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Policy Making

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on January 1, 2006

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The following is one of my best of all times policy making efforts I have ever encountered. It was a note from MaryJane Westra from Fergus Falls MN;

Greetings, Mike and Happy New Year!

The hour really flew by (our radio interview with Ember Reichgott Jung).

I wanted to tell you about what we did with our local state Senator Cal Larson on Dec 24, 2003. We put him in foster care for a day. We went with the police and picked him up from his house.

We gave him a teddybear and I explained to his “mom” (his wife) that we would be taking himfrom the home “for a while” and “we will be contacting you.” He cried
REAL TEARS when I asked him to get some pj’s and his special blanket.

I took him to social service (by police car) and he was interviewed and given a duffle bag. Then I took him to a foster home (strangers to him)and dropped him off and actually left him for an hour.

Then I returned and took him to the doctor for an exam. The whole project took 3 hours but Senator Larson has been a friend to the agency every since! He returned to that foster family (this time as a Senator, not a 7 year old boy) and gave them Xmas presents and he has done it every year since.

Our Representative, Bud Nornes, was not interested in participating in this awareness event. We got some good media coverage. I’d be happy to do that for another legislator if you knew someone that needs enlightening. It was FUN!

Honest, Senator Larson cried real tears ..several times.. or maybe he’s a good actor!

Be well, Mike. Keep in touch.

maryjane

My note to her;

If enough of us talk to our friends, neighbors, legislators & those who work and live with abused and neglected children, we will end the madness that has become America’s public policy of filling the prisons, ruining our schools, and making our cities a dangerous place to live. Pass it on.

Mike Tikkanen

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Ember Reichgott Jung’s Radio Show

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Mike Tikkanen

on December 30, 2005

in Kids At Risk Action (KARA)

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Yesterday, (December 29th,2005) I had the opportunity to speak on Ember Reichgott Jung’s radio show* on the topic of Invisible Children. It was a terrific conversation that has further convinced me that there exists a core issue that must be addressed before meaningful change can take place. It is that people in positions of power and influence do not understand the nature or severity of the problems we speak of. Without understanding there will be no positive discourse that can build public support for systems and programs that work.

It is because the topic is complex and unhappy that we avoid it. Because those people who make and enact public policy do not comprehend the magnitude and seriousness of the problem chose not to discuss it. Because there is such limited discussion (and media coverage) the average citizen is largely clueless as to what good public policy would be.

Child Protection, Schools, Health and Juvenile Justice systems are filled with well meaning hardworking people that are frustrated with their own failure to achieve positive results. Everyone has a perspective, but no one knows what good comprehensive public policy needs to be.

Our institutional systems remain anathema to the healthy development of millions of American children. Until we accept the realization that dialogue must precede action (intelligent action) we will continue to abuse neglected children within our public institutions and our communities will suffer the grim results of millions of preteen mothers and adolescent felons.

Children deserve better, we deserve better than what we are now experiencing. Let’s all work to learn and raise awareness by starting this very important dialogue.

*Type “tikkanen” into the search box & the show will pop up and start to play.

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Missouri Model

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on December 17, 2005

in Crime and Courts, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

. 1 Comment

CHILD WATCH™ COLUMN
MISSOURI DIVISION OF YOUTH SERVICES: A MODEL FOR THE NATIONBy Marian Wright Edelman

In a recent column I wrote about the dangerous increase in the criminalization of our children, asking how we got here. Of course, this leads to a second key question: how do we get out? Researchers and practitioners agree that mentoring, tutoring, gang prevention, substance abuse prevention, dropout reduction, community service, quality after-school and summer programs and jobs, and nurse-visitation initiatives are among the right preventive investments in our nation’s youth.

But since 2001, the Bush Administration has proposed funding reductions in federal youth prevention and intervention close to 66 percent. Actual funding has dropped more than 40 percent, with additional cuts being considered for next year — a reckless budgetary decimation of the very programs and services that help keep children out of trouble and on the right path in life.

If we know what works, how can we possibly allow children, particularly poor and minority children, to consistently get the short end of the stick of our budgetary priorities?

Eliminating youth services costs us much more in the long run in terms of our criminal justice system, incarceration and other public costs. Conservative estimates place the total savings of diverting one child from a lifetime of crime at about $1.5 million. Much more importantly, that child has the opportunity to succeed in life – an opportunity that is each person’s God-given birthright. There are models for how we can do this for more of our nation’s children. The state of Missouri’s approach to juvenile justice services gives us one example of how to get things right.

Experts praise Missouri’s Division of Youth Services as a “guiding light” of juvenile justice reform, and they credit Mark Steward, the division’s recently retired director, with building – and sustaining – the finest state juvenile corrections system in the country. Dubbed the “Missouri model” by reformers in other states, the youth corrections system strongly emphasizes rehabilitating young offenders in homey, small-group settings that incorporate constant therapy and positive peer pressure under the direct guidance of well-trained counselors.

When a young person commits a crime, judges generally reserve commitment to a Division of Youth Services residential facility as the final option for only the toughest of cases – about 1,300 each year. For most youths, “aftercare” consists of a prolonged relationship with a case manager. Many youths are also assigned a “tracker”— often college students, or sometimes residents of the youth’s home community, who meet with them regularly to monitor their progress. Missouri also operates 11 nonresidential “day treatment” centers year-round during school hours, and these facilities offer a way station for many teens after leaving a residential facility.

How do we know Missouri’s approach is working? A long-term recidivism study showed that only eight percent of youths released in 1999 were incarcerated in youth or adult corrections three years later, while 19 percent were sentenced to adult probation – meaning nearly three-fourths of these youths had avoided either prison or probation for at least three years. Compared with other states, Missouri’s results are remarkable.

Besides the obvious future savings that accompany its low recidivism rates, the Missouri model is also substantially cheaper than many of its counterparts around the country. In 2004, Missouri’s Division of Youth Services devoted nine out of every ten dollars in its budget to treatment services.

Across the state the annual cost per bed in a residential treatment facility ranged from $41,400 to $55,000, while Maryland spent $64,000 per bed in 2003, and California spent a whopping $71,000. Even worse, far more young people in Maryland and California end up in prison as adults, meaning those states effectively pay twice as much for inferior treatment.
So if successful models like Missouri’s are out there, why isn’t the entire nation following them?

We know what works to keep our children safe and out of trouble. The question is will we actually provide the support for all at-risk children? Our children deserve the chance to survive and thrive and to be protected from the cradle to prison pipeline that steals too many young dreams and futures.

Marian Wright Edelman is President and Founder of the Children’s Defense Fund and its Action Council whose mission is to Leave No Child Behind and to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities

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Is Undertreatment of Mental Health Counter-Productive?

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on December 4, 2005

in Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA) and Politics and Funding

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Last week I had the pleasure of presenting to the hardworking and committed service providers my talk on American institutions and their impact on abused and neglected children.

My talk is a hard discussion about the statistics, distrust, and outrage over failed schools, high crime, growing prison populations, and serious health problems and a direct correlation to abused and neglected kids.

The high point of my talk came during the open discussion when a Child Court Judge that I’ve known for many years challenged my promotion of mental health services. There were some sparks.

She is someone I genuinely respect both for her commitment to children and her deep knowledge of the issues impacting children. Six years as a Child Court Judge working with thousands of troubled children gives her a perspective of these issues not had by many others.

I surprised myself with my immediate reaction to her. Here was someone I anticipated would be fully understanding and appreciative of a child’s need for guidance and help due to the trauma of abuse and Child Protective Services.

It has occurred to me, that she, like most of the people working with abused and neglected children, has never seen the positive results of a mental health therapy regimen.

This should be no surprise to me.

There are forty-nine child psychiatrists in the state of Minnesota. Most of them practice in the higher paying suburbs (Medical Assistance pays a small fraction of the rates paid in the suburbs).

What passes for mental health therapy in most counties is under-trained people (however well motivated) trying to understand and devise teaching/learning strategies for seriously mentally damaged children. These well meaning people are incapable of understanding or dealing with the damage these children have suffered. Both the under-reporting of the severity and repetition of abuse and the lack of knowledge by the professional of the concrete impact of this abuse on the child, combine to insure minimal positive results from “mental health therapies”.

In ten years of Court Appointed Special Advocacy (guardian ad-Litem) work (fifty children) I have never witnessed a child that has been provided anything like mental health therapy upon removal from their toxic home. One four year old boy had been tied to a bed and molested for four years, another four year old girl had been kicked so hard by her abuser that she went into convulsions. Their mental health stories are a study in neglect.The few Child Psychiatrists that do work with the thousands of traumatized youth in the system are overwhelmed and largely unable to deal effectively with their caseload.

The guardian ad-Litem children I worked with were provided truly marginal mental health therapies only years after they had been removed from their toxic homes and mostly after their own attempts at suicide.

