Kids at Risk Action (KARA) – Children's Rights Advocacy Network
Adoptees Have Answers Summer Event
The Minnesota History Center
(co-sponsor)
345 West Kellogg Boulevard
St. Paul, MN 55102
RSVP preferred to Anne C. Johnson by June 15, 2010
612-746-5122 or ajohnson@mnadopt.org
Walk-ins welcome
“What we do to our children, they will do to our society” said Pliny 2500 years ago. Look hard at what we are doing to our children now and what they are doing to our society.
Rosalynn Carter’s smart article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/former-first-lady-rosalynn-carter/solving-the-mental-health_b_561747.html draws attention to the necessity of putting strength-based models in place to overcome the deficits that poor children are growing up with.
About three million children a year are reported to child protection services each year in the U.S.
Between 40 to 85 percent of kids in foster care have mental health problems.
As a guardian ad-litem, many of the children in my case load had multiple foster placements because they were so mixed up and badly needed help that just was not available. Many of those children still live troubled lives (the last study I saw, showed 80% of youth aging out of foster care leading dysfunctional lives).
Prisons, Jails, underfunded schools, and failing support for children’s programs and health support have stressed the last few generations of America’s youth to where we now hold world records for prison populations, poor health, and poverty stricken children.
As a long time volunteer county guardian ad-litem, I believe that America’s institutions should be defined by what it is they actually create instead of what they were designed to create; they must be seen as producing obese children, preteen moms, and adolescent felons, as we now lead the industrialized world measurably in these areas.
Our children deserve better. Our society deserves better.
Support programs that help children learn, heal, and keeps them out of the justice system (we now prosecute about 25% of juveniles at adults).
Let’s stick together on this friends.
Support educators, social workers, foster and adoptive parents and the people working with troubled youth.
Most of all, support children and programs for children in your community. It will be a better community because of it.
Continue reading ‘America’s Children, Mental Health, & Society’
Kids At Risk Action needs your support for its successful launch of televised public service announcements building awareness to the issues surrounding child abuse.
In collaboration with award winning Salo of San Ramon CA, & the Academy on Violence and Abuse www.avahealth.org KARA is working to create and place public service ads that bring attention to child abuse on national TV.
These ads will reach millions and create interest and understanding of the children impacted by abuse.
Contact KARA with your questions and support. Please contact us with your questions, referrals, and donations.
The KARA team.
ps… pass this on to those you think might appreciate the opportunity;
Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.
ChildTrauma Academy
When: Thursday, June 17th
Registration: 8:30 a.m.
Training: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Mystic Mystice Lake Casino, Shakopee MN
Cost: $40 Standard, $30 JJC Community Member, $30 Student Rate
Scholarships available
Targeted Audience: Policy makers, professionals and practitioners in education, the court system, law enforcement, corrections, human services, community-based organizations, mental and chemical health, parents, youth, advocates, elected officials and others.
Presenter:
Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D. is the Senior Fellow of the ChildTrauma Academy, a not-for-profit organization based in Houston that promotes innovations in service, research and education in child maltreatment and childhood trauma (www.ChildTraumaAcademy.org). Dr. Perry is the author with Maia Szalavitz of The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love and Healing, a book based on his work with maltreated children. Over the last twenty years, Dr. Perry has been an active teacher, clinician and researcher in children’s mental health and the neurosciences holding a variety academic positions.
This is a compilation of recent news that reflects the conditions of youth and youth policy in the U.S. this past few weeks. Thank you Jamie Wilt for your hard work and Century College for your great programs.
I would like reader comments on the style and substance of this article and appreciate receiving information from you about youth programs, policy, and data.
A great new nonprofit is reaching out to improve and reform child welfare through citizen-led advocacy. This is a Minnesota effort, but every state needs it.
What is Safe Passage for Children? http://safepassagemn.org/
Our strategy is based on two principles: citizen involvement and data.
On the grass roots level Safe Passage recruits volunteers to lobby local and state elected officials in a grass roots campaign to improve the child welfare system. We train them to use reports that highlight key state and county performance measures.
Going forward Safe Passage will engage civic and business leaders in a broader reform campaign that will complement the grass roots effort.
How Does Safe Passage Work?
