My article was written from the perspective of a CASA volunteer working with very troubled children that were not adopted. They needed a consistent adult in their life and we must help provide that.

Some of my CASA children had been in over ten foster homes and treatment centers and would age out of foster care very alone and uncertain.

I failed to clarify that in yesterday’s article. This counterpoint helps to clarify the serious issues that must always be considered in our struggle to provide the very best services to abused and neglected children. Please submit your own ideas and comments to this discussion.

Michael,
I am emailing you this privately and will leave it to your discretion as to whether you want to post this on your site as a mode of discussion. I know you support CASA and they do a lot of good for some kids, but the program has developed major faults over time.

It was never intended that CASA become a substitute parent or become personally involved with the children at all. They are supposed to be objective, getting FACTS from everyone involved, making recommendations to the judge based up those facts. Their own rules caution them against becoming too personally involved causing loss of objectivity.

They are not supposed to take the child shopping, buy them gifts, or celebrate milestones. This is the role of the parental figure in the child’s life. What if the parent doesn’t step up? The CASA can recommend that the child be assigned a person who can serve that role. It is not the CASA responsibility to fill it.

The CASA guidelines describe this role as “passive observer, information gatherer.” Passive is not active. They may not actively do anything. Gathering information does not equal obtaining or performing services. Obtaining services is the duty of the caseworker.

The CASA may recommend to the judge that services be obtained, but is not allowed to perform them himself.

This is where CASA goes awry causing blurred boundaries with the other parties involved in the case, especially, the parents. CASA can overstep to the point that they push the parent out of the picture completely, and this is a grand travesty to the child.

Additionally, CASAs receive their 40 hours of training in neglect and abuse cases, yet they are also assigned to dependency cases. Sometimes, “no fault dependency” cases.

As a result of ASFA, when the federal government gave money to states for the purpose of increasing adoptions, large numbers of kids did get good homes. Thirteen years later, hoards of those kids are re-entering the system because they came to parents with severe mental and emotional scars as a result of infant and child trauma, neglect, and abuse.

States refuse to help in any way with the astronomical mental health fees, such as $150,000 per year for residential care. Health insurance, Medicaid, and adopt subsidies pay nothing towards this care, not $1. Adoptive families are being forced to relinquish children back to the states to access astronomically expensive mental health care.

It defaults to child protective services and Juvenile Court, neither of which understand mental health and trauma. These cases are being treated just like abuse and neglect, when they are really clinical matters. What training does CASA have for cases like these? ZERO. NONE. They treat parents like they are abusive too. They are taking over the parental role, which is the last thing a child with bonding and attachment issues needs.

These children need assistance staying close to the only parents they’ve ever known. They don’t need to be separated from them. They don’t need to suffer guilt from watching their parents be charged with neglect and having CASA and caseworkers run all over their parents.

This happened to us. The CASA on our case bribed our son with over $1000 in gifts. Books, clothes, electronic games, rollerblades, skateboard, bicycle, health club membership complete with personal trainer, and on, and on, and on. This worker’s supervisor ridiculed me in court while the judge and attorneys were in chambers because I dared bring it to their attention that they were breaking all their own rules.

My son was calling her twice weekly asking her to buy him things, which only served to feed his OCD, causing setbacks in his therapy. He spoke to her husband on the phone. On her final visit, she sat in front of him at the residential treatment facility and cried tears in front of him, because I was trying to get her dismissed. I was, and rightly so.

She gave legal advice. She told the school I needed a court order to get his school records which was not true. She tried to paint to everyone that we were bad parents. Then she lied repeatedly in an effort to cover up her own discrepancies. She wound herself up in such a web of lies the judge dismissed her.

The only issue with our family is that our son has PTSD and OCD due to pre-adoptive trauma and severe infant neglect that happened two years before he came to live in our home. The state baled on us for any and every kind of mental health funding.

Unfortunately, after she was gone, our son figured out the truth. He no longer trusts them and neither do we. Kids with PTSD do not trust adults and it has taken us many years to develop a level of trust with him.

That CASA magnified his trust issues even more. The new one has been less involved, but still insists on overstepping the parental role. He keeps advising us on what he thinks would be best. We are good parents. We’ve raised 3 other kids, all of whom are community servants and upstanding citizens, nursing, police work, military.

Just because parents can’t cure PTSD does not make them unfit. It does not mean they don’t want a relationship with their child. It does not give CASA or anyone else the right to take their place.

We have another parent in our state in the same situation. The states attorney is seeking to terminate her parental rights because he does not feel that a single mom can raise a child with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Shame on the states for giving children permanency and then taking it away after failing to provide the mental health services the child needs. Shame on CASA for taking advantage of children and parents in this unjust situation.

It is my opinion that CASA should not be assigned to these cases at all, and that the parents be allowed to speak for the child’s “best interests.” If the CASA organization truly wanted to help this population of children, they should boycott these types of cases all together, sending a clear message to the government that these cases do not belong in court at all. Parents are entitled to the same rights as those who have children with physical illnesses, CUSTODY AND TREATMENT. Preserve adoptions.

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.

Volunteers act like parents foster children never had
BY SHARON A. HEILBRUNN, SPECIAL TO THE UNION-TRIBUNE
THURSDAY, JULY 22, 2010 AT MIDNIGHT

PEGGY PEATTIE / UNION-TRIBUNE
Candace Kaimuloa is going to college. She shyly chose a quilt from a shelf at Target while shopping for dorm accessories with her Voices for Children advocate Genevieve Rohan. Kaimuloa is also graduating from the foster care system.

- PEGGY PEATTIE / U-T
Candace Kaimuloa gets a push on a bicycle at Target from her Voices for Children advocate Genevieve Rohan during a shopping excursion to get ready for college.

VOICES FOR CHILDREN

What: Volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocates for foster children

Where : 2851 Meadow Lark Drive, San Diego, CA 92123

Who : People interested in volunteering should contact Susan Smith at (858) 598-2235

Information: speakupnow.org

It was a frame. A black frame, with multiple spots for pictures and the word “Family” in large letters at the top.

Most teenagers would pass right over it while shopping. It didn’t have any bling. It wasn’t terribly stylish. Heck, it wasn’t even in the right aisle at Target. It was abandoned in the furniture section by a previous shopper, and it caught foster teen Candace Kaimuloa’s eye.

Family.

Something the teen barely had.

