Happy holidays to all of you that work so hard for the best interests of the weakest and most vulnerable among us.

Pine Island Florida

Guardian ad Litem Needed; http://www.pineisland-eagle.com/page/content.detail/id/520054/Guardians-ad-Litem-needed.html?nav=5049

Vero Beach Florida Gift Drive; http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/nov/24/guardian-ad-litem-angel-gift-drive-accepting-unwra/

Bridgeport Connecticut, Innocent Child Of A Murderer

This tells you something and absolutely nothing that might identify Annabelle, and that’s the way her guardian ad litem, Justine Rakich-Kelly, director of the Childen’s Law Center, wants it to stay. Annabelle, after all, is the 9-year-old …

http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/MariAn-Gail-Brown-The-innocent-child-of-a-2308310.php

Lake Lillian, MN Guardian ad Litem, termination of parental rights http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=In%20MNCO%2020111128169.xml&docbase=CSLWAR3-2007-CURR

Northern Virginia, Child Custody / Guardian ad Litem http://www.lieblichgrimes.com/Child-Custody/Guardian-Ad-Litem.shtml

Wilkes Barre Pennsylvania, Parents Target Family Court/FBI Court; http://www.timesleader.com/golackawanna/news/Parents_target_family_court_11-20-2011.html

Cincinnati Ohio; tested positive for cocaine, attempted suicide and was hospitalized with a self-inflicted stab wound. The child was placed in the temporary custody of her paternal grandmother, who she was living with at the time…

http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=In%20OHCO%2020111118660.xml&docbase=CSLWAR3-2007-CURR>

Joliet Illinois

The purpose of the appointment of a GAL is to have a neutral, independent fact finder who reports to the Court. The GAL acts only under the direction of the …

<http://www.angelahendersonlaw.com/Guardian_ad_Litem.html>

Iowa City, Iowa;

Maurine A. Braddock, Iowa City, attorney for minor children and guardian ad litem for CBS Anthony A. Haughton of Linn County Advocate, Inc., Cedar Rapids, guardian ad litem for KMB Considered by Sackett, CJ, and Vogel and Eisenhauer, JJ. …

<http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=In%20IACO%2020111109305.xml&docbase=CSLWAR3-2007-CURR>

Lackawanna Pennsylvania;

FBI searches court administrator’s office Scranton Times-Tribune A source familiar with the visit told the newspaper the search warrant was related to the county’s guardian ad litem system. The FBI has been investigating the county’s guardian ad litem system, which is in the hands of one lawyer, attorney Danielle …

<http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/fbi-searches-court-administrator-s-office-1.1232356>

See all stories on this topic:

<http://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/fbi-searches-court-administrator-s-office-1.1232356&hl=en&geo=us>

Colorado Court Decision; No Attorney Client relationship between Guardian ad Litem and child;

Attorney-Client Relationship as it Pertains to the Guardian Ad Litem.

<http://www.harrisfamilylaw.com/updates/attorney-client-relationship-as-it-pertains-to-the-guardian-ad-litem>

Colo. Supreme Court Nixes Attorney-Client Privilege for Children in …

ABA Journal

A divided court ruled that a lawyer acting as a guardian ad litem is supposed to help the court act in the child’s best interest even if the child doesn’t want the lawyer to reveal information, the Denver Post reports. The case involves an alleged …

<http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/colo._supreme_court_nixes_attorney-client_privilege_for_kids_in_guardianshi/>

See all stories on this topic:

<http://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/colo._supreme_court_nixes_attorney-client_privilege_for_kids_in_guardianshi/&hl=en&geo=us>

Miami Fl;

Prosecutors and Guardian Ad-Litem Ask For One Trial in Barahona Case NBC Miami “It’s that simple,” said Guardian Ad-Litem Attorney Frances Feinberg. “We object because it’s more stress on the child, it’s more trauma to the child, it’s more depositions.” Prosecutors say Victor was starved, tortured and beaten by his adoptive …

<http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/Attorneys-Ask-For-One-Trial-in-Barahona-Case-133474723.html>

Here’s How You Can Help Children

The Ledger

I was her guardian ad litem. Guardians ad litem are court-appointed volunteers who advise the court about best interests of abused and neglected children whose families are under the supervision of the Department of Children & Families. …

<http://www.theledger.com/article/20111107/COLUMNISTS03/111109528>

See all stories on this topic:

<http://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=http://www.theledger.com/article/20111107/COLUMNISTS03/111109528&hl=en&geo=us>

Kappa Alpha Theta & Guardian Ad Litem Super Hero Run University of Central Florida Kappa Alpha Theta and the local CASA chapter, Guardian Ad Litem, are partnering up to host the first annual Super Hero 5K. Runners are encouraged to dress as their favorite superhero because every child needs a hero, but CASA children need superheroes. …

<http://events.ucf.edu/?eventdatetime_id=3137>

North Carolina Facebook GAL;

25th District NC Guardian Ad Litem – General Information: The Guardian ad Litem program is a legislatively sanctioned non-profit organization that actively …

<http://www.facebook.com/pages/25th-District-NC-Guardian-Ad-Litem/182028391878997>

Cascade County Montana

CASCADE COUNTY GUARDIAN AD LITEM, INC

crisis, knowledge as a guardian ad litem and other social service skills desirable. Computer literate and familiar with Microsoft Office, including Word and Excel. …

<http://www.casagal.org/News/Archive/2011/Documents/Office%20manager%20posting%2011032011.pdf>

Anderson South Carolina;

Guardian ad litem program needs volunteers in Anderson area Anderson Independent Mail Trained volunteers in the Cass Elias McCarter Guardian ad Litem Program helped more than 10000 abused or neglected South Carolina children last year, and the numbers will probably be even higher this year, according to officials. …

<http://www.independentmail.com/news/2011/oct/29/guardian-ad-litem-program-needs-volunteers-anderso/>

See all stories on this topic:

<http://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=http://www.independentmail.com/news/2011/oct/29/guardian-ad-litem-program-needs-volunteers-anderso/&hl=en&geo=us>

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Please visit the CASA website www.casamn.org & make your friends and circle of influence aware of the good work CASA does.

The mission of CASA Minnesota is to broadly support volunteer advocacy on behalf of abused and neglected children in our state. We believe that every abused and neglected child in Minnesota court proceedings should have a volunteer advocate working for their best interests. In pursuit of this goal, we do the following:

• Assist in the recruitment and retention of Minnesota volunteer guardians ad litem
• Provide initial and continuing education and support to Minnesota volunteer guardians ad litem
• Increase public awareness about child welfare and guardians ad litem
• Provide a network for communication among Minnesota volunteer guardians ad litem
• Advocate for legislative change, public policies and best practices that enhance the quality of advocacy and care for abused and neglected children

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Since then, I have witnessed very young children (as young as four) try to kill themselves and seen others exhibit terrifying behaviors (starting fires, stabbing, etc) that I know to be a direct result of the abuse they have suffered.

A few of these children I have been in contact with for over ten years and I know that not a day goes by without them reliving the unspeakable acts that have made them who they are.

The good news is our medical people have developed treatments that can help children overcome trauma.

The great sadness is that sex abuse is grossly under-reported and the services available to terribly abused children are very limited.

We don’t want to talk about it & therefore not much is said about it, which means not much will be done about it (because it’s obviously a very rare thing – or more would be said about it).

Much more needs to be written and spoken of on this topic as much like the sex abuse hidden in the Catholic church for so many years, very few communities have made an effort to understand or bring attention to the size, scope, and impact of this issue (to the everlasting detriment of children).

Please do comment on this article.

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=377631

Schaumburg grad, sex abuse victim campaigns for ‘Erin’s Law’
By Kimberly Pohl | Daily Herald StaffContact writer

Erin Merryn, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, speaks to psychology students last week at Harper College in Palatine.