• Safe Passage recruits volunteer advocates to lobby elected officials for improvements
• Volunteers are trained in reports that highlight basic county and state performance measures
• Those who have not lobbied previously are paired with more experienced individuals
• Volunteers impress legislators because they are advocating on behalf of children in general, not because they need services themselves or work for a nonprofit that is requesting money
• Advocates attend one training session and one organizing session per year, and make 2-3 visits – one each to their state representative, state senator, and county commissioner
Continue reading ‘Safe Passage For Children’
If child protection means anything, it should mean that a child already traumatized by a lifetime of abuse will not be subjected to another series of poorly made decisions by the adults in his life.
If there is one thing that we do know, it is that adoptees need time and help adjusting to new surroundings, people, life, & everything else that has changed in their O so chaotic little universe.
If there is one thing a nation should stand for, should agree on, could vote for,… it might be providing protection for children seven and under.
Even our coarse, money driven hard bitten society might find a majority to support basic systems to insure that 7 year olds are not sent back into even worse circumstances than they are now experiencing.
What would it take to have put in place services that the Hansen family could have relied on to manage their very serious problems that would have negated casting the boy so harshly out of their home?
Of all the billions we spend on war, medications, beer, football, and advertising, where does Artyom Savelyev and his seven year old counter parts fit in?
From an international perspective, this must look like a three ring circus. From a guardian ad-Litems perspective, the conversation around child protection systems and children’s rights is long overdue.
Let’s move it along. I would really like to hear from the legal world, and stories from people that have found remedies for abused children. Continue reading ‘Deeper Questions About 7 Year Old Russian Boy’
How many of us would do well with no long term relationships, friends to fall back on, a family (even a very troubled family) to turn to when life kicked us in the stomach?
NYT article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/us/07foster.htmlrecaps the terrible data that we all know and have been unable to fix for many years.
Why the gangs flourish, schools fail, streets become unsafe & preteen girls give birth.
The last study showed 80% of youth aging out of foster care leading dysfunctional lives.
Blaming children for being born into dysfunctional families would not be a stated public policy, but I have found it to be de facto public policy. Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz has stated that “90% of the youth in juvenile justice have come through the child protection system”.
Every child deserves a chance to obtain the skills necessary to lead a productive life.
It is a much better investment to grow a child than it is a convict, a preteen mother, or an unstable person. Continue reading ‘Fixing Foster Care’
The CASA program I came through is a terrific volunteer program that connects volunteers to abused and neglected children in their community. CASA provides a great learning experience as well as a badly needed service to children unlucky enough to be born into tragic circumstances.
KARA has had the good fortune of having volunteers from Century College & Macalaster College to find information for me to write about and to research information on child abuse in other nations.
Volunteering is a powerful force at times like these, when young families are struggling, and more children are at risk.
To make volunteering work, it is best to do things that you like to do, for people that need it. The results are terrific.
Don’t be afraid to provide services through your own efforts (perhaps with the help of your local religious or business organizations). Small efforts become big if fed and sustained.
What follows is my quick list of child friendly organizations that need volunteers and articles on volunteering (to start the thought process).
In 2005, when I wrote the book Invisible Children in MN there were less than 900 cases of child rape reported in the state I live in (MN). If that were true, I personally knew of about 50 cases, and there were about five hundred guardian ad-Litems besides myself in the state. I know that there were many more cases of child rape in this state that year.
I have attended several law school symposiums that articulated the complexities of prosecuting child rape and come to understand how far away from solving these problems our nations judicial system really is. In one of my GAL cases, a 40 year old man had terribly molested a child over a four year period and was not made a party to the case. He was still in the home accused of molesting another (three year old) child almost ten years later.
The following article from UNICEF in the Huffington Post focuses on adolescent girls in third world nations, but I would point out that child rape in my caseload has been significantly younger than ten years of age. Continue reading ‘International Women’s Day March 7′
Monday’s Irish Times announced that Ireland would be
Implementing best practice on the right of children to be heard http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0301/1224265369793.html
A child’s right to be heard is the essence of the guardian ad-Litem program. Think about it. Voiceless, helpless children enduring unspeakable horrors, sometimes for many years with no one to turn to for help.
The World Health Organization defines Torture as extended exposure to violence and deprivation. That is how I see child abuse.
In my experience as a guardian ad-Litem, a child often doesn’t even know that these terrible adult behaviors are wrong or they they have not done something to cause them.
Unspeakable crimes are committed against children but its not a crime in most third world nations, and it is rarely discovered if child protection services are under-trained or under resourced in industrialized nations.