She looked at Genevieve Knych-Rohan and said, clearly: “I want to buy this.”

Knych-Rohan understood.

For the past six years, Knych-Rohan, 46, has been the family Kaimuloa, 18, never had. The two met when Knych-Rohan, a recruiter for a local biotech company who is married and has two stepsons, became a Court Appointed Special Advocate to Kaimuloa and three of her brothers through the nonprofit organization Voices for Children. The organization pairs volunteer advocates with foster children in the region to identify and advocate for their needs.

“It’s different from being a mentor or Big Brother or Sister figure, because CASAs have court orders,” said Kim Penny, vice president of marketing and development for Voices for Children. “They are assigned by the court for this child’s case. They have access to court reports, school reports — really, access to all aspects of the child’s life.”

Special advocates spend a minimum of 10 hours a month with their foster child. They advocate for anything from eyeglasses and braces to transportation to and from school events.

The individualized attention can sometimes be difficult for social workers to provide.

“Social workers have a high caseload and are responsible for many children and their families, and are therefore not able to focus attention on one child at a time,” said Penny, who noted there are nearly 6,000 children in San Diego County’s foster care system.

“Voices for Children has a huge impact on what I do as a social worker,” said Steven Wells, a senior protective services worker with the county’s Child Welfare Services Department. “It’s really important that CASAs are around because they’re charged with keeping an eye on everything the child needs.

But it’s the intangibles that sometimes make the most difference.

It is the special advocate who celebrates a foster child’s birthday when parents don’t call or visit. It is the special advocate who is on the sidelines when a foster child plays his first soccer game and has no family in the stands. It is the special advocate who helps a teen with relationship issues in high school or does her hair before prom.

“The CASA is often the only consistent adult in the child’s life,” Penny said.

On a recent trip to Target, Knych-Rohan accompanied Kaimuloa as she picked out items for her college dorm room at University of California Davis. It was a first for Kaimuloa, who was using money she won from an essay contest to make the purchases.

“I’ve never been able to choose before,” she said as she eyed an aisle of linens, her smile exposing two dimples. “I’ve never been able to pick out what I wanted.”

She was learning about things like thread counts and closet organizers from Knych-Rohan, who insisted on snapping her photo in the aisles of Target and embarrassing her the way any mother would to a daughter about to go to college.

Kaimuloa is thankful for those pictures. Without Knych-Rohan, Kaimuloa would have nothing to fill the frame she found. Knych-Rohan began taking pictures of Kaimuloa and her brothers the day she met them, when Kaimuloa was 12 and her parents could no longer care for her.

Now, there are pictures of Knych-Rohan with Kaimuloa and her brothers at the zoo, ice skating, bowling, surfing and golfing. There are pictures of the family clowning around and supporting one another at school events.

Sometimes, Knych-Rohan was the only link between Kaimuloa and her brothers, as the family was separated into different group homes when they entered the foster care system.

“The court suggested the kids get together one hour, once a week,” Knych-Rohan said. “Invariably, there would be at least one or two of the kids who wouldn’t be brought. So I started picking up the older boys and bringing them to the family visits.”

Knych-Rohan tears up as she thinks about her relationship with the Kaimuloa children.

“In the beginning, they didn’t have a lot of motivation,” Knych-Rohan said. “Nobody checked on their homework, no one cared if they got good or bad grades. No one would come for their open houses at school.

“So I made a bigger deal about helping them get good grades and helping them with projects,” she continued. “I went to their open houses. They are so appreciative that someone cares enough to meet their teacher or talk to them on the phone. There are a lot of children who just don’t have one person they can call when they need to talk something through.”

Kaimuloa remembers the hesitation that came with allowing someone new into her life.

“At first I had a wall,” she said. “Why should I trust her? She’s just like everyone else that comes in and out of my life. But then she was consistently in my life. And I learned she was a volunteer, and she was taking time out of her day to spend time with us. I never expected that, and she was very happy. That helped us be happy.”

Knych-Rohan encouraged Kaimuloa, who missed fifth, sixth and seventh grade, to go back to school. She agreed, and was forced to take special education classes to catch up. She later took honors and Advanced Placement courses and served on the Associated Student Body, the school’s TV station, the volleyball, basketball and track teams and homecoming court.

“If I didn’t have Genevieve, I don’t think I would have been so successful in everything I’ve done,” Kaimuloa said. “I never thought I’d have anyone in my life that cared about me long enough to help me with anything. She’s like my mom. She was more of a mom to me than my own mom.”

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.

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

Child-welfare panel forms

The citizen review group will evaluate the treatment of child-abuse cases in Lebanon and 12 other counties.
By JOHN LATIMER Staff Writer
Updated: 07/15/2010 10:46:48 AM EDT

A citizen review panel representing Lebanon and 12 other counties is organizing with a mission of evaluating and improving the services provided to victims of child abuse.
The South Central Region Citizen Review Panel already has a handful of members and is looking for volunteers to represent Lebanon County, said its chairman, Sheldon Schwarz. The term is for two years and requires a commitment to attend meetings scheduled every other month in Mechanicsburg, where the panel will discuss and evaluate the policies and procedures the counties’ have in place to treat child-abuse victims.

A background in a related profession is beneficial but not necessary, Schwarz said. The current panel of eight members represents a wide variety of experiences.

“This is open to any citizen interested in protecting the rights of neglected and maltreated children,” he said. “We are not looking for employees of the (child-welfare) system. We are looking for anyone who cares about children and is committed to do something about it.”

The review panel is the first of eight regional panels being established across the state in accordance with the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act. In addition to Lebanon, the South Central Region Citizen Review Panel represents Adams, Bedford, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Fulton, Huntingdon, Juniata, Lancaster, Mifflin, Perry and York counties.

Gov. Edward Rendell authorized the formation of the review panels in 2006 to make the state eligible for federal grants and other funding to benefit child-abuse services. Guidance and financial support for the panels is provided through a grant to the Pennsylvania Child Welfare Training Program, which is administered by the University of Pittsburgh. The training program has offices in Mechanicsburg, where the South Central Region review team meets.

The review panel is overseen by a policy board appointed by the Pennsylvania Child Welfare Training Program, Schwarz said. However, it is an independent entity that does not answer to the Department of Public Welfare or any other state agency. At year’s end, a report containing recommendations for improvements to the child-welfare system is produced and provided to the state, he said.