Erin Merryn, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, speaks to psychology students last week at Harper College in Palatine.

Erin Merryn’s second book, “Living for Today,” was released in November.

Whether facing students, counselors or politicians, Erin Merryn tells her audience to think back to their elementary school days.

Most hands go up when asked if they remember evacuating school buses, “stranger danger” or say no to drugs. Midwesterners recall tornado drills. West Coasters remember earthquake drills.

But nobody moves when the 25-year-old Schaumburg woman asks who learned “how to get away and tell today” and other protections against childhood sexual abuse.

Merryn believes she wouldn’t have lived in silence after being raped at 6 years old by a neighbor had some sort of formal education been in place.

And when a cousin repeatedly molested her five years later, Merryn believes she would have come forward sooner had teachers instilled the need to tell.

Merryn, who has a master’s degree in social work, said that the first time many students get any sexual assault education is in high school, too late for many. “I want to prevent this from ever happening, not deal with the aftermath,” she said.

Merryn is pushing for state legislation aiming to do just that.

Erin’s Law calls for age-appropriate curriculum on sexual abuse for prekindergarten through fifth grade. Its purpose is to prevent children from falling prey to sexual abuse or remaining silent if they do.

State Sen. Tim Bivins, a Dixon Republican and former Lee County sheriff, is sponsoring Erin’s Law. He filed the bill on Thursday and hopes it will come up for a vote before the spring session adjourns May 7.

It goes far deeper than current school code, which only says sexual violence must be mentioned as part of bullying prevention, and a health education act requiring sexual assault information be taught in high schools.

The legislation creates a nine-person task force charged with researching child sexual abuse throughout Illinois, receiving testimony and establishing strategies that would ultimately become state policy.

“We can’t end this evil epidemic, so we need to give innocent children the tools and knowledge to protect themselves,” Merryn said. “Otherwise they’ll listen to the perpetrator who tells them to be quiet because it’s the only message they’re getting.”

One in four girls and one in six boys will be abused by their 18th birthday, according to a Centers for Disease Control study. And more than 90 percent of victims know their abusers, according to Children’s Advocacy Centers, a nonprofit network of 700 facilities providing services to fight child abuse.

Dixon Police Chief Dan Langloss, who heard Merryn speak and put her in contact with Bivins, said of the 150 abuse victims ages 3 to 13 he’s interviewed, not one of their perpetrators was a stranger.

Langloss also said that most parents don’t report abuse to police when a child confides in them. He believes children must learn to tell their teachers, counselors and other authority figures who are mandated reporters.

Merryn’s been on a crusade to erase the stigma put on victims of sexual abuse for the past eight years and won’t be deterred.

As a senior at Schaumburg High School, she published “Stolen Innocence,” a collection of diary entries from ages 11 to 19 chronicling her abuse and healing process.

Merryn tours the country telling her story at conferences, colleges, fundraisers and on talk shows. She also works closely with Children’s Advocacy Centers, the place she finally broke her silence at age 13 after discovering her cousin was also molesting her little sister.

Merryn struggled for about five years after coming forward, suffering flashbacks, nightmares, panic attacks and thoughts of suicide. She self-injured and had an eating disorder and depression.

Then she confronted her cousin and corresponded with him through letters. He apologized and she eventually let go of her anger. Forgiveness is a main focus of her second book, “Living for Today,” released in November.

Merryn is her middle name, and she uses it in the public eye in order to protect the identity of her relatives.

Bivins is confident both parents and legislators will get behind Erin’s Law, especially since it is calling for research before implementation. He wants to get the task force assembled before summer.

Professors and staff at Harper College, including Linda Campbell, an associate professor of psychology who invited Merryn to speak to 200 of her students, have volunteered to research and create curriculum.

Bivins also suggested Merryn teach the curriculum on a DVD that can be mass-produced in order to keep costs minimal.

If all goes according to plan, the task force will submit its final report to the governor and General Assembly on April 30, 2011. That’s the 13th anniversary of when Merryn entered the Children’s Advocacy Center in Hoffman Estates with her little sister and parents, and the day she found her voice.

“This law is necessary and overdue,” Chief Langloss said. “We need to wake people up that child sexual abuse is an immediate problem and has long-lasting and devastating effects.”

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

amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com

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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.

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How profound the impact sexual abuse, violence, and neglect has on a child (and the community that he/she will live in)

Without the right kind of care, violence and neglect hurts a child forever. The hole in their life is gigantic and small efforts don’t mend this serious damage.

What does it say about a community that leaves children in toxic homes because it does not have the foresight, concern, or resources to protect its youngest and most vulnerable citizens?

Keep in mind that Hennepin County used to be one of the nations most progressive child protection counties.

As a guardian ad-Litem there were many children in my case load that had been through three, four, and five years of the worst kinds of tortured abuse. One boy had spent much of his life tied to a bed, starved, and sexually abused (from four to seven).

He has AIDS today (about 14 years later) and not had anything like a real life. I would call it a tortured life of awful choices and no real joy.

I tell a similar tale about a girl of the same age who was abused from the time she was four until she was seven. The man that molested her was never made a party to a lawsuit or a court case. He continued to molest children for many years with no interference from authorities.

At the time of her court case, my guardian ad-Litem office was faced with the choice of turning the case into a criminal trial where the seven year old would have to face her accuser and testify (and lose) or go through the family court process and be removed from his presence safely. It was not a hard choice if you were concerned about the safety of the seven year old girl. But the man is still molesting children.

You can listen to these stories at length (click here)

Our institutions are not set up to handle people like him.

Add to that the use of Prozac, Ritalin, and the plethora of psychotropic medications that keep the children in child protection services from hurting themselves or others, and the book I refer to in this article title starts to write itself.

Abandoned children tasered by police, , two year old foster child lost in Nevada,, eight year old to be tried as an adult in Arizona?,

Jeff Weise was asking for help,

Needs work, but it’s a start.

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

www.mnprogressiveproject.com/

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Public policy at the time treated the Irish more like animals than people and their children were doomed to living lives of crime, prostitution, and destitution.

Jonathon Swift’s satirical theme was that Irish children would be better off dead than raised in such horrible and inescapable circumstances.

As a long time guardian ad-Litem, I have come to understand Swift’s rage at the cruelties a community can pile on to poor children.

The idea that America’s poor working families don’t deserve education, health care, & safe homes for their children in the richest nation in the world is a cruel and unsupportable position.

The other industrialized nations have figured out that caring for their youngest citizens guarantees healthy adults and productive communities. We now don’t rank anywhere near the top in the majority of quality of life indices among the 24 industrialized nations.

America can’t quit building prisons and filling them with juveniles and preteen moms. We continue to quit subsidizing daycare, early childhood programs, healthcare for the poor, & education funding, while at the same time listening more and more to the mean spirited philosophies of radio and TV hosts that blame the nations ills on people that have (and always will have) the least.

The economic arguments of caring for children are all in favor of creating productive citizens by early intervention and early childhood development. It actually costs a great deal more to continue to punish the weakest and most vulnerable among us.

Are we a community without compassion?

KARA is seeking a 21st Century Modest Proposal. If you are a writer and given to challenges, please read Swift’s “Proposal” below, and write your own as you see it applying to American children & include it as a comment, or send it to Info@invisiblechildren.org

A Modest Proposal

For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland
From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and
For Making Them Beneficial to The Public

By Jonathan Swift (1729)

About this text.

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.
I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them as those who demand our charity in the streets.

”I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled …”

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in the computation. It is true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a solar year, with little other nourishment; at most not above the value of 2s., which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands.

There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us! sacrificing the poor innocent babes I doubt more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast.