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Continue reading ‘Ireland Implements guardian ad-Litem Program’
I am taken by the hard stories and painful facts in Ruben Rosario’s article on Victor Vieth’s dream of ending child abuse in today’s St Paul Pioneer Press
http://www.twincities.com/ci_14437150
As a guardian ad-Litem, I know that most child abuse cases are not reported. Recently an acquaintance of mine admitted to witnessing the prostitution of a very young girl and not reporting it. He had remorse and said that he had felt confused and endangered at the time.
I personally experienced a case with 45 police calls to an abusive home before the girls were removed from the home (where child abuse had been occurring and prostitutes had been arrested). The seven year old had been the victim of extended sexual abuse (I assumed prostituted).
“As a nation, we have done more to address child abuse in the past 30 years than occurred in the first 200 years of our history,” Vieth writes in an academic paper that has been well-received in the child-protection and justice fields but is virtually unknown in mainstream circles. “Unfortunately, the obstacles that remain are nothing less than mountains.”
One of them is the sad reality that many children suspected of being abused are not reported to the child-protection system.
Vieth cites a 2000 study that found that 65 percent of social workers, 53 percent of physicians and 58 percent of physician assistants did not report all cases of suspected abuse.
Most telling are two hypothetical cases involving teachers — not only mandated reporters, but also possibly the one trusted adult a child comes into daily contact with the most outside the home. Of 197 teachers who took part in the test, only 26 percent said they would contact authorities if a child told them that a relative was touching their genitals. Only 11 percent would do so in the second test, which involves a child accusing another teacher of touching their private parts.
Vieth also notes that even when cases are reported, most are never investigated. A government-commissioned national report this year on abused and neglected children found that most cases of maltreated children “do not get CPS (child-protection services) investigation.”
Continue reading ‘Ruben Rosario on Victor Vieth’s Dream of Ending Child Abuse’
LA County is refusing to release information about the deaths of the most recent deaths of 12 children that have passed through child protection, claiming that the agency has been denigrated unfairly by the media coverage of these deaths. The public will not long stand for this.
White hot issues like this are easily decided and blame will be quickly affixed to the social worker that should have known, filed more accurate and timely reports, and not made mistakes.
Hard to fight that logic.
A sorrowful underlying truth in defense of these humble, well meaning, and underpaid people is that on top of the tremendous strain of large & difficult case loads, they are under-trained and under-supported for the work they do (and yes, I really do mean this – the social workers I’ve met have all wanted to make a difference in the lives of the disenfranchised – and without sufficient help, they cannot do their work effectively).
We as a community have become quick to throw rocks and blame people, while not taking time to look for the core problems, think critically, and work meaningfully to fix them (like we do so very well in industry).
This organization is has many resources and will be of great value for parents, kids, and communities in working to end child abuse.
Five time Nobel Peace Prize nominees Sara O’Meara and Yvonne Fedderson founded ChildHelp to raise awareness and funds to end child abuse. From their website;
National Child Abuse Statistics;
Children are suffering from a hidden epidemic of child abuse and neglect. Over 3 million reports of child abuse are made every year in the United States; however, those reports can include multiple children. In 2007, approximately 5.8 million children were involved in an estimated 3.2 million child abuse reports and allegations.
http://www.childhelp.org/resources/learning-center/statistics
Continue reading ‘ChildHelp.org’
According to the 2006 California Blue Ribbon Commission on Children in Foster Care, the state has more than 75,000 children in foster care, almost 80% removed for neglect, 45% have been in foster care for over two years, 17% for more than three years.
African American and American Indian children are disproportionately represented in the system as well as in their probability of leading dysfunctional lives as they age out of foster care.
These recent news posts will bring you up to date on the difficulties being faced by the people of California (and other states) in dealing with the policies and politics of abused and neglected children Continue reading ‘California’s Child Protection Problems Grow’
This organization Childabuse.com goes a long way in measuring the attitudes and understanding this nation has towards child abuse and why public policy has lagged so far behind the reality. The more we know, the better our policies and programs;
Fifty percent of Americans do nothing when they witness abuse
New Study by Prevent Child Abuse America Reveals Alarming Trends in How Americans Respond to Child Abuse
WASHINGTON, D.C.- Three in ten Americans have witnessed an adult physically abuse a child and two in three Americans have seen an adult emotionally abuse a child (see table 1). Yet nearly half of these Americans failed to respond to the incident, according to a study released today by Prevent Child Abuse America, formerly the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse. Continue reading ‘How Americans Respond To Child Abuse’
This in depth report from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire makes it painfully clear that poverty and mental health issues are often at the heart of child abuse.
