with tightfisted & hard hearted public policies toward youth.
An impressive video statement about the importance of attending to the needs of youth. Cheers for our neighbors to the north.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/20100430_Ex-judge_pleads_guilty_in_Luzerne__kids-for-cash__scandal.html This judge should go to prison for the thousands of young lives he destroyed with his money making scheme to send kids to detention facilities while he was paid millions in commission (20 people were in on the deal, including a school superintendent).
There are strong arguments to be made for separating private enterprise and policing and punishment, not the least of which Michael T Conahan has proven beyond mere words (2.8 million dollars in commissions).
I can tolerate the stealing of money but I am not able to stand by and watch children denied their youth because those of us that vote (and run this nation) don’t see the connection between healthy institutions and healthy children.
It is up to us as citizens to have the depth of understanding and concern with our community to see how what happened in Pennsylvania is happening by degrees to youth throughout our state and our nation (just without the commissions).
We have not yet fully understood and agreed that healthy youth make healthy adults and citizens, and that ensuring that youth have a solid chance to be healthy is worth the investment.
Until that happens, we will continue to underfund programs that help struggling children and families with health and mental health and live with the results that we have been getting for so many years. I draw your attention to the ACE study in Ramsey County that points out the great majority of violence and serious crime committed by juveniles in St Paul was committed by youth from three or four percent of the families in the community http://www.tacommunities.org/getfile/view/id/1000/cid/1004/p/folder_1004%252Ffolder_5040
Helping these children helps us all. Better schools, safer streets, a more educated work force, and healthier communities (less frightening newspapers and TV news).
Let’s get behind this; Denounce the cuts in programs (it won’t save money in the long run) Vote for the people that understand the value of healthy youth and families.
Continue reading ‘Kids For Cash, Privatizing Punishment, What Could Be More Wrong?’
If it bleeds it leads, is the standard newsroom motto. Adults suffer the consequences of trial by media regularly and I don’t see that changing in my lifetime.
*We live in a time when newsrooms don’t have budgets to adequately follow complicated stories, like child protection, adoption, foster care & the other very serious issues that social workers, educators, parents & other service providers must study deeply to manage abused and neglected children.
A brief interview covering the death of a child in child protection leads to a short news story making a social worker look inadequate (or worse) bringing outrage from a community, and even less support for an already overburdened department of human services. Almost no attention is paid to the lack of resources, low salaries, and patchwork system that holds together the millions of children and workers across this nation.
When a baby is found in a dumpster, too many of us are not trained to dig down deep for compassion and understanding and ask ourselves what we could do to prevent this. Just where could we put more and better resources? Who could I call to show support for programs supporting pregnant preteen moms?
Our media response quite often drives us to an opposite response of quick anger and blaming, and even less compassion and support for our already overworked social workers, foster care providers, educators and everyone else in the system.
It is telling to note that we were in the top five as a nation in the quality of life indices for over twenty years among the 24 industrialized nations with 200 year democracies and now we don’t compare ourselves to them (but to the 90 or so “emerging nations”).
We desperately need to agree that children in need of services will receive them. The cost is minimal as compared to their expense in crime, prisons and jails over their lifetimes and is now well documented.
How to deal with a media that does not have resources to adequately report the details that lead to the baby in the dumpster, drowned in the bathtub, or 7 year old that hung himself?
My suggestion is to change the rule social workers are taught during their training from “never talk about your work outside of work” to “use your own judgement, be legally and personally discreet, but feel free to discuss the nature of child protection, the circumstance that are common to you in your work, and by all means, the needs you see not being met in the lives of abused and neglected children”.
As it is today, abused and neglected children have no voice in the terribly abusive homes they are raised in nor the court system once they are removed from those homes.
Some of us, preferably some of us educated in the study of the issues; social workers, health and mental health providers, and others close and sympathetic to abused and neglected children, needs to give these children a voice in their own lives other than a Media that has to sell itself with “if it bleeds it leads”.
*I’m not blaming anyone. Newspapers don’t have money to pay people, the system is what it is. There are many great reporters trying to do good work, but it is an uphill slog against terrific odds. This is a complicated topic that does not lend itself to the type of news we have prepared American citizens to comprehend.