At this point, the review panel’s focus and goals are still being formulated, Schwarz said. Panels already working in some states evaluate their local systems by reviewing child abuse on a case-by-case basis, but he favors taking a different approach.

“We are still very much on the ground floor,” he said. “We are charged with finding what can be done to improve the system and make it more responsive to abused and neglected children. … For me, I would personally like to look at the broader picture — at the overall legislation and regulations in place to see if they are working well at the county level.”

Those interested in applying for a position on the South Central Region Citizen Review Panel or have questions are asked to call the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act coordinator at 795-9048 or e-mail PACRP@PITT.EDU.

johnlatimer@ldnews.com; 272-5611, ext. 149

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.

Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=14&articleid=20100708_14_A1_Marcia556191

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”.

Lori Sturdevant: Art Rolnick’s six bullet points for state success

Rolnick: Minnesota should target spending on high-return services — like early education.

By LORI STURDEVANT, Star Tribune
Last update: July 3, 2010 – 5:53 PM

Art Rolnick’s economics wisdom would be worth hearing during an election-year summer, even if he weren’t about to end 25 years as senior vice president and director of research at the Minneapolis Fed.

But his visit to the Star Tribune last week was pegged to his pending move down river. Accordingly, news before wisdom: On July 30, Rolnick will leave his perch at the beautiful Federal Reserve Bank just north of the Falls of St. Anthony. Sometime in September, he’ll be ensconced just south of the falls as codirector of the Humphrey Institute’s Human Capital Research Collaborative, with an emphasis on early education.

That means that one of Minnesota’s best sources of research-based advice about how to keep this state prosperous won’t be gone long. But candidates for governor and the Legislature — and the voters who will evaluate them — would benefit now from a dose of Rolnick’s thinking. As is his wont, he cheerfully obliged:

•Education has been key to Minnesota’s success. “Sometime in the early 1950s, we started to pour money into education. Today, we’re one of the most educated states in the country. This is more than just a correlation. It’s causality. Human capital investment in education is what helps to create strong economies.

“The education premium — the increased lifetime earnings if you get a college degree rather than just a high school diploma — used to be 40 percent. It’s now 70, 80, some have it as high as 100 percent, and growing. The market is telling us something: As our economy has progressed, human capital is a critical ingredient to economic growth.”

•The Great Recession is confirming the value of Minnesota’s education spending. “Minnesota’s unemployment right now is 7 percent, well below the national average. I attribute that to having an active and highly educated workforce. Relative to the nation, we shine.

“Are taxes too high?” is the wrong question. “The question should be, are we providing high-quality public goods at the least cost? There are certain public goods which the market fails to produce enough of — education, clean air, safety. Any economy needs these public goods in order to progress.

“All taxes distort. We know taxes are a problem. Nevertheless, if you are getting a high public return, that’s an argument for tax-and-spend. … I have no trouble with a relatively high-tax state that produces really good public services. I would argue that Minnesota has been that for years, and we have one of the best economies in the world.”

•Capital is more mobile now — but the need for government services is also greater now. “Businesses don’t want to locate in areas with high crime and poor educational systems.”

•The next governor and Legislature need to rigorously prioritize spending. “We have to make sure that the high-return public investments are funded. What’s driving our deficits at the state level are medical costs.

“We’ve got to get more disciplined about controlling that. We’re going to have no choice.

“I wouldn’t say ‘Don’t raise taxes.’ But you can’t raise them too far above other states. I’ve supported expanding the sales tax to clothing in a progressive way. There are ways to reformulate the tax system to make it more efficient.”

•Minnesota has been missing the biggest public investment opportunity — early education. “We’re way under-investing in early education. There’s all kinds of research to say that if you provide a healthy environment for our children starting as early as prenatal, so that kids when they start kindergarten are healthy and cognitively ready and socially ready to learn, our children are much more likely to be successful in life. The return we’ve calculated for this is extraordinary. Yet we’ve hardly invested in it. … Other states are passing us by.”

• • •

Rolnick has been sounding an alarm about early ed since 2003. The results to date are more public awareness of the issue and an exciting pilot program involving 625 parents in St. Paul, sponsored by the privately funded Minnesota Early Learning Foundation.

And too little else.

Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/KidsAtRisk

amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com

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.

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

Other recent child tragedies

Child’s death illustrates L.A. County’s growing problem resolving backlog of abuse cases
Though child welfare officials had been told abuse was occurring in the victim’s home nearly two months ago, investigators had yet to determine if he was at risk when he died Saturday. The county continues to struggle meeting investigative deadlines for many cases.

By Garrett Therolf, Los Angeles Times
June 30, 2010

The tip that abuse was taking place in the Long Beach home where 2-year-old Joseph Byrd lived came to Los Angeles County child welfare officials nearly two months ago.

But 57 days after opening an investigation into the allegations, social workers had yet to determine if Joseph was at risk when the toddler was pronounced dead Saturday. Coroner’s officials have listed the case as a homicide.

At the time of Joseph’s death, social workers were still looking into allegations of abuse and neglect in a family that already had been investigated five times, according to sources familiar with their history. Three of those cases were substantiated, sources told The Times.

Joseph’s case is a grim illustration of the growing number of abuse and neglect investigations still open past the state’s 30-day deadline.

Despite pledges to resolve Los Angeles County’s mounting backlog, the crisis has deepened significantly in recent weeks. At last count, cases involving more than 20,000 children reported at risk of abuse or neglect had not been fully investigated within 30 days — up from 18,000 in May. Even with a temporary extension allowing L.A. County 60 days to complete its inquiries, social workers were unable to meet the new deadline in 5,400 cases involving more than 12,000 children — up from 3,700 such cases last month.

Joseph’s father told doctors at Long Beach Memorial Hospital that his son drowned in a bathtub while he was unattended. Authorities, however, have questioned his story. Coroner’s records indicate suspicion that Joseph had ingested drugs, although tests to determine toxicology will not be complete for weeks.

Long Beach police officials this week asked for the public’s help in determining what happened.

What is clear is that Department of Children and Family Service leaders continue to struggle to complete timely investigations.

“Right now, our caseloads for these workers are within the yardstick where we want to be,” Supervisor Gloria Molina said Tuesday. “If you tell me we need more people to make the same dumb mistakes without proper supervision, I disagree.”

In May, department head Trish Ploehn said additional staff was needed to expedite investigations.