The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing, till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towardly parts, although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier, during which time, they can however be properly looked upon only as probationers, as I have been informed by a principal gentleman in the county of Cavan, who protested to me that he never knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art.

I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no salable commodity; and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and half-a-crown at most on the exchange; which cannot turn to account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriment and rags having been at least four times that value.

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increaseth to 28 pounds.

I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.

Infant’s flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent than at any other season; therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of popish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom: and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the number of papists among us.

I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, laborers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants; the mother will have eight shillings net profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child.

Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.

As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.

A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased in discoursing on this matter to offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said that many gentlemen of this kingdom, having of late destroyed their deer, he conceived that the want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and maidens, not exceeding fourteen years of age nor under twelve; so great a number of both sexes in every country being now ready to starve for want of work and service; and these to be disposed of by their parents, if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due deference to so excellent a friend and so deserving a patriot, I cannot be altogether in his sentiments; for as to the males, my American acquaintance assured me, from frequent experience, that their flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our schoolboys by continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable; and to fatten them would not answer the charge. Then as to the females, it would, I think, with humble submission be a loss to the public, because they soon would become breeders themselves; and besides, it is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice (although indeed very unjustly), as a little bordering upon cruelty; which, I confess, hath always been with me the strongest objection against any project, however so well intended.

But in order to justify my friend, he confessed that this expedient was put into his head by the famous Psalmanazar, a native of the island Formosa, who came from thence to London above twenty years ago, and in conversation told my friend, that in his country when any young person happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass to persons of quality as a prime dainty; and that in his time the body of a plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison the emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty’s prime minister of state, and other great mandarins of the court, in joints from the gibbet, at four hundred crowns. Neither indeed can I deny, that if the same use were made of several plump young girls in this town, who without one single groat to their fortunes cannot stir abroad without a chair, and appear at playhouse and assemblies in foreign fineries which they never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse.

Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known that they are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young laborers, they are now in as hopeful a condition; they cannot get work, and consequently pine away for want of nourishment, to a degree that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labor, they have not strength to perform it; and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come.

I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject. I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance.

For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation as well as our most dangerous enemies; and who stay at home on purpose with a design to deliver the kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an episcopal curate.

Secondly, The poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to distress and help to pay their landlord’s rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money a thing unknown.

Thirdly, Whereas the maintenance of an hundred thousand children, from two years old and upward, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a-piece per annum, the nation’s stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom who have any refinement in taste. And the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture.

Fourthly, The constant breeders, beside the gain of eight shillings sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the charge of maintaining them after the first year.

Fifthly, This food would likewise bring great custom to taverns; where the vintners will certainly be so prudent as to procure the best receipts for dressing it to perfection, and consequently have their houses frequented by all the fine gentlemen, who justly value themselves upon their knowledge in good eating: and a skilful cook, who understands how to oblige his guests, will contrive to make it as expensive as they please.

Sixthly, This would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the public, to their annual profit instead of expense. We should see an honest emulation among the married women, which of them could bring the fattest child to the market. Men would become as fond of their wives during the time of their pregnancy as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in calf, their sows when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a miscarriage.

Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barreled beef, the propagation of swine’s flesh, and improvement in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our tables; which are no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well-grown, fat, yearling child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a lord mayor’s feast or any other public entertainment. But this and many others I omit, being studious of brevity.

Supposing that one thousand families in this city, would be constant customers for infants flesh, besides others who might have it at merry meetings, particularly at weddings and christenings, I compute that Dublin would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses; and the rest of the kingdom (where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper) the remaining eighty thousand.

I can think of no one objection, that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged, that the number of people will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. This I freely own, and ’twas indeed one principal design in offering it to the world. I desire the reader will observe, that I calculate my remedy for this one individual Kingdom of Ireland, and for no other that ever was, is, or, I think, ever can be upon Earth. Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither cloaths, nor houshold furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of Topinamboo: Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken: Of being a little cautious not to sell our country and consciences for nothing: Of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. Lastly, of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our shop-keepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it.

Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients, ’till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them into practice.

But, as to my self, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal, which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real, of no expence and little trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, and flesh being of too tender a consistence, to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country, which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.

After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. But before something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, I desire the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points. First, as things now stand, how they will be able to find food and raiment for an hundred thousand useless mouths and backs. And secondly, there being a round million of creatures in human figure throughout this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock would leave them in debt two millions of pounds sterling, adding those who are beggars by profession to the bulk of farmers, cottagers, and laborers, with their wives and children who are beggars in effect: I desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold as to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these mortals, whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food, at a year old in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed for ever.

I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing.

The End

Note: Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), author and satirist, famous for Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and A Modest Proposal (1729). This proposal, where he suggests that the Irish eat their own children, is one of his most drastic pieces. He devoted much of his writing to the struggle for Ireland against the English hegemony.

KARA Note: In America today, there is a growing movement to blame the nations ills on poor people, at a time when resources are scarce this is not uncommon, but it is reprehensible. We are better than this.

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Children need and deserve a voice in the system that rules their lives. Their only chance of having that voice is if there is a guardian ad-Litem speaking for them in child protection.

There are CASA (guardian ad-Litem) offices near you. If you have a friend that would like to be a volunteer voice & help a child send this to them;

http://www.casaforchildren.org/site/c.mtJSJ7MPIsE/b.5301295/k.BE9A/Home.htm

This article out of Florida captures my sentiment well;

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/feb/03/more-volunteers-needed-children-court-system/

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More volunteers needed for children in court system
The Guardian ad Litem program will hold a three-day training session for volunteers next week

By AISLING SWIFT
Posted February 3, 2010 at 8:19 p.m.

Ever since social services workers took 12-year-old Rose Douyon and her seven siblings from her Immokalee home due to neglect, Douyon was shuffled through dozens of group and foster homes in Collier, Lee and Pasco counties.

“The house was a mess and there was no food,” said Douyon, now 22, of Fort Myers, referring to her mother’s Immokalee home.

But that didn’t stop her from earning her high school diploma and getting a paralegal degree, which she hopes will land her a job. Douyon eventually wants to be a lawyer and is focusing on family law because she knows the system inside out: She’s lived it.

But if it hadn’t been for her guardian ad litem, the only consistent person in her life since age 14, she knows she wouldn’t have been a foster child success story.

“I believe she changed my life,” Douyon said of Mary Pruchansky, a North Naples retiree who fought for her rights in court. “She’s like my best friend. I still talk to her all the time, every day. It’s like a mother-daughter relationship.”

When social service workers remove a child from a home because of abuse, abandonment or neglect, a guardian ad litem — Latin for “guardian of the law” — is appointed to protect the best interests of a child in the court system.

Douyon “aged out” of foster case at age 18. But there are many more children like her. Some will be adopted, some will return to their parents or relatives, while others are like Douyon.

State reports show there were 30,966 children in the system statewide as of Dec. 31, 2009, and 6,297 had no guardian ad litem. Of the 447 Collier County children, 22 had no guardians ad litem. It’s worse in Lee County, where there were 754 children, 147 without an advocate.

There were 152 guardians ad litem in Collier and 252 in Lee, so having enough is a problem. So the Guardian ad Litem Program in the 20th Judicial Circuit will hold a daytime training session from Feb. 9 to 11 at North Collier Regional Park on Livingston Road. Anyone interested in training can call Connie Sudbrook at 860-0297.

Volunteers work six to 10 hours monthly on their own schedules, meeting with children, foster parents, teachers, caseworkers, writing brief reports for judges, and attending hearings. Since Florida’s program began in 1979, more younger people and men are volunteering, according to Sudbrook, the volunteer recruiter.

“It probably is the most unique volunteer position you can find,” Sudbrook said, estimating at least 80 percent of children are in the system due to parents’ substance-abuse or addictions. “The needs of the child in each case are different, so we’re constantly learning. The longer you do this, the more effective you become.”