Kids At Risk Action needs your support for its successful launch of televised public service announcements building awareness to the issues surrounding child abuse.
In collaboration with award winning Salo of Finland, KARA is working to create and place ads on national TV.
These ads will reach millions and create interest and understanding of this important and often misunderstood subject.
Contact KARA with your questions and support. Please contact us with your questions, referrals, and donations.
The KARA team.
ps… pass this on to those you think might appreciate the opportunity;
Today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune article http://www.startribune.com/world/92016859.html?page=1&c=y clearly explains the abject failure of giving traumatized veterans psychotropic medications without adequate therapy. The Public and the Media are beginning to understand the consequences of under-treated mentally damaged soldiers (violence/suicide/shattered lives) and the value of proper medical attention given early.
We learn slow as a nation, but we do learn. This story needs to be repeated (pass it on).
Almost nothing is known about the rivers of psychotropic medications that are poured into the millions five, seven, and nine year old children that pass through child protection systems in America without sufficient mental health services.
Judge Heidi Schellhas shared with me the quantity of Prozac, *Ritalin, and other mind altering psychotropic medications poured into the very young children that passed through her court room each year. The amounts were staggering.
One of my first cases as a volunteer guardian ad-Litem took me to a four year old girl at the suicide ward at a Minneapolis hospital. Many of my cases of very young children were taking powerful psychotropic medications and not receiving access to mental health professionals. There was almost no coordination of services for these children, one provider had no idea what another provider was doing or how they might work together in the interests of the very troubled child.
There is no doubt that traumatized children and veterans need better access to mental health services. Veterans are fortunate in that their traumas are readily understood, discussed, and addressed.
Not so with abused and neglected children. The Media and the Public fail to see that child do not end up in child protection services unless they have been traumatized.
It is America’s “Imminent Harm Doctrine” that rules child protection law, and it only allows children to be removed from a home if their lives are endangered. In my experience over twelve years as a guardian ad-Litem, all children removed from their homes have been endangered and severely traumatized. Many children that were not removed from their homes were traumatized also. They need help too.
It would serve us well as a nation to help them. Our schools, communities, families, and children would benefit.
*Ritalin was banned in Sweden in 1968 because of a huge increase in suicides in the nation attributed to its use.
Kids At Risk Action needs your support for its successful launch of televised public service announcements building awareness to the issues surrounding child abuse. In collaboration with award winning Salo of Finland, KARA is working to create and place ads on national TV. These ads will reach millions and create interest and understanding of this important and often misunderstood subject.
Please contact us with your questions, referrals, and donations.The KARA team.
Continue reading ‘Drugs Without Therapy Is Ineffective & Can Be Dangerous’
Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.
ChildTrauma Academy
When: Thursday, June 17th
Registration: 8:30 a.m.
Training: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Mystic Mystice Lake Casino, Shakopee MN
Cost: $40 Standard, $30 JJC Community Member, $30 Student Rate
Scholarships available
Targeted Audience: Policy makers, professionals and practitioners in education, the court system, law enforcement, corrections, human services, community-based organizations, mental and chemical health, parents, youth, advocates, elected officials and others.
Presenter:
Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. is the Senior Fellow of the ChildTrauma Academy, a not-for-profit organization based in Houston that promotes innovations in service, research and education in child maltreatment and childhood trauma (www.ChildTraumaAcademy.org). Dr. Perry is the author with Maia Szalavitz of The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love and Healing, a book based on his work with maltreated children. Over the last twenty years, Dr. Perry has been an active teacher, clinician and researcher in children’s mental health and the neurosciences holding a variety academic positions.
This is a compilation of recent news that reflects the conditions of youth and youth policy in the U.S. this past few weeks. Thank you Jamie Wilt for your hard work and Century College for your great programs.
I would like reader comments on the style and substance of this article and appreciate receiving information from you about youth programs, policy, and data.
A great new nonprofit is reaching out to improve and reform child welfare through citizen-led advocacy. This is a Minnesota effort, but every state needs it.
