The plaintiffs (children) ask for improvements in the following areas:

Lower Caseloads for DHS workers and supervisors.

Education and training for agency employees, foster parents and adoptive parents.

Monitoring of the safety of children in state custody.

The original plaintiffs were nine children who are alleged to have suffered in DHS placements. The case has since become a class-action lawsuit with thousands of children in DHS custody as plaintiff

How many states have caseloads that are just too high to provide a realistic safety net for the children they support? How many states need more training and education for the agency employees, foster parents, and adoptive parents?

Without educating judges, court workers, and criminal justice people, this nation is still on the path to maintaining excessive prison populations and disastrous school performance among the population of abused and neglected children.

This is the tip of the iceberg. Legislators in many states ought to be finding money to make these changes without class action lawsuits. To think that we are a nation forced to sue on behalf of abused and neglected children because legislators did not see the need to provide the services or resources to keep children safe shows a deep failure within our system.

To those social workers and supervisors that will be made to look bad as this case becomes news; you need to stick together and make your arguments clear and concise. Support each other and recognize that it is a glaring fault of an uncaring institution that would make the people doing the hard work look bad when failure is almost guaranteed as resources are stretched too thinly. Stick together, support each other, and make your arguments to the public. The size and scope of this problem has become too large to keep buried and silent.

America’s child protection systems need help at many levels. Like all of us, social workers do the best they can with the resources they have.

Children need this victory. They will have more resources and support if the case is resolved fairly (& maybe legislators will see the wisdom of avoiding class action lawsuits and vote for more child friendly programs).

There needs to be more money for training and services.

Without it, abused and neglected children will continue to become preteen moms & felons and lead dysfunctional lives in and out of our institutions, costing our nation a multiple of what we might have spent saving them with the price of training and services when they were young.

America is on trial here. Oklahoma is not the only state to abandon its abandoned children.

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

It is painful to know that children who come from trauma and abuse, are now finding fewer services, more burdened staff, less resources, and inevitably, less chance of finding help in many communities.

Seema points out that a Hawaii program that had serviced 4000 families now services 100, South Carolina now has caseload ratios as high as 60 to 1 in some regions & that nearly half of the abused children murdered in Texas have been investigated by Child Protective Services.

I did know most of the financial problems facing the people and programs created to help abused and neglected children. I also know that eliminating those programs will not save communities any money*.

I did not know that children raised in families with incomes under $15,000 are 22 times more likely to to be abused and I am well aware of the dismal standing of certain states when it comes to how they treat children.

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

Seema Jilani’s Article;

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

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

Bitter? Maybe. Harsh? Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would like reader comments on the style and substance of this article and appreciate receiving information from you about youth programs, policy, and data.

Budget cuts could put Family Drug Court in jeopardy

Posted: Mar 17, 2010 2:56 PM CDT
Updated: Mar 18, 2010 9:20 PM CDT

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HONOLULU (Hawaii News Now) – As lawmakers go over the state budget, judiciary officials are watching closely. Employees are worried more cuts could put its 11 treatment courts in jeopardy.

The courts go beyond the criminal system to help people suffering from mental illness, abuse or addiction. Here’s a look at one court that helps not just patients, but their children as well.
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=12157057

Selected Recent Publications and Data Briefs

This subsection provides links to selected publications and briefs that include data relating to youth violence and related topics released or published within the past 12 months.

Children’s Exposure to Violence: A Comprehensive National Survey. (PDF 884 KB)
Source: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U. S. Department of Justice.
Crime in the United States. 2008.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice.
Electronic Media and Youth Violence: A CDC Issue Brief for Researches. (PDF 11.1 MB)
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 2007.
Source: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.
Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2009. (PDF 2.1 MB)
Source: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education. Available at:
Juvenile Arrests 2008. (PDF 760 KB)
Source: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice.http://www.safeyouth.org/scripts/statistics/statistics_data.asp

2010 Florida CSC State Policy Program
Early Childhood System of Care: A Proven Investment Strategy

During these tough economic times, states are discovering what early childhood experts have known for decades – policies that promote healthy development throughout a child’s early years create a foundation for later school achievement, economic productivity, responsible citizenship, and successful parenting.

States that support and invest in early childhood systems of care are seeing first-hand the positive outcomes in their communities. Juvenile crime rates drop. Gang violence is diminished. Child abuse and neglect is reduced. Children and their families are healthier and more self-sufficient. Students perform better in school.

Children are prepared to succeed. Early childhood systems also contribute to global economic outcomes, including a bigger and more qualified workforce, healthier communities, and a thriving consumer market. http://www.thechildrenstrust.org/fcsc-state-policy-program

Chicago;CBS2 investigation suggests Steinmetz and BEST high schools may be counting ghost students to inflate budgets.

Florida;NAPLES — Katalina Legros counts her blessing that she was able to take her newborn home when she left Gulf Coast Hospital after giving birth seven weeks ago.

The 39-year-old Naples resident knows the heartache all too well that mother and baby don’t always go home at the same time.

She’s got the Healthy Start Coalition of Southwest Florida to thank that both she and her baby, Mariah Legros, are healthy and her delivery went without a hitch.http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2010/apr/09/state-budget-cuts-could-threaten-lee-collier-healt/

Indiana;Indiana budget cuts target special needs kids
The Associated Press
Sunday, April 4, 2010 | 12:21 a.m.

Cash-strapped Indiana wants to scale back services for special-needs children placed in foster care.

The state would cut payments for hundreds of children with medical or emotional problems by moving them into cheaper care for children without special needs.

The move is part of a plan to cut $56 million from spending on the 10,000 children in state care. It follows a planned 10 percent cut in payments to foster parents. Many parents who receive up to $100 a day to care for special-needs children would be paid less than $25.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/apr/04/indiana-budget-cuts-target-special-needs-kids/

North Carolina Gang Violence Prevention;

http://seventeenb.org/pdfs/Stokes_09_10Community_Based_Youth_Gang_Violence_Prevention_Program_Agreement__GANG_ASSESSMENT.pdf

Dept of Justice Youth Gang Prevention and Intervention Program
http://ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/grants/solicitations/FY2010/YouthGangPrevention.pdf

Virginia, Governor’s Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act grant programs are intended to supplement the SADFSCA funds that flow directly from the Virginia Department of Education to every local school division for youth substance abuse, gang involvement and violence prevention programming.

For this award cycle, grants will be awarded to programs which emphasize prevention of gang involvement, realizing that early initiation of alcohol, tobacco and other drug use is a risk factor for youth gang involvement. In addition, community needs assessments regarding youth substance abuse, gang activity and violence may seek GOSAP SADFSCA funds. Projects in the following four categories will be funded:

http://www.gosap.virginia.gov/SDFSCA/announcement2010-2011.htm

National news;POVERTY DURING EARLY CHILDHOOD MAY LAST A LIFETIME
Children raised in poverty in their first five years are more likely to feel its effects well into adulthood.

By Jessica Marshall | Mon Feb 22, 2010 12:29 PM ET

According to the researchers, the earlier poverty intervention efforts begin within a child’s lifetime, the better the chances of that child overcoming the effects of poverty when he or she becomes an adult.
Getty Images
THE GIST:

Poverty during early childhood is correlated with lower adult income.
Childhood poverty causes lasting effects on the brain and on the way DNA is expressed.

Because early childhood is so important, researchers advise policies to address these problems should focus on the youngest children.

http://news.discovery.com/human/poverty-children-income-adults.html

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amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com

As a guardian ad-Litem, I have seen plenty of cases where unsavory family members and other questionable practices become the only available answer to a family that cannot find daycare.

The child pays, the family suffers, and the community bears the burden of troubles that arise as the stresses and chaos build in our neighborhoods.

The return on investment of subsidized daycare is high. Allowing parents to work, children to learn and thrive in healthy environments is what gets young kids prepared to enter school and do well. The first step in becoming a healthy citizen.