“It’s sad at times, but there are also a lot of happy endings,” she said. “We do accomplish a lot and make a difference.”

Lorrie Moore, the case coordinator for the five-county circuit — which also includes Hendry, Charlotte and Glades counties — warns it’s a commitment that takes time, but most stick with it and some have volunteered 10 or 15 years and mentor the new recruits.

“Kids can prevail through whatever they live through,” she said, adding that reunification with parents is the goal, but doesn’t always work. “We really have to look at the whole, big picture. … You have to do what’s in the child’s best interests.”

Pruchansky, who retired from Greenscapes, a landscaping firm she owns with her husband, has volunteered for 10 years and has seen many happy endings and sad stories in the 50 children she’s advocated for.

There was the infant with 19 broken bones, a young girl taken out of her home after she was sexually abused, then placed with her grandparents. Her grandfather then sexually abused her.

Pruchansky’s saddest story?

“The little boy who had to testify against his dad, who tried to kill him,” Pruchansky said, adding that the boy also watched the father stab someone else. “He did see some brutal things.”

Pruchansky, who works mostly in Immokalee, where volunteers are needed, noted: “It really does make a difference in a child’s life. It gives them hope.”

That’s what Pruchansky saw in Douyon, a 14-year-old with behavioral issues.

“Part of it was foster homes that didn’t match her personality,” Pruchansky said. “She and I just bonded. She had issues, but I saw potential. She knew the system wasn’t fair and rebelled against it.”

“She’s a success story,” Pruchansky added. “She didn’t have any family for a long time and I was the only one she had.”

Douyon, a convenience store cashier who is now married, said no one listened until Pruchansky arrived. Before that, she acted out because well-behaved foster children were “forgotten, ignored.”

She hopes other volunteers will help children like her, Douyon said, adding: “As long as you have the heart and mindset to help — and the time because it’s time-consuming — you should do it because it’s an important job.”

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Every county in every state needs to know about the guardian Ad Litem program and how it helps at risk children through the difficult system of child protection services.

It is to all our benefit when children thrive in our communities. Children can only thrive if they are given a fair chance to thrive.

Without court appointed guardians, abused and neglected children are voiceless in our communities. For the CASA guardian ad litem program in your state, http://www.nationalcasa.org/, for Florida; www.casa-stpete.org/, for CASA Minnesota http://www.casamn.org/

http://www.pr.com/press-release/206840Voices For Children Foundation Announces Their 2010 Be A Voice Feel the Magic Gala with Special Cirque Du Soleil Performers

Be A Voice Feel The Magic Gala benefiting Voices For Children Foundation-the fundraising arm of the 11th Judicial Circuit Guardian Ad Litem Program-is set for Saturday, February 13 at the Mandarin Oriental, Miami.

Miami, FL, January 22, 2010 –(PR.com)– The magical evening will begin at 7:30 p.m. with cocktails and a fabulous silent auction, followed by a sumptuous dinner at 9:00 p.m. and dancing to the music of celebrity DJ Kucha, who has appeared on CNN and MTV. South Florida’s own Channel 10 News Anchor, Laurie Jennings, will serve as the evening’s Mistress of Ceremony.

A highlight of the evening will be special breathtaking performances by Cirque du Soleil acrobats, featuring the internationally renowned dynamic couple, Duo Voltart.

The Be A Voice Feel The Magic Gala is sponsored by Mandarin Oriental, Miami; Southern Wine & Spirits of South Florida, Cathay Pacific Airways; Jeff and Yolanda Berkowitz; The Continental Group; Florida Power and Light; Ramesh and Veena Panjabi; Michael and Diane Rosenberg; Stearns Weaver Miller Weisller Alhadeff & Sitterson, P.A. and Swire Properties.

Nelson F. Hincapie, President and CEO for Voices for Children Foundation states, “This year’s Gala will be unforgettable! The evening will be filled with surprises- surely not be missed. This evening is all about the children who get lost in the foster care system without a Guardian Ad Litem. Proceeds will help raise much needed funds, so that every child in Foster Care has a voice. This is a great opportunity for people to get involved, make a difference and enjoy an amazing evening.”

Co-chairing this year’s Gala is South Florida philanthropist’s and community leaders, Aimee and Stephen Owens and Veena and Ramesh Panjabi. Serving on the committee is The Honorable Ambassador Carmenza Jaramillo de Maincourt, Maria Maribona, Arancha Plana and Adela Mones.

This year’s extraordinary auction is Co-chaired by long-time supporter and Board Member, Yolanda Berkowitz along with Beth Tasca. The auction committee members include: Lana Bernstein, Sarah Harrelson, Lisa Pliner, Kim Wood, Rhonda Rose-Drecksler, Lourdes Lameran Gail Appelrouth, Chandra Balsera and Leslie Wolfson. Some of the unforgettable and exciting items that will be featured include, a five night stay at a beautiful 2-level home in heart of Santa Fe, NM; a weekend for two with spa services at Costa d’Este including dinner for two at Oriente; Gloria and Emilio Estefan’s resort property in Vero Beach), a fishing trip with Ray Rocher aboard the Miss Britt; a two night stay with at Fontainebleau Miami Beach; The Best Birthday Party Ever (for 20 children) from Miami Children’s Museum; luxury designer items from: Prada Bal Harbour, Christian Dior, Oscar de la Renta, Miu Miu and others; a Fourteen (14) person wine tasting from Wines for Humanity; Sports and entertainment memorabilia; a $5,000 shopping spree from a Luxury Retailer; fine jewelry and much more.

An ongoing supporter of Voices For Children Foundation and this year’s Golden Fan Guardian, Cathay Pacific Airways has once again generously donated an “Oriental Getaway” for two. The winner of this $250.00 raffle will have the opportunity to travel business class with a guest, to one of the following destinations: New Delhi, India, Beijing, China or Bangkok, Thailand.

Individual tickets for the Gala are priced from $500. To learn more about underwriting opportunities, sponsorships, or to purchase table and tickets, please call 305.324.5678 or email iardon@voices4.org.

###

The mission of Voices For Children Foundation is to raise funds to ensure that every abused, abandoned, and neglected child in Miami-Dade County has a court appointed Guardian Ad Litem to represent their best interests in court and that financial assistance and other resources are available to meet their needs.

Be a Voice.

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This morning’s news http://www.startribune.com/local/59883387.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU (Star Tribune 9.19.09 Mom charged in death of the murdered 15 month-month old baby girl) brings home the need for a robust social service agency and a more compassionate community.

It hurts me to see that my neighbors no longer react to the next murdered baby in their city.

Minneapolis/St. Paul Metro is approaching twenty murdered and brutalized very young children & babies for the year.

A major newspaper really needs to put a reporter on this, as I suspect that next year, due to cuts in funding, social service agencies will report a decline in reports of child abuse (and then we could refer them to the data and ask them to start investigating more of the calls that they should be following up on).

Just a month ago I wrote about my conversation with reporters from the Star Tribune about the 14 calls to child protection before the baby drowned in the bathtub.

These reporters were surprised that a baby could be left in dangerous circumstances after 14 social service calls to the home.

As a guardian ad-Litem, I worked on a case with 45 police and social service calls to a home where the children lived with drugs, gunfire, and prostitution & were only removed on the 45th call because the seven-year-old tried to kill the five-year-old in front of the officers.

There was evidence that the seven-year-old had been prostituted (she had certainly been sexually abused).

The impact on a child of extended exposure to violence, drug use, and sex abuse is lifelong and traumatic. The cost to society is compromised schools, failing communities, and monstrously high crime and criminal justice costs.

“What you do to your children, they will do to your society” Pliny, 2500 years ago.

Abused and neglected children have no voice.

If you and I don’t speak up for them who will?

