Dave is a KARA volunteer intern from Century College and an occasional author on this site;

The Positive Effects of Child-Parent Centers on Education
By Dave Mast

Few problems facing children of all ages have been discussed as often as that of substandard education. More specifically, the American education system has been under attack from a number of sources.
However, the situation has yet to improve, possibly because the programs that work are not highlighted, instead only those that have failed are.

How bad has the situation in the United States become? Roughly 18% of children are not familiar with the basic rules of printing or writing. However, when looking at children with mothers who did not obtain their high school diplomas, this number increased drastically to 32%. In contrast, only 8% of children with mothers who have college degrees struggle with the basic rules of writing (Siegel & Welsh, 2006, p. 336).

The seriousness of the state of America’s education system can be demonstrated by looking at the effects, both short and long-term, that the failure of the system can have on a child. For example, the annual income that a juvenile can expect to earn as an adult is significantly lower if he or she drops out of high school. For adults 18-65 years old, the average annual income of high school dropouts is only $20,000, compared to $30,000 for those who graduate from high school or obtain their GED (Siegel & Welsh, 2006, p. 336).

A grimmer example of the effects that unsuccessful education can have on children is related to criminal activity. Though 74% of non-offenders graduated from high school, only 9% of chronic offenders obtained their diplomas. Another look at the subject shows that less than 40% of incarcerated felons in America completed 12 or more years of education. In contrast, 80% of the general population has completed the same level of education.

More important than identifying the effects that educational failure can have on children is the need to determine which programs are effective in stopping such a downward spiral and making them available to more American children. Arguably one of the best programs to date was started in Chicago in 1967 and uses what are known as Child-Parent Centers (CPCs). CPCs are located in low income areas in the Chicago public school system, and are available for children to start at three to five years of age.

Through parental involvement, the children enrolled in CPCs are able to develop reading, writing, and math skills, while their parents learn about topics related to child growth, development, health, safety, and nutrition (Chicago Public Schools, 2010).

The benefits reaped from enrollment in CPCs have been demonstrated in a number of studies involving juveniles and adults who received educational enrichment from the program. One such study was conducted by Reynolds, Temple, Robertson, and Mann in 2001. This study compared a group of adults who had completed an educational program at a CPC prior to entering kindergarten with a group whose members had not been enrolled in a CPC.

Through the use of justice system records, educational records, and family surveys, the study obtained the following results: CPC graduates enjoyed a 29% higher rate of high school completion, a 41% lower rate of placement in special education, and a 40% reduction in grade retention (the need to repeat a grade or course). Similarly, those in the study who attended a CPC had a 33% lower rate of juvenile arrest, 42% reduction in the rate of arrest for violent offenses, and a 51% lower rate of child maltreatment by their parents (Reynolds, et al, 2001).

The sustained success of the Child-Parent Centers in Chicago offers some hope to areas with struggling rates of high school completion and kindergarten readiness. For example, in Minneapolis, the rate of kindergarten readiness for students in 2006 and 2007 were only 57% and 59%, respectively (City of Minneapolis, 2010). Kindergarten readiness is a measurement of the students’ abilities in the areas of counting, vocabulary, listening, and alphabetical understanding.

Those who are not considered “kindergarten ready” may experience considerable difficulty keeping up with their classmates as their education progresses. Thus, the implementation of programs such as Child-Parent Centers can help youth who otherwise would struggle with their education and prevent them from turning to delinquent behavior as they grow older.

References
Chicago Public Schools. (2010). Child Parent Center (CPC). Retrieved July 25, 2010, from http://www.cps.edu/Schools/Preschools/Pages/Childparentcenter.aspx
City of Minneapolis. (2010). Minneapolis kindergarten readiness. Retrieved August 7, 2010, from http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/results/kindergarten.asp
Reynolds, A. Temple, J., Robertson, D., & Mann, E. (2001). Age 21 Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Title I Chicago Child-Parent Center Program. Retrieved July 25, 2010, from http://www.waisman.wisc.edu/cls/cbaexecsum4.html
Siegel, L., & Welsh, B. (2006). Juvenile Delinquency: Theory, Practice, and Law. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning

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amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com

In defense of the profession, in the twelve years I worked as a guardian ad-Litem, this story did not happen to me. The social workers I was engaged with were truly committed and in this line of work because they loved kids and wanted to make a difference in their community. Social work is a calling (being a nanny pays way better and is much easier).

It is my belief that people want to do their work well, especially when it involves the welfare of abandoned, helpless children. This story does not reflect that.

When a person fails to complete a simple task, and a tragedy occurs, we (the system/management) should find the problem and insure that it can’t happen again. 

The problem lies it a system that is not well designed to see to the well being of the children it is meant to serve. This system is being undermined by our current economic chaos, and children are suffering.