That my friend the Judge would be able to look me square in the eye and say that “mental health therapy doesn’t accomplish anything, why are you so in favor of it?, has caused me deep consternation.

Think about this.

If you had been infected with a terrible virus at four years of age but didn’t get to a doctor until you were eight, and the doctor said to you, “yes it appears that you have a terrible infection and really needed antibiotics when you were four. It’s too bad that you didn’t get them when you needed them. What I can do, now that you’re eight, is give you a prescription today.”

But, because we only have 49 pills in stock, instead of a prescription for thirty pills over thirty days (which is how antibiotics effectively overcome infections), she writes you a prescription for one pill a month for three months (guaranteed not to work).

The under application of a treatment (of any treatment) is ineffectual and it gives the concept of treatment a bad name.

I have repeatedly experienced poorly executed mental health therapies (for children in child protection) that were in fact counter-productive. At the same time more and more professionals believe that therapy doesn’t work.

Children suffer more abandonment & more trauma when their therapist prematurely leaves (quits the patient) than they would have experienced without treatment. I have yet to witness my county provide timely or adequate mental health therapies to any of the truly damaged children I have come to know through the Court System. Most of them take multiple prescriptions of psychotropic medications with very limited access to mental health professionals. The children’s behaviors and development are living proof of ongoing mental trauma.

This is my argument against poorly understood and poorly executed mental health services.

I’m assuming that my friend the judge has never witnessed a positive transformation due to adequate application of mental health services. I know it is possible. I have friends to prove it.

Postscript;

A short time later, this judge mailed me her psychotropic medication records of the very young children that passed through her courtroom in child protection cases. The amounts of Prozac, Ritalin, and other brain changing drugs given to five and seven year olds is frightening. My own experience with four year old suicides and very young children subjected to the traumas of sex abuse, violence and neglect, proves the need for consistent access to mental health services.

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The Economics of Mental Illness

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on November 18, 2005

in Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

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Mental Health and Children

Speaking at the 2005 MSSWA Annual fall conference, Dr. Sulik from St. Cloud’s Centre Care gave one of the best explanations of mental health that I have ever heard. He also runs one of the most effective programs for saving troubled children in our nation.

These are my observations as I apply Dr. Sulik’s information to the work I do with abused children.

Boys and girls are complex beings living within complicated and demanding social structures.Children unfortunate enough to be born to dysfunctional parents and toxic living conditions develop very differently than children growing up in healthy families (physiologically and mentally).

Each year in America there are about three million children reported as abused and about one million kids enter Child Protection Services.

Emotionally and mentally ill children are poorly equiped to learn in school, play well with others, or respond appropriately in social situations.

Abused and neglected children suffer traumatically from the terrible experiences that led to their removal from their birth home.What we observe to be rage and anger from troubled children are generally anxiety ridden/traumatic responses to current perceived threats and past violence.

Those of us who work with traumatized children are familiar with the pain and suffering just below the surface of most damaged children. We also know that if untreated, damaged children turn into damaged adults, preteen mothers, and dangerously disturbed people.

The economics of treating mental health issues for children is far more effective than letting the problems grow into adulthood, where the evidence clearly indicates a continued social failure and institutional dependence (whether prison, hospital, or state sponsored programs) for those people denied help in their youth.

Today our congress passed a bill cutting fifty billion dollars from programs that could have helped these people…the least among us, to have some of their most basic needs met.

It hurts me to live in a nation so willing to abandon needy children.

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guardian conference

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on November 12, 2005

in Crime and Courts, Guardian ad-Litem, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

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I met a multitude of hard working guardian ad-Litems at a their annual conference November 8th and 9th.

Presenter Dr. Jeffrey Edleson explained that reported cases of child endangerment almost doubled (from 1500 to 2500 cases monthly) in Minnesota when the language in the law changed to include children exposed to domestic violence as maltreatment.
The increase in cases so overwhelmed the Child Protection System that the changes were dropped within just a few months.

Dr. Edleson points out that some states have found mothers unfit for being victims of violent assaults (because they had exposed their children to domestic violence.)

This brought back a vivid recollection of Joe Rigert’s Minneapolis Star and Tribune article and his well-researched stories of women incarcerated because the man they lived with was a drug dealer. These women were mostly guilty of being in love with or afraid of a man that treated them badly.

Most women drew longer sentences (under federal mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines) than the perpetrator, they lost custody of their children, and in almost all cases, they had not profited from the criminal’s activity. See Incarcerated Mothers and Their Children.

Because federal prisons were generally far from the homes of these women, they were unable to receive visits from their children. There is no doubt, that our legal system is tortured between understanding the need to make people well, and the habit of punishing everyone to the fullest extent of the law (no matter what the consequences).

We could do At Risk Children a big favor and persistently communicate to our lawmakers that we want child friendly legislation, programs that work for children and families, and no more new prisons (especially women’s prisons).

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100 Years of Juvenile Justice

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on November 5, 2005

in Crime and Courts, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

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At the William Mitchell Law School today, I learned that Minnesota has been a genuine leader in Juvenile Justice in America for one hundred years.

The vast majority of people working with abused and neglected children quickly see the need for healing the mental and emotional scars left on children that have been terribly abused by their parents.

Most thinking people also perceive the benefits to the larger society of making children well and allowing them to become productive members of society (instead of leaving them dysfunctional and to go on to have more dysfunctional progeny).

Healing children through the efforts of the courts is making some people stretch their brain to accommodate something other than an adversarial approach to a Justice System.

Today at the William Mitchell Law Schools Conference on Innovations Ideas in Juvenile Law I observed the incongruity of bright committed people arguing opposite ends of the spectrum.

This would be just an interesting curiosity if it did not so glaringly exemplify the difference between healing emotionally and mentally disturbed children and imprisoning kids whose entire lives have been a punishment.

I call it our abandonment of twice-abused children. Once by their parents, and once by our Justice System.

Instead of assessing their mental status, we send them to jails and boot camps, to reinforce how different they are from we good people and why they must live apart from us.

I’m won’t recite the mental illness statistics within the Juvenile or Criminal Justice Systems (way over half), but I will draw your attention to the fact that most of the children in Minnesota’s Juvenile Justice System have come out of Child Protection system and most of the adults in Criminal Justice have come out of Juvenile Justice.

Inevitably, these children go on to spend many years in our institutions.

They hate it, we hate it, and great expense and suffering is incurred along the way as it happens.

Some very smart people at the Symposium suggested that we just quit doing counterproductive things and do things that work. There are so many successful models.

We’ll save big money and many lives and we’ll feel much better about ourselves.

Thank you William Mitchell for your Symposium celebrating 100 years of Juvenile Courts in Minnesota. This was a much needed public dialogue.

It is efforts like yours that will spread the word and make people see the wisdom of better public policy towards children.

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National Workshop On Adult & Juvenile Female Offenders

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on October 21, 2005

in Crime and Courts, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), mike tikkanen speaking, Politics and Funding and Public Policy

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This last weekend I attended and presented at the 11th National Workshop on Adult & Juvenile Female Offenders held in Bloomington MN.

There were wardens and justice workers from many states & many stories. America has 25% of the world’s prison population.

The Program was committed to Gender, Environment, Relationships, Services & Supervision, Socioeconomic Status, and Community for women.

I discovered committed and intellegent people trying to effect positive change within communities that are becoming more open to new approaches.

Where progressive programs are encouraged (like Shakopee Women’s Prison used to be), recidivism is greatly reduced, while in regressive communities (some states still shackle women prisoners in child birth) recidivism for women offenders is about the same it is for male offenders.

Last year, 33 states held children and juveniles with mental illness in detention centers without any charges.

In 2001, nearly 2/3 of California local law enforcement departments did not have written guidelines governing the care of children whose sole caretaker had been arrested (Marilyn Moses, article in Police Chief, Sept 2005)

In Boston, the 9 year old Arts Incentive Program found that 57% of those with criminal records who were redirected to mental-health care have not be re-arrested or involved with the courts.

In the Texas Outreach & Tracking program participants had a 65% lower re-arrest rate than kids on parole. There are many states with great programs.

Chicago’s Child-Parent Centers have served 100,000 three and four year-olds since 1967. Findings indicate that the program cut the rates of child abuse and neglect in half.

The Nurse Family Partnership in Elmira, NY, reduced incidents of child abuse by 80% and children from families not in the program had twice as many arrests by age 15.

It’s hard to believe the vast differences between communities. Some policy makers are genuinely committed to breaking the cycle of violence, abuse, and neglect that drives emotionally and mentally disturbed people into lives on the edge of society.

Other political leaders are still banging pots and screaming for more prisons and fewer resources for people struggling to succeed.

From a strictly financial perspective, investing in children to solve problems (through repeatable proven programs) is a miniscule investment compared to the twenty, thirty, and forty years these children can spend in child protection and future correctional facilities.

We must also consider the havoc they wreak on the lives of the people within our communities and the progeny that follow them into our institutions.