Marketwire

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Determined-Stop-Childcare-Cuts-Parents-Deliver-Giant-Budget-Cookie-Finance-Minister-1136426.htm

Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care (OCBCC)

Mar 23, 2010 12:53 ET
Determined to Stop Childcare Cuts, Parents Deliver Giant “Budget Cookie” to Finance Minister

WINDSOR, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – March 23, 2010) – A dozen Windsor area daycare parents delivered a giant “budget cookie” to Ontario MPP Dwight Duncan’s office today asking the Finance Minister to “chew this over” before finalizing a budget they fear may contain up to $63.5 million in cuts. The cookie was decorated with what the parents say are “all the numbers the Minister needs” including how many centres will close and how many spaces will be lost if proposed cuts are in Ontario’s 2010 spring budget.

At stake, these parents say, is $63.5 million for 7600 subsidies that help families access affordable child care in Ontario.

The pizza sized cookie delivered today to Duncan’s Windsor constituency office was decorated in coloured icing that read: “budget cookie” all around the edge.

The centre of the cookie, also decorated with icing, read “7600 spaces” and “300 centres” indicating how many child spaces will be lost and how many centres are expected to close if Duncan allows the $63.5 million in cuts to find their way into his Thursday budget.

“This is about ensuring spaces for children,” said one of the parents, Shannon Porcellini, “and it’s about parents who rely on subsidies to work and retrain and child care centres that need funding to remain viable.”

Porcellini also cited research by economist Robert Fairholm predicting 3,480 jobs could be lost by parents who can’t go to work because of a loss of daycare spaces if the cuts proceed and a further 3,030 in job losses in the child care sector.

The loss of subsidies comes at the same time as 4 and 5 year olds are being transferred from community based child care into the school system under the province’s early learning plan this coming September.

The removal of over 35% of the children they care for will cause centres to close across the province.

The government’s own analysis estimates that in this year alone 48% of child care centres will be affected.

For background information about child care in Ontario please see www.childcareontario.org.

For more information, please contact
Shannon Porcellini
519-562-1572

Related Articles;

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED474512&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED474512

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/25/AR2009032503477.html
http://www.invisiblechildren.org/?p=1553 Comparing these same indicators in other developed nations the results are very different. ]]> This generation has it in for American children. By all significant indicators, U.S. youth will not be as educated, financially well off, live as long, or be as healthy as their parents. Comparing these same indicators in other developed nations the results are very different.

For many years the U.S. was a leader among the developed nations in health, quality of life, education, and mortality. Not so any more. America’s public policies have become punitive to where we now have 5% of the world’s population & 25% of its prison population & there were 13 million prison and jail releases last year alone.

Public policy makers have been satisfied building more and bigger prisons, and schizophrenic about dealing with dysfunctional families and the problems their children pose to the schools and larger community.

Any valid study of U.S. institutions shows a direct correlation between abused and neglected children, failed schools, unsafe / unhealthy communities and full prisons.

A serious look at other industrialized nations (and many emerging nations) will show that these nations do not suffer the same terrible crime problems, failing school problems, and generational poverty issues because their public policy makers have come to understand that investments in early childhood programs & support for young families are a much better investment than prisons and jails.

Some states are fighting to keep programs that protect and foster their poor and vulnerable children, but many are not.

What can be said to people that would deny health, education, and the most basic needs for the babies and young children living among them that would change their mind to a more compassionate (and practical) understanding that we all benefit when healthy children become healthy citizens?

Perhaps, remind them that all religions demand caring for the weakest and most vulnerable among them.

“When institutions are defined by what they create, instead of what they were designed to create”, it must be said that American courts and legislatures are now creating preteen moms and juvenile felons.

*(Kathleen Long, DANCING WITH DEMONS)

Caseloads were too high before the downturn, & funding from non profits and governmental agencies has been significantly reduced, leaving more dysfunctional families & their abused and neglected children without help.

The future holds more and bigger juvenile detention centers, jails, and prisons until this trend reverses & our communities grasp the wisdom of investing in youth.

The rest of this article is a compilation of recent updates on how states from around the nation are managing troubled families and their abused and neglected children;

Thank those of you who have sent me important articles. I appreciate the information.

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

amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com


California

California
Florida

Florida
Florida

Georgia

Hawaii

Illinois

Illinois

Iowa http://www.globegazette.com/articles/2010/03/04/news/latest/doc4b8f5630d99ec604150445.txt#vmix_media_id=11609441 , read below (does not link well)

Michigan

Minnesota

Minnesota

Nevada

New York

Ohio (Forced to Live In Cages Article Link)
Pennsylvania


Tennessee
Texas
Texas
Texas
Texas

Washington

Wyoming

Thursday, March 4, 2010 12:49 AM CST
Child abuse cases climb across Iowa
By CHARLOTTE EBY, Globe Gazette Des Moines Bureau

DES MOINES — Iowa child abuse cases were up in 2009, reversing a two-year decline, according to figures released Wednesday by the Iowa Department of Human Services.

Iowa Thursday, March 4, 2010 12:49 AM CST
Child abuse cases climb across Iowa
By CHARLOTTE EBY, Globe Gazette Des Moines Bureau

DES MOINES — Iowa child abuse cases were up in 2009, reversing a two-year decline, according to figures released Wednesday by the Iowa Department of Human Services.

Officials reported an 11 percent increase in both the reports of abuse and the findings of abuse or neglect. They cited the down economy as a likely contributing factor to the rise in cass.

In North Iowa, however, the number of cases in 2009, though up slightly from 2008, are still significantly lower than the numbers from 2005 through 2007.

There were a total of 1,377 cases reported in North Iowa in 2009. Of those 374 were determined to be founded.

That’s up from 1,226 cases reported and 369 founded in 2008, increases of 9 percent and 1.4 percent respectively.

But the number of cases reported in North Iowa counties in 2007 was 2,033, and the number of cased founded was 715.

Individual North Iowa county totals are in the chart on Page A1.

Heightened awareness of child abuse and high-profile cases may have contributed to the increases noted statewide, according to experts.

“There’s definitely more stress on families because of the economy, and so we think that has some impact, and this probably is the only logical thing right now to point to,” said DHS Director Charles Krogmeier.

Officials say domestic violence and substance abuse remain the main risk factors for children.

In 2009, investigators completed 25,814 assessments for child abuse or neglect, up 11 percent from 2008.

Those complaints or “intakes” typically come from a hotline, school officials, medical personnel or law enforcement.

“We’re getting more reports and investigating more,” Krogmeier said.

Roughly two-thirds of those investigations showed no abuse occurred. A total of 7,011 were founded abuse cases last year involving 10,148 children, compared to 6,141 founded cases in 2008. Founded abuse cases topped 7,900 in 2006.

The biggest share of abuse cases were the denial or critical care or neglect, which made up 81 percent. These types of cases commonly involve parents who are impaired by drug use or mental incapacity, officials said.

Physical abuse cases made up 9.3 percent of abuse cases. A majority of the children in abuse cases were 5 years old or younger.

Krogmeier said the number of workers who complete the assessments remains about the same number as last year despite budget cuts.

Some of those workers are expected to participate in an early retirement program offered to state workers this year, but Krogmeier said they expect to be able to fill those positions. He said they would continue to try to target resources to child protection efforts.

State Rep. Renee Schulte, R-Cedar Rapids, said the increasing numbers of abuse cases could not have come at a worse time. Lawmakers are still grappling with budget constraints as the state faces declining revenues.

Schulte is concerned an early retirement program for state workers would mean about one-third of frontline child abuse workers have the potential to retire.

“We’re already short and already not having enough people to get it done,” Schulte said.

— Bob Steenson of the Globe Gazette added to this report.

Texas;CHILD PROTECTION

The center is deeply committed to safeguarding Texas’ six million children from abuse or neglect.
Recent Child Protection Publications
Implementing the Permanent Care Assistance Program (03/11/2010)

The new permanency care assistance program, which pays relatives who take permanent custody of a child in state care, is well intended. But due to federal and practical constraints, implementation may not go as planned. That is why the 2017 sunset provision is important. It allows sufficient time for the program to get up and running but provides an important “out” if the program does not achieve its intended goals.