Postscript 1; We must accept that it is because we have not fully supported child protection services that they do not have the resources to respond to the soaring numbers of serious cases, and babies are being murdered. Blaming social workers for dead babies is like blaming teachers for failing schools, doctors for a troubled health care system, or the police for crime ridden cities. Pogo said it best, “We have met the enemy, and it is us”.

Postscript 2; Blaming and hating terribly damaged parents is a reptilian response to the problem but it solves nothing. Many of these people have severe and chronic mental health issues and have grown up in homes as crazy and dysfunctional as the one they are now giving to their own children. As a guardian ad-litem removing children from birth homes I have empathy for the sadness that these people must live with every day of their lives.

Postscript 3; It is public policy that social workers are trained to not speak of their work publicly. It insures that the public will not know of the conditions that led to the seven-year-old foster child hanging himself, the two-year-old “disappeared” foster child in Nevada, or any of the other tragic conditions that result in the sorrowful tales that finally do make it into the newspaper.

Anonymity is important, but the thought that the problems of abused and neglected children do not deserve to be spoken of, is adding to the impossibility of finding support for them while they are still young enough to receive the guidance and resources that can help them to lead normal lives.

This is one more example of the great need for KARA’s grassroots effort to raise awareness to the needs of America’s at risk children.

Until that happens, children, schools, families and communities, will contintue to suffer.

It is a bigger step to convince people that healthy children become healthy citizens, but it is true.

Support at risk children! Become a CASA volunteer or start a KARA group in your community.

Have something to add? Attach a comment to this blog post or

Contact Us to tell us your point of view or story.

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Join the public debate for children (they have no senator, lobby, or voice)

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So when Harris retired four years ago from the federal government in Fulton County, Georgia, the idea of working for a child-advocacy program seemed a perfect way to continue healing herself while helping others struggle with traumatic losses. As a volunteer for the National Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Association, Harris assists abused, abandoned, or neglected children who are in foster care for their protection, then makes recommendations to the court about how to salvage their futures.

Read the entire article: People Helping People: Profiles of people who volunteer and give back to their communities.

MN day care

It is a bigger step to convince people that healthy children become healthy citizens, but it is true.

• Support at risk children! Become a CASA volunteer or start a KARA group in your community.
• Have something to add? Attach a comment to this blog post or Contact Us to tell us your point of view or story.
• If you think someone might appreciate this information, click the ShareThis button below
• Buy our book or listen to it (for free)
• Join the public debate for children (they have no senator, lobby, or voice)

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This judge began using trained community volunteers to speak for the best interests of these children in court. The program was such a great success in Seattle that very soon judges across the country decided to use citizen advocates.

Perhaps the hardest decision a judge will ever make is to remove a child from a birth family.

For people outside the legal system, it is important to recognize the adversarial nature of courts and law in America. Divorce law is a tiny example of how painful our system makes the resolution of family legal matters. Child abuse and neglect are a sad but very real part of life in America and children must be protected against dangerous home environments.

Today, federal law mandates that children in need of protection will have a CASA voice in the courtroom. After all, a five or six year old has not much more comprehension or ability to testify than a three year old in a courtroom setting.

Not all CASA members are volunteers. Some CASA are paid staff and some are attorneys.

As a long time volunteer CASA, I am partial to the volunteer programs mainly because we take fewer cases and by taking fewer cases we can spend more time and have more involvement with the child and family (read my book; http://www.invisiblechildren.org/our-book/ ) — these children really do need all the time, concern, and resources that this community can deliver.

The following are a few CASA blogs and websites I have discovered that give a snapshot of CASA programs and accomplishments:

Mass:
http://www.masskids.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=1&d4dad6935f632ac35975e3001dc7bbe8=279969f8375c4284bcbb8496b9eee605

Oregon;

http://www.myspace.com/casacc

Mi
http://www.casawashtenaw.org/

National CASA Youtube:
You Tube CASA video

OklahomaCASA
myspace

National CASA

CASA MN

Send us your favorite CASA blogs and website and we will post them here;

send to info@invisiblechildren.org

MN day care

It is a bigger step to convince people that healthy children become healthy citizens, but it is true.

• Support at risk children! Become a CASA volunteer or start a KARA group in your community.
• Have something to add? Attach a comment to this blog post or Contact Us to tell us your point of view or story.
• If you think someone might appreciate this information, click the ShareThis button below
• Buy our book or listen to it (for free)
• Join the public debate for children (they have no senator, lobby, or voice)

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WASHTENAW COUNTY
426 children confirmed victims of abuse or neglect.

252 children in out-of-home care due to abuse or neglect.

As of October, 2008, 37 CASA volunteers are serving 78 children in Washtenaw County.

(October, 2007: 30 CASA volunteers serving 54 children in Washtenaw County.)

http://www.casawashtenaw.org/

CASA guardian ad-Litem programs provide volunteers that learn the family circumstances in child abuse cases and make impartial recommendations to the court. Judges find the impartial insights of trained volunteers helpful in discerning the true state of the family and the risk of future abuse and neglect to the child.

Take a moment and read the Washtenaw County Blog to get a feel for how this program works.

http://www.casawashtenaw.blogspot.com/

MN day care

It is a bigger step to convince people that healthy children become healthy citizens, but it is true.

• Support at risk children! Become a CASA volunteer or start a KARA group in your community.
• Have something to add? Attach a comment to this blog post or Contact Us to tell us your point of view or story.
• If you think someone might appreciate this information, click the ShareThis button below
• Buy our book or listen to it (for free)
• Join the public debate for children (they have no senator, lobby, or voice)

Share this:

The local newspaper (Star Tribune) interviewed me because I have written about a case (as a guardian ad-Litem) where the police had been to a home 49 times before removing the child from a terrible environment (I believe the 7 year old was prostituted). I told the editor about several of my cases where three year olds were sexually abused and cocaine positive, and one experience where the four year tried hard to kill herself.

Its important for each and every one of us to react as compassionate beings for children. It is all that separates us from animals.

Not having empathy for the screams of your neighbors six year old child as he is being murdered, or as she is being sexually abused is the very last sign that we have entered the dark ages. Not having resources or systems to insure that children will be removed from toxic environments is the community’s way of not having empathy for the screams of your neighbors six year old.

From the Los Angelas Times By Hector Becerra and Garrett Therolf
July 25, 2009 South L.A. boy died after previous reports of abuse

Dae’von Bailey had injuries that suggested blows or other trauma over an extended period of time, a police lieutenant said.

A 6-year-old boy whose battered body was found on the floor of a South Los Angeles home was the subject of roughly a dozen calls to Los Angeles County’s child abuse hotline alleging abuse or neglect, a county official briefed on the case told The Times on Friday.

Dae’von Bailey had injuries that suggested blows or other trauma over an extended period of time, said Lt. Vincent Neglia of the LAPD’s Abused Child Section. Police are searching for the boy’s stepfather, Marcas Fisher, 36, as a “person of interest” in the case.

Dae’von’s death appears to fit a pattern in which children have been killed after their cases already had come to the attention of county child welfare officials. The Times previously reported that last year, 14 children died after being evaluated by the county Department of Children and Family Services. Some of those deaths involved breakdowns in the system in which some agencies knew about potential abuse but had failed to share the information with other agencies. In other cases, investigators found that poor decisions by social workers had contributed to the deaths.

The county Board of Supervisors has repeatedly been warned by auditors and other experts that the child welfare system lacks efficient ways to share information about risks faced by children. After the reports in The Times, the board last month voted to approve a new effort to ensure that agencies share information.

Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, whose district includes South Los Angeles, called on the board Friday to appoint an independent investigator to thoroughly review Dae’von’s case. Thomas said the probe should include looking at the boy’s contact with Family Services and any other government agencies to identify any breakdowns that might have contributed to his death. The inquiry, if approved, would be the first of its kind since 2006.