The speaker I followed, Susan George, PhD Associate Professor, Harris Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Chicago,completed a large study showing relationships between foster children and incarcerated mothers and a significant growth in the number of children being born to women in the system.

A tremendous cost to society of not treating children and juveniles when they are still young enough to effect change, is the exponential addition of the next generation of potentially troubled children they bring into your community. The average number of children born to women in the Illinois systems has grown from three to four (Susan George’s recent study).

Our Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Art Rolnick has proven conservatively, that investments in early childhood programs exceed other public spending in return on investment percentages.

Citizens ask, “where will get find the money” when they ought to be asking, “how are we spending our Money?”

As a long time guardian ad-Litem working with youth in the court system, I continue to see huge sums spent on counter-productive mental health treatments, poorly designed and supported residential treatment facilities & other partial attempts to deal with serious problems.

One damaged child, without proper support can develop severe and lasting mental and emotional problems that stick to them for life.

Studies on foster home children indicate that eighty percent of foster home graduates go on to lead dysfunctional lives of mental illness, drug dependency, crime, and unemployment.

Many of these children will have lived in multiple foster placements and incur very real and very costly care before they leave their foster home placements. Think of how untreated abused children impact your schools, city streets, and police departments.

Examples:

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/02/08/mn-early-childhood-summit-speech-david-lawrence/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2005/12/17/missouri-model/

Conferences like the National Workshop on Adult & Juvenile Female Offenders, exemplify that most of the people in the system care, there are many successful programs, and perhaps most of all, sharing information is critical to success in saving our community’s children.

Let’s do more of that.

In the weeks and months to come, I will post successful and unsuccessful programs and stories that I have gathered.

Send them to me.

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A Myth That Will Bring Down America

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on October 12, 2005

in David Strand, Guardian ad-Litem, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

. 7 Comments

There is a myth about our public education system that has the potential of bringing down our nation. The myth is that the lack of funds does not plague America’s schools.

A year ago the St. Paul Pioneer Press published a series designed to help voters make choices leading to the November election. It ran for several weeks and featured listing of “facts unfiltered”.

In an issue devoted to education, one of the facts voters could take to the bank was that America spends more money per K-12 pupil than any nation except Switzerland. In other words, putting more money into education is not the answer.

The idea that we spend as much or more on K-12 education is a myth. The truth is that our peer democracies devote far greater resources on educating their children. Until we realize the myth for what it is, we are on our way down.

One of the most important reasons for a good public education system is to insure that all of our children get the best possible start in life. If we care about our country, we should want all children to be successful.

Educating our kids isn’t just a priority, it is the highest priority.

There are two critical factors that determine the success of education.

First, children must come to the process ready to learn. That means they have good nutrition and good health. It also means that their young minds are nurtured and that they are comfortable with children their own age. Second, the teachers need to be of the highest quality possible.

Combining kids ready to learn and excellent teaching leads to educated children.

What do other nations do that we do not? I can cite the countries of Northern Europe because I lived in three of them for a total of ten years. I have been in their schools.

I also served on a Fulbright scholarship committee working with education leaders.

Every child in these countries has preventative health care, homelessness among children is forbidden, they have the lowest rates of infant mortality, and they lead the world with the lowest rates of child poverty.

On average their child poverty is one sixth of America’s!

Every child has access to high quality pre-school child care. For example, the pre-kindergarten centers in Denmark are run by the ministry of education and child care workers are required to have three years of child development training after high school. Most Danish parents work so nearly every child attends these pre-school centers and they are ready to learn when they start kindergarten.

Their schools offer breakfasts so no child starts school on an empty stomach. In Finland, taxpayer paid school lunches are served to all kids, and every school has a dentist who provides in-school dental care. None of these countries has America’s silent epidemic of tooth decay as described by former Surgeon General David Satcher.

European teachers have greater support and they are far less likely to leave teaching for a higher paying job elsewhere. These countries also provide tuition for higher educations so qualifying children of teachers do not rely on their parents to pay for college.

In the US we have too many kids living in poverty, homeless, without health care, hungry, and left alone while parents work several jobs. Too many school children are not ready to learn, estimated at 35% by child development experts, and they never recover.

We have the highest rate of 12th grade illiteracy and the highest dropout rate. Too many end up in gangs, on the street, and ultimately in prison.

Spending on K-12 education is not limited to the cost of operating schools. That’s the small picture. The comprehensive resources devoted to child health, nutrition, early child care, housing and antipoverty programs result in a massive investment aimed at giving every child a chance to succeed in school.

In Minnesota we are going in reverse. The National Women’s Law Center has just ranked our state 40th nationwide in support for low income child care. In 2000 we ranked in the top five. In a breathtaking reaction to this report, Republican state rep Fran Bradley stated, “Our taxpayers remain very generous compared to other states”.

In our race to the bottom, some Minnesotans don’t seem to understand the issue. Providing resources to help children succeed is not a question of generosity. It is the life blood of America and it is a moral obligation.

The Pioneer Press was wrong, and their unfiltered fact is a horrible myth. We do not value educating our children, and that means we do not value children. That is shameful.

My friend Mike Tikkanen has written a new book, Invisible Children. On its opening page he quotes Pliny the Elder. “What we do to our children, they will do to society”.

Amen.

David Strand

Author, Nation Out of Step

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A Public Unconscious

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on October 5, 2005

in Kids At Risk Action (KARA) and Occasional Authors

. 0 Comments

The beginning of a solution to a problem begins with building support by raising public awareness.

Raising awareness about issues such as child abuse and neglect is not an easy task. Child abuse is a difficult conversation to have and in the end I have no concrete answers for fixing such a large scale problem.

It is much easier to talk with my friends about the need for a new stadium. Professional sports is a much more enjoyable conversation to have than asking what to do with the thousands of children in Child Protection Systems.

While not necessarily true, it’s easier to convince people that millions spent on stadiums will have greater economic benefits than millions spent on early childhood programs.

The complexities of policies impacting the lives of at risk children are not well explained in a twenty minute conversation.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Art Rolnick through extensive research has proved that rates of return on money spent on early childhood programs are greater than tax money spent on malls and stadiums (FedGazzette, March 2003).

But who reads the FedGazzette?

As a community we will continue to turn our backs on the hard topic of child abuse because the answers are painful and we don’t see how the issues personally impact us.

Until we take the time to explore the core problems, the public (we the people) will be unwilling to pay for long term solutions.

It may be that we are doomed to third world status in education, health care, children living in poverty, crime, and huge prison populations until we reaffirm a committment to child friendly legislation and programs.

Child abuse affects each and every one of us every day. We pay for at risk children each year in taxes & insurance premiums, and the detriment they cause our schools, health provider systems, courts, and community.

Public policy that builds new stadiums might make us a little happier on the night of the game. But the walk home could be dangerous if you live in the city. Minneapolis public schools 53% graduation rates won’t be positively impacted by a new stadium. Health care costs will continue to rise (the expense of treating at risk kids is very high). The list of impacts at risk children have on our communities is long.

I know that by sheer public will a new stadium will be built.

I don’t see a sign of a public will to end child abuse anywhere in sight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Contributing editor,
Chad M. Ramaker, Intern
Grasstops

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Perspective

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on September 29, 2005

in Crime and Courts, Guardian ad-Litem, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

. 0 Comments

Today I spoke with 40 social workers and service providers in a small room for almost 90 minutes.

We talked about perspective and how each of us has a different experience with abused and abandoned children and the institutions and services that work to help them.

Like the “elephant in a dark room” analogy- each of us has a hand on a different part of the elephant. It’s the same elephant but it feels very different depending on if your hand is on the trunk, the tail, or a leg.
We all agreed that the systems and institutions designed and built to serve troubled children are not working properly and changes need to be made.

We all agreed that it’s not educators wrecking schools, nor social workers purposefully trying to destroy the lives of the children under their care.

We are confident that the police and juvenile justice workers are not trying to incarcerate poor and needy children.

What seems to be the underlying dysfunction is the poor public policy that has continued to deny services to children in Child Protection while creating more jail cells, harsher sentencing, and a focus on punishment and away from rehabilitation.

The children this group works so diligently to help for the most part end up as adolescent felons and preteen mothers no matter what the service providers do.

As long as government resources continue to pour into Criminal Justice systems and not Mental Health services;

graduation rates will remain at 50 – 60%, high school rates of illiteracy will remain at 25% upon graduation,

recidivism in criminal justice at 66%

our insurance rates will reflect the twenty year statistic that about one out of five Americans is the victim of a crime each year.

The sad thing is that we all know it’s broken and we know what needs to be done.

It’s just that our policy makers don’t appear to appreciate the failed history of punishing abused and neglected children.

Most lawmakers ask, “where is the money going to come from?” when they should be asking, “where is the money going?”