There needs to be accountability and a greater responsiveness built into our child protection system. This will not happen without public support and more resources.

Not valuing children reflects badly on our society and it is beginning to show.

If children were as important as expensive business machines, the doctor would have had the authority to save this child’s life (or some other fail safe process would have been in place.

KARA supports more training, better resources, and greater attention to the needs of social workers, teachers, and service providers to at risk children, because it is difficult work.

This unfortunately cannot change what happened to Portia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No one wants to do that.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you Lelde.

With almost half the population of the U.S. (138M v 307M) Japan reported 33,308 cases of child abuse in 2005 compared to about 3 million cases in the U.S. In 2007, 37 Japanese children were killed by their parents compared to 1400 in the U.S.

The very first Japanese child abuse survey was conducted in 1999, along with specialized training for social workers. In 2006, the government introduced a national 10-year plan to improve child-rearing nationwide that included new 1700 community daytime childcare centers by March of 2010.

Japan is only now beginning to identify and respond to child abuse and neglect, after hundreds of years of three generations living in the same home, and the supreme authority of the oldest male, family intervention by the community is a difficult issue.

Child Protection and Abuse in Japan

According to a UN report, in 2006 Japan ranked seventh in the list of countries of the highest living standards. While highly developed both economically and socially the country experiences problems similar to those in less-developed countries. Child abuse is one such example. During 1990, when the data was first collected by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, there were 1,101 reported incidents of child abuse.

The report stated that physical cruelty was the most common kind of abuse accounting for 44.5% of all cases, followed by neglect (36.7%) and mental abuse (15.6%). There were 1,048 reported instances of sexual abuse, comprising 3.1% of the total. Those most at risk were children under six years old, with 15,255 pre-schoolers being the target of abuse.

According to Al-Badri, in 2005 child abuse was still soaring in Japan, with 33,308 reports to child welfare consultation centers or the police in the year ending March 2005. This provided more than a 20% increase since the previous year.

Another report by the local government in Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo, released in 2006 revealed that more than 60% of the public consider the root cause of child abuse to be parents’ inexperience and selfishness.

Among other reasons cited of the increasing child abuse were the increasing shift away from households in which three generations would cohabit, meaning that grandparents were no longer able to assist with childcare chores; the lack of community in the country, with people feeling less connected to their local neighborhoods; the rising cost of bringing up children; and the increase in single-parent families.

According to Japanese Police, child abuse has been one of the biggest social problems in recent years. The number of abuse cases cleared by the police in 2007 reached 300 and the number of offenders was 323, increase of 3 (or 1.0%) and a decrease of 6 (or 1.8%) over the preceding year respectively. The number of victimized children was 315 (a decrease of 1, at 0.3% over the previous year). Out of these, 37 children were killed.

Child pornography is also a serious issue. To deal with this issue, the Act on Punishing Acts Related to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography and for Protecting Children was enacted in May of 1999. In 2007, the total number of persons arrested in violation of this act was 1,361 for 1,914 offenses. For child prostitution, 984 persons were arrested in 1,347 cases, including 596 persons (60.6%) in 679 cases (50.4%) involving the use of on-line dating services, 61 persons (6.2%) in 61 cases (4.5%) involving the use of telephone clubs. For child pornography, 377 were arrested in 567 cases, including 172 persons in 192 cases involving the use of the Internet.

In 2007, the number of victimized children under the age at 18 in child prostitution decreased 13.7% to 1,144 from the previous year.

In 2007, the number of victimized children under the age at 18 in child pornography increased 8.7% to 275 from the previous year. Furthermore, it has recently been reported that the Yakuza (members of organized crime syndicates in Japan) have been heavily involved in burgeoning new business: child pornography.

While it is illegal to make or sell such material in Japan, possession often goes unpunished. This legal loophole has been exploited by the Yakuza, adding to their traditional money spinners like prostitution and drugs.
Such statistics and stories reveal the extent of child abuse, which many Japanese believe does not exist in their society.

Japan’s unusually strong families are being strained, weakened by the long recession and record unemployment, which have undermined stability in the home and in addition to economic pressures, divorce rates and remarriages are rising, which experts say has led to abusive behavior by some stepparents.

Dr. Seiji Sakai, a child psychiatrist and director of the Center for Child Abuse Prevention admits: “In pediatric circles we thought there wasn’t much child abuse and that we were different from the United States because our culture was different.

The single biggest problem was society failing to realize that there is child abuse.” At the same time, while statistics suggest a rise in child abuse, experts are uncertain whether more is actually occurring or whether more instances is now being reported. As Machiko Ayukyo, a lawyer handling child abuse cases admits: “Child abuse is on the rise in Japan. Superficially, it seems the trend is rising, because more is coming to light. I feel that this has been happening for a very long time and it is finally just coming to the surface.”