“The social worker staff simply cannot keep up with everything we are asking them to do,” she said, adding that she planned to make the case to county supervisors that hundreds of additional social workers were needed. “All of the things that equate with quality do take time.”

In the end, Ploehn never submitted a budget request for additional social workers, citing the county’s tight finances.

Instead, department officials have relied on temporary reassignments of existing staff members to the investigative unit, increasing the number of child abuse investigators to 992 from 596. Even so, the backlog has gotten worse, and many of those workers, whose regular jobs are considered essential, soon must return to their previous posts.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said there was “no excuse having a backlog of this magnitude” in a department that has grown to nearly 4,000 workers from about 2,900 nine years ago. He expressed growing frustration with what he described as a lack of strong management and reactive policymaking.

“Not only is their well-being on the line,” he said of the children, “their lives are on the line.”

Molina said there was “obviously” a deep disagreement over the department’s direction.

“Right now, I am surprised she is not being more efficient and effective,” she said of Ploehn. But Molina said Ploehn’s job was not in jeopardy.

Lizelda Lopez, spokeswoman for the California Department of Social Services, said Tuesday that her agency remains supportive of L.A. County’s efforts. The county, Lopez said, “is doing more than is required by regulations” in its child abuse investigations.

Ploehn also declined to respond to questions about the increasing number of cases that remain open past both deadlines. In a statement, she said the department was “legally unable to share any information on the details of this investigation until it is completed.”

“The death of any child is tragic and heartbreaking, and it pains all of us whenever it happens, no matter the circumstances,” Ploehn said. The increase in the backlog of cases was “consistent with seasonal trends,” she said.

In recent months, Ploehn has dramatically reduced the number of child death case records released to the public. Under a law that went into effect in 2008, authorities are supposed to make public the records for child fatalities resulting from abuse or neglect. Department officials in L.A. County disclosed case histories in almost all such deaths that occurred in the first 18 months of the law.

After a series of stories on the deaths in The Times last year, the release of records slowed dramatically. Of the 23 most recent deaths resulting from abuse or neglect since June last year, the department has released limited records in only two cases, citing a provision in state regulations that allows the district attorney or police agencies to redact information that might jeopardize a criminal investigation. Without such disclosures, determining how many child fatalities in the county involve families or children with previous department involvement is essentially impossible.

Los Angeles County district attorney’s officials told The Times that they have been unable to locate any staffers who objected to the release of the information in the cases where they have been cited as objectors. Department officials declined to identify the police agencies they say objected in the other cases.

garrett.therolf@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

Back up; L.A. County welfare agency refuses to release files on children’s deaths
Officials cite 2007 disclosure law in barring access to data on recent cases.
February 13, 2010|By Garrett Therolf
Los Angeles County’s embattled child welfare agency has clamped down on the release of information about 12 recent deaths among children who have passed through the child welfare system.

The decision follows a series of articles in The Times last year that detailed flawed casework. The cases prompted some reforms at the county’s Department of Children and Family Services, including enhanced training for social workers.

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

amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com

ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2008) — Better guidance is urgently needed for doctors in child protection cases to prevent them from being deterred from acting to protect children, says an editorial on the British Medical Journal website.

Writing in response to recent high profile cases such as that of Sir Roy Meadow, which have highlighted “the crisis of confidence” developing between the General Medical Council (GMC) and paediatricians, David Foreman and Juliet Williams call for better guidance to prevent doctors from being deterred from raising concerns about child abuse and to restore confidence in child protection processes.

They point out that the number of complaints against paediatricians related to child abuse work increased by more than 500% between 1995 and 2003.

In addition, since 2003, registrations of children for emotional and sexual abuse have increased while those for physical and sexual abuse have declined. This, they say, suggests that doctors may be avoiding work related to abuse for which more detailed physical examinations are needed.

According to the authors, part of the problem is that there is a basic confusion in doctors’ duties regarding child protection. Medical law still states that doctors have a duty of care to both the parent and the child, but current paediatric professional guidance incorrectly applies the Children Act principle that the welfare of the child must be placed over all other considerations. In fact, this only applies to the courts, when they make a decision governed by that Act.

Therefore, in child protection cases, doctors have conflicting duties both to the child and to the parents who may not feel that doctors are acting in their best interests, particularly if they are suspects and if retrospectively no abuse is detected. This situation worsens if the doctor is later required to act as an expert witness in court.

Recent hostile media campaigns have added to the pressure on doctors by making it less likely that the GMC will dismiss high profile cases because its duty is to protect the public and also the reputation of medicine while maintaining public confidence in the profession, say the authors.

So what can be done to reinstate confidence in child protection processes and prevent a reduction in child protection?

The authors call on the GMC and other professional bodies to issue more specific guidance for doctors on how to manage these conflicting duties of care in child protection cases.

They also suggest that complaints against professionals in child protection cases should be subject to independent scrutiny before they are referred to their professional bodies.

To avoid unwarranted public criticism the public also need to be better educated about child protection work, so that the dual role of doctors in these cases is better understood, they conclude.

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by BMJ-British Medical Journal, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

BMJ-British Medical Journal (2008, September 4). Better Guidance Urgently Needed For Doctors In Child Protection Cases, Say Experts. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 26, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/09/080904215617.htm

Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/KidsAtRisk

amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com

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. Subscribe to The Economist print edition, get great savings and FREE full access to Economist.com. Click here to subscribe: http://www.economist.com/subscriptions/email

Alternatively subscribe to online only version by clicking on the link below and save 25%:

http://www.economist.com/subscriptions/offer.cfm?campaign=168-XLMT

STARTING THEM YOUNG
Jan 28th 2010

Nursery schools are the latest front-line in the Scandinavian
integration debate

IN SOFT, southern countries, snow is enough to close schools. In
Sweden–a place that lives by the maxim that “There is no such thing as
bad weather, just the wrong clothes”–fresh snow is a cue to send
18-month-olds into the playground, tottering around in snowsuits and
bobble hats. It is an impressive sight at any time. But it is
particularly striking in a Stockholm playground filled with Somali
toddlers, squeaking as they queue for sledge-rides.

The playground belongs to Karin Danielsson, a headmistress in Tensta, a
Stockholm suburb with a large immigrant population. Mrs Danielsson
calls her municipal preschool “a school for democracy”. In keeping with
Swedish mores, even young children may choose which activities to join
or where to play. All pupils’ opinions are heard, but they are then
taught that the group’s wishes must also be heeded.