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Child Summit

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on September 22, 2005

in Guardian ad-Litem, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

. 0 Comments

At last, a movement to bring public attention to the larger issues of abused and abandoned children (the best article I’ve seen on Child Protection Issues to date) MikeT

Process to find lasting homes for kids is under fire

Jean Hopfensperger
Star Tribune

Published September 22, 2005

After a particularly painful beating by his mother, Roosevelt Huggins stuffed some clothes into garbage bags and dragged them to school with no plans of turning back.

Then 13, he hoped it would be the first step toward ending years of abuse and starting a new life. Instead, he bounced from foster home to foster home — about six in all — before finishing high school.

The courts didn’t seem to notice that he wasn’t following a plan to find a permanent home, as required by law. In fact, his case just seemed to drift. It’s precisely the problem that a national summit of high-powered court leaders is tackling this week in Bloomington.

“Every time I went to court they talked about family reunification,” said Huggins, now 21 and living in Marshall, Minn. “They didn’t seem to understand that wasn’t an option.”

During the next two days, hundreds of judges and children’s experts — including about 25 chief justices of state supreme courts — will participate in a summit designed to spare other children the rootlessness Huggins endured.

It’s based on the premise that courts must take the lead in managing child protection cases, not just act as arbitrators, said Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz.

All 49 states who brought teams to the summit — Louisiana had to cancel — will return home with concrete plans to make that happen, she said.

“If a case sits on our docket, a child sits in foster care,” said Blatz, who welcomed an overflow crowd of about 400 people to the summit Wednesday.

Managing child protection cases, she said, “means one judge, one family. It means you don’t [delay] these cases because someone is sick. You don’t make a kid wait in foster care three months while we tend to adult problems. It means that when parents leave the courthouse, they have a written notice of the next court hearing and a written case plan so they’re not wondering what the judges meant.”

Such changes aren’t just practical, they’re also critical for the child’s long-term well-being, speakers at the summit said. Foster care children, for example, disproportionately end up in the criminal justice system and in homeless shelters.

One child’s story

Huggins could easily have ended up that way. Upon leaving home, a teacher invited him to live with her family for a while. After that, he bounced through short-term foster homes as the court tried to reunite him with his mother. The trouble was that she had moved to California, he said.

“I lived in homes in North St. Paul, Woodbury, St. Paul Park and another place, I don’t even know where I was,” he said. “It played chaos with my mind. These are people you don’t even know. It was hard enough living with new people, but you’re also changing school districts. You feel like you’re alone. And you always worry you’ll have to leave again.”

Finally Huggins moved in with a foster family in Cottage Grove — a single mother and a son about his age. It wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven, but they worked things through, he said. And Huggins finished high school there.

And thanks to a lot of help from teachers, social workers and others — plus his own inner drive — he’s now attending Southwest State University.

“Kids need to have some options,” Huggins said. “They [courts] have to evaluate the situation and plan ahead better for the child.”
Huggins’ message was repeated at the summit. Keynote speaker William Byars told the crowd that child protection “isn’t a parent-protection system.” If parents can’t get their act together, it’s time for the child to move on, he said.

And courts need to make child protection a priority, said Byers, a former South Carolina judge who now runs the state juvenile justice department.
“This is not a rent case or a land dispute,” he said. “This is a child’s life. And a year is an eternity for a child.”

Next steps

More than half a million children are in foster care nationally, staying for an average of three years with three different families, national data show. That situation has become the subject of growing national scrutiny.
Recommendations by a Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care this year have inspired a bill in the U.S. Senate that has a good chance of passage, said former Minnesota U.S. Rep. William Frenzel, the commission’s chairman.

For starters, he said, courts need to start tracking children in the court system, monitoring their placements and adoptions and the time it takes to find them permanent homes. The commission also recommended more training and better collaboration for court and child-protection workers and financial incentives for attorneys pledging to work on child-protection cases.

After the summit, every state will design a plan to improve its court performance on child protection cases, organizers said. They will share them at a National Call to Action later this year.

Said Blatz: “We’ve got to start looking at the system through the eyes of children.”

Jean Hopfensperger is at http://www.blogger.com/.

http://tste.startribune.com/tte/blank.gif

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Saving Money Saving Children

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on September 21, 2005

in Crime and Courts, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

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Hurricane Katrina caused great suffering for thousands of innocent people. Katrina’s adult victims have lost everything but with help, they can still have hope for a return to normal. In five, or ten years the majority of Katrina’s adult victims will have started new lives and Katrina will only be a painful memory.

Ignoring well-known and completely understood dangers creates harm that lingers for years and innocent people will struggle to recover their broken lives. Children removed from a birth-home because of abuse and neglect, have also lost everything. But abused children do not have the benefit of having lived a normal life to which they can return.

A key difference between Katrina’s adults and abused and abandoned children stuck in Child Protection systems is that adjusting and returning to normal is just not possible for most children.
Abandoned children are unable to even envision just what “normal” is.

They see it around them, they want it, but they can’t achieve it. They weren’t taught “normal” in their birth homes. These children learned chaotic and insane behaviors at a young age. Instead of learning how to interact with peers they learned about violence and alcohol, sex and drugs.

Children raised with sex, drugs, violence, and insanity develop differently than normal kids. Abandoned children do not have the skills of socialization.

Abused children have adapted their behaviors to survive in impossible environments. Most of their adapted behaviors are asocial and personally destructive outside of their toxic home environment.

Generally they fail at school, with peers, and with authority figures. The consequences of these deficiencies are ruining the lives of At Risk Children and our society.

Failing schools, preteen pregnancy rates, and burgeoning prison populations point to the severe and lasting impact abused and abandoned children are having on our communities.

About 90% of the children in juvenile justice systems have come out of child protection systems (MN Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz). About 90% of the adults in the criminal justice system have come out of the juvenile justice system. We have created a Prison Feeder system.

Child abuse is to children, what Katrina was to the tens of thousands of Louisiana’s suffering adults. A catastrophic disruption in the normal process of life on earth.

Three million children a year are referred into child protection systems in the U.S. Almost one million children are removed from their birth families. It’s eerie that 600,000 felons are released from American prisons every year.

Had the Army Corp of Engineers been allowed to make the necessary upgrades to Louisiana’s locks and levies the huge expense of rebuilding an entire city could have been avoided. The catastrophic death and suffering of tens of thousands of Louisiana residents could have been avoided also.

If America was to practice a proactive approach to our abused and neglected children, we could avoid the huge expenses of crime, prisons, failing schools, and preteen pregnancies.

Our schools would work and fewer fourteen and fifteen year old girls would have babies that they cannot care for.

We have the resources.

We know what the problem is.

We must quit wasting money on prisons and punishment of children that have been punished all their lives.

Vote for early childhood programs and support mental health initiatives.
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Shortsighted Culture

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on September 15, 2005

in Guardian ad-Litem, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Occasional Authors, Politics and Funding and Public Policy

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Abused and neglected children cannot vote and lack the skills and resources to stop the violence besieging them. Direct care workers slave tirelessly to navigate a mired system of social services that is inadequately funded and doing only as much as public will allows. We have been caught focusing on crisis, looking shortsightedly at the behaviors and crime plaguing our communities. There are a vast array of issues facing Child Protection Services.

The economic impacts of bad contemporary policy making will disable our communities for years to come if we continue to ignore the critical physical, emotional and mental health needs of these vulnerable children. By continuing to operate in the same haphazard fashion, medicating and incarcerating at risk children, who deserve so much better, we doom ourselves to continued crisis, crime, teenage pregnancy, drug use and overcrowded prisons.

Long-term sustainable solutions are needed.

This political shortsightedness discredits and debilitates social services. Paying taxes does not entitle anyone to apathy or selfishness. Public outcry is needed. Personal engagement is essential. Please consider becoming involved in the fight to help save At Risk children and make their needs visible to our policy makers and community at large.

Chad M. Ramaker
Intern at Grasstops

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Hibbing, MN Daily Tribune -Article and Review

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on September 12, 2005

in Guardian ad-Litem, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Mike Tikkanen, mike tikkanen speaking and Public Policy

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On Aug. 28, 2005, the Hibbing, MN Daily Tribune ran an article about me and my book, Invisible Children, titled A serious book about a serious problem by reporter Cathy Braun.

The article is not on their website, but the above is a scan of the cover and below are scans of the article itself (click the images to enlarge.)

————————

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/our-book/

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Book review: Armchair Interviews

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on September 11, 2005

in Guardian ad-Litem, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Links To Audio, Mike Tikkanen, mike tikkanen speaking, Occasional Authors, Politics and Funding and Public Policy

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Armchair Intervews is a website that works at “connecting authors to their readers.”

My new book, Invisible Children, was recently reviewed by Barbara Broom.

Here’s a quote:

The author packed the book with his passion and purpose: society’s involvement in children’ in abusive and dysfunctional homes’ foster care and the system in general. If you care about your community’s welfare, it is a “must read.”