The Government statistics show that in 1997, there were 5,352 reported cases of child abuse, a 30 percent rise from the previous year. In 1990, when the government began to record statistics there were just one thousand reports of child abuse a year. In 2004, the number was 24,000 and in 2006, the number was estimated to be around 35,000 cases of abuse. The population of children under the age of 14 years was 18.58 million in 2000.

The prevalence rate of child abuse and neglect is calculated to 9.1 per 10 000 children. However, this rate is only the tip of the iceberg, because there are still many unreported cases. As for forms of child abuse and neglect in 2000, physical abuse was 50.1%, neglect was 35.6%, psychological abuse was 10.0% and sexual abuse was 4.3%.

It should be acknowledged that the total number is still quite small compared to many other countries.

However, for Japan, which places so much emphasis on safety and family, the number is shocking. As Japan has became more urbanized and the number of nuclear families increased, parents have become more isolated, there is more and more pressure put on parents while support and assistance is decreasing.

As it is argued, such pressure has increased the prevalence of violence and abuse of children in such families, although the relationship is not clearly proven.

However, the statistics may not present a full picture because the Government has not traditionally kept track of cases and few are reported to authorities. Furthermore, traditionally, the police rarely investigated accusations of child abuse or wife beating, believing these were issues best left to the head of the household: the father or grandfather.

For centuries, Japanese believed that children were like possessions and that parental authority was virtually supreme. In Japan, the right of the family head was very strong and until the 1860’s, when if the father unintentionally killed a child, by being too strict or too violent, he was not questioned.
Parents have traditionally had enormous authority when it comes to raising children, with the government reluctant to intervene, but that is now changing.

Authorities are now struggling to figure out when and how to intervene. The Government wants to crack down on so-called “parental rights” and is planning to increase the number of situations in which the state can take children from their parents.

Doctors, lawyers and welfare workers, as well as some media, have recently begun to increase public awareness of these issues. More rigid laws are being discussed and legislated, which would give some power to intervene in this rigid and inaccessible family sphere. The Ministry of Health and Welfare commissioned its first child abuse survey in 1999, along with specialized training for social workers in child abuse, to provide increased psychological support for abused children.

In 2006, the government introduced a national 10-year plan to improve child-rearing conditions nationwide. This has seen an increase in the number of community centers being turned into daytime childcare centers where toddlers can play together and parents can lend each other mutual support.

More than 1,700 such centers are expected to be operational by the end of March 2010. However, more official help is necessary to prevent parents allowing their emotions to boil over into violence. The key is stopping the abuse before it starts by helping parents who have not harmed their children, but feel that they are struggling to keep a grip on things.

As Masaaki Noda, a professor at Kwansei Gakuin University pointed out, Japan will have to brace itself for more horror stories of child abuse that have already come up in the press recently until it terminates its traditional reluctance to interfere in other’s ‘private’ lives.

In regards to criminal law, Japanese society has long regarded the disciplinary issue as a part of individual (parental) discretion. Authority (e.g., schoolteachers, police, and local government) is reluctant to enter into this issue unless it is prosecuted as a court case. If the penal code is applied strictly to child abuse, however, it is no longer abuse but should be considered assault and battery.

There appears to be no provision in the Japanese penal code noting that assault and battery should be accepted from prosecution and punishment if committed by the victims’ parents or caregivers.

Child abuse then often is a crime committed by someone who is in a position to take care of the victim leading to a situation where the child emotionally and financially depends on his/her abuser.

The Child Welfare Law was enacted in 1947 to protect child abuse and poverty-related maltreatment. In 1965, Maternal and Child Health Law strengthened child health care delivery system throughout Japan. Health check-ups for infants and young children, home visit to newborns and psychological support to mothers and children are conducted and its coverage is approximately 90%. While the system for child survival and development had been successful, the welfare system for child protection was not enough. The Child Abuse Prevention Law was also enacted in 2000 and its objective was to promote measures towards the prohibition and prevention of child abuse by prescribing the responsibility of central and local government to prevent child abuse and neglect, and to establish measures to give appropriate protection to children who are abused.

The Law encourages prevention, early detection and early response of child abuse and neglect. Teachers, workers in child welfare centers, medical doctors, public health nurses, and lawyers should report to child guidance centers when they find a child abused or neglected.

The child guidance centers make an assessment from viewpoints of medicine, psychology, education and mental health, and take care of abused children under the collaboration with family courts, residential care facilities and foster families.