What is Safe Passage for Children? http://safepassagemn.org/
Our strategy is based on two principles: citizen involvement and data.
On the grass roots level Safe Passage recruits volunteers to lobby local and state elected officials in a grass roots campaign to improve the child welfare system. We train them to use reports that highlight key state and county performance measures.
Going forward Safe Passage will engage civic and business leaders in a broader reform campaign that will complement the grass roots effort.
How Does Safe Passage Work?
• Safe Passage recruits volunteer advocates to lobby elected officials for improvements
• Volunteers are trained in reports that highlight basic county and state performance measures
• Those who have not lobbied previously are paired with more experienced individuals
• Volunteers impress legislators because they are advocating on behalf of children in general, not because they need services themselves or work for a nonprofit that is requesting money
• Advocates attend one training session and one organizing session per year, and make 2-3 visits – one each to their state representative, state senator, and county commissioner
Continue reading ‘Safe Passage For Children’
If child protection means anything, it should mean that a child already traumatized by a lifetime of abuse will not be subjected to another series of poorly made decisions by the adults in his life.
If there is one thing that we do know, it is that adoptees need time and help adjusting to new surroundings, people, life, & everything else that has changed in their O so chaotic little universe.
If there is one thing a nation should stand for, should agree on, could vote for,… it might be providing protection for children seven and under.
Even our coarse, money driven hard bitten society might find a majority to support basic systems to insure that 7 year olds are not sent back into even worse circumstances than they are now experiencing.
What would it take to have put in place services that the Hansen family could have relied on to manage their very serious problems that would have negated casting the boy so harshly out of their home?
Of all the billions we spend on war, medications, beer, football, and advertising, where does Artyom Savelyev and his seven year old counter parts fit in?
From an international perspective, this must look like a three ring circus. From a guardian ad-Litems perspective, the conversation around child protection systems and children’s rights is long overdue.
Let’s move it along. I would really like to hear from the legal world, and stories from people that have found remedies for abused children. Continue reading ‘Deeper Questions About 7 Year Old Russian Boy’
Minnesota Adoption Resource Network (Marn) is launching an inspired program that should become a national model for dealing with foster and adoptive care. Ten adoptees from diverse ethnic backgrounds have combined their wisdom & energy to provide adoptee-to-adoptee training, connections and resources.
A calender full of adoptee-focused events, support groups, website, networking and discussion tools.
Wow. This is a heartfelt and logical pooling of talent and concern that could make a world of difference to a world full of adoptees.
Best wishes to everyone in this grand new venture. Read their newsletter;
Continue reading ‘Adoptees Have Answers…and lots of questons’
How many of us would do well with no long term relationships, friends to fall back on, a family (even a very troubled family) to turn to when life kicked us in the stomach?
NYT article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07foster.htmlrecaps the terrible data that we all know and have been unable to fix for many years.
Why the gangs flourish, schools fail, streets become unsafe & preteen girls give birth.
The last study showed 80% of youth aging out of foster care leading dysfunctional lives.
Blaming children for being born into dysfunctional families would not be a stated public policy, but I have found it to be de facto public policy. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz has stated that “90% of the youth in juvenile justice have come through the child protection system”.
Every child deserves a chance to obtain the skills necessary to lead a productive life.
It is a much better investment to grow a child than it is a convict, a preteen mother, or an unstable person. Continue reading ‘Fixing Foster Care’
Just a few years ago in Red Lake, Jeff Weiss committed multiple murders and then killed himself after months on poorly proscribed Prozac & genuinely reaching out to his community for mental health help and not finding any. Jeff’s mother had told him that she wished he’s never been born. Jeff had a website openly discussing homicide/suicide.
In Red Lake and other communities that have suffered such mayhem, much money has been spent after a tragedy to put in place services that should stop the next Virginia Tech, Red Lake, Columbine.
Mental health is the cornerstone of a healthy life. We all have our ups and downs. Some of us start lower than others and sink lower than others. Throw in alcohol or drugs (proscribed or not) & bad things begin to happen.
Programs that help youth understand these issues and how to cope with them are one of the best investments that we can make in our youth and our community.