CPPP senior policy analyst Jane Burstain delivered this testimony on the permanency care assistance program to the Texas Senate Committee on Health and Human Services.

The State of Texas Children: Breakfast Briefing (01/14/2010)

Join Dr. Harriett Romo, Director, UTSA CAPRI/Mexico Center, and Frances Deviney, Ph.D., Texas Kids Count Director, for a breakfast briefing on the well-being of children in San Antonio, Bexar County, and across Texas.

New Analysis Anticipates Child Poverty Increase (01/7/2010)

More than one of every five Texas children, or nearly 1.5 million kids, lived in poverty during 2008—and when data from 2009 are compiled, that number is likely to increase to one of every four kids, according to a new analysis released Wednesday by First Focus and Brookings researcher Julia Isaacs. The increase in poor children is placing an even heavier burden on an already strained network of private charities and state agencies already reeling from the triple punch of inadequate funding, staffing shortages, and a broken eligibility system that withholds critical assistance to needy families.

Child Abuse and Neglect Deaths in Texas (12/16/2009)

Recently, a spotlight has been focused on deaths from child abuse and neglect in Texas. Texas does have a higher death rate per capita compared to other states. The exact reasons for the higher rate are difficult to determine but seem to be related to two factors. First, other states may be undercounting their child abuse and neglect deaths. Second, Texas probably has a larger number of child abuse and neglect deaths per capita related to the difficult circumstances families face in Texas, specifically high child poverty, a high teen birth rate, and low child abuse and neglect prevention.

Fostering Connections Creates a Conflict in Federal Law Regarding the Preferred Permanency Model (09/29/2009)

CPPP Senior Policy Analyst Jane Burstain recently offered testimony to the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means regarding the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act.

Child Protective Services and the 81st Legislature (07/16/2009)

The investments the 79th and 80th Legislatures made in the child protective services (CPS) system are paying off. More children are safely staying in their homes or with relatives and, when that is not possible, more are being adopted. As a result, fewer children are in foster care. The 81st Legislature built on these successes, making additional investments in CPS and passing legislation to further reduce the number of children entering the state’s care and improve outcomes for those children who do. This policy page discusses the details of that legislation and what needs to be done next.

The Gates Case: What It Means for Child Protective Services (06/26/2009)

In July 2008, the United States Court of Appeal for the Fifth Circuit published a decision in the case of Gates v. the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). The Fifth Circuit set guidelines under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution for state caseworkers to follow in making investigation and removal decisions in child protection cases. This policy page discusses what Gates means for caseworkers in the field, explores its impact on Child Protective Services (CPS), and makes recommendations about what the state and CPS need to do next.

The Texas School Disciplinary System and Foster Care Children (04/24/2009)

Research shows that abused and neglected children are much more likely than their peers to misinterpret neutral situations as threatening, have poor impulse control, and engage in aggressive behavior with adults and other children. These behaviors present public schools with difficult challenges. Continuing our effort to explore school outcomes for students in foster care, in this paper we compare students in foster care to the general student population and explore differences in how they fare in the school discipline system.

House Better Funds Child Protective Services (04/21/2009)

The House budget funds 85 percent of what Child Protective Services (CPS) needs to keep children safe in their families or with relatives, or, when that is not possible, to successfully transition out of care. In contrast, the Senate budget funds only 15 percent. In conference, the Senate needs to move towards the House budget or it will risk more failed family and relative placements, forcing more children into the more expensive alternative of foster care and risking poorer outcomes for Texas’ most vulnerable children.

House Bill 2860, An Act Relating to the Fostering Connections to Success Act: Testimony to the House Human Services Committee (04/9/2009)

“We appreciate Representative Dukes for authoring this important legislation to provide better financial support to older children in the long-term care of the state and relative caregivers. Last year, Congress passed and President Bush signed the Fostering Connections to Success Act. The act provides new federal matching funds to support extended assistance payments to older children who are adopted, extended foster care payments for older children in the long-term care of the state who are pursuing an education or a job and payments to support relatives who take permanent custody under certain circumstances. (Under the federal law, permanent custody is referred to as guardianship and under Texas law as conservatorship.) House Bill 2860 creates programs that will take advantage of these new federal funds while the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has requested the state general revenue required to fund the state share of the costs.”

Senate Bill 1411, An Act Relating to the Fostering Connections to Success Act: Testimony to the Senate Health & Human Services Committee (04/7/2009)

“We appreciate Senator West for authoring this important legislation to provide better financial support to older children in the long-term care of the state and relative caregivers. Last year, Congress passed and President Bush signed the Fostering Connections to Success Act. The act provides new federal matching funds to support extended assistance payments to older children who are adopted, extended foster care payments for older children in the long-term care of the state who are pursuing an education or a job and payments to support relatives who take permanent custody under certain circumstances. (Under the federal law, permanent custody is referred to as guardianship and under Texas law as conservatorship.) Senate Bill 1411 creates programs that will take advantage of these new federal funds while the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has requested the state general revenue required to fund the state share of the costs.

HB 2040, Establishing Kinship Guardian Assistance: Testimony to House Human Services Committee (03/26/2009)

CPPP testified on HB 2040, which would provide subsidized kinship care for abused and neglected children. While we support kinship care, we recommended that the Legislature study the issue over the upcoming interim.

Child Protective Services Issues for the 81st Legislative Session: Invited Testimony to the House Human Services Committee (03/10/2009)

The 79th and 80th Legislatures made significant financial investments in Child Protective Services (CPS). CPS used those resources to improve investigations, to keep more children safe in their homes or with relatives, and to increase the number of adoptions for children who could not return to their parents’ care. But challenges remain. To meet these challenges and maintain the momentum of success, the 81st Legislature must continue to invest in CPS.

The 2010-2011 Budget and Child Protective Services: Testimony to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services (02/24/2009)

The 79th and 80th legislatures made significant financial investments in Child Protective Services (CPS). CPS has used those resources to improve investigations, keep more children safe in their homes or with relatives, and to increase the number of adoptions for children who could not return to their parents’ care. It is important that the 81st legislature maintain this momentum of success and continue to invest in CPS so that recent gains are not lost and future challenges can be met.

Federal Funds for Texas CPS (02/23/2009)
Texas relies heavily on federal funds to pay for child protection. This Policy Page describes the major sources of federal funds and their uses. It also discusses policy recommendations of the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care and the Kids are Waiting: Fix Foster Care Now campaign.

The 2010-2011 Budget and Child Protective Services: Testimony to the Texas Senate Finance Committee (02/12/2009)

The 79th and 80th legislatures made significant financial investments in Child Protective Services (CPS). CPS has used those resources to improve investigations, keep more children safe in their homes or with relatives, and to increase the number of adoptions for children who could not return to their parents’ care. It is important that the 81st legislature maintain this momentum of success and continue to invest in CPS so that recent gains are not lost and future challenges can be met.

A Better Understanding of Caseworker Turnover within Child Protective Services (02/4/2009)

As every parent knows, children need stability and consistency. For children involved in the child welfare system, who often come from and continue to live in chaotic circumstances, a caseworker may be their only continuous and stable relationship. High caseworker turnover, however, disrupts continuity and stability. To address this problem, this policy paper analyzes turnover data on Texas’ child protective services (CPS) caseworkers and makes recommendations about how turnover can be reduced.

State’s New Managed Health Care Model for Foster Children (11/17/2008)

Senate Bill 6 in 2005 directed HHSC to create a new health care delivery model to provide foster children with comprehensive services, a “medical home,” and coordinated access to care. HHSC worked with the DFPS to develop STAR Health, a new Medicaid managed-care model for foster children, which was implemented on April 1, 2008. This report explores the initial implementation of the program and STAR Health’s potential to improve health outcomes for foster children.

New Federal Foster Care Legislation: What It Means for Texas (11/3/2008)

On October 7, 2008, the President signed the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 (H.R. 6893). The act overhauls the federal child welfare structure for the first time since the Adoptions and Safe Families Act in 1997. The law contains new requirements, changes federal financing for adoptions, and provides additional financial assistance for various optional programs. For Texas, none of the changes require new legislation, though the state must appropriate additional funding to fully benefit from the provisions of the new act. This policy paper discusses provisions of the federal legislation and the potential for helping Texas children.