“We need to get to the bottom of this,” Ridley-Thomas said. “To have a county that has a stain on its image, to have children dying under these circumstances, is very, very difficult to bear. . . . The public has a right to have confidence that we are taking care of these matters competently.”

Family Services Director Trish Ploehn, who since taking office two years ago has made better accountability of social workers a top priority, said she’s already launched “a full and comprehensive internal investigation.”

“This was a tragic and senseless death,” Ploehn said. “I’ve had a full team of people looking at it all day.”

On Friday, neighbors on South 87th Place tried to make sense of what had happened to Dae’von, whom they described as a sweet, well-behaved child. Relatives found him dead on the floor after being alerted by a frantic call from an unidentified person in his home. Fisher was not in the house when officers arrived. Neglia said Fisher had “no history of violent crime” but that he did have a history of property crimes. The coroner’s office had not determined the cause of death.

The county official, who was not authorized to comment on the case and therefore spoke on condition of anonymity, said the dozen calls reporting abuse or neglect occurred at various times in Dae’von’s life. The source said county officials had opened an investigation after each call. But it remained unclear Friday whether social workers had concluded that abuse had occurred or whether the county had an active case file on Dae’von at the time of his death.

The boy’s mother, Tylette Davis, 28, said Fisher had been with her when she was pregnant with Dae’von, but he wasn’t the boy’s biological father. She separated from him some time ago.

Davis said she never witnessed Fisher abuse Dae’von, but she said that about three years ago, Fisher “whipped” one of her older sons until “his butt was all red.”

Davis said that none of her six children, including Dae’von, were living with her because she was “going through things, and I thought he could take care of the kids while I got my stuff together.”

Dae’von and Davis’ 5-year-old daughter — who is now in protective custody — were staying with Fisher; a 14-year-old daughter was staying with a cousin in Compton; and her other three children were staying with her mother, also in Compton…

He and other neighbors say they heard the movie “Medea Goes to Jail” playing loudly in the house. Davis said the film seemed to be playing in a loop, along with a taped performance by comedian Katt Williams. Later, he wondered whether the sounds were intended to cover up tumult inside the house.

hector.becerra@latimes.com

garrett.therolf@latimes.com

Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
Read entire article;

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-child-killed25-2009jul25,0,220819.story

In my many years working in child protection services, it has never been the fault of the social worker when a child dies. It has always been the lack of support, lack of training, huge caseloads, minimal resources and public policy that abandons other peoples children. It is easy to blame social workers, but it solves nothing. Support at risk children and the people, programs, and policies that will help these children lead normal lives.

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It is a bigger step to convince people that healthy children become healthy citizens, but it is true.

• Support at risk children! Become a CASA volunteer or start a KARA group in your community.
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and a Zero tolerance policy for guns and violence,

How about zero tolerance for abused children? My city has two murdered toddlers in two weeks.

How many police calls are required, how many observations of children in toxic environments are tolerable to this community?

Northfield stepfather charged in death of brutalized toddler

The Northfield man confessed to shaking the boy. An autopsy found broken bones, bleeding on the brain and other injuries. By JOY POWELL, Star Tribune

Last update: July 1, 2009 – 8:44 PM For four days, 17-month-old Nicholas Miller was in pain with a badly broken back, which made it difficult for the toddler to walk or even breathe. His brain was bleeding, and he had other wounds.

He got no medical help.

On June 23, the battered rural Northfield boy turned blue as his stepfather and step-grandmother laid him out and tried to revive him on a picnic table in Maiden Rock, Wis. It took an ambulance 23 minutes to arrive.

Nicholas was pronounced dead upon arriving at a hospital in Durand, Wis

Toddler found submerged in St. Paul bathtub dies

By ALEX EBERT , Star Tribune
Last update: July 4, 2009 – 9:07 PM

A toddler who was found submerged in a bathtub in a St. Paul foster home on Wednesday has died, police confirmed. The girl had been in critical condition since the accident.

An autopsy will be performed today and police are still investigating the circumstances surrounding the near-drowning that eventually killed the 18-month-old, who was in the tub with a 3-year-old sibling.

In the past five years, 14 police calls have been made to the home of the toddler’s foster parents, Daniel and Barbara Wright.

Police are investigating what the foster parents were doing while the child was submerged. The 3-year-old has been taken from the home.

“Clearly this was a horrible tragedy,” St. Paul Police Sgt. Paul Schnell said. “Hopefully it serves as a reminder to all of us to make sure we are watching our kids.”

Schnell said the names of the toddler and her sibling may not be released because doing so could identify their parents.

Last years Brutal Truths and Best Practices Forum at Century College

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Join our focused and energetic conversation about children in need of protection and the people, programs, and policies that impact them. Have your views and questions heard.

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On the 49th call to the home, police removed the children into protective custody (only because the 7 year old was observed trying to kill the 5 year old). As I became involved in the case, the sex abuse of the older girl became apparent. The police were aware of the prostitution taking place on the premises, and it was very likely that the older child had been prostituted.

To say that societies interests were served by not intervening in this child’s life earlier is an obscenity almost worse than the crime of child rape. The impact is forever. There is no excuse to leave at risk children in dangerous conditions.

Star Tribune Article

14 police calls to foster home led up to near-death

The near-drowning was the latest in five years worth of calls to the St. Paul house, including one last year from the frantic provider herself.

By ANTHONY LONETREE, Star Tribune
Last update: July 3, 2009 – 11:47 PMFourteen times in five years, police have been called to a St. Paul foster home where an 18-month-old girl nearly drowned this week after being left unattended in a bathtub.

Once last year, the caller was the foster-care provider herself, seemingly frantic about her husband leaving the house after an argument and warning she was “emotionally unable to care for the children” when alone, police said.

Police and state human services records have identified the foster-care providers as Barbara L. Wright, 46, and her husband, Daniel L. Wright, 50.

Since that afternoon, five more calls have been made to police about the house across the street from an East Side playground, the most recent involving the near-drowning Wednesday. The girl remains hospitalized in critical condition.

Initial reports indicated the 18-month-old and her 3-year-old sibling were left alone for a brief period before the toddler was found submerged, said police spokesman Sgt. Paul Schnell. The 3-year-old since has been moved elsewhere. Nobody appeared to be home Thursday or Friday.

Investigators now are working to determine how long the children were left unattended, Schnell said. It wasn’t clear how many children had been living in the house.

Paul Gustafson, a spokesman for the Ramsey County attorney’s office, said that as of Thursday, police had not forwarded to prosecutors any request to consider charges. Since 2007, however, authorities have prosecuted at least two cases in the Twin Cities area in which mothers left toddlers alone in bathtubs and returned to find them drowned.

Last year, a Lakeville woman was sentenced to six months in jail and 10 years’ probation after an August 2007 incident in which she left her 11-month-old daughter and 2-year-old son in the tub while she shopped for shoes on the Internet. The girl died.

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I-Team: Settlement Reached in Missing Girl Case

A settlement has been reached in the civil lawsuit surrounding the disappearance of a 2-year-old foster child. The natural parents of Everlyse Cabrera sued Clark County when their daughter went missing from her North Las Vegas foster home three years ago.

Not long ago, Everlyse’s mom said she wasn’t sure she’d ever settle. Marlena Olivas wanted a trial, she claimed, to expose Clark County’s failure to protect her little girl. But after intense negotiations, the parties reached a $500,000 deal with $250,000 earmarked for Everlyse, should she be found alive on or before her 25th birthday. If she is not, the money is returned to the county.

Some remaining funds will be distributed to her little brother Benjamin, who shared the foster home with Everlyse, and to her biological mom and dad. Benjamin stands to receive $35,000. Her parents get $22,000 each.