Not having programs is expensive. Just ask the people that lost family and friends in Red Lake, Columbine, & at Virginia Tech.
The following articles are an expansion on the topic of money and teen substance abuse (thanks Jamie); Continue reading ‘Mental Health, Drug & Alcohol Abuse Programs Don’t Cost They Save’
It is easy to blame people doing the work, but almost always more honest to look upstream to see what process is in place for the workers to follow. Poor process almost insures bad results. Add to that extensive workloads and minimal resources, any positive results become elusive.
I have found social workers to be hard working and caring people, & frustrated like the rest of us in our troubled communities.
In business, outcomes are measured and process is controlled by results desired.
Once the process has been understood, measured, and adjusted, outcomes improve, and the resulting efficiencies save money and improve lives.
There are existing models for measuring social service outcomes, my favorite is; http://www.socialsolutions.com
Why our nation does not demand this software for its social service providers is a mystery to me.
The following article shows that the U.S. is not alone in its child protection troubles; Continue reading ‘How To Improve A Child Protection System’
50% of mothers in the Virginia Healthy Families Program last year reported they were abused as children.
That has been my experience working as a guardian ad-litem also. Abused and neglected children grow up to have families of more abused and neglected children.
Once the cycle is broken, children grow up to be normal productive citizens and happy families. Until the cycle is broken, children go on to lead dysfunctional lives and spend years in and out of institutions, failing in school, personal development, and their communities.
This Danville-Pittsylvania program has been helping at-risk children avoid abuse by providing parental guidance and connecting families to other resources; Danville news http://www2.godanriver.com/gdr/news/local/danville_news/article/executive_director_budget_cuts_would_affect_at-risk_children/18842/
Prevent Child Abuse MN holds its Healing Fields event from April 29th to May 2nd at the Minnesota State Capitol. The theme of the field is “The Future of America Depends on Healthy Children”.
One thousand American Flags and a field of blue pinwheels for prevention. There will be a candlelight vigil on Friday evening and a music and speaker program on Sunday afternoon.
The field will be open to the community for informal tours all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday until the program starts at 2pm.
go to PCAMN’s site http://www.pcamn.org/temp_01.php?PK=84
The Ontario “budget cookie” (below) requesting affordable daycare I found worth repeating. Daycare allows young working families to work & have a life and their children a safe & healthy environment. Without it, parents struggle with often inadequate ways of caring for their children while they earn a living.
As a guardian ad-Litem, I have seen plenty of cases where unsavory family members and other questionable practices become the only available answer to a family that cannot find daycare.
The child pays, the family suffers, and the community bears the burden of troubles that arise as the stresses and chaos build in our neighborhoods.
The return on investment of subsidized daycare is high. Allowing parents to work, children to learn and thrive in healthy environments is what gets young kids prepared to enter school and do well. The first step in becoming a healthy citizen. Continue reading ‘The Importance of DayCare, DC, LA,’
This is a program worth knowing about; http://www.ncptc.org/index.asp?Type=NONE&SEC={D2B324A2-07CB-404F-8927-5891D28A8AF8}
Send to people that you know to be interested in the topic.
Developed in 2004, the Child Advocacy Studies Minor started at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota. The curriculum was designed to bring the goals of the National Child Protection Training Center to the field by providing students with real-world experience. Continue reading ‘National Child Protection Training Center’
The following article http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-02-23/news/bal-md.bowman23feb23_1_adoption-agency-girls-killing from the Baltimore Sun froze the blood in my arteries and brought my attention to the critical importance of funding child protection services in our communities.
Money losing newspapers are hard pressed to assign reporters to these tragic stories. As a guardian ad-Litem, I had a case with 49 police calls to a home before the children were removed (& only because the seven year old attempted to kill the five year old in front of the officer). I believe that the seven year old had been prostituted.
How can our community stand by without demanding change as three and five year old children are tortured and murdered and our overworked and underfunded social workers and institutions provide no safe place for abused youth to hide?
What follows are the sad stories of the Maryland girls, and several other tragedies that I have followed recently.
Continue reading ‘What Have We Come To?’