Durham, NH–According to a new brief by Carsey Institute director of research on vulnerable families Marybeth J. Mattingly and research assistant professor of sociology Wendy A. Walsh, rural families who have been reported to Child Protective Services (CPS) are more likely than those reported in urban areas to experience high family stress and financial difficulties. Rural children referred to CPS are also more likely than urban children to live in a single parent home.
Based on data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, this brief shows that across place, nearly 40 percent of children who are reported to CPS live in poverty, and roughly half have a caregiver with mental health issues. Continue reading ‘Financial and Family Stress Linked to Child Maltreatment in Rural Areas’
One of my guardian ad-Litem youth walked home for many hours on a below zero Minnesota night without a coat because of the abuse he received at a juvenile detention center. He had had enough troubles for a lifetime before this happened.
A Pennsylvania judge was just sent to prison for receiving commissions for each youth he sent to a privately run juvenile detention center run by his friends.
Thousands of innocent youth paid for this crime. Illinois has recently stun gunned, choked, and brutalized young girls in its juvenile justice system.
A MN judge has sent me the Ritalin, Prozac, and other psychotropic medications proscribed to five, six, and seven year olds that passed through her courtroom (seldom receiving adequate mental health therapy to accompany these not yet recommended for children medications).
Missouri had suffered a 90% recidivism rate in its juvenile justice system, New York & California are close (and topping the expense charts at almost $250,000/per child per year) & all states seem to be moving toward trying more and more children as adults
Today’s NYTimes Report: Sex Abuse High at 13 Juvenile Centers
establishes that almost a third of juvenile justice detainees are victimized. About 12% are sexually abused & six of the sites had abuse rates of over 30%. Continue reading ‘Growing Up In America’
Our dedicated Macalaster College Volunteer Lelde has delivered another extensive report on child abuse in other developed nations. (Entire report follows with “continue reading”). England , Canada, Sweden.
Thank you Lelde.
With almost half the population of the U.S. (138M v 307M) Japan reported 33,308 cases of child abuse in 2005 compared to about 3 million cases in the U.S. In 2007, 37 Japanese children were killed by their parents compared to 1400 in the U.S.
The very first Japanese child abuse survey was conducted in 1999, along with specialized training for social workers. In 2006, the government introduced a national 10-year plan to improve child-rearing nationwide that included new 1700 community daytime childcare centers by March of 2010.
Japan is only now beginning to identify and respond to child abuse and neglect, after hundreds of years of three generations living in the same home, and the supreme authority of the oldest male, family intervention by the community is a difficult issue. Continue reading ‘Invisible Children Around the World; Japan’
As a guardian ad-Litem, I have seen government agencies more responsive to abused animals than abused children.
Among the 24 industrialized nations, the U.S. stands out with no positive public federal policy for children.
The only Child Protection policy in America is its Imminent Harm Doctrine, allowing courts to remove children whose lives are endangered by their parents. CP systems in the U.S. are under resourced, poorly coordinated, with no meaningful studies or outcome based measurements to track success or failure.
Absent coordinated positive public policy for the care of children, America is now at the confluence of misaligned and mistaken public policies that are overwhelming its schools, health and mental health services, child protection services, juvenile justice services, and criminal justice systems.
Failing schools, unsafe communities, and absurdly high rates of incarceration are just the tip of the iceberg.
Many Americans see the tip of this iceberg and assume that they understand the deeper problem, which they will fix by lowering taxes, criticizing civil servants, harsher sentencing, limiting juvenile or criminal justice rehabilitation, and move towards privatizing prisons.
What people are not seeing, and what undermines our civil society, is the correlation between healthy children and healthy citizens. We are ignoring an explosion of traumatized children with serious mental health issues, unable to cope with school & work, or get by without intervention or services
Dr. Bruce Perry gives credible argument with his research that within the next few generations, 25% of Americans will be special needs people.
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Become part of KARA’s email network by sending a request to join to;
amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com
It is clear to anyone living or working with abused and neglected children that trauma suffered in childhood is carried into adulthood at great personal expense to the child.
Every year, we read about useful new methods of addressing trauma, yet in my 12 years working with children in child protection I rarely saw abandoned kids receive the mental health services that they needed to lead normal lives.