The settlement also provides for a scholarship fund in Everlyse’s name, a reward for information about her disappearance, and monies to continue the private investigative effort to find her.

The agreement releases Clark County from any future claims and its employees do not have to admit any wrongdoing. “The most important thing for my perspective is not necessarily a punishment for the county, but to take care of Everlyse. So my concern was not seeing that the county had to turn over the money and had to risk losing that money, but realistically that if Everlyse is found there’s going to be money to provide for her,” said Everlyse’s guardian ad litem Dara Goldsmith.

Before a judge can formally approve the settlement, it must be accepted by the Clark County Commission.

A second battle is brewing over a $200,000 payout from Clark County’s foster parent insurance carrier. Those funds are not part of the negotiated agreement.

Anyone with information about the case, no matter how small, is encouraged to share it with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST or James Conklin with ExFed Investigations at (702) 204-7654.

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Gabriel Myers, 7, hung himself in the bathroom of his
Margate foster home in April

A state group looking at the suicide of a young foster child met Thursday to discuss ways to improve care and listened to adults who said they were overmedicated in the foster-care system.
Foster Child: “felt like I was an animal on a farm being tested’

BY AMY SHERMAN

Mez Pierre, 22, and Kimberly Foster, 25, both from Broward County, told the group that mental health drugs — already at the center of the investigation of Gabriel Myers’s tragic death — aren’t the answer for many foster youth. Children need caring adults who will look at the causes of their difficult behavior, they said — not simply write prescriptions in an attempt to control it.

Foster said doctors prescribed medication when she got upset about being removed from her home. She was ultimately placed in facilities with locked windows and restraints.

”They were trying to control the symptoms I had from being put into the system. . . . How I reacted was normal,” Foster said. “I was sad. I was taken away from my home. Because of that they felt medication was the right way to treat me.”

Florida Department of Children & Families (DCF) administrators and child advocates who formed a work group to study Gabriel’s death held their third meeting Thursday in Fort Lauderdale. Gabriel hanged himself in the bathroom of his Margate foster home in April.

He had been prescribed several psychiatric drugs during his nine months in foster care.

Workgroup members spent much of the day talking about issues such as how to improve communication between various professionals who care for foster kids. The leaders discussed various forms and documents collected for each child, and the potential roadblocks in gathering the data — sometimes as simple as a fax not going through.

Anne Wells, pharmacy director for the state Agency for Health Care Administration, questioned how some of these efforts will help children in foster care. .

”I don’t mean to criticize, but I have listened to improvements, and checked boxes, forms and paperwork. I’m sorry. I just don’t get it,” she said. “Where does all of this stuff head off the outcome that Gabriel had?”

Wells also questioned whether administrators were too quick to blame medication for Gabriel’s death, rather than talking about what led to his being medicated in the first place.

OVER-MEDICATED

But both Pierre and Foster told the group that they were over-medicated as foster children.

”To hear a story about a foster youth who lost his life, I take that very, very personally,” said Pierre, who choked back tears during his presentation. “I went through a lot of things that Gabriel went through and to see one loss is very painful.”

Gabriel ‘wasn’t being cared for. He was just told `you have problems,’ ” Pierre said.

Pierre added that he was first prescribed medications when he entered the foster-care system at age 5. He was given multiple pills and various diagnoses, including attention deficit/hyperactivity and bipolar disorders.

”When I was on medications, I always felt like a zombie,” he said. “I felt drowsy. I didn’t feel human. I felt like I was an animal on a farm being tested.”

Today, Pierre is doing what many told him he couldn’t do: living a successful life without medications. Pierre, who lives in Deerfield Beach, said he has a job, attends Broward College and hopes to become a lawyer.

”Consider the lives . . . even though it’s a difficult job,” he told the group. “That doesn’t mean to neglect your responsibility and to not work together.”

Foster said she took herself off the medications when she was 18 and pregnant. She now lives in Pompano Beach with her husband and son.

NEVER SUICIDAL

”I have never displayed any suicidal ideations, no mutilations, no disorientations,” Foster said. ‘We are lost if we send a message to youth, `if you cry you are depressed.’ We are so quick to put diagnoses on a child for a lot of times being a normal adolescent.”

Both Pierre and Foster are active in a group called Florida Youth Shine which, among other things, testifies in Tallahassee about foster-care issues.

A Miami Herald article that showed Gabriel had been on several drugs, including anti-depressants associated with a higher risk of suicide, prompted DCF to investigate the prescribing of mental health drugs to children.

DCF Secretary George Sheldon formed the work group as part of the wide-ranging investigation.

The group Thursday discussed a recent state review of more than 100 foster children age 5 or younger receiving psychiatric drugs. The study revealed that child welfare administrators are ignoring rules designed to protect the children.

In the majority of cases, for example, there was no documentation to show that case managers coordinated with the prescribing practitioner to obtain a psychiatric evaluation.

Broward County’s top child-welfare judge, Circuit Judge John A. Frusciante, read a statement that he recently wrote to ChildNet, Broward’s private foster care agency, in response to child advocates in recent hearings who had no knowledge about the existence of ”black box warnings” on medications. He called for more education of case workers.

”It is deeply disturbing that child advocates have no knowledge of the FDA’s highest warnings for possibly life-threatening adverse effects of medications,” he wrote.

Comments can be made here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/southflorida/story/1104243.html
(short registration required)

You can see a CBS News video of the foster kids here:
http://gabrielmyers.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/dcf-panel-reviews-mental-health-policies/

Bookmark this page http://gabrielmyers.wordpress.com/ for up to date media coverage on this issue.

Postscript… I too have had 4 year old and 7 year old suicides as a Hennepin County guardian ad-Litem and a judge that has shared with me the pages of documented Prozac, Ritalin, and other Psychotropics given to very young children. This conversation needs to take place at a higher level (where something can be done about it).

Thank you Psych_News@psychsearch.net for this information.

MN day care

It is a bigger step to convince people that healthy children become healthy citizens, but it is true.

• Support at risk children! Become a CASA volunteer or start a KARA group in your community.
• Have something to add? Attach a comment to this blog post or Contact Us to tell us your point of view or story.
• If you think someone might appreciate this information, click the ShareThis button below
• Buy our book or listen to it (for free)
• Join the public debate for children (they have no senator, lobby, or voice)

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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-childabuse14-2009jun14,0,7157276.story

Support at risk children, start a KARA group in your community.

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http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1902500,00.html?imw=Y

Time June 04, 2009

By Claudian Wallis

Depression is one of the dark demons of adolescence. Up to 1 in 12 American teenagers is affected, according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and three times as many will experience depression at some point by age 18. Studies show that at least 20% of teenagers with clinical depression will go on to develop chronic cases that will haunt them throughout adulthood. That is, if they reach adulthood. Suicide is a significant risk for depressed adolescents and the third leading cause of deaths among U.S. teenagers….The researchers will also examine what can be done for the adolescents whose parents are in the grips of depression: this subset, which was 45% of the participants, did not benefit significantly from the cognitive behavioral program.

“It’s awfully hard to change your thinking habits if a parent is depressed and everything is so chaotic around you,” observes Clarke. Future studies, says Garber, will look at whether treating the parent for depression makes a difference…

Because it focuses on prevention, the JAMA study “really moves the field forward,” says child psychologist Anne Marie Albano, who directs the Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Columbia University Medical Center.

Albano says that recent surveys showing rising rates of mental illness in college students have sounded the alarm about the need to intervene earlier to prevent the cascade of social, academic, economic and emotional woes that befall teens who slip into depression. “This study is telling us that if you get kids early in the cycle of depression when they have symptoms and are on the path, you can give them skills that manage those symptoms.”

Personal note; As a long time guardian ad-Litem, I am sensitive to the cascading problems children in dysfunctional homes must live with.