CPPP Applauds Presidential Signing of Legislation to Shore Up Foster Care and Adoptions in The U.S. (10/8/2008)
The Center for Public Policy Priorities (CPPP) today applauded presidential signing of the Fostering Connection to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act. The Act contains substantial improvements to the U.S. foster care system. Without this legislation, our nation’s current federal adoptions incentives program would have expired this month.

CPPP Hails U.S. Senate Passage of Adoption Incentives Bill, Urges Quick Presidential Action (09/23/2008)
The Center for Public Policy Priorities today announced that the U.S. Senate passed the Fostering Connection to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, which contains sweeping and comprehensive improvements to the U.S. foster care system. Without this legislation, our nation’s current federal adoptions incentives program would expire on September 30.

Drawing the Line between Public and Private Responsibility in Child Welfare: The Texas Debate (09/4/2008)

Protecting children and strengthening families is difficult, complicated work. Doing it well requires successfully engaging the entire community—both the public and private sectors. In this report, we explore the issues raised by how a state draws the line between public and private responsibility, and we make specific policy recommendations. The report compares Texas to the two states that have most completely privatized, Kansas and Florida.

Testimony on H.R. 5466 – Invest in Kids Act (03/6/2008)
Policy Analyst Tiffany Roper submitted testimony in support of the Invest in Kids Act, which reforms many outdated federal policies and gives states the ability to significantly improve their child welfare systems — keeping children out of care and decreasing the amount of time that children who must be in care spend in care.

Report Card on the Education of Foster Children (02/11/2008)
The public educates children because of our common interest in ensuring that children become responsible and productive adults and to provide an opportunity to every child to achieve their potential. Unfortunately, several national studies show that we aren’t doing a good job educating foster children. Foster children have lower test scores, lower graduation rates, and less post-secondary education. This policy page examines the problem and makes recommendations.

New Report: Lack of Child Abuse & Neglect Prevention Costs the U.S. Over $100 Billion a Year (01/29/2008)
According to a new economic impact analysis by Prevent Child Abuse America, child abuse and neglect cost the United States nearly $104 billion a year. Child abuse and neglect are preventable, yet in 2006, nearly 68,000 Texas children—one million kids nationwide–were confirmed victims of child maltreatment. A just-released study by Kids Are Waiting, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts, finds that the unavailability of federal child welfare funding for prevention programs and services is in part to blame. On average, only 10 percent of federal money dedicated for child welfare can currently be used to prevent child abuse and neglect. According to the report, 8% of federal dollars allocated to Texas for child welfare were used for prevention in 2006. Both reports are available at http://www.kidsarewaiting.org.

Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention in Texas and Nationally (01/29/2008)
The old proverb that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is especially relevant in terms of prevention of child abuse and neglect. Child abuse and neglect are preventable, yet in 2006, nearly 68,000 Texas children were confirmed victims of child abuse and neglect. Nationwide that number jumps to one million. While the federal government spent over 7 billion dollars on child welfare in 2007, most of the federal funding available for state use is restricted to spending on children who have been removed from their homes and placed in foster care. Little money is left to provide the prevention services that can prevent child abuse and neglect from occurring and children from coming into foster care in the first place.

Creating Foster Care Capacity for Abused and Neglected Children (01/14/2008)
When the state takes an abused or neglected child from their parent, a court names the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) the legal custodian of the child—essentially making the state the parent of the child. The state must then do for the child what any parent must—provide food, clothing, and shelter. Since January 2007, however, the state has had to keep over 500 abused and neglected children for at least one night, some for more, in a state office or a hotel room. Every region in the state has had to use offices or hotels, though some more than others. This is only one manifestation of a growing problem—the state does not have enough foster homes. This policy page examines this problem and makes recommendations for capacity building.

Federal Funds for Texas CPS (10/8/2007)
Texas relies heavily on federal funds to pay for child protection and foster care. Unfortunately, federal funds are often too limited or too inflexible to meet our state’s child welfare needs. CPPP’s latest policy brief describes the major sources of federal funds and their uses. It also discusses recent policy recommendations to reform federal funding of child protection made by the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care and other experts.

Testimony on Judicial Commission on Children, Youth, and Families (09/26/2007)
Yesterday the Texas Supreme Court held an historic public hearing on whether to establish a permanent judicial commission on children, youth, and families to strengthen court performance in child protection cases and foster collaboration to improve the child protection system. CPPP testified in favor of the commission. The archived tape of the public hearing is available at http://stmarytxlaw.mediasite.com/stmarytx/Catalog/

Report: More Than 1 in 4 Latino Foster Children Lives With a Grandparent or Relative (09/20/2007)
A new national report finds that 26% of Latino children in foster care are living with relatives. Nationwide, 23% of all foster children live with relatives. In Texas, in open CPS cases, the percentage of children living with relatives is about 26%, though most are not in paid foster care. The large number of children living with relatives underscores the need to make it easier for more relative families to care for their kin. In Congress, legislation is on the table that would allow states to use federal foster care funds to subsidize guardianships and link relative caregivers to a range of services to help the children in their care. The bipartisan Kinship Caregiver Support Act (KCSA) would extend to relatives the same benefits received by those who foster children or adopt children from the system.

Celebrate Grandparents’ Day by Urging Congress to Support Relative Caregivers (09/7/2007)
Every child needs a safe, permanent family to help them grow and flourish. Grandparents and other relatives can be an important resource to provide permanent homes for thousands of children in foster care– but they need the same supports any other foster family gets. Common-sense reforms in Congress could help make this happen– if you add your voice to call for change. In honor of Grandparents’ Day (September 9) call your senators and representative and ask for their support of the bipartisan Kinship Caregiver Support Act (S.661/HR 2188). This federal legislation would help the more than 124,000 children– 1 out of every 4 in foster care– who live with grandparents or other relatives. The bill would enable those relatives to become permanent guardians while maintaining crucial financial and social services support for things like medical visits, food, school clothes, and educational tutoring.

Overview of Major Actions on CHIP, Medicaid and Child Protective Services (08/1/2007)
CPPP Associate Director Anne Dunkelberg and Policy Analyst Tiffany Roper presented an overview of major actions on the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Medicaid, and Child Protective Services to the San Antonio Nonprofit Council.

Analyses to Help You Prepare for the Conference Committee Budget Debate (05/1/2007)
CPPP has revised its overview of the differences between House and Senate state budget proposals for 2008 and 2009. More detailed side-by-side comparisons for Education, Protective Services, Medicaid/CHIP, Public Health, Assistive & Rehabilitative Services, and Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS) are also available. Texas can afford to meet all its needs. Texas has at least $3 billion more in General Revenue that the legislature could appropriate. In addition, the legislature could redirect $1.4 billion in the House and Senate proposals that would only undo past payment deferrals. Undoing these payment deferrals has no purpose except to shelter money to pay for tax cuts after 2009. If the legislature appropriated this entire $4.4 billion to meet today’s needs, Texas would still have another $4.3 billion in its Rainy Day Fund to meet an emergency of any sort.

Children Released by TYC Will Hit CPS Hard (04/11/2007)
TYC recently notified Child Protective Services that CPS must find homes for many of the children TYC is releasing. Almost 100 of the children at TYC are in the state’s conservatorship (meaning that before the child was committed to TYC, a court removed the child from the parent’s custody and gave responsibility to CPS), though we do not have a figure for how many of these are scheduled to be released. TYC is also asking CPS to take children for whom TYC cannot locate parents or whom the parents refuse to pick up. TYC releases will hit CPS hard because these TYC children are hard to place—a child coming out of TYC can’t go into just any foster home—and CPS already has a foster care capacity crisis. In February, 42 children spent a combined total of 52 nights sleeping in a state office building. CPS is now putting children up in hotels.