Prozac, Ritalin, and other psychotropic medications are readily available, but without consistent access to therapy, abused and neglected children are often doomed to live with the PTSD that makes them behave in ways that cost them their place in our community.
Here are a few PTSD articles on the topic that I found on BBC that were very powerful; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6897406.stm
Continue reading ‘Addressing PTSD In At Risk Children’
I found this video by Misha Zubarev to have captured much of the unspoken human side of child protection services. It speaks volumes in its ten minute span.
“Children grow to fill the space we create for them, and if it’s big, they grow tall.”
Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan
The following is my synopsis of the report written by KARA’s Macalaster Student Volunteer (Thank You Lelde) on abused and neglected children in the UK. The entire report can be read by clicking the “read more” button at the end.
In 1889, the first act of parliament for the prevention of cruelty to children (the Children’s Charter) was passed. In 1932 all existing child protection laws were united under a single piece of legislation. In 1968 the Social Work Act gave authority to local authorities for investigating child abuse.
Of 11 million children in England, 235,000 receive support from a local authority; 60,000 are looked after by a local authority, 37,000 are the subject of a care order; 29,000 are the subject of a Child Protection Plan, 1300 are privately fostered & 300 are in secure children’s homes.
Of America’s 73 million children, about 750,000 are in county adoption, foster care and child protection and another 1.8 million living with relatives. This would indicate an American rate of child abuse (children that are out of the home or in child protection) approximately three times that found in England.
Reading this study closely, it appears that many UK children fail to receive the help they need (which may account for some of the big disparity in rates of child abuse between our nations).
The NSPCC child Maltreatment study found that one in six children experienced serious maltreatment; it appears that only one in one hundred children received services.
16% of UK children under 16 experienced sexual abuse during childhood by people known but unrelated to them, with the majority reporting more than one incident. 72% of those children told no one at the time, 31% told no one by early adulthood.
25% of UK children experienced physical violence during childhood; 78% happened at home, 15% at school, & 13% in public places.
Of the 189 children reported murdered or injured by their caregivers, only 33 had child protection cases open.
Does anyone know of the approximately (my estimate) 10,000 U.S. children that are murdered or injured annually by their caregivers, how many of them were open child protection cases? Please comment here or contact KARA directly; info@invisiblechildren.org
Continue reading ‘Invisible Children Around the World; United Kingdom’
Key facts from the Child Abuse and Protection report on Canada written by KARA’s volunteer Macalaster College student (Lelde);
* Close to one third of Canadian teen agers reported some kind of abuse or neglect,
* Children know their abusers in eight out of ten cases,
* Canada experiences 2200/100,000 investigations of child abuse (about half the U.S. statistic 4500/100,000),
* it is estimated that only one in ten abused children is ever reported in Canada.
Most Canadian jurisdictions now categorize exposure to family violence as a distinct type of maltreatment in their child welfare legislation.
I would agree with this entirely. A child watching mom beaten or raped is traumatized.
Trauma is real and results in severe and lasting mental health development problems. The world health organization defines torture as extended exposure to violence and deprivation. Children watching their mothers beaten or raped, it may be argued, are being tortured.
In my experience as a guardian ad-Litem, our county was just too overwhelmed to adequately address this type of abuse. The desire is there, but there was no way the case loads and court loads could accommodate these children.
Without significant signs of bodily harm, I never saw a confirmed case of child abuse where a child was removed from the home because of what had happened to the mother (or father).
Another significant piece of verbage;
“Makes child abuse an aggravating factor for the purpose of sentencing”,
as a guardian ad-Litem, I was repeatedly forced to choose between criminal court with a seven year old defendant and questionable removal of the child from the home (and prosecution of the perpetrator), or child protection court with automatic removal (either/or).
The people (multiple cases over twelve years) I witnessed molesting and torturing children were never charged. Most of them did terrific damage to a number of children over many years.Day care workers are paid about the same as food service workers in America (the lowest paid employees in the U.S.). This is how we value children in America.
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Join our online group on children’s issues by sending an email to;
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As Pliny the Elder said 2500 years ago, “what you do to your children, they will do to your society”
Abandoning programs that work well will not save states money. This example of bad politics will lead to higher costs and mores suffering as Arkansas creates more people unable to cope, more crisis, and a larger more dysfunctional citizenry in need of more services and more institutionalization. Arkansas, your schools and city streets will suffer, and your communities become more unsafe for all.