The CASA program I came through is a terrific volunteer program that connects volunteers to abused and neglected children in their community. CASA provides a great learning experience as well as a badly needed service to children unlucky enough to be born into tragic circumstances.
KARA has had the good fortune of having volunteers from Century College & Macalaster College to find information for me to write about and to research information on child abuse in other nations.
Volunteering is a powerful force at times like these, when young families are struggling, and more children are at risk.
To make volunteering work, it is best to do things that you like to do, for people that need it. The results are terrific.
Don’t be afraid to provide services through your own efforts (perhaps with the help of your local religious or business organizations). Small efforts become big if fed and sustained.
What follows is my quick list of child friendly organizations that need volunteers and articles on volunteering (to start the thought process).
This government study shows the frequency of children, most under two, almost all under ten, that are deliberately burned by their caregivers. It is striking in that it gives clear definition & how to interpret a child’s burns.
This is perhaps a more technical/professional piece than is usually found here, but I think it is important and might serve as reference to people you know in the social service or medical fields.
It explains how to distinguish between accidental burns and deliberate burns. I found it to be a complete and important investigation of this serious and not often discussed type of abuse.
One of my first cases was a baby in a very dysfunctional home that had been terribly scalded in a bathtub. The skin on the bottom half of her body had suffered third degree burns in a bathtub of 161 degree water. A very painful experience for the baby that would be with her for her life (her legs and bottom would be scarred forever).
The only positive was in this sad case was a firm that specialized in burns that recovered substantial damages for the child against the landlord that had ignored frozen cold water pipes and turned the hot water heater to a scalding temperature.
Link to the complete Worksheet;
http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/91190.txt
Continue reading ‘Burn Injuries Make Up 10 % of All Child Abuse Cases’
This generation has it in for American children. By all significant indicators, U.S. youth will not be as educated, financially well off, live as long, or be as healthy as their parents. Comparing these same indicators in other developed nations the results are very different.
For many years the U.S. was a leader among the developed nations in health, quality of life, education, and mortality. Not so any more. America’s public policies have become punitive to where we now have 5% of the world’s population & 25% of its prison population & there were 13 million prison and jail releases last year alone.
Public policy makers have been satisfied building more and bigger prisons, and schizophrenic about dealing with dysfunctional families and the problems their children pose to the schools and larger community.
Any valid study of U.S. institutions shows a direct correlation between abused and neglected children, failed schools, unsafe / unhealthy communities and full prisons.
A serious look at other industrialized nations (and many emerging nations) will show that these nations do not suffer the same terrible crime problems, failing school problems, and generational poverty issues because their public policy makers have come to understand that investments in early childhood programs & support for young families are a much better investment than prisons and jails.
Some states are fighting to keep programs that protect and foster their poor and vulnerable children, but many are not.
What can be said to people that would deny health, education, and the most basic needs for the babies and young children living among them that would change their mind to a more compassionate (and practical) understanding that we all benefit when healthy children become healthy citizens?
Perhaps, remind them that all religions demand caring for the weakest and most vulnerable among them.
“When institutions are defined by what they create, instead of what they were designed to create”, it must be said that American courts and legislatures are now creating preteen moms and juvenile felons.
*(Kathleen Long, DANCING WITH DEMONS)
With reduced funding to manage the increased calls coming in from the community distress that results from the poverty and chaos from our declining economy, social service agencies are becoming unable to respond adequately to the calls they are receiving.
Caseloads were too high before the downturn, & funding from non profits and governmental agencies has been significantly reduced, leaving more dysfunctional families & their abused and neglected children without help.
The future holds more and bigger juvenile detention centers, jails, and prisons until this trend reverses & our communities grasp the wisdom of investing in youth.
The rest of this article is a compilation of recent updates on how states from around the nation are managing troubled families and their abused and neglected children;
Thank those of you who have sent me important articles. I appreciate the information.
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Continue reading ‘Abused & Neglected Children Around The Nation’
No nation can achieve its potential for greatness without investing in its human capital. The extent to which children successfully negotiate the treacherous passage to adulthood depends on the earliest years of brain and emotional development. That explains why early childhood education is crucial to society.