Privatization of State Foster Care and Adoption Services: An Idea Whose Time Has Come or a Disaster in the Making? (04/3/2007)
Child Protective Services (CPS) in the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) employs specialists who recruit, train, and monitor foster and adoptive parents and complete adoptions. CPS also contracts with private providers for these services. Some argue that the state should maintain this public-private system. Others argue that the state should use only private providers. This Policy Page explores the pros and cons of each approach.

Privatizing Welfare Services Would Put Profit Above Children: Austin American-Statesman (03/19/2007)
Earlier this week, Texas announced the termination of its contract with Accenture, the private company the state hired to enroll Texans in health care, food stamps, and TANF cash assistance. Although privatization was supposed to save the state money and improve services to families, thousands of the most vulnerable Texans were wrongly denied benefits and the state didn’t save a dime. Despite the failure of this privatization experiment, legislation is still in the works to privatize another essential state service — Child Protective Services (CPS), the child welfare arm of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). CPS investigates reports of child abuse and neglect and works to protect these children.

Strengthening Child Protective Services: Comparing SB 758, HB 2140, and HB 3916 with HB 1361 (03/14/2007)
In 2005, the 79th Texas Legislature considered whether to privatize any or all of the child protective responsibilities of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS). At that time, a push to privatize resulted in a mandate to completely privatize case management and substitute care services throughout the state by 2011, with the first region to be privatized by the end of 2007. After contract difficulties, however, implementation of this mandate was put on hold. This legislative session, privatization is under reconsideration. This policy page examines privatization and whether it is the best approach to improving Texas’ child welfare system.

Strengthening Child Protective Services: An Analysis of DFPS’s LAR and Senate Bill 758 (03/5/2007)
This policy page provides CPPP’s analysis of the Legislative Appropriation Request for Child Protective Services, as well as Chairman Nelson’s CPS bill for this session, SB 758.

The Federal Role in Funding Child Protection: How Eliminating the “Lookback” Could Help Texas (02/7/2007)
Nationally, in 1998, more than half of the children in foster care were eligible for federal support, but, by 2005, fewer than half were—an estimated 35,000 fewer children. Experts project that the number of children eligible for support will continue to decline by about 5,000 a year. Many factors contribute to this decline, including changes in state policies and demographics. A new analysis by KIDS ARE WAITING: Fix Foster Care Now, led by The Pew Charitable Trusts, with CPPP as a partner, shows that part of the decline is the result of the federal “lookback” policy. This policy makes a child’s eligibility for federal funds dependent on whether their family would have qualified for support in 1996 under the rules of the now-defunct Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).

New National Report: 35,000 Fewer Abused & Neglected Children Eligible for Federal Support; Texas Children at Risk (02/7/2007)
Over the past decade, thousands of foster children and the states responsible for them have lost critical federal support and this problem is only projected to get worse, according to a study just released by KIDS ARE WAITING: Fix Foster Care Now.

Judicial Leadership and Child Protection (01/22/2007)
Across the nation, child welfare judges are taking on a new role—participating in collaborations designed to strengthen the child welfare system, such as multi-disciplinary task forces or court improvement projects. As judicial leadership increases, however, questions have arisen regarding the limits on judicial leadership. When does exercising leadership to improve the system compromise impartiality in individual cases? This policy brief addresses the limitations on judicial leadership in Texas and discusses where judicial leadership is not only appropriate, but also necessary.

Lawyers and Child Protection (01/22/2007)
For years, many have complained about the quality of legal representation in child protection cases. In 2005, the Texas legislature addressed these longtime criticisms through Senate Bill 6 (SB 6), which reformed many aspects of the child welfare system, including representation of children and parents. Much remains to be done, however. The good news is that unlike many challenges facing the state, it is possible to significantly strengthen legal representation in child protection cases in a short period with limited funds. This policy brief provides an overview of the issues, discusses the new provisions of Senate Bill 6, and recommends additional ways to make representation more effective for DFPS, parents, and children.

Presentations at the United Way of Metro Tarrant County’s Pre-Legislative Health and Human Services Public Policy Forum (11/13/2006)
Celia Hagert and Tiffany Roper presented on outsourcing public benefits administration and privatizing the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services at the United Way of Metro Tarrant County’s public policy forum.

Comments on HHSC’s Proposal for Comprehensive Medical Care for Children in Foster Care (08/2/2006)
CPPP prepared comments in response to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission’s proposal for a comprehensive medical system for children in foster care.

Federal Funds for Texas CPS (05/17/2006)
Texas relies heavily on federal funds to pay for child protection and foster care. This Policy Brief describes the major sources of federal funds and their uses. It also discusses the recommendations of the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care and describes recent changes in federal funding.

CPPP’s Comments on HHSC’s Outsourcing Proposal (05/12/2006)
CPPP prepared these comments in response to the Texas Department of Health and Human Services Commission’s draft proposal relating to an independent evaluation of outsourcing case management and services in the foster care system.

CPPP’s Comments on DFPS’ Outsourcing Proposal (03/20/2006)
CPPP prepared these comments in response to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services’ draft proposal relating to outsourcing of case management and services to children and families in the foster care system.

CPPP’s Comments on HHSC’s Proposal to Develop a Medical System for Children in Foster Care (03/20/2006)
CPPP prepared comments in response to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission’s draft proposal to develop a medical system for children in foster care.

Who’s Who and What to Do in the Texas Child Protection System (01/30/2006)
CPPP is excited to share with you a short brochure we’ve developed to build collaborations in child protection and spread awareness of the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care’s court improvement recommendations. CPPP is involved in this work as the Texas partner of Home At Last, a national Pew initiative to ensure that foster children are placed in safe and stable homes as quickly as possible.

A Holiday Wish for Foster Children: Gilmer Mirror (12/26/2005)
It’s difficult to separate the thought of children from the spirit of the season. So full of hope and happiness, children truly embody the magic of the holidays. But for the nearly 28,000 Texas kids who will spend the holidays in foster care, the season is not so bright.

How Texas Can Help Lawyers Help Children: Austin American-Statesman (10/14/2005)
Aimee Blanchard, a 2002 graduate of The University of Texas School of Law, went to law school to become a child welfare attorney. She even spent a year working with abused and neglected children at the Children’s Rights Clinic, a hands-on clinic at UT. As a student attorney representing the legal interests of child clients, Ms. Blanchard did a lot of things that practicing lawyers do– interviewing clients, developing legal strategies for her cases, and arguing her clients’ positions in the courtroom.

National Study: Student Loan Debt Keeps Lawyers from Entering or Staying in the Child Welfare Field (09/28/2005)
Too many of the nearly 28,000 kids in Texas’ foster care system (and the over 500,000 foster children nationwide) lack stable legal representation and are voiceless in the court proceedings that profoundly affect their lives. A first-ever study of children’s attorneys reveals why: many lawyers cannot afford to enter or remain in this low-paying practice area due to overwhelming student loan debt. Over two-thirds (68%) of lawyers surveyed owe at least $50,000 in student loan debt and nearly a quarter (24%) owe $75,000 or more.

Home At Last (09/1/2005)
CPPP is the Texas partner of Home at Last: Moving Children in Foster Care to Safe, Permanent Families (HAL), an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts. HAL is a national and state public education and outreach campaign about the recommendations to enhance federal financing and court oversight of child welfare cases made by the blue-ribbon Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care. HAL focuses on the court recommendations—facilitating better and timelier court decisions related to children’s safety, permanence, and well-being. You can learn more about the Pew Commission’s work and recommendations at www.pewfostercare.org.

Houston KIDS COUNT Conference on Children Powerpoint Presentations (06/15/2005)
The following presentations were given at the Houston KIDS COUNT Conference on Children, a half-day conference on children’s issues in the wake of the 79th Legislative Session.

Statement of F. Scott McCown Regarding Child Protective Services Legislation (05/27/2005)
To answer how child protection fared this session, one must study both the final appropriations bills and Senate Bill 6.

Privatize protective services? Let’s not: Fort Worth Star-Telegram (05/15/2005)
The Texas House has just passed legislation to have private corporations take over the job of ensuring the safety of our abused children and getting them into permanent homes. The proposed legislation calls for firing about 1,700 Child Protective Services caseworkers.