Arkansas 211 Shut Down
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The Arkansas 211 telephone program that linked callers to social service programs throughout the state is being shut down due to lack of funding this week. The services offered by the program would steer callers to local organizations and services for every day needs in time of crisis including:
* Basic Human Needs Resource: food banks, clothing closets, shelters, rent assistance, utility assistance.
* Physical and Mental Health Resources: health insurance programs, Medicaid and Medicare, maternal health, Children’s Health Insurance Program, medical information lines, crisis intervention services, support groups, counseling, drug and alcohol intervention and rehabilitation.
Read more;read more;http://www.areawidenews.com/story/1586372.html
My note;
This is a strong example of removing the underpinnings of a support system for the most vulnerable for all the wrong reasons.
Legislators believe that they can safely save tax dollars by ignoring the needs of poor people.
They can’t. There will be no long term savings from this short sighted act.
The cost to our communities goes on for generations.
Support at risk children! Become a CASA volunteer or start a KARA group in your community.
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Join the public debate for children (they have no senator, lobby, or voice)
Ruben Rosario: Rising toll of child abuse deaths requires attention – and action
By Rubén Rosario
Updated: 10/25/2009 01:26:43 PM CDT
As painful as this story is, I am happy to see a major newspaper printing the stories and data that shine a light into the frightening world of abused and neglected children.
The question we should all be asking ourselves is what life was like for these children before they were suffocated, burned, starved, and beaten to death.
Children forced to live in cages
It has been my experience as a guardian ad-Litem, that children spend many years being abused and neglected, often under the eye of an under – resourced social service provider. The worst abuse is invisible. The impact of abuse lasts forever. Early and extensive intervention can help an abused child lead a normal life.
I agree with Ruben Rosario, that the public has no clue about the depth and scope of child abuse. I would add that three million cases of abuse and neglect are reported each year, and only a small percentage of child sex abuse is ever dealt with openly or adequately.
This years death toll of murdered, hanged, and otherwise suicidal very young children is a powerful indicator that we as a community are failing the weakest and most vulnerable among us.
Without intervention, at risk children become adolescent felons and preteen moms, perpetuating the kinds of dysfunctional families that they were born into. The cycle can only end with our help. Our schools, city streets, and newspaper headlines will be much happier if we should make that choice.
When child protection services fail babies, handicapped, and other at risk children, their only recourse is the courts. Yesterday’s Ohio lawsuit by two children forced to sleep in cages
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/us/23brfs-CHILDRENSUEO_BRF.html
also names caseworkers and county department of family family services.
As a long time guardian ad-Litem, I know that it is overworked, and under resourced caseworkers with giant caseloads that can’t stay on top of the building nightmare that is county child protection services and not mean or lazy people that we are reading about more and more.
State of Nevada pays for lost two year old foster child
Seven year old foster child hangs himself
Murdered metro baby
Blaming social workers for children living in cages & babies found in dumpsters is wrong. Supporting people programs and policies that help abused and neglected children is right.
Social work is is grueling, the pay is poor, the support can be non existent, and the results can be disastrous. It’s like blaming teachers for failing students, the police for the terrible crime that just happened, or the doctor for a failed medical outcome.
Without resources, without support, without help, everything is much harder.
Try being a social worker with way too many needy children to see in a week and way too little to offer them to ease the pain of growing up in a really dysfunctional family.
Try being an abused or neglected child and making your way in the world without the help of the community. It is almost impossible.
Is the only way to bring children out of the shadows and a state of chattel to sue counties and states after children have been forced to live in cages, walk thirty five miles home in sub zero temperatures (my story), or drown in bath tubs after 14 police and social worker calls to the home?
If there are attorneys reading this blog that are interested in pursuing these kinds of cases, please contact KARA with an email.
Our terrific volunteer researcher from Macalaster College (Lelde) has been uncovering hard facts about
abused and neglected children in Sweden.
The following are some of the more striking differences between our nations.
“converting the American figures for direct comparison with Sweden (2001), a comparative picture of the reported incidence of child abuse in Sweden and America is as follows:
Sweden – 57/l00,000
America – 4,500/100,000. ”
My note on the above; because America’s child protection systems is so overwhelmed, only the more severe cases of abuse are reported. I would estimate that the reported number of abused children could easily double if we were to honestly report just the most severe instances of abuse ( = 9000/100,000).