Listen to the audiobook online (for free)

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/our-book/

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Wish List for Abandoned Children

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on August 7, 2005

in Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

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Add your ideas and share your stories and experiences by posting them here.
The First 12 are my thoughts, the next 6 are from Victor I Vieth, UNTO THE THIRD GENERATION: a call to end child abuse in the U.S. within 120 years, Journal of Agression, Maltreatment & Trauma

These are efforts that would greatly improve the lives of abused and neglected children. When you speak with decision makers or write letters to your lawmakers, make some of these points:

1. Health care for all children including mental health services and mental health assessments for all children removed from their homes by child protective services will lead to healthier children.

2. Stop prescribing psychotropic medications to children without proper mental health therapies.

3. A greater investment in abuse prevention strategies like home visiting, crisis nurseries, and parental education will lower the number of children in child protection systems.

4. Support for child care and early education (Head Start type programs) will take the burden off of schools and create happier communities with less crime.

5. Increased investment in finding, supporting, and educating foster and adoptive parents with attention paid to recruiting from minority communities will lower the number of children in the Juvenile Justice system.

6. By replacing punishment and incarceration of nonviolent young offenders with programs that work will lower the number of criminals in the criminal justice system and break the cycle of violence and drug abuse that has climbed to such high rates in our communities..

7. Better training, greater resources, and lower caseloads for social workers and mental health workers will give the children in the systems a far better chance to succeed. Better results will pay big dividends to our communities and reduce the future tax burden significantly.

8. Increased investment in programs that deal in GLBT issues, child prostitution, and other dangerous childhood behaviors will save lives and it is the right thing to do.

9. By concentrating investments in those communities that are experiencing the greatest failure rates we get a double return on our money. Those communities will become far more livable for the entire population and at the same time, the cycle of poverty and violence will be greatly reduced.

10. A guardian ad-Litem for every child in child protection with a GAL system that allows personal contact, mentoring, and long term relationships with the children they serve can insure that children don’t fall through the cracks and are not abandoned for the second time.

11. A big brother/big sister program that insures each child in child protection at least one long-term adult relationship in their life will serve the child as an anchor that will help them in their stuggle to lead a normal life.

12. By ending Child homelessness and children living with untreated mentally ill or drug addicted parents a large percentage of those conditions that lead to abuse and neglect will have been eliminated. This will prove to be a savings to us when the children go on to lead normal lives.

Victor Vieth;

13. Every suspected case of child abuse will be reported and every report will be of a high quality.

14. Every child reported into the system will be interviewed by someone who can competently interview a child about abuse and the investigation of all child abuse allegations will likewise be competently completed.

15. Every substantiated case of egregious child abuse must be proseccuted by a child abuse prosectutor skilled at handling these complex, special cases.

16. Every CPS worker will be competent to investigate and work with child abuse victims and their families from day one.

17. Every CPS worker will be a community leader skilled in the art of prevention.

18. Every child protection worker, guardian ad-Litem, and attorney will have access to national trainings, publications, and technical assistance.

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A Finished Book

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on July 16, 2005

in Guardian ad-Litem, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Mike Tikkanen and mike tikkanen speaking

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The book is finished. It just arrived from the publisher. Books are always neater and cleaner than the process that makes them. Hundreds of hours, stacks of paper, and dozens of edits. I’m genuinely embarrassed by some of the poorly edited pages that I sent to people to review and comment on what I had been writing.

What started out as three hundred pages of research notes, personal stories, and comments are now forged into 200 pages that are readable. Unlike this blog that seems to collect problems of the moment, the book sorts through issues and arranges them in an orderly fashion, and relates them to people, policy, and community.

The plan now is to get books to reviewers, media, and friends to see if it’s worthy of being read. Objectivity is hard. I’m heavily invested in the topic. The writing could always be improved, and I see now what I left out and how the book could have been clearer and made more impactful.

Oh well, perhaps next time.

If you have comments on the book, Please post them here.

See the book;

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Dear Judge John

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on July 11, 2005

in Guardian ad-Litem, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

. 1 Comment

Dear Judge John,

For years now I have visited you every month or so in your chambers when you review my status as your county ward.

Is it odd that you are the only adult who has stayed in my life since I was taken away from my father eight years ago?

He had done terrible things to me until I was seven. When I started school the nurse saw all my bruises and reported me to child protection. I am glad that happened. It probably saved my life.

But it’s not much of a life. I remember running out into traffic on Chicago Avenue just after I was put into St Joe’s Home for Children. I have done other life threatening things also.

I am abnormal. I feel it deeply that I don’t fit in. The traumatic things that happened to me and the prolonged exposure to violence and neglect have made me grow up differently than other kids.

My attention is always locked on the bad things that can happen to me. I am hardwired that way.

Because my childhood was so hard, I can’t be comfortable around other people, in a school, with other children, or in a family. My behaviors are explosive because that is the way I learned to survive with my father.

Telling me all day long to stop my bad behaviors will not help me to develop coping skills to replace my explosive personality. The Prozac and Ritalin that I have taken these past five years have made me feel like a zombie and I hate taking them. I am just a combative person.

School is the worst because I started three years later than the other children in my class and I have never caught up or kept up. I had no parents to help me start school. My language skills weren’t half as good as other kids & I just hate being made to look stupid again and again all day long because of how much I don’t know and how much I can’t do.

I don’t have attention for school. My mind is not able to let go and get into English or Math or History and I cannot read.

There have been over one hundred social workers, foster parents, and other adults in my life since I left my dad. None of them have stayed for more than a few years. My feelings of abandonment have been reinforced over one hundred times. I have lived with twenty-seven foster families and group homes. My explosive personality and lack of trust make it hard for me to stay in one place too long.

Even though I never show it, I very much appreciate your monthly reviews. It is about the only thing regular and predictable in my life.

You have been a stern but caring figure in my life. I hope someday that I will be comfortable enough with myself to be able to thank you.

I have several children in my child protection work (as a guardian ad-Litem) that have seen the same judge for many years. This is the letter that I like to imagine that they would write if they had the thinking, coping, and writing skills that they don’t have today.

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Torture vs. Child Abuse

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on June 15, 2005

in Events, Guardian ad-Litem, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA) and Public Policy

. 0 Comments

Century College held a talk by Sigred Bachmann from the Center for Victims of Torture on the impact of torture last night. She is a bright and articulate lady who lived through the horrors of nazi concentration camps, and made a new life for herself as a pediatrician, and now a speaker and helper for victims of torture.

There is a striking similarity in the language used to describe war torture victims and victims of child abuse.

“Repeated or prolonged exposure to violence or deprivation”, is what happens to abused children and torture victims.

Children in American child protection systems are only removed from their homes if their lives are in imminent harm. The average length of child sex abuse in America is four years.

Abused children and torture victims suffer from the same kinds of trauma. They exhibit many of the same kinds of problems. They need the same kinds of long term mental health therapies to allow them to rebuild their traumatized mental states, learn coping skills, and how to function in our communities.

The concept of trust, that is so easily taken for granted, is one of the significant long-term barriers to recovery. Children are violated and deprived by their own mothers and fathers. Many children never rebuild a level of trust sufficient to have a spouse or even a close friend.

Abused Children have the problem of self-loathing overcome because they subconsciously believe they are responsible for the abuse they have suffered.

War torture victims don’t have this problem. They know the inherent evil of their torture.

There is no book a child can go to that explains what normal is or the terrors that are being done to them. They have no one to turn to, they can’t even tell their parents.

Today’s war torture victims are finally finding Centers for Victims of Torture to help them rebuild their lives. It takes years of therapy and hard work to function again. Sigrid felt seven years was about the average length of time for a victim of torture to be rehabilitated.

Each year, about six hundred thousand abused and neglected American children are removed from their homes, placed into group homes, foster homes, and adoptive homes with minimal mental health counseling and often not much history or training provided to the new care giver. These children are expected to adjust well into society, succeed in school and with their peers

What we are now doing is not working. Ask any teacher, social worker, mental health worker, or juvenile police officer that seek better results from the institutions they work in.

Unfortunately, many educators and child workers have become jaded to the negative public image of the system and do not believe that there are viable answers to overcome the problems that are ruining these children and our schools and communities.

America has suffered from years of educational failures, high crime and high rates of incarceration, unsafe schools and communities, and growing urban blight.

“The difference between that poor child and a criminal is about eight years”, MN Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz.

We have the skills, resources, and knowledge to successfully treat the mental health problems of abused and neglected children. Today, we simply need the awareness and the will to do so.

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Mental Health Issues

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on June 9, 2005

in Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

. 0 Comments

Minneapolis Star Tribune, 5.7.05, reporting on a National Institute of Health mental health study;

“One-quarter of all Americans met the criteria for having a mental illness within the past year, and fully a quarter of those had a “serious” disorder that significantly disrupted their day-to-day lives, according to the largest and most detailed survey of the nation’s mental health…The numbers suggest that the United States is poised to rank Number One for mental illness globally.