Memo to Conferees on Senate Bill 6: Privatization of Case Management (04/27/2005)
In their different versions of Senate Bill 6, both the Senate and the House require the Department of Family and Protective Services to discontinue its foster and adoption units and outsource all foster care and adoption services. The Senate and the House differ, however, with regard to privatizing case management. The Senate authorizes a regional pilot to test the concept. The House mandates statewide implementation. The conference committee will have to choose between these two approaches.

Scott McCown Statement: House Version of Senate Bill 6 (04/19/2005)
The House made significant changes to Senate Bill 6. In introducing those changes, Chairman Hupp said that the Senate plan did not go far enough. In our judgment, the reverse is true. The House plan goes too far by turning over children in the legal care of the state to private companies. We hope that the Senate can prevail on the House in conference to move toward the Senate plan.

Call to Action for Child Protection (04/15/2005)
Strengthening child protection is critically important. This call to action advises you about what is happening and what you can do to make your voice heard.

CPS Reform Side by Side (04/15/2005)
CPPP’s analysis of where the House and Senate bills stand as of April 15, before the full House vote. Read Call to Action for Child Protection for complete details.

CPS: Is the Legislature Going to Make Things Worse for Texas Children and Families? (04/6/2005)
In an earlier brief, we analyzed privatization of case management. This brief compares CPS performance in Texas to the three states favorably cited by HHSC that have made the greatest use of privatization. Based on this comparison, this brief argues that the Senate proposal to pilot privatization is the only prudent course.

Privatization of Child Protective Services (03/28/2005)
This policy brief analyzes privatizing case management. The brief recommends that before the state privatizes case management, it pilot the concept, perhaps seeking a federal Title IV-E waiver to use federal funds in a demonstration project.

CPPP Statement on HHSC CPS Recommendations (01/6/2005)
Today, the Governor and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission released a long-awaited report on changes that should be made to child protective services (CPS) to safeguard the state’s six million children from abuse or neglect.

Child Protective Services Testimony (10/19/2004)
I am Scott McCown, the director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, the home of the Texas KIDS COUNT Project. Before I came to the center, I served as a district judge for fourteen years, hearing some 2,000 cases regarding child abuse and concerning some 4,000 children.

Funding Child Protection in Texas (10/1/2004)
Texans have recently heard one tragic story after another about the failure of our child protection system. In this policy brief, we explain that Texas has a small, inadequately funded child protection system. We then describe where the state gets money for child protection. Finally, we discuss emerging funding challenges.

Child Welfare (09/30/2004)
Presentation to Houston One Voice Collaborative.

Comments on the 2006-07 Legislative Appropriations Request of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (07/20/2004)
Some Texans think that over time the state has significantly increased support for child protective services, and that CPS remains troubled due to bad management or policies. An objective analysis shows this to be untrue.

Kinship Care in Texas (05/1/2004)
When the state must remove a child from a parent for the child’s protection, the child is often best served by placement with a relative, commonly called kinship care. When a judge makes a placement decision, however, the judge must determine the best interest of a particular child. This determination can be extraordinarily complex. In this policy brief, we discuss these complexities and make recommendations about how to enhance the use of kinship care.

Adoption Subsidies and Foster Families (04/13/2004)
Since the passage by Congress of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), Texas has significantly increased the number of adoptions.

Adoption of Minority Children (03/24/2004)
In 1994, Congress enacted the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act (MEPA), which prohibits states from delaying or denying adoption placements on the basis of race or ethnicity, but which allowed consideration of race and ethnicity in making placement decisions.

Testimony to Interim Committee on Minority Adoption (03/24/2004)
I am Scott McCown and I am testifying on behalf of the Center for Public Policy Priorities. The center has long been concerned about child well-being, and is the home of the Texas KIDS COUNT Project.

Adoption Efforts at the Texas Dept. of Family and Protective Services (03/18/2004)
We applaud the Speaker for his interim charge to this committee to study “ways to increase the adoption of special-needs children through efficiency in the Adoption Assistance Program.” Increasing adoptions of special-needs children is of course a subset of a larger question: How do we increase adoptions? But special-needs children do present special challenges.

Adoption Efforts at the Texas Dept. of Family and Protective Services: Testimony on Increasing Adoptions (03/18/2004)
We applaud the Speaker for his interim charge to this committee to study “ways to increase the adoption of special-needs children through efficiency in the Adoption Assistance Program.” Increasing adoptions of special-needs children is of course a subset of a larger question: How do we increase adoptions? But special-needs children do present special challenges.

Foster Care in Texas and Other States Faces a Federal Financing Straitjacket, Says New Report (03/11/2004)
As the effect of state budget cuts to various social services continues to surface in Texas communities, a report released today spotlights states’ troubled foster care systems and how these systems could be improved if states had the flexibility to provide more foster children and their families with critically needed services such as mental health and substance abuse programs.

Comments to the Pew Commission on Children in Foster Care Relating to Federal Financing (08/6/2003)
Our comments are divided into three parts: 1) an explanation of how child protection in Texas is different from other states; 2) an explanation of why block grants are particularly devastating to Texas children; and 3) an explanation of why the Title IV-E eligibility “look back” is particularly devastating to Texas children.

Child Protective Services/Foster Care Budget Cuts for 2004-05 (06/6/2003)
This Policy Page describes cuts in child welfare programs administered by the Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, which will receive General Revenue funding of $484 million in the biennium that begins September 1st–down from $529 million in 2002-03, for an overall cut of 9 percent in GR funding.

Preserve the safe house Bush built for children (03/3/2003)
Then-Gov. George W. Bush championed abused children, reforming laws and increasing funding for child protection. Everything he did for children, however, the 78th Legislature under Gov. Rick Perry will undo unless they fund Child Protective Services.

Testimony on Protective & Regulatory Services Budget in 2004-05 Appropriations Bill (02/25/2003)
I am F. Scott McCown, Executive Director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a non-partisan, non-profit policy research organization concerned about low- and moderate-income Texans. Child welfare is an important issue for the center; it has also long been a major interest of mine.

Child Well-Being Funding Needs in 2002-2003 (02/5/2001)
On Tuesday, February 6th, the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services (DPRS) is scheduled to have its budget request heard by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services. Individuals and groups who are concerned about state funding for child protective services (CPS), foster care, adult protective services, at-risk prevention programs for children and youth, child care regulation, and many other important DPRS programs will have a chance to testify at this hearing. This Policy Page summarizes important recent developments in DPRS funding.

All Grown Up, Nowhere to Go: Teens in Foster Care Transition (01/1/2001)
The Texas Foster Care Transitions Project, a research effort conducted by the Center for Public Policy Priorities, provides a first glimpse of a little-known but extremely vulnerable population of young people in Texas— foster youth who have transitioned from the care of the state to independence.

Child Protective Services Budget Issues (03/12/1999)
One health and human service budget issue that has successfully captured legislators’ attention and support is the need to increase funding for the Texas Department of Regulatory Services (DPRS), the state agency responsible for investigating and preventing abuse or neglect of Texas children and adults, regulating child care facilities, and providing foster care and adoption services for children who cannot remain in their biological families. An emergency spending package is likely to provide more money to DPRS in the remainder of this fiscal year, and the general appropriations act (HB 1/SB 2) will probably provide more resources for 2000 and 2001, although not as much as is needed to fully address Texas’ child abuse crisis.

Protective Services Threatened on Many Fronts (10/26/1995)
The Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services (DPRS), which operates the state’s Child and Adult Protective Services programs, receives funding from many federal sources. Not only does the agency rely upon traditional child welfare (i.e. child protective) funding sources like Title IV-E Foster Care and Title IV-B Child Welfare Services, DPRS also receives substantial federal funding from Title XIX Medicaid, Title XX Social Services Block Grant and Title IV-A Emergency Assistance. In all sixty percent — $298 million — of DPRS’s 1996 operating budget is projected to come from federal funding sources.

Texas recently refused almost a billion dollars from the federal government to improve its school system. Texas has suffered the lowest graduation rates in the nation with the worst racial disparities.