Swedes take preschool seriously. Though education is not compulsory
until seven, more than 80% of two-year-olds are enrolled in preschool,
and many begin earlier. Among European countries only Denmark has
higher enrolment rates at that age.

Just three of Mrs Danielsson’s 85 pupils, aged from one to
five-and-a-half, speak Swedish as their mother tongue. Most come from
Somali backgrounds, or other cultures where young children stay at
home. That may be their tradition, Mrs Danielsson says. But in Sweden
“you need to learn Swedish rules and social behaviour.” She prefers her
pupils to enroll at 12- or 18-months-old, and to stay for six hours a
day.

Swedish values can cause conflicts in immigrant families, she concedes.
It can be hard for parents to cope with “strong” children taught to
take decisions for themselves. Well, she says, “preschool teaches
parents about Sweden, too.”

Such self-confidence comes with a cost to individual liberty. Generous
welfare payments (including heavy subsidies to keep preschool fees low)
combine with high income taxes to shape Swedish childhoods into similar
patterns. Sweden offers 14 months of parental leave (12 months for one
parent, and two for the other, to encourage fathers to do their bit),
during which an average earner may receive up to 80% of his or her
salary, paid by the state. That means hardly any Swedish children under
a year old go to day care. A few months later, most are at preschool.

A new integration policy, to take effect at the end of 2010, will pay
immigrants to attend full-time language classes, “civic orientation”
courses or job training for two years after they obtain residence
permits. The benefits will be payable to individuals, not households.
The stated aim is to push immigrant women into the labour market (duly
propelling their children into day care).

Behind such policies lie a set of ideological beliefs, concedes a
senior government official. Swedes are fiercely attached to gender
equality. Economically, they think it good for women to work and pay
taxes. They also believe “it is good for young children to be in
preschool”, so they can be educated by trained professionals. In a nice
piece of circular reasoning, officials argue that children need to go
to preschool to make friends, because that is where all the other
children are.

Only one political party challenges this consensus: the small
centre-right Christian Democrats. A junior member of the coalition
government, the party last year secured a law offering monthly
allowances of 3,000 kronor (about EURO300) to parents who keep
under-threes at home. Party officials give the example of a rural
family, living some distance from the nearest preschool, with a child
born in the spring. Once statutory parental leave ends, the family
might prefer to keep their toddler at home for a few months more,
perhaps until after the summer. Yet the bigger point is to send a
political signal, say the Christian Democrats: parents should have a
choice about how to raise their families.

That argument has triggered a backlash among centre-left politicians
and education professionals. A 3,000-kronor allowance will mean little
to middle-class parents, but it is enough to persuade immigrant mothers
to keep toddlers at home, they charge. Mrs Danielsson says 5% of
children in her catchment area have vanished, thanks to the allowance.
After years running waiting lists, last year she had to go on local
television to fill her places.

SCHOOL IS GOOD FOR YOU
In Denmark the debate has taken a harder edge. Pia Kjaersgaard, leader
of the populist right-wing Danish People’s Party, called last December
for councils to force toddlers from “vulnerable families” into creches
on pain of losing benefits, before they grow up into “gang members”.
She was referring mostly to immigrant families, she explained.

In fact, Denmark already has such “parental orders”. The debate is
about lowering the threshold for withdrawing benefits. The centre-left
Social Democrats reject such sanctions. But it should be “easier for
the authorities to say a child should attend day care” when the child
is at risk, says the party’s social-affairs spokeswoman, Mette
Frederiksen. Most under-threes who do not attend day care in Denmark
are from minority backgrounds, she notes. That denies them
opportunities other toddlers enjoy.

That the issue of compulsory day care is even on the agenda says
something about Denmark’s toxic immigration debate. Yet the Nordic
experiment is mostly kindlier than that. Mrs Danielsson’s school is
lovely, and her pupils seem happy. If Sweden is a nanny state, it is a
Mary Poppins nanny state, emasculating parents, in part, by being good
at what it does.

Few other countries are likely to try the experiment–Sweden and
Denmark spend about EURO10,000 a year per preschool pupil. Expect to
hear more, though, about clashes between parental freedom and
integration. The Nordics may be an extreme case, but their debate has
lessons for all Europe.

- – - – - Economist.com/blogs/charlemagne

See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15394132

Go to http://www.economist.com for more global news, views and analysis from the Economist Group.

This severely disabled child was turned away from the Lake City Medical Center after being alerted by social workers of his urgent need of medical care;he was sent home with a note (where he had just come from).

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

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

Lake City ER sends starving disabled boy home with just a note

Lake City Medical Center cited for violations.

By PAUL WALSH and WARREN WOLFE, Star Tribune
Last update: June 17, 2010 – 8:16 PM

A severely disabled boy was wrongly sent home from a hospital emergency room in Lake City, Minn., without an assessment or treatment — but with a note saying he was well enough to return to school — after Wabasha County officials ordered the boy’s parents to seek treatment for his unexplained injuries and weakness.

The next day, officials say, local authorities sent an ambulance to the boy’s home and took him to a different hospital, where he was admitted for several days with what state investigators described as “severe malnutrition, starvation, bedsores and uncontrolled seizures.”

In a report made public Thursday, the Minnesota Department of Health cited Mayo Health System’s Lake City Medical Center for violating two federal rules on emergency room care. They concluded that a nurse at the hospital granted the father’s request that the boy not be examined but be sent home with a note.

Lake City Police Chief Lyle Schumann said Thursday his office is investigating whether the family should be charged with a crime.

Under federal rules, the hospital should have recorded the boy’s March 4 visit to the emergency room and conducted a medical assessment to determine whether he required emergency treatment — regardless of what the father wanted — said Stella French, who supervises the Health Department investigators.

The Health Department did not offer any identifying information about the boy, his family or any other individuals. County, hospital and police officials also declined to release the boy’s name, age or school.

How the story unfolded

According to the Health Department report:

School nurses examined the boy on March 1 and 2 after he was absent for a week. They saw several open lesions on his back and noted he could not walk or feed himself and lay on a school cot in the fetal position. They contacted the parents both days and urged that he see a doctor. After the boy missed school on March 3, the school notified county social service officials of the boy’s “urgent need for medical care.”