The article goes on to articulate the chronic condition of mental illness and the importance of expert medical attention.

As a long time guardian ad-Litem and student of the impact of American institutions on abused and neglected children, I would offer that the harshest consequences of America’s untreated mental health problems are suffered by chronically poor families that have histories of abuse and neglect.

One million American children annually are placed in Child Protection systems because they meet the criteria under the Imminent Harm doctrine for having their lives endangered by their parents.

By definition, abused and neglected children have been traumatized (generally for years) and then torn from the only home they have ever known. Very few of these children receive adequate mental health therapy. Instead, they are placed into group homes that are over crowded and understaffed, and foster and adoptive homes that vary widely in their ability to deal with the serious needs of the children they serve.

The data from children under county protection is negative. School failure, illiteracy, crime, and early pregnancy are all too common. One percent of children living in foster homes goes on to college.

90% of the children in the Juvenile Justice system have come out of Child Protection. Over 90% of the adults in the Criminal Justice System have come out of the Juvenile Justice System. Over fifty percent of the children in the Juvenile Justice system have diagnosable mental illness.

The social workers, teachers, and therapists that tend these children try with their best efforts to make life better for their young charges and cannot to be criticized for not having the resources or framework to accomplish their tasks. It is we the people, the voters, the politicians that have made sure there are inadequate services

Abused and Neglected children are abused two times. Terrified and tortured by their parents, and secondly when they are handled like the problem they are to the counties that must deal with them. Many abandoned children spend the majority of their lives in state institutions, never having overcome mental health traumas suffered in their birth homes.

Abused and neglected children are sent to schools where they are disruptive and unable to learn. Many abandoned children are taking psychotropic medications like Prozac and Ritalin. They disrupt classrooms, make life unbearable for public educators, and have brought graduation rates to 53% in the Minneapolis Public Schools (Roosevelt graduated 28% of its class last year.) 25% of American high school graduates can’t read.

This should not be a political issue. No religion allows for the abandonment of the weakest and most vulnerable among us.

50 years ago, senior citizens were eating dog food out of cans and living under bridges. Media attention and public outrage created AARP and finally lobbied for an adequate social security for seniors.

Can’t we do the same for children?

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Intelligent Design

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on June 5, 2005

in Crime and Courts, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA) and Public Policy

. 0 Comments

As a guardian ad-Litem speaking for voiceless children born into toxic and violent homes, placed in overburdened child protection systems, and finally into court systems and prisons, I have been thinking about public policy making.

Designing public policy to accomplish certain goals is an important and difficult process that needs public discourse. Institutions are defined by what they actually do (as opposed to what we claim they do.) We the people, as in the voting citizenry need to appreciate our role in the political process that creates public policy.

Schools, Juvenile Justice, Child Protection, Police departments, Courts, and Criminal Justice systems are supposed to work together to foster the development of children and keep our communities safe and livable.

44% of African American men living in Hennepin County were arrested in 2001. No duplicate arrests (in fact 58% of those men went on to be rearrested within two years.) With only 4% of the worlds population, America has 25% of the worlds prison population. America’s prison recidivism rate remains at about 66%.

Five of America’s largest cities have African American adult male populations with a 50% unemployment ratio. Those same cities have an ex offender ratio of over 50% among the same population.

Almost 13% of all African American men can’t vote because they are felons. It’s almost impossible for a felon to procure meaningful work at decent wages.

48% of African American High School boys dropped out of Minneapolis Public schools in 2001.

Almost half of African American boys are in special needs classes or treated for emotional or mental health problems.

The cost of one child dropping out of school into a life of crime is estimated at between one million five hundred thousand dollars and ten million dollars.

Creating public policies that help ensure literacy and high school graduation is within our grasp. Twenty other industrialized nations have done it much better than we have.

Minnesota spends 5.3 times more money per prisoner than per public school student and we have one prison staff member for each 5.4 inmates. Minnesota prisons have been growing faster than almost any other segment of our state these last few years (averaging over 12% growth per year for the last 2 years.)

America ranks 91st among the other nations in staff to student ratios (there are only twenty other industrialized nations.)

Is this an intelligent design for our institutions or a fair approach to public policy?

If the idea is to create systems that fill our courts, prisons, and public schools with people of color with poor educations and mental health problems, then we are doing very well indeed.

If we want public policy that makes for safe streets, high functioning schools and youth, and a return to the superior quality of life indices that this nation maintained from after the second world war to the end of the 1970′s, it seems a longer term and more studied approach needs to be taken.

Pliny the elder, 2500 years ago, “what you do to your children, they will do to your society”

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Post Memorial Day blog

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on May 30, 2005

in Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA) and Public Policy

. 2 Comments

I have just finished reading about the Harvard study on the relationship between foster children and soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome.

According to the Harvard study, foster children are twice as likely to suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome as soldiers returning from Iraq are.

As a guardian ad-Litem observing children removed from frightening and toxic birth homes, I understand the correlation between living in a war zone and living in a dangerous home.

Both people live in fear of their lives. Both individuals witness terrible and frightening events (often on a daily basis). Often both have experienced terrific personal pain and suffering.

Each of them must rationalize his or her own existence in an insane situation with no way out.

There are differences;

The soldier goes back home to the remembered Normal world that was left behind. A child removed from an abusive home goes to a strange new existence and does not know what normal is. There was no “before” for an abused child. Sex, drugs, insanity, and violence have become their “normal”.

An abused child acquires behaviors to stay alive in toxic situations that are extremely detrimental to the child outside of the abusive home. Mental health services for abused and neglected children are few and far between.

The soldier suffering from posttraumatic stress syndrome qualifies for mental health therapy.

The child will most likely be prescribed psychotropic medications with minimal psychiatric oversight and very little therapy.

About one percent of foster children go on to college. Between fifty and seventy-five percent of children in the Juvenile Justice system have diagnosable mental illnesses.

I do not wish to minimize the seriousness of post traumatic stress syndrome in solders.

I only wish to point out the seriousness of post traumatic stress syndrome in children.

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Abused Children and Crime

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on May 24, 2005

in Crime and Courts, Guardian ad-Litem, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Mike Tikkanen and Public Policy

. 1 Comment

Unlearning Child Abuse (or go to prison)

Children are not aware of the rightness or wrongness of their own abuse. They do not know that abuse is abnormal, or even that it is wrong. To a five-year-old, no matter how painful and frightening her life is, her life is normal. A sad and lasting fact of child abuse is that children blame themselves for the abuse they receive.

How can sex, drugs, and violence be unlearned by a ten year old child whose entire life has been just that? It takes years of therapy to change a child’s perception of an abusive past. It takes a great deal longer for an abused child to develop a healthy view of the world and a positive self-image. Our child protection systems don’t provide much therapy.

There is no book a child can go to, or code they are born with, that explains the abnormality of what is happening to them. Children can’t call their senators, or complain to the authorities (they can’t even tell their parents).

These children are invisible in our community, yet each one of us is directly responsible for their plight. They live under our laws; they go to our schools; they are convicted by our courts; many of them spend lifetimes in our prisons. They have no say in the laws and policies that rule their lives. Just like they had no say in the neglect and abuse that was their childhood.

Neglected and abused children make up a great majority of the crime, drugs, and violence we experience in our communities. Over fifty percent of the children in the juvenile justice system have diagnosable mental illness.

Ninety percent of the juveniles in the Juvenile Justice System have come out of the Child Protection System (Minnesota’s Chief Justice, Kathleen Blatz). Over 90 percent of the adults in the Criminal Justice System come out of the Juvenile Justice System. Justice Blatz (and others) call it a prison “feeder” system.

The United States is the only nation in the world to build prisons based on failed third grade reading scores.

Behaviors learned by abused children to stay alive in toxic homes are terribly counter-productive once the child is out of the abusive circumstances and trying to live a normal life. The behaviors developed for staying alive and avoiding pain dominate and thus can become significant detriments to getting along in society. As a matter of fact, for many troubled youth, their explosive responses and pain avoidance behaviors define them as social misfits and send them to prison.

There has got to be a better way to deal with abused and abandoned children in our communities.

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Tasers and School Children

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on May 18, 2005

in Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

. 1 Comment

Tasers & School Children

Today’s Star Tribune article on St. Paul schools new policy on Taser use, (B2, James Walsh, St. Paul schools OK policy on Taser use, May 18, 2005) draws attention to the growing violence in our public schools. Teaching can be a dangerous profession for educators faced with unmanageable children or chaotic classroom environments.

Prozac, Ritalin, and a host of other psychotropic medications have taken the place of mental health counseling for children as young as six and seven years old. Behavior modification is now often a function of “if they took their meds.”

Conversations with many teachers about the severity of the mental health issues and explosive violence from nine and ten year old children (and high school students) make me wonder how long educators will continue to work in dangerous situations.