America’s current public policy regarding at-risk children is an economic and moral failure:
“We reject community investment programs (implemented today by nearly all developed countries) that stress preventing the creation of at-risk children. Instead we assume colossal costs of corrective measures that mostly fail regardless of how earnestly they are pursued.”
The results of this undocumented policy are many:
1. A child is a work-in-process toward citizenship. A successful citizen adds $5 million of economic value to society in his/her life. If unsuccessful, that person instead costs society several million dollars in expenses. Therefore, the lost opportunity value between a success and a failure is somewhere between $5 and $10 million per child.
2. Young children are humiliated when they read below grade level. A wealthy society that rejects proven programs to avoid the humiliation of children is an immoral society.
3. Children who read by the third grade seldom are ever involved with the criminal justice system. Four of five incarcerated juvenile offenders read two years or more below grade, and a majority are functionally illiterate.
4. America has over two million prison inmates, the highest rate in the world and five to ten times that of European countries. Another five million Americans are involved in the criminal justice system for probation, parole, or supervision, all unproductive activities.
5. Several states forecast needed prison growth based on third grade reading scores. Our federal prisons are operating at 130% of capacity.
6. No industrial nation equals the United States in neglecting the basic needs of working families.
7. Minnesota’s under funded policy to assist low-income families for out of home child care has a waiting list of over 7000 families. This is a sham, not real policy.
When America isn’t fair, it doesn’t work. America is cheating its children.
High quality, universally eligible early childhood education and development similar to that now in place for decades elsewhere would solve the above problems. According to Minneapolis Federal Reserve researchers, no public sector investment of taxpayer money yields the high returns verified for early childhood education.
What are we waiting for? Continue reading ‘Education Is The Engine of Progress & Prosperity’
Not one third of Kansas City’s elementary students read at grade level.
Texas recently refused almost a billion dollars from the federal government to improve its school system. Texas has suffered the lowest graduation rates in the nation with the worst racial disparities.
Houston schools superintendent wrote at the time; “I have 100,000 kids in Houston who don’t read at grade level”.
Georgia education officials recently ordered investigations at 191 schools across the state where they found evidence of tampering on answer sheets for the state’s standardized achievement test.
The list of inner city schools struggling to educate the children of those who could not get to (or for reasons of loyalty, love, or ethics) decided not to, escape to the suburbs where the schools still function is long.
My old high school, Edison, built in 1922, graduates less than 50% of its students, its sister school across town has graduated less than 30% of its students for five years running.
As a nation, we know that high school dropouts have a far greater chance of preteen pregnancy, years of costly incarceration and leading dysfunctional lives that they pass on to their children (who will repeat this cycle).
25% of America’s graduating seniors are now functionally illiterate, and U.S. graduation rates are among the worst in the world.
Today, many states are increasing their percentage of spending on juvenile justice and criminal justice while maintaining or reducing spending on education.
New York and California have been spending about $250,000 per year per juvenile in their juvenile justice systems. MN has reached the half a billion dollar mark for maintaining its prison system this year after five years of double digit growth.
We are spending more on prisons than on schools and we are getting more accomplished criminals than good students.
Which is what Pliny meant when he said 2500 years ago;
“What we do to our children, they will do to our society”
Kids At Risk Action seeks information about what is happening in your community that impacts abused and neglected children.
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Comment here, or privately; Info@invisiblechildren.org
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In 2005, when I wrote the book Invisible Children in MN there were less than 900 cases of child rape reported in the state I live in (MN). If that were true, I personally knew of about 50 cases, and there were about five hundred guardian ad-Litems besides myself in the state. I know that there were many more cases of child rape in this state that year.
I have attended several law school symposiums that articulated the complexities of prosecuting child rape and come to understand how far away from solving these problems our nations judicial system really is. In one of my GAL cases, a 40 year old man had terribly molested a child over a four year period and was not made a party to the case. He was still in the home accused of molesting another (three year old) child almost ten years later.
The following article from UNICEF in the Huffington Post focuses on adolescent girls in third world nations, but I would point out that child rape in my caseload has been significantly younger than ten years of age. Continue reading ‘International Women’s Day March 7′
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