It has been my experience as a Hennepin County guardian ad-Litem that child protection services will not take the call unless multiple criteria are met. I have many stories from people that have told me how their report of abuse was not considered serious enough, or they were not deemed a credible source (in one case they were a family member reporting the abuse).
In 1998 comparative study of child abuse 9 years after the prohibition of corporal punishment in Sweden, 10.7% of American men and 8.2% of American women sampled stated that they had been victims of child abuse as children, compared to 3.9% of Swedish men and 0% of Swedish women in the sample. Finally, according to Joan Durrant, professor of family studies at the University of Manitoba in Canada, “Sweden went from a family violence- child death rate of 18% in 1970 to 0 percent in recent years”- a significant and congratulatory fact.
My note on the above; I have written about this at length this summer and give concrete proof that American parents are murdering hundreds if not thousands of very young children. One must include the seven year old Florida foster child that hung himself and the two year old foster child that was disappeared in Nevada.
We are better than this and children deserve more.
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.
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)
Continue reading ‘Sweden – Positive Role Models’
Today board member Bob Olson and I interviewed a very bright and internationally well travelled student from a progressive local college. She is hoping to make a difference in the lives of America’s at risk youth.
We agreed that there needs to be a Mothers Against Drunk Drivers type grassroots movement to turn around the cradle to prison pipeline that continues to fill our communities with troubled youth and the problems that stem from growing up without the basic building blocks of life.
Our plan is to work together to gather information about how the other industrialized nations treat very young children and families and make comparisons that will help us better understand what sensible programs could make more kids finish school and go on to lead more productive lives.
Most of America’s public policies have been based on saving money in the short term. Many of those policies have cost exponentially more money than if we had taken the long term view and made better choices.
As an example, U.S. high school graduation rates are dismal and the 25% illiteracy rate upon graduation rate is unheard of in other industrialized nations. Blaming teachers for this result of bad public policy is like blaming doctors and nurses for the hospital population.
It is public policy (not teachers) that allows children to pass out of the third grade without reading skills.
Children that begin school without the tools to learn will not graduate, or if they do manage to make it through the process, it will be with minimal skills.
I still point at the money Minnesota did not save by failing to maintain the 35w bridge when it fell in the river two years ago.
The request for maintainance money was denied repeatedly and when it collapsed its impact on the lives of the 113 dead and injured people and their families was far in excess of the almost one billion dollars in total costs of the bridge failure and reconstruction.
Likewise, taking care of children when they are young and able to change and grow is a easier and less expensive than working with mentally unstable youth in juvenile justice (over fifty percent of youth in juvenile justice have diagnosible mental health problems, about half of that population have multiple, serious mental health diagnosis).
Minnesota Governor Pawlenty’s plan insures that poor children and their families will be far less able to receive the basic building blocks of life.
These children will fail more often in school and not thrive as citizens when they enter society.
At Pliny the Elder said 2500 years ago, “what you do to your children, they will do to your society”
It is an effort to convince people that healthy children become healthy citizens, but it is worth doing.
Support at risk children! Become a CASA volunteer or start a KARA group in your community.
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In my morning email was a sad plea for help from a grandmother with granddaughters taken from her home where they were in school and well cared for.
These two young girls are now living with non family, in another state, not attending school, and living in less than ideal conditions.
The children have demonstrated hunger when grandma visits. Grandma’s state social service agency simply told her that she had no legal authority to care for the children and sent the girls to another state (like MN does with its homeless people).
If the county allowed grandma to keep the children until mom returns (if possible), there would be continuity, education, and the building blocks of healthy child development for these two girls.
The disruption in this case is total. In my experience as a guardian ad-Litem, these types of decisions are motivated by lack of funding at a state and county level. The county saves money by moving the children away.
In the end, it costs the other state more money both in foster care and the long term costs to society of youth failing in society. A recent study determined that 80% of youth aging out of foster care were leading dysfunctional lives. Many of my guardian ad-Litem cases showed this to be true.
America’s only national policy for children is the “Imminent Harm Doctrine”.
If you have read this blog or the national news this summer you know that this policy did not save hundreds of very young children from death this summer.
This grandmother has an uphill battle finding help for her grandchildren to insure that they are enrolled and attending school, being fed, and that they are not being abused or neglected.
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. Help For Grandparents
This Article was written by Steve Kelley and first appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune;
Imagine the entire population of Mora homeless. Imagine that not one of St. Louis Park’s 40,000 residents has access to health care. Imagine that all of residents of Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center and Maple Grove are living in poverty.