In Japan, each prefecture has one or more child guidance centers. In total, there are some 170 centers in Japan. The Child Welfare Act empowers the head of a child guidance centre to give abused children temporary shelter in the centre or to transfer them to the family court.

However, it is only the family court that can authoritatively investigate the home and, if necessary, deprive parents of their power. Child guidance centers usually are very reluctant to ask the prefecture to order the deprivation of parental power by the family court and the family court also is very hesitant to do this. As a result, the annual number of cases of parental power deprivation is extremely low.

The child guidance centers also have no formal means to gather evidence of child abuse. Anyone who notices child abuse may report it to a child guidance centre under the regulations of the Child Welfare Act, but there are no people in certain occupations (e.g., pediatricians, schoolteachers, social workers, etc.) who have legislated duties to do so.

As a consequence, people who become aware of a child being abused often are reluctant to report it out of fear of being sued by the victim’s parents for defamation.

The duty of certain professionals to report should be legislated. It should be noted, however, that a report may discourage an abuser from seeking help. Because Japan ratified the Convention of the Rights of the Child, it should endeavor to embody its principles.

Much should be done to that end in Japan, but what is clear is that many children are still being abused. While in recent years, the activities for prevention of child abuse and neglect have been strengthened in Japan, public awareness of child abuse and neglect is still quite low.

First, the human resources in child guidance centers to protect children are lacking. While the number of reported cases increased drastically, the number of staff has not yet increased.

Second, Japan needs to establish practical measures to support all the family members from the viewpoint of family structure. Asian ‘solutions’, applicable to Japanese family structure, ought to be employed. Third, the collaboration between local governments and NGO is lacking which is a problem in many fields in Japan, including the issue of child abuse and neglect.

The participation of civil society is one of the most critical issues of Japanese society.

To prevent child abuse and neglect in Japan, it will require the full participation of civil society and community.

Just like here.

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Works Cited

Al-Badri, D. Japan Hit By Huge Rise in Child Abuse. The Guardian, Tuesday, June 27, 2006. Accessible online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jun/27/japan

Japan Rocked By Soaring Child Abuse. Guardian News and Media, 2008. Published 08.08.2004. Accessible online at: http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-8-2004-57591.asp

Kitamura, T.; Kijama, N.; Iwata, N.; Senda, Y.; Takahashi, K.; Hayashi, I. Frequences of Child Abuse in Japan: Hidden But Prevalent Crime. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, Vol. 43, Issue 21, 1999). (Accessible online at: http://ijo.sagepub.com.ezproxy.macalester.edu/cgi/reprint/43/1/21)

Nakamura, Y. Child abuse and neglect in Japan. Pediatrics International, Vol. 44, 2002, pp. 580-582. Accessible online at: http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.macalester.edu/ehost/pdf?vid=2&hid=106&sid=c72c6313-7a37-4c3e-af71-c48495c43f8b%40sessionmgr112

Simkin, M. Horrific child abuse case highlights wider problem in Japan. Correspondents Report, February 8, 2004.

The Situation of Child Protection in Japan. Police of Japan. Accessible online at: http://www.npa.go.jp/english/syonen2/The_situation_of_child_protection_in_Japan.pdf

Willacy, M. Without Honor and Humanity. ABC News, October 10, 2009. Accessible online at: http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2009/s2715335.htm

WuDunn, S. Child Abuse Has Japan Rethinking Family Autonomy. The New York Times, August 15, 1999

Yanagawa, T. Current Status of Child Abuse and Neglect in Japan. 6th ISPCAN Regional Conference, Singapore, 17 November, 2005. Accessible online at: http://canal.hus.osaka-u.ac.jp/yanagawa.pdf

I am the Grandmother of Amy* And we are in desperate need of many new/more voice’s of everyone of the grandparents that have lost our right to be able to see our grandchildren! Either because of the other parent getting custody or just because.

Please can you tell me what you know about being able to make the courts listen to the children and what they have to say, no matter what their age!

thank you so much!

We lost our grandaughter to a man who for some sick reason had to …Get even with our daughter! We no longer were able to see or talk to her, now she is dead!

My father has written a letter to the county and wants some answers from them as to why there is not a more indepth look at the background checks of the Other parent! I know this a very shallow explaination, but I am so lost!

Grammy!

* not a real name

This is one of the letters I’ve received from distraught grandparents trying to convince the local courts that their children were neglecting or abusing their own children.  After many years in the child protection system as a guardian ad-Litem, I’m convinced that our systems are overwhelmed and need to be re-thought to include more training, & resources, and better decision making for all involved.

Note, I too have experienced the county returning children to criminally dangerous parents and watching as they destroyed their children.

Copy this post and send it to your state representative

support abused and neglected children, start a KARA group in your community

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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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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

Support At Risk Children, start a KARA group in your community

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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/