Social service and law enforcement officials told the family to take the boy to an emergency room as soon as possible. The father took the boy to Lake City Medical Center that evening. He told the nurse that he didn’t want his son examined by a doctor but wanted a note saying his son could return to school.

On a prescription pad, the nurse wrote that the boy was “vitally stable and there is no emergent/urgent need that needs our attention.”

When Wabasha County social service officials discovered the next day that the boy had not been treated, they went to the house, were given the nurse’s note by the father and immediately called an ambulance.

An administrative nurse at Lake City told the Health Department she reviewed the case with the emergency room nurse and counseled him about his performance.

Protocols not followed

In a statement Thursday afternoon, the hospital said “the child’s condition did not appear to be serious when he was first seen in our emergency department.”

However, it acknowledged “our policies and protocols, designed to protect patients, were not fully followed.”

The hospital also noted that “we identified and implemented several improvements to our processes as a result of this situation to ensure that an incident like this does not happen again.”

The nurse cited in the Health Department report is still employed at the hospital in acute care, said hospital spokeswoman Asia Christensen. She declined to say whether the nurse was disciplined in any way. No appeal of the state’s findings is planned, Christensen said.

Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482

Share your comments here;

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.

She would have turned 13 this summer, had she lived beyond seven weeks. She could have been my daughter, had I chosen to foster and later adopt her as I had with her older brother and sister.

Instead, all that I have to remember her by are the pictures from her big sisters 3rd birthday and the bulletin from her funeral. Her tiny casket was paid for by Ramsey County Child Protection; her grave was unmarked.

I knew of Portia before she had ever entered the world. The child protection worker assigned to her older siblings called to inform me that my foster children’s mother, Faith, was expecting again.

This next child would be her seventh. The six children she had already birthed were split up in four different homes – three foster homes and one child was with his father.

After the six children, ranging in age from nine months to 14 years, were removed from her care after being left alone in their apartment for five days, it was decided that the next baby would be removed at birth and placed directly into foster care. Because the one year old and two year old were placed with me, it made sense to make a placement agreement for her unborn child to be with her siblings.

I was reluctant to accept this placement, this child. Her one-year-old brother had come to me, for the first time, when he was two weeks and six days old.

Faith probably nursed him in the first few weeks of life. The act of breastfeeding a newborn would normally be considered a loving act by a mother, giving her baby the healthiest food available, but when the mother is using crack cocaine it is as bad as mainlining the drug right into the newborn’s veins.

When my son came to me, his tiny frame would tense up and shake as if he were having a seizure. Not knowing what to do, I did what came to me instinctually. I would hold him and rock him and soothe him until the shaking would pass. This two-week-old baby was going through withdrawal. By removing him from the mother and placing him with me, his supply had been cut off and he was experiencing life, for the first time since conception, without the influence of drugs.

In the seven-and-a-half months that my son was with me following his initial placement in my home, I watched him grow from a tiny newborn to a robust eight month old.

He still harbored the effects of being addicted to cocaine, mainly a high sensitivity to sound, but he was still hitting all of his developmental milestones and was on target for both his height and weight. He even said, “I love you” as clear as a bell when he was only six months old. Of course he only said it once and I was the only one present to hear him, but he said it and I quickly called everyone I knew to share this accomplishment.

When his mom got out of jail, he was returned to her. However, Faith heard the cry of crack louder than she heard the cries of her children and she very quickly went back to her drugs and prostituted herself to support her habit.

Her six children were only with her five weeks before the police went into the apartment on a Sunday afternoon and found that the children had been alone since Wednesday. Two weeks later, after a short stay in a shelter, my son came back to me. The social worker asked if I would also take his two-year-old sister.

Here we were several months later and my children’s birth mother was expecting again. Although initially I wanted to say, “yes” to this child, my mind became consumed with all of the “what-ifs?”

I knew this child was also being exposed to crack in utero, just like my son; what if the challenges of taking care of another crack baby were too much for me? My son and his sister were two of thirteen children I took care of on a regular basis, at least three of the children were born addicted to crack and three had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. (It is not certain if my daughter, the child who was two at the time, was exposed to crack in utero.

To this day she does not exhibit the symptoms that I have come to recognize as the effects of crack on a fetus.) Could I handle another new born experiencing withdrawal considering everything else I had on my plate?

Towards the beginning of her second trimester, my children’s birth mother was arrested and sentenced to serve enough time that she would likely carry out the remainder of her pregnancy in jail. I was relieved to know this. I thought this would cut off Faith’s supply of drugs and therefore the child would not be born addicted.

Sadly, her little heart and other organs were formed while her mother was using crack, but at least she would not be born addicted. I felt confident that I could handle this child and I was ready to move forward with the placement agreement, once little Portia was born.

It didn’t take long for folks more seasoned than myself to laugh at my expectation that this child would not be born addicted to crack because her mom was in jail. I remember one worker saying to me “Honey, if you think this mom isn’t getting her fix in jail, I have some great property in Alaska I would like to sell you.”

I guess I was naïve in thinking that jail kept the bad guys in and the bad things out. I was told that it was very likely that this baby would be exposed to crack through out her entire gestation period. I called the social worker and told her to come up with another placement plan.

When Portia was born, she was placed in the home of a trusted foster parent, a woman with several decades of experience in the system. In the mid-nineties, however, crack was still a relatively new phenomenon. All of us raising crack kids were still trying to figure out just how this exposure on the fetus would impact the child through out its life.

I don’t know what this woman’s experience was in caring for babies with this unique special need and none of us knew, at the time, what the long term impact of crack exposure would mean for these children. Another one of my children, born four years before Portia, participated in a long-term study investigating the effects of crack exposure in utero on the child’s development.

By the time Portia was born, this study had not yet been released, but I didn’t need a study to tell me that her needs would be very great; I had real life experience, and the bags under my eyes to prove it!

Portia was born July 30, 1997, two weeks after her big sister’s third birthday. We waited until the baby was born and had a party at our home celebrating both occasions. The birth mother had been allowed a daytime visitation so she came to our home with all of her children, including the baby.

I remember holding Portia and rocking her on the glider chair in my yard. She was the same age as my son when he came to me at two weeks old twenty months earlier, but Portia seemed very different. My son would shake violently, his whole body stiffening up and then relaxing. Portia didn’t do this.

Her body didn’t shake from violent tremors; her breath did not intensify and then slow back into a rhythm of deep, slow breathing. By contrast, her breath seemed very shallow, her skin appeared dusky. My neighbor even commented, “Something is wrong with that baby.” We didn’t know at that time that it was her heart.