Houston schools superintendent wrote at the time; “I have 100,000 kids in Houston who don’t read at grade level”.

Georgia education officials recently ordered investigations at 191 schools across the state where they found evidence of tampering on answer sheets for the state’s standardized achievement test.

The list of inner city schools struggling to educate the children of those who could not get to (or for reasons of loyalty, love, or ethics) decided not to, escape to the suburbs where the schools still function is long.

My old high school, Edison, built in 1922, graduates less than 50% of its students, its sister school across town has graduated less than 30% of its students for five years running.

As a nation, we know that high school dropouts have a far greater chance of preteen pregnancy, years of costly incarceration and leading dysfunctional lives that they pass on to their children (who will repeat this cycle).

25% of America’s graduating seniors are now functionally illiterate, and U.S. graduation rates are among the worst in the world.

Today, many states are increasing their percentage of spending on juvenile justice and criminal justice while maintaining or reducing spending on education.

New York and California have been spending about $250,000 per year per juvenile in their juvenile justice systems. MN has reached the half a billion dollar mark for maintaining its prison system this year after five years of double digit growth.

We are spending more on prisons than on schools and we are getting more accomplished criminals than good students.

“What we do to our children, they will do to our society”

Kids At Risk Action seeks information about what is happening in your community that impacts abused and neglected children.

Send us your stories.

Comment here, or privately; Info@invisiblechildren.org

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I have posted what I think to be two well written perspectives of this issue. Please share your comments.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/us/12schools.html
New York Times
Board’s Decision to Close 28 Kansas City Schools Follows Years of Inaction
By SUSAN SAULNY
Published: March 11, 2010

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Like so many other public school parents, Reshonda Sanders felt confused on Thursday as she tried to comprehend why nearly half of the schools here, including her own alma mater, are to close for good at the end of the year. As the mother of two high school students, she was well aware of the district’s struggles.

Ed Zurga/Associated Press
Kansas City, Mo. officials will close about half of its schools.
Related

Kansas City to Close Nearly Half Its Schools (March 11, 2010)
Room for Debate: Does the Size of a School Matter?
“But even so, I thought, Could they be serious? Close almost 30 schools, all at once?” said Ms. Sanders, 34. “That’s devastating for us. How did it get to be this bad? What were they doing for years and years so that something like this happens just like overnight?”

In her bafflement, Ms. Sanders is not alone. In the wake of the Kansas City school board’s decision to shutter 28 of its 61 schools, many people were left scratching their heads. While school closings as a result of demographic change and tight budgets are commonplace across the country, rarely does a system lose half of itself in one sweep.

The sudden move suggests a depth of dysfunction here that is rarely associated with Kansas City, a lively heartland town with a reputation for order. But a closer look at the school board’s recent history reveals a chaotic, almost nonfunctioning body that put off making tough choices and even routine improvements for generations. Experts said that in the board’s years of inaction is a cautionary tale for school districts everywhere.

“This is extraordinary,” said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, a research group in Washington. “The school board was dysfunctional for years. There was very poor governance for a long period of time, and it was like a revolving door with superintendents.”

Mr. Jennings also said the board was plagued with “a general unwillingness to face the facts” of the chaos it created.

Students have been leaving the Kansas City public schools in droves. Close to 18,000 students exited to better suburban districts or charter schools in the last 10 years alone. The student enrollment is now 17,400 children, who are mostly black and impoverished.

And achievement levels in the schools are abysmal: Fewer than a third of elementary students in the city schools read at or above grade level. And in most of the schools, fewer than a quarter of students are proficient at their grade levels.

Faced with a $50 million deficit in its $300 million budget, the district decided to close the schools. The plan also calls for the elimination of 700 of 3,000 jobs, including teaching positions.

Education experts praised the new schools superintendent, John Covington, who was hired in April from the Pueblo, Colo., school district where he was also superintendent, for pushing for change. A former principal and teacher, Dr. Covington spent months researching and writing the Right-Sizing plan, and managed to win a 5-to-4 majority from the board.

Previous superintendents had failed in similar efforts to downsize the district.

“He put a mountain of information out there with statistics, and people finally understood what was happening, even if they didn’t like it,” said Duane Kelly, who has been a school board member for 10 years and voted in favor of the closings. “It was time.”

The local teachers’ union agreed. “We have buildings that are half empty,” said Andrea Flinders, the union president. “We recognized that schools needed to be closed, but the board wasn’t willing. This board is different.”

If the schools had fallen into bankruptcy, as was predicted before the closings, the state would have seized control, and made changes as it saw fit.

In 2006, the Council of the Great City Schools, a Washington-based coalition of the nation’s largest school districts, produced an extensive analysis of what was going wrong in the Kansas City schools. It concluded that the board wasted too much time on administrative trivia, its instructional program lacked “cohesion and forward momentum” and it had “no machinery” for intervening when students fell behind.

The council included advice in the report on how the schools could fix themselves, but little if any action appeared to have been taken as a result.

At times before Wednesday night’s vote, the board’s meeting threatened to fall into chaos, with members trading insults, not following rules of order and even crying. An angry audience shouted its general disapproval.

“This is too much, too fast,” said a parent, Carmen Edwards, after the vote.

Nakisha Eubanks, a mother of three students, said: “I don’t want my kids in this district, going through all this disruption. But I can’t move, and I don’t have transportation. So, this is it.”

Minneapolis Startribune.com March 8, 2010

Don Samuels, Chanda Baker, Sondra Samuels: As the teachers union digs in, it’s students who suffer
By DON SAMUELS, CHANDA BAKER, and SONDRA SAMUELS

On a personal level, union leaders such as Education Minnesota President Thomas Dooher no doubt care about our schools, teachers and communities. We all know many wonderful teachers in Education Minnesota’s ranks. They are our relatives, neighbors and friends.
Yet on issue after issue, Dooher stands defiantly in the school entrance, horn in hand, blocking any innovation that would lift black children from north Minneapolis out of the endless cycle of poverty and failure. Many leaders within the black community, including us, will not stand politely by and allow such injustice at the hands of Education Minnesota to happen any longer.

Only 34 percent of the Minneapolis district’s black students graduate from high school in four years, compared with almost 70 percent of whites, according to the latest state figures. Last year, only 8.6 percent of black students were proficient on state science tests, compared with 61.4 percent of white students.

Despite the crisis in our urban education system, Dooher publicly stated that he would rather lose hundreds of millions of dollars for our public schools than give up union positions on issues like performance pay and alternative teacher certification — strategies that President Obama supports for closing the achievement gap.

Well, Dooher got his wish last week, when Minnesota failed to become a finalist in the Race to the Top program and secure up to $250 million of the $4.35 billion competition. Make no mistake: Despite the public statement that “we’re obviously disappointed,” Dooher achieved his goal.

To their credit, almost 90 percent of Minnesota’s school districts and charter schools, as well as 28 union locals, including in Minneapolis and St. Paul, supported the president’s innovations, but it was not enough to override the state union’s opposition.

What is the union leader’s next target? Dooher opposes another proven innovation touted by the president — the alternative teacher certification bill under consideration in the Minnesota Legislature, which would widen the pool of qualified candidates entering the field from different paths and attract more minorities into the teacher ranks.

Minnesota has one of the largest achievement gaps in the nation, and we believe alternative teacher certification is one of the missing links as to why Minnesota’s urban core schools have not yet realized the success of many of their counterparts in other cities. Students trapped in consistently low-performing schools have been robbed of their right to a high-quality education and effective teachers. If the Legislature passes alternative teacher certification, it would open the pipeline to programs like Teach For America, which recruits top-notch teachers into high-needs classrooms.

Although Dooher has claimed otherwise, a growing body of extensive reputable research from the Urban Institute and others indicates that Teach For America teachers are as effective as veteran and fully certified teachers. On behalf of our struggling students, we need these talented individuals leading our kids to academic success.

We tout our predominantly white suburban schools as some of the best in the nation, which they are. Yet today the African-American, Hispanic and immigrant families living in north Minneapolis and many other neighborhoods in the urban core have few, if any, choices to send their children to quality schools that match our high-performing suburban schools.