It is obvious to me that children of really troubled parents cannot escape the problems of their parents.  It is a benefit to all of us to have healthy children in our communities.

Support at risk children, start a KARA group in your community.

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Star Tribune June 3, 2009

Justice is unequal in sex abuse

Those who molest family members get lighter sentences than outsiders, data show.

A young woman in Hennepin County accuses her father of sexually abusing her since she was 12 and impregnating her at age 18.

A 13-year-old Ramsey County girl tells a school counselor that her father had been touching her while her mother was in the hospital.

A 15-year-old Anoka County boy reports to police that his stepfather, convicted of a sex offense years earlier, committed sex acts with him, once in exchange for help with a video game.

In each case, Minnesota sentencing guidelines called for a seven-year or 12-year prison sentence. Instead, each defendant pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year or less in jail and a long probation.

Such lighter sentences are given more often to defendants abusing children in their own families or households than to those who abuse outside their families, a Star Tribune analysis of nearly 1,500 child sex abuse cases shows.

From 2001 to 2007, 33 percent of family or household child sex abuse defendants facing prison time ended up with probation, compared with 26 percent of those abusing outside their families. In the most serious cases where victims were between 13 and 15 years old, the difference was even greater: 37 percent versus 24 percent.

That sentencing disparity troubles some legislators and advocates for victims.

“It’s really unfortunate because … girls and boys who have experienced incest are somehow valued less than girls and boys who have experienced abuse at the hands of neighbors and coaches and teachers and other people,” said Elizabeth Saewyc, a nursing professor in Canada who studies abuse victims in research with Children’s Hospital of St. Paul.

Even family members who initially agreed to lighter sentences for abusers — to protect children from having to testify or to keep a family wage earner working — sometimes come to feel probation sentences aren’t enough as they watch the effect of abuse on the child victim play out for years.

Addendum,

Below are articles from other authors and some  that I have written on this topic over the past few years.

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2006/02/19/another-day-in-family-court/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2006/04/02/the-longest-day/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2006/06/04/wellness-and-child-abuse/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2008/09/28/ptsd-study-of-abused-children/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2005/06/15/sigrid-bachmann/

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                CASA Minnesota partnered with the Dr. Phil Foundation for Monday’s Rally to bring attention to foster children in Minnesota and draw attention to the need for more volunteer guardians ad litem, foster parents and adoptive families.  When a child in foster care turns 18, many of them lose the safety net of the system that was created to protect them.  Without services to help them achieve independence, many of these young adults get swallowed back into the system through a different avenue, quite often the adult corrections system. 

A diverse group of speakers brought attention to the issues facing foster children from a variety of perspectives.  Two young adults, members of Our Voices Matter, who have gone through the foster care system, shared their experience with the audience.  Genaysia Love is involved with Our Voices Matter, an organization that provides a platform for teenagers in foster care and those who have transitioned into adulthood to share their experiences and advocate for change.  Genaysia shared that “home” to her was multiple foster homes, shelter homes, hospitals, and even a youth detention facility when there wasn’t a “bed” available for her in a more suitable environment.  Genaysia, now a mother herself, never did find a permanent adoptive family. 

Like Genaysia, Tina Rosenthal was also a child in foster care.  Unlike Genaysia, Tina was adopted by a family before she “aged out” of the system.  Now a young adult and Miss Minnesota 2008, Tina has made it her mission to bring attention to the issues facing foster children.  She said that during her reign as Miss Minnesota, she pledged that every time she entered a room, she informed everyone in her presence of how many children enter foster care in Minnesota each week and what challenges each of those children would face. 

Mary McGowan; foster parent, adoptive parent, volunteer guardian ad litem, child advocate and National Speaker, shared her stories of raising her five adopted special needs children and the scores of foster children who have come into her home.  She told the crowd that without a system of support, she “crashed and burned real hard” for a period of about two years.  Since this time, she has been able to not only find the systems that exist for supporting foster and adoptive families, but also be a part of creating those systems.  She sees that, while meeting the needs of the children is of the utmost importance, without addressing the unique needs of the people who care for those children, we are missing a critical link in the chain of service.

Another foster and adoptive parent, Sarah Shannon, shared her gift of poetry with the crowd.  Her poem, I Wish told the story of life through the eyes of a child experiencing abuse and neglect.  In her poem, the child wishes that they were various things that they see as being loved and honored by their parent more than they are.  The child wishes they were a crack pipe, a bottle of alcohol, even a scary movie just so they can know how it feels to be cherished by a parent. 

Second Judicial District Judge, Judith M. Tilson, told her story through the eyes of a decision maker in the system.  She shared a letter written by a young man, now a member of the armed forces, who found “family” through two of his workers who went above and beyond in their level of care for him.  The result of level of love and care shown by these women could have made the difference between this young man being a successful, contributing member of society or being an adult caught up in the correction system.  She also shared the story of a young woman who was repeatedly failed by the system in getting her need for a permanent family met.  In hindsight, the Judge could see how this young woman’s life could have had a happy ending sooner if different decisions had been made on her behalf.  At one point, the judge took responsibility for her role in this child’s life by sharing how a wrong decision was made early on that delayed this child’s opportunity to be adopted.  The judge said “that would be me” when she shared who made this decision.  Fortunately this child was eventually adopted by the family who had wanted to adopt her as soon as she was placed in foster care.  After the adoption was completed, the judge said “we finally got it right.”

Michelle Johnson, was also an adopted child.  As an adult working with the Fourth Judicial District Guardian Ad Litem Program, she is helping youth in foster care share their stories through dance.  She led a group of young dancers who shared their message to legislators that adopted children should be allowed to receive their original birth certificate.  As the words of DMC’s “I’m Legit[imate]” played, the children danced.  In the end, a large “Birth Certificate” was passed among the children.  This represented a piece of their identity that is currently being withheld from them through legislation that protects the identity of the biological parents.

Joe Kroll, founder of NACAC, addressed with the crowd a current issue affecting adoptive families.  Currently adoptive parents have a system of support established through a group of parent liaisons across the state.  These are individuals who are adoptive parents themselves who are in a position of providing support and a connection to additional resources that adoptive families may have challenges meeting on their own.  As a result of changes in the Department of Human Services budget which would redirect the funding toward clinical support, adoptive families may lose this network.  This would be a devastating loss to the families that receive this service and the children in their care.   

A number of politicians graced the stage and shared their voice on behalf of children in foster care.  Senator Mee Moua told the story of her own children.  Fortunately they have experienced stability in their family life and they are thriving because of this.  Senator Moua keeps them in mind when making decisions on behalf of Minnesota children.  Senator Patricia Ray Torres also shared her experiences as a policy maker on behalf of children.  The final speaker of the day seemed to be a surprise even to the event coordinators.  Senator John Marty came to the podium and shared how deeply moved he was by the display that was placed on the front lawn of the Capitol.  As he faced the crowd, looking back at him were the faces on 187 life sized billboards of children – each one representing the life of a Minnesota child placed in foster care each week.  After the rally closed, Senator Marty was given a billboard photo of a young boy holding a sign that read “Twelve foster homes.”  Senator Marty said that he will have the voices and lives of these children in mind as he promotes policies that will affect them. 

The Forgotten Children Rally shared the voices and told the stories of the children in foster care.  Participants and spectators could hear for themselves the challenges faced by these children and former children who were once a part of this system and realize the need for more volunteer guardians ad litem, foster homes, and adoptive families.  By bringing attention to the unmet needs of these youth and young adults, service providers and policy makers can develop a system to better meet their needs and assure a brighter future for today’s “forgotten children.”     

Submitted by Amy Rostron-Ledoux, KARA volunteer

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Here is a sample of the 2008 Kids At Risk Action (KARA) Forum:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jCTBZmy40Y

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