On September 19, the social worker called to tell me that Portia’s was being admitted to the hospital and needed surgery on her heart. She asked me if I knew where Faith was because she would need to sign consent forms before her daughter could have the operation. I told her that I wasn’t certain, but I had heard that she might be in Chicago.

My children’s five-year-old brother, the sibling who lived with his father, came over regularly to play at our home. At one point either he or his dad, Leroy, mentioned something about the mom staying with family in Chicago.

The social worker grumbled at the notion that she could be three states away. She asked if I had a number where she could be reached. I didn’t, but I was able to place a call to Leroy and he gave me a possible contact for Faith. When I gave her the number, she mentioned “I could take this before a judge [and obtain consent to perform the surgery], but it is a Friday afternoon”.

“No one wants to do that.”

I wasn’t sure who she meant, “didn’t want to do that”: the judge who would need to sign the paper, the doctor who would need to do the surgery, or her, the child protection worker, who would need to go before the judge.

It struck me as an odd comment, but at the time I was entertaining a gaggle of kids and she needed to get off the phone with me and dial the number I had given her. I wasn’t going to ask her to explain what she meant.

The phone number was a success and Portia’s mother was found. After being told the situation, that her daughter needed this surgery to live and that she needed to sign the consent form for the surgery to be performed, she boarded the next available bus back to the Twin Cities, was taken to the hospital and the paperwork was signed.

She arrived at 2 o’clock in the morning on September 20th; about 15 hours after the doctor said the baby needed surgery.

Portia died shortly after being brought into the operating room. Leroy called me early in the morning and told me that the surgery had been delayed too long. There was no way the doctors could save her at that point.

It is now thirteen years later and even most elementary school kids can tell you that “crack kills.” But beyond the mother’s drug use, could this baby have been saved at any other point along the way? When a child attends daycare, when they are enrolled in school or if they even go overnight to a camp, a parent is required to give consent that medical care can be provided in their absence.

Why is this simple procedure simply overlooked when a child is placed in foster care?

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).

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.

*The articles underlined herein give several perspectives on the near sightedness that has unfortunately captured otherwise clear thinking policymakers for many years now. Until a longer view is adopted, America’s prisons will remain full, its schools troubled, and its streets unsafe.

Seema Jilani’s Article;

By SEEMA JILANI, McClatchy Newspapers
Last update: May 28, 2010 – 6:09 PM
We doctors are a cynical bunch. The novelty of the white coat expires after a short time treating drug addicts, combative schizophrenics and patients whose idea of “how-do-you-do” is threatening a lawsuit. This is to say nothing of conducting pelvic exams, bosses with God complexes and extracting a baseball bat that got stuck up someone’s backside when he “fell on it.”
Few things shock us, but cruelty to children is one of them.

Behind closed doors, we even pontificate on the need for strict contraception laws. “Birth control should be sprayed into the air,” we muse. “If people want children, they should pass drug tests and home evaluations.” Another of our suggestions is that the government should lace fast food with trace amounts of contraceptives, so that people who eat it occasionally are unaffected, but those who exist on it are sterilized.

Bitter? Maybe. Harsh? Absolutely.

The inconceivable becomes plausible, however, after you see a 9-month-old boy test positive for mommy’s crystal meth and shaken baby syndrome render a 6-month-old girl blind, or after treating the burns on a young girl who was dipped in boiling oil and the cigarette burns on her sister’s back in the shape of a marijuana leaf. When a 13-year-old boy dies from heat stroke because he was chained to a tree overnight, “Proposition McSterilization” starts to make sense.

Three million reported cases of child abuse and neglect result in 2,000 deaths in the United States annually, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Since 2001, 30,000 American children have been killed in their own homes, taken their own lives or been murdered in their own neighborhoods, according to Every Child Matters, a child advocacy group.

Why does the United States lead the world’s richest democracies in child abuse fatalities, with death rates three times higher than Canada’s and 11 times higher than Italy’s?

Now the nation’s and the states’ financial crises are leading to budget cuts to child services in more than 40 states. In Hawaii, Every Child Matters reports, funding for a child abuse reduction program was slashed so much that two years after serving 4,000 families, it can afford to serve only 100. In South Carolina, five state-run homes for children were closed. Child Protective Services is severely understaffed, with caseload ratios as high as 60 to one in some regions.

Nearly half of all the Texas children who are killed by abuse belonged to families that had been investigated by Child Protective Services. In order to keep families united, CPS attempts to place children with safe family members. While its motives are admirable, CPS should put a higher priority on protecting children from monsters than it does on keeping families together.

The single best predictor of child abuse is poverty. Children raised in families with annual incomes of less than $15,000 are 22 times more likely to be abused. One in five American children, more than 14 million, live in poverty.

Budget cuts are taking a toll in California, too. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed discarding the state’s welfare-to-work program, effectively eliminating aid for roughly a million children.

If the most prosperous country in the world can afford to fight two wars, battle terrorism in far-off lands and bail out Wall Street, why can’t it offer its most vulnerable and voiceless citizens anything but bureaucratic red tape?

Seema Jilani is a Houston physician who specializes in pediatrics. A version of this commentary was published in the British newspaper the Guardian. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

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;

1) Program accountability (make programs measurable) I have suggested the highly successful Social Solutions program that has been required by Kaiser Permanente and is getting a foothold at CASA California. It was invented by a social worker that wanted service providers to be paid like baseball players. And it works incredibly well to track all the changes in outcomes based measurements. It should be used everywhere.

2) Legislation in all states is 20 years behind the problem. We the people are the only ones that can change this. Reaching out to progressive states for the types of legislation being proposed is my suggestion. Keep in mind, this nation tries 150,000 youth as adults each year, just quit executing juveniles (those who committed crimes as juveniles) and locking up juveniles for life).

3) How are judges trained to handle child protection cases in your community? Is there an understanding of how this court needs to work (it is not traffic court).

4) Are services coordinated in your community, or are they a jumble of people that don’t talk to each other providing a mismash of poorly defined resources to very troubled people?

5) Raise the level of understanding and attention to the issues; speaking/writing/media. Do something to alert people to the issues. No change can come until people understand more and see a need for change.