Has teaching becoming police work at half the salary?

I know many social workers that feel just as hopeless as teachers with dangerous students in chaotic classrooms do.

There is no safety net for many of the poor neglected and abused children they care for. There is no child psychiatrist for a sexually abused seven-year old, or for the starved and tortured six-year old. Go to school. Get well. Take these pills. We just don’t have a budget for the services you need.

As a Boomer growing up in good schools with cheap college and a straight path to success, I am appalled at the roadblocks set up for poor and abandoned children.

The data is alarmingly negative if you live in a foster home or are born into poverty (my book, Invisible Children, Preteen Mothers & Adolescent Felons and What We Can Do About It, www.invisiblechildren.org)

Who will speak for these children?

Those of us who know what it’s like to work with abused, neglected, and mentally ill children need to inform the people we live with about the reality that has shaped our schools, our jails, and our evermore dangerous city streets.

Being a hardworking quiet person is not working.

Neglect and abandonment appear to apply to educators and social workers as well as to children.

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Unhappy Schools

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on May 12, 2005

in Guardian ad-Litem, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

. 0 Comments

A snapshot of our schools and community:

28% of the class at Minneapolis Roosevelt High school graduated last year. The Minneapolis school system had an overall 53% graduation rate.

Blaming teachers for failing schools is wrong. Teachers teach because they love learning and children. It is a political vote getter to blame educators for our larger institutional failures. The system needs to make learning possible. Politicians are missing the core issues. Public policy needs to change, not teachers.

129 African American men from Hennepin County enrolled in the University of Minnesota’s three largest colleges between 1994 to 1997 (African-American Men Project.)

About 15% of Minnesota students were threatened or injured with a weapon on school property last year. Nationally, in 2002, there were 659,000 violent crimes involving students at school, and 720,000 violent crimes away from school.

Almost 20% of Minnesota students carried a weapon on school property in 1995.

About 15% of Minnesota female students become pregnant before they are 18.

Almost 10% of Minnesota students attempted suicide in 1995.

Minnesota prisons have grown by over 10% per year for the last two years with signs of even greater growth next year.

Ratio of adult inmates in Minnesota State Prisons to corrections officers in 2004: 4.5 to 1.

Ranking of the United States staff to student ratio internationally this year:
we are 91st among the 189 UN member nations (there are only twenty other industrialized nations.)

Most of the 14 million people jailed each year are parents who leave children behind.

Most women in jail have two or more children and are often single parents. The women’s correction facility at Shakopee used to have a recidivism rate of 23% when public policy was on rehabilitation not retribution. Today Shakopee’s recidivism rate is the same as the rest of the nation (66%.)

In 2001, 8776 Minnesota juveniles were arrested for violent crimes. Wisconsin arrested 134 juveniles for murder in 2001.

Most jailed juveniles are following a father or brother into the criminal justice system. Once in the criminal justice system, juveniles learn from the tough hardened criminals what the rest of their lives are going to be like. Almost 20% of juveniles are tried as adults in the U.S. today.

Over 50% of the juveniles in the Juvenile Justice System have diagnosable mental illnesses. This figure probably holds true for children who pass through the Child Protection System.

The average middle class child starts school with a vocabulary of 2100 words. The average poor child starts school with a vocabulary of 600 words. As a guardian ad-Litem, I have come to know many children in the child protection system that can barely communicate at six or seven years old.

Educational and mental health services work to keep kids off the streets and out of jail. Productive member of our community always cost us less than criminals or child mothers.

Investing in early childhood programs and mental health services could actually save us money, and certainly make our streets safer, and our communities more pleasant to live in.

It’s not so much about money– Minnesota’s 2001 GDP (gross domestic product) ranks greater than Austria, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Hong Kong, Denmark, and a hundred other nations.

So if it’s not money, what is it?

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What you do to your children, they will do to your society (Pliny, 2500 years ago)

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A Normal Kid

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on April 26, 2005

in Crime and Courts, Health and Mental Health, Kids At Risk Action (KARA) and Public Policy

. 2 Comments

Jeff Weise was a normal kid.

He was just a “normal kid,” until his father killed himself in a police standoff, his mother told him his birth was a mistake and she wished he’d never been born. Jeff Weise listed hating, death and dying as his hobbies and interests on his website.

Jeff tried suicide with razor blades and a therapist put him on Class II narcotics to treat him for his depression (psycho pharmaceutical drugs without ongoing therapy.)

“My mom used to abuse me allot when I was little” and “She used to drink excessively too.” Were posted on a website attributed to Jeff Weise (Star Tribune, I Really Must Be Worthless, 3/24/05.)

A functioning child protection system would have at least been looking for seriously damaged children that fit Jeff’s profile. It is clear that Jeff Weise suffered childhood trauma and would have benefited by having a relationship with an adult who understood emotional and mental health issues.

Do we think we are saving money by not providing services to mentally ill children? Providing psychotropic medications to children with severe mental health issues without providing the therapy is wrong (and perhaps dangerous). There is a growing body of evidence that this approach leads to worse results than if left untreated.

The key here is therapy. Drugs with therapy can work. What are solvable problems to children receiving the help they need instead of the madness that created the violence that consumed Jeff.

As a volunteer guardian ad-Litem, this story is all too common. There are millions of abused and neglected children in this country who deserve the help that Jeff didn’t get either. Many of them are medicated with psychoactive narcotics without adequate therapy also.

A school administered mental health assessment would have discovered Jeff Weiss. He could have received the help he needed to lead a full and productive life. This child was not born crazy; he was made crazy by the adults in his life. No one helped him. He deserved better.

Jeff Weise killed seven people and wounded seven more before taking his own life on March 21st in Red Lake MN.

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Back on the Drugs

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on April 22, 2005

in Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA) and Public Policy

. 1 Comment

A recent study by the Partnership For a Drug Free America reports that more teens abused a prescription painkiller in 2004, than ecstasy, cocaine, crack, or LSD.

Add these millions of painkiller abusers to the millions of youth prescribed Ritalin, Prozac, Zoloft, Welbutrin, and the multitude of other psychotropic Class II pharmaceutical drugs ingested by teens, America might very well have ten to twenty percent of it’s youth drugged with illegal or poorly monitored psychotropic medications.

I say poorly monitored because my experience as a guardian ad-Litem is that psychotropic drugs are being distributed to many children for many reasons without the therapy that would insure the monitoring of serious side effects. Many of the terrible murders and suicides being witnessed today have been committed by youth using Prozac, Ritalin and other psychotropic medications without adequate therapies.

How many teachers are aware of the number of children in their classrooms using these drugs (legally or illegally?).

Fifty to seventy percent of the children in the Juvenile Justice system have diagnosable mental illness. As a guardian ad-Litem, I believe the statistic holds true for children in the Child Protection system also (50% to 75%.)

Teachers and administrators are being blamed for the high rate of dropouts and low student achievement. I would make the argument that the number of drug using and mentally ill children in our schools today interferes dramatically with the business of education. Don’t blame the teachers or school administrators. What’s wrong is poor public policy.

A discussion around early childhood programs, mental health services, and the use of psychotropic medications is overdue.

partnership for a drug free America

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America’s Definition of Abuse

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on April 21, 2005

in Guardian ad-Litem, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA) and Public Policy

. 1 Comment

As a guardian ad-Litem I am following the legislative discussions around the topic of mental health services in our public school systems. I am painfully aware of the lack of knowledge at all levels of this discourse.

Very few teachers, administrators, politicians, (our public stewards) or citizens know why school drop out rates are so high, graduation and literacy rates are so low, and so many children are in trouble with the law.

As a person who has become familiar with many children who have been removed from their homes, I know what a traumatic life a child must live before being taken from a toxic home.

By definition, children remain with their birth parents until their lives are in danger of “ imminent harm.” This is called the Imminent Harm doctrine and it defines the statutory circumstances under which a child may be removed from their home. Or, as I call it, the doctrine of “the bruised and the bleeding.”

Most people have a misconception of child abuse. I too thought I knew the nature and definition of the word before I became a guardian ad-Litem. An accurate definition of child abuse must take into account the severity and repetition of abuse that are legally necessary for a child to be removed from their home.

Child abuse redefines the way a child thinks and sees the world. Abused children have severely limited learning and coping skills. An abused child’s mental development has been arrested by an anxiety and fear that supercede the learning of other personal and social skills. Without personal and social skills, and a lessening of the anxieties and fears, Abused children fail at school, don’t make friends, and keep a terribly low self image.

This is why school drop out rates are so high, graduation and literacy rates are so low, and so many children are in trouble with the law.

Medicating children with Prozac, Ritalin, and other psychotropic medications may lessen their dangerous behaviors, but without adequate counseling and mental health therapies, their fears and anxieties will continue to interfere with their development and personal growth. Abused children will not fit into our communities. They will continue to fill our jails and be a great burden to our schools.