Now imagine that they are all children. On Aug. 9, “Kids Count” released data showing that the number of children living in poverty in Minnesota grew by an astonishing 33 percent from 2001-2007. Right now, 2,700 children are homeless, 40,000 do not have health care and at least 112,000 children and counting are living in poverty. These numbers and the challenges they create for our schools — as revealed in the recent No Child Left Behind reports — should be jolting Minnesotans into action. We need to act to broadly change the future for our children.
But that is not what is happening in the governor’s office. Instead, Tim Pawlenty’s unallotments and the damage they will do have indelibly marked his pint-sized picture of Minnesota’s future. Pawlenty has offered only small ideas. As opposed to dealing with the myriad issues that our children face as they attempt to learn in our schools, the current administration has chosen the flawed path of blaming schools for our society’s failures.
For the sake of our collective future and for what is right, we can and must imagine a bigger, better Minnesota where all of our children don’t just survive, but thrive. To speed our recovery from this challenging recession, we must make no small plans.
We can look for inspiration to successes around the country and the world. One model of success is the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York. The Minneapolis Foundation recently sponsored a visit here by Geoffrey Canada, the Zone’s leader. Their goal is to have all the children who grow up in the 100-block zone graduate from college. Harlem Children’s Zone offers a Baby College for new parents, universal education for 4-year-olds, good public schools, chemical dependency and health counseling, and housing stability programs. All children there are wrapped in a variety of support systems designed to help them and their families succeed.
Some communities in Minnesota, with the help of foundations, are starting to work on similar approaches. These initiatives are a laudable start, but they raise the moral question of where the boundary lines for the new children’s zones should be drawn? Which kids get supported on their path to the American dream, and which kids do we leave out?
The right answer is that the whole state should be the Minnesota Children’s Zone. No less than in 100 blocks of Harlem, the goal for all children in Minnesota should be that they will all graduate from college and get their chance at living the American dream.
No one should doubt that we can achieve this goal. In a competitive world, we must achieve it. Step one is to invest in innovative early childhood education, including proven ideas like age three to grade three schools. By properly funding Minnesota’s schools, we can boost each child’s path to success in college. And by creatively reorganizing how we spend health care and housing dollars, we can ensure that families are healthy and stable enough to help their children succeed.
It is a bigger step to convince people that healthy children become healthy citizens, but it is true.
See the article in the September/October 2009 issue of AARP magazine titled People Helping People: Profiles of people who volunteer and give back to their communities by Michelle Diament. It features a volunteer with the National Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Association.
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.
It is a bigger step to convince people that healthy children become healthy citizens, but it is true.
The program places AmeriCorps members in sites to implement a researched-based early-literacy effort tohelp struggling readers. The Reading Corps strategies are designed for both preschool-aged students and Kindergarten–3rd grade students.
Learn what it takes to serve for one year as a Minnesota Reading Corps member.
» Read more…
Learn how your school can get involved with Minnesota Reading Corps.
» Read more…
Learn about volunteer opportunities at Minnesota Reading Corps sites.
» Read more…
Missouri went from 90% recidivism in its juvenile justice system to about 10% over just a few years as it transitioned into a restorative justice model that treated youth as children in need of counseling instead of adult criminals (about 30% of American youth are tried in adult courts).
California locks up young people longer than any other state — on average young people spend about 3 years in the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). More than a year of this time is tacked on by DJJ guards, who extend parole hearing dates for disciplinary and other reasons.
This flies in the face of research that shows that positive incentives are much more effective at helping kids improve than are negative, disciplinary actions. And, because DJJ spends $234,000 a year to lock up each youth, it’s not only unfair and ineffective, it’s incredibly expensive.
AB 999 would eliminate the “time adds” system, and institute a model that provides incentives for youth to prove they’re ready to return home. (Learn more here.) But the DJJ won’t change without clear direction from lawmakers — and from you! Even if you’ve already taken action to support AB 999, your elected officials still need to hear from you now that the bill is headed for a full Assembly vote. Click here to send an email now:
http://www.ellabakercenter.org/?p=bnb_ab999_support
Postscript;
It was MN Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz who commented that 90% of the youth in juvenile justice had passed through child protection. As a long time guardian ad-Litem working with children in child protection, it hurts me greatly to see children born into almost certain lives of crime and incarceration.
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