6) Better models for adoption and foster care (let’s make a list; http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/04/11/adoptees-have-answers-and-lots-of-questons/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/03/24/national-child-protection-training-center/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/01/23/a-program-worth-repeating/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/01/23/the-evidence-is-in/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/12/14/new-york-meet-missouri/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/01/13/child-well-being-network-a-model/

International conversation; Share your thoughts please

*This is what hate radio does (there is nothing constructive about it – all about tearing down, and no ideas for making things better) please don’t get in the habit, this is destroying our nation.

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.

An innovative program serving a diverse community of adopted individuals

Minnesota is nationally recognized for its long and rich history in adoption. Adoptees Have Answers (AHA) builds on this tradition of breaking ground and achieving high standards. Rooted in current research and led by an all-adoptee staff and Advisory Group, AHA is a first of its kind in the country—a live and virtual community designed by adoptees to be a safe environment for seeking and sharing answers and connecting with other adoptees.

From the MARN Executive Director:

As Minnesota Adoption Resource Network (MARN) celebrates its 30th birthday, it proudly debuts Adoptees Have Answers, a unique program funded by the Minnesota Department of Human Services that focuses on the needs of adopted people.

AHA supports the life experience that is often mythologized, pathologized or romanticized but rarely understood in, that of the adopted person.

Mary Martin Mason, Minnesota Adoption Resource Network

From the Program Manager:

We at Adoptees Have Answers, and many others who imagined and inspired its vision, are pleased to welcome you to a new Minnesota adoptee community space.

Whether you’re joining us as a newsletter contributor, webinar participant, blogger, support group member, event attendee, service user or provider, your ideas and stories will ‘stick to the wall.’

Be sure to keep checking back at this website — http://aha.mn — as we continually add networking tools and broadcast new information that you provide. Because you, all 135,000 estimated adoptees currently living in Minnesota, are the experts.

Kate Ingalls-Maloney, Project Manager

AHA Mission and Beliefs

AHA Mission:

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
What AHA is not:

An adoption agency or other child placing organization
A social work organization
A mental health services provider

AHA Program Components

What AHA provides:

A safe, welcoming adoptee-to-adoptee environment

All-adoptee staff and executive leadership
All-adoptee Advisory Group
Adoptee-facilitated support groups in several Minnesota locations
Even adoptee service vendors when possible
Web-based adoptee community

Individual profile pages
Discussion boards
Blogs
Education from an adoptee perspective

12-part interactive series
CDs
Videotapes
Variety of live events honoring adopted individuals and groups

Opportunities to contribute ideas and artwork

Monthly eNewsletter
Website – http://aha.mn
Info phone line, always covered by adoptee with First Responder training

Local: 612-746-5135
Tollfree: 877-966-2727
Info email account, always maintained by an adoptee

info@aha.mn

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.

Rosalynn CarterFormer First Lady
Posted: May 6, 2010 09:16 AM
Solving the Mental Health Crisis for Our Children

When I was a child in Plains, everyone knew everyone else in town. Church and school were the center of our community and were strong and positive influences on my life and those of my siblings and friends. So much has changed since then. The social fabric I took for granted no longer exists. On May 6–National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day–we need to acknowledge the fact that too many children in our nation are left to struggle with a whole host of stressful circumstances–violence, divorce, poverty, substance abuse and war, to mention just a few, without effective supports.

Children in foster care are especially vulnerable; they have already been exposed to trauma by virtue of being brought into the protective services system in the first place. Approximately 800,000 children are reported in the foster care system nationwide at any one time. Anywhere from 40 to 85 percent of kids in foster care have mental health problems–a staggering number. At a recent symposium at The Carter Center, a poised young woman in medical school described her early life as a foster child. “When I left my mom to live in a foster home,” Angela told us, “I was very, very upset because nobody told me why I left. They could not tell me anything. I was 6, so if they had said anything, I would not have understood it. I have been in different foster homes and group homes. I have been in mental institutions …

“It was really hard growing up, having to fight in different group homes and foster homes. One of the things that used to bother me the most was one of the girls always got to go home on holidays, and I wished I had a family that I could go home to. That used to eat me up inside so much.”

Children growing up in these circumstances are at great risk, but like Angela, they are also remarkably resilient. Indeed, today we know much about how to cultivate resilience in all children. Carl Bell, MD, President and CEO, Community Mental Health Council, Director of Public and Community Psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago who introduced Angela at our symposium, has also been one of the field’s foremost advocates for promoting resiliency.. He speaks passionately about the need to shift our focus from a deficit-based model of child development, where the goal is to overcome problems, to a strength-based model that emphasizes support.

Carl puts it this way: “Most of life is about attitude and perception.” Children are best served when we help them develop the skills they need to frame whatever challenges and obstacles they may meet in a positive paradigm.

Carl has identified a number of characteristics present in resilient children–the same characteristics that enabled Angela to overcome her troubled childhood. These include having a sense of purpose in life, confidence in one’s ability to control any given situation, compassion for others, a belief in the fundamental goodness of people, and the energy and resourcefulness to make things happen. John Gates, PhD, former director of the Mental Health Program at The Carter Center, describes them as “characteristics that enable children to work well, play well, love well, and expect well.”

In Minnesota, an innovative program called Check and Connect, developed by the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Community Integration in Minneapolis, uses strategies such as social skills training and relationship building to increase student engagement with school and reduce dropout rates.

The program was initially designed to meet the needs of students with behavioral and learning challenges by pairing students with a patient, caring adult mentor. Studies have demonstrated over and over the positive effects achieved by this program, yet because of funding constraints it remains only a demonstration project.

Why is it that we are so slow to take what we know works and make it available to communities all across the country? We can and must do more. We are all familiar with the adage “A stitch in time saves nine.” When it comes to children, this proverb couldn’t be more apt. If budding issues are not adequately addressed early on, they become bigger and more often devastating problems later in life.

Mental health problems during childhood are often precursors to delinquency, substance use, smoking, risky sexual behavior, and school failure. Our inattention is causing unnecessary pain, trauma, and even death. The wasted potential is immeasurable.

Our children are our most precious resources. And we cannot delay, for as my good friend and our nation’s surgeon general while we were in the White House, the late Dr. Julius Richmond observed, “Every day that we do not intervene with effective programs, we are losing remarkable human potential. And every child whose potential is wasted is an incredible loss to the nation.”
Invisible Children (The American Cycle Of Abuse & Its Cost) Free ebook & audiobook