There are thousands of abused and neglected children in our schools with almost no mental health services (there are 49 child psychiatrists in our state) and extremely limited school counseling of any kind (900 students per counselor is the statewide average.)

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talk of suicide

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on March 31, 2005

in Kids At Risk Action (KARA)

. 1 Comment

Jeff Weise resembles many of the children in Child Protection I know.

A mother that hated him, Psychotropic medications, repeated examples of self-loathing, talk of suicide and homicide.

Working with neglected and abused children has shown me a part of human development that I could not have otherwise become familiar with.

Normal children overcome feelings of self-hate and inadequacy with the help of parents, teachers, and other adults in their lives.

Abused children can’t trust the adults in their lives. Their own abuse has come from the trusted adults in their lives. These children often resent or hate authority figures as a result of the suffering adults have visited upon them.

Feelings of self-hate and inadequacy consume many of the children I work with as a guardian ad-Litem.

Children removed from their homes have been traumatized by their circumstances. Starved, beaten, and tortured children do not overcome trauma, self-hate, anxiety, and inadequacy without timely intervention and adequate mental health therapy.

Almost all abused children believe they have brought on their own abuse.

Abused children think it was something they did that made daddy do those terrible things. Raped women experience similar feelings—if I had taken another route, or I had been more observant, the terrible thing might not have happened.

My little friends talk to me about “being normal” until they reach a point of hopelessness and despair that leaves them cold to me—and cold to the rest of the people in their lives.

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A Week After Redlake

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on March 28, 2005

in Crime and Courts, Guardian ad-Litem, Health and Mental Health, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Mike Tikkanen and Public Policy

. 1 Comment

The media is still filled with coverage Jeff Weiss and the Red Lake tragedy. The pattern repeats itself; tragedy, outrage, and wonder about how it happened and what should be done about it.

A special national Swat team of psychologists has been flown into Red Lake to deal with grieving students.

In a few weeks the TV and Newspaper coverage will die down and we will go on to the next tragedy and repeat the process.

It pains me that there are no serious discussions about the mental health issues that create these violent tragedies or the steps that could be taken to help seriously troubled children cope with their problems.

As a long time guardian ad-Litem I see the sadness, depression, and mental health issues that seriously affect so many children. Our culture does not recognize or help these kids. While psychotropic medications are everywhere, the kind of therapy that makes a difference is sadly lacking. I have not seen it in any of the cases I have worked on at Hennepin county.

I have two GAL children who have been with me for over six years (Alex and Nancy). I profile their lives in my book INVISIBLE CHILDREN.

Had my young friends received mental health counseling when they were young, they might have been able to lead normal lives. Instead, they are full of self-loathing and dangerous behaviors, prescribed Class II stimulant drugs (like Prozac), and they have both tried suicide. In these respects, they are just like Jeff Weiss.

Jeff let many people know his homicidal/suicidal thoughts. There was simply no help available for a very troubled young man. The suffering of the living will go on for many years. If you know anyone that has lost a loved one to violence you will understand this.

How a little care might have prevented this awful tragedy could be a lesson. I am always hopeful.

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Crime and Justice & a Great Sadness

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on March 25, 2005

in Crime and Courts, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA) and Mike Tikkanen

. 0 Comments

Today I met with Tom Johnson—he runs the Council on Crime and Justice in Minneapolis.

We both have roots to Floodwood MN where my Finnish grandparents let me stay with them on the farm each summer when I was a boy (instead of getting in trouble with my pals in the inner city.)

One of the things Tom and I spoke of was the sense of warmth and community that existed growing up in a rural community.

Powerful feelings divide us within our communities today and impact the way we vote to treat our neighbors (education, race, social safety nets.)

I find it painful that Councilman Don Samuels is kept busy holding vigils for murdered young men (almost every week) on the North side.

It hurts me that so few people care that Roosevelt high school graduated 28% of its students last year, or know that 44% of African American men living in Hennepin County were arrested in 2001.

How disconnected can we become?

What do you feel when a baby is found dead in a dumpster, a young person deliberately murders innocent people, or some other insane tragedy fills the headlines?

Do you feel a sense of loss and sadness for the suffering of the parties involved?

Or are you filled with judgment and a need to blame someone and a desire for punishment?

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Reality Training

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on March 18, 2005

in Guardian ad-Litem, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Mike Tikkanen, Politics and Funding and Public Policy

. 0 Comments

A fifteen-year old boy I am a guardian ad-Litem for has recently prostituted himself.

He has taught me many lessons. He was such a charming little boy. He won 2nd place at an inner city high school talent show not long ago. He has verbalized his self- hatred and tried to kill himself more than once.

A cute little girl I have worked with for many years has genital warts and a strong desire to have a baby. She has no parenting skills (nor a viable grasp of reality.)

She is fourteen and I don’t see how things could be different. The court put her on long-term birth control when she was eleven. She had just escaped ST Joe’s home for children and seduced a man at a bar.

People in the business of child protection know that traumatized children do poorly with their peers, fail in school, and suffer severe anxieties and social failures.

Helping abused children back into the role of student, citizen, or any other functioning member of the community our policies must replace (or integrate) psychotropic medications with specific and extensive mental health therapies.

Does anyone know the number of current county ward children prescribed psychotropic medications? I think it is more than we can imagine. The national number (total) of kids on psychotropic drugs is at least 6 million.

The model we use today (drugs without adequate therapy) saves a little money on the front end.

By denying the need for services we guarantee ourselves many years of state support for damaged children—who then become troubled juveniles, becoming dysfunctional adults that commit crimes and visit their mental illnesses upon their own progeny (who repeat the cycle.)

It would be a useful exercise to calculate the costs of adequately treating traumatized children versus letting them become dysfunctional adolescents, pregnant teenagers and criminals. 80% of youth aging out of foster care lead dysfunctional lives.

It causes me great pain to watch these children continue to hurt themselves and the others around them.

I’m certain that community investment in troubled youth is a sound investment. It also strikes me that any nation that values children would find a way to invest in children.

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The Value of Healthy Children

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on March 5, 2005

in Health and Mental Health, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Mike Tikkanen, Politics and Funding and Public Policy

. 0 Comments

Friends,

I met with State Senator Mee Moua recently. She is the first legislator I have connected with who shows a genuine interest in creating a public dialogue around the issues of children’s mental health. So many legislators fail to see the social and economic value of healthy children. Art Rolnick at the Federal Reserve Bank in MN has done extensive work to prove the point

This is a complicated topic with no simple answers. I think that makes legislators avoid the topic.

Senator Moua asked me to submit a bill that would begin a discussion on the issues of mental health services for children in the child protection system.

In the cases that I have worked on, many children removed from their homes by the county have needed counseling and not received it.

Children that have suffered severe or prolonged abuse need a counseling regimen that will be part of their life for a long time. Short term counseling for severely damaged children is just one more abandonment.

Can the prescription of psychotropic drugs like Ritilan, Prozac, without commensurate mental health services be a sound protocol for a disturbed child?

What can I do to create awareness of how many seriously troubled children are being “managed” with psychotropic medications and expected to “become normal” without the help of therapy?

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Teachers Are People Too

Published

Mike Tikkanen

on February 21, 2005

in Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding and Public Policy

. 0 Comments

Roosevelt High school graduated 28% of its students last year—Minneapolis and other big city schools averaged graduation rates between 50% and 60% nationwide. 25% of graduating U.S. high school seniors are functionally illiterate.

Teachers and school administrators are accused of bad stewardship.

At dinner in our home, two longtime educator friends blamed immigrants for school failure.

Administrators are being blamed for wasting money on bad teachers and bad programs.

The public wants accountability and better results.

No one talks about the impossibility of teaching seriously unhealthy children in crowded classrooms.

There is no discussion about the vast numbers of Prozac, Ritalin, and other Class II stimulants prescribed to children in our schools (or the behaviors being managed).

Between 50% and 75% of children in the Juvenile Justice system have diagnosable mental illness (nationally.)

I believe the mental health ratios for children in Child Protection and children in Juvenile Justice to be similar (50%-75%.)

There are about 900 children per counselor in MN schools. There are 49 child psychologists in the entire state of MN. With funding cuts, there will be fewer counselors or psychologists next year.

Is it sound public policy to medicate troubled children with Class II psychotropic stimulants without proper mental health services? I know what happens to prescription drug protocols for juveniles when they turn fifteen (they turn to illegal drugs.)

Early counseling pays big dividends when it comes to troubled children getting their lives back, fitting in with their peers, and doing well in school.

I have always thought teaching a noble profession. Teachers teach because they love learning and children, and they have a desire to make a difference. I don’t believe that it is teachers, administrators, or immigrants that are ruining public education as some in politics would have us believe.

We are all in this together, or as Pliny the elder said 2500 years ago, “what we do to our children, they will do to our society”

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