Education Minnesota’s hollow defense of the status quo is a cynical, morally bankrupt agenda, which focuses more on protecting the adult members of teacher unions than protecting the interests of the state’s most vulnerable children. Dooher has become the last holdout for the failed status quo, one that has yielded no significant change to the achievement gap over the last three decades. His commitment to thwarting real reform has blocked every bridge that spans the racial and socioeconomic performance gap.

Other related works; Preparing for Prison? Inner-city Schools and the Extended Reach of Criminal Justice

http://www.allacademic.com/one/www/research/index.php?cmd=www_search&offset=0&limit=5&multi_search_search_mode=publication&multi_search_publication_fulltext_mod=fulltext&textfield_submit=true&search_module=multi_search&search=Search&search_field=title_idx&fulltext_search=%3Cb%3EPreparing+for+Prison%3F++Inner-city+Schools+and+the+Extended+Reach+of+Criminal+Justice%3C%2Fb%3E&PHPSESSID=fb5be97e8821beb4e1690544b38d298c

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2010/feb/17/social-services-to-feel-house-budget-cuts/

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/02/affordable_after-school_care_n.html

http://www.irp.wisc.edu/dispatch/2010/02/12/

http://www.edmondsun.com/local/x1834673907/Edmond-agency-sees-budget-cuts-growth-in-need

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/BOBMGAT17_20100217-195001/325011/

http://utahlegislaturewatch.org/2009/02/13/legislative-education-budget-committee-more-cuts-to-education-shorten-school-year/

http://www2.tricities.com/tri/news/local/article/va._education_officials_decry_k-12_budget_cuts/41715/

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/02/gov_patersons_budget_plan_woul.html

Kids At Risk Action seeks information about what is happening in your community that impacts abused and neglected children.

Send us your stories.

Comment here, or privately; Info@invisiblechildren.org

America’s aging population is retreating into retirement with its pensions and savings and leaving young families with failing schools, health systems, and communities.

The lack of financial or public support for day care, early childhood programs, schools & health care is being compounded by the increased political footballing of five year olds.

At Risk Children have been sold out to the pharmaceutical firms of our very young children as guinea pigs for Prozac, Ritalin, and other psychotropic medications (Ritalin was banned in Sweden in 1968 due to the increase in suicides).

Educators are expected to deal with the mental health issues of thousands of abused and neglected children in their classrooms each year & then be denigrated by political figures in election years.

At the same time, media & politicians are blaming the people working in the field instead of taking a constructive approach to understanding the issues and creating public policies that address the problems.

Building prisons has not worked (500M budget in MN this year), nor has under-serving abused and neglected children (double digit prison growth 4 of last 5 years).

There is nothing responsible or adult-like in accusing bad teachers for failed schools, or for blaming social workers when a baby is found in a dumpster. That is like blaming the police for the criminal in the squad car.

It is to our own best interest to approach these issues in a responsible fashion and make the investment in determining what needs to be done and then doing it.

We will continue to degrade our cities and spend far more money maintaining prisons, fighting crime, and paying for damage and insurance than we would if children received the attention they need to succeed in school and go on to lead productive lives.
The following are a few examples of the how various states are dealing with the current financial crisis and how it is impacting their public safety and children;


California Schools

Minnesota

North Carolina

http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2009/02/06/parents-and-youth-advocates-arms-over-budget-cuts

Data on Pre School Success in Florida

Good News In Early Childhood Care
Georgia
Georgia

Kansas

New York

Texas
Texas
Texas

Michigan

Illinois

Florida

Florida

Tennessee

Nevada

Missouri

Florida

California

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Become part of KARA’s email network by sending a request to join to; amy.rostronledoux@yahoo.com

Send KARA links to the important children’s policy news and stories in your state.

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/contact-us/

Kansas budget cuts and layoffs have created a backlog that appears to be growing dramatically.

Budget cuts hurting state child health program

By Marshanna Hester http://www.ktka.com/news/2010/feb/01/budget-cuts-hurting-state-child-health-program/

Almost all developed nations have affordable health care. Why are we unable to provide health care even for America’s children?

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2010
Budget cuts hurting state child health program

By Marshanna Hester
Forty thousand Kansas children depend on a state program for health insurance, but the state program is failing to do its job because of budget cuts.

Now some parents are worried how their children are going to get the care they need.

“I just couldn’t believe the state would cut a program for Kansas kids,” says Harold Stultz, a dad with children on Healthwave.

Like thousands of Kansas parents, Harold Stultz, who’s self-employed depends on state program Healthwave to provide health insurance for his children, including 12-year-old Keenan.

So when Keenan hurt his knee wrestling, Stultz assumed he had insurance. He was wrong.

“They said they had everything they need, but due to the economy and cutbacks they couldn’t process the applications.” says Stultz.

“I figured if it happened to me it happened to a lot of other people,” says Carmetti Klein a mom with children on Healthwave.

She’s right. Klein, just like Shultz, assumed her children were covered. She sent in her application on time, but learned it wasn’t processed.

“I got on the phone and told them I needed this processed,” says Klein.

The state’s not denying there are problems, so why are there delays? A spokesperson says he could: “verify that the delay in processing applications is due to a shortage of resources and manpower. We understand that many parents are frustrated at the delays in processing applications. This has been a problem since the recession really hit in Kansas in late 2008 and early 2009.”

It’s only getting worse because of the economy. The need is growing and applications are up dramatically.

Until his application is processed, Stultz will have to find money to treat his son’s knee. So far, that’s about $6,000.

‘It just upsets me that there are more people in my situation,” says Stultz.

Kansas provides low-cost health insurance to children who meet the following criteria: they must be under the age of 19, not covered by Medicaid, have a family income below 200 percent of the federal poverty level and who are not eligible for state employee health insurance.

The state says it is taking proactive steps to speed up processing, but it’s just now putting those into effect and it’s going to take time.

A specific number of pending applications is unavailable, but it is said to be a sizeable amount.

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When the truth is not reported, the critical problem is not perceived and no steps are taken to correct the underlying core issues. Things can only get worse until the system is destroyed.

Operating on false information forces people to make choices based on lies, causing more terrible results and disruption and eventual failure in what was a functioning system (education, social work, courts, or any other institution).

What would have been accomplished had these people succeeded in hiding the failure rate of Georgia’s students?

The next generation of students would be lacking in knowledge and critical thinking skills (just like the adults responsible in the tampering, but a hair less intelligent). Would they continue the convention of hiding critical information from the community?

When would the system implode?

Let this be an example of why systems need to be transparent.

Bad results are good BECAUSE we see them and can do something about them.

Not teaching 21st century American children how to learn, read, and compete in school is a disaster at many levels. Not supporting educators, parents, children, and public policy in this endeavor has cost us greatly as a nation. http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/03/02/kara-action-group-manifesto-for-early-childhood-education/

A stark example of no (or false) reporting comes from my state, MN.

When I wrote the book, INVISIBLE CHILDREN in 2004, there were 897 cases of reported child sex abuse in the state. Obviously, not a huge issue (897 out of about 5 million people = l/10,000th).

But it was not true. If it were true, I personally knew of about fifty children that year that had been sexually molested, some terribly (2 of which had been suicidal) and I was only one of about five hundred guardian ad-Litems in the state.

If the crime is not reported, there simply is not a significant problem and the public will not respond for funding, or programs, or support for families to address the issue. What is not seen as a problem will not be dealt with.

For instance; I have observed the same man that kicked the 7 year old girl so hard that she went into convulsions (after 4 years of sexually abusing her) to be still in the family 11 years later abusing other very young children.

Children in this nation at this time are having a hard time getting the attention they need and we are not telling the truth about their conditions.

Not educating children is a terrible failure for any community. Not keeping children save from the trauma of sexual abuse is criminal.

We are living in a time of (not uncommon) of political chaos.

Texas just refused almost a billion dollars it could have used to help its students read at grade level (they don’t).

Each state needs to police itself and at the very least, back off on the politics when it comes to the children.

Protect them. Educate them. “what we do to our children, they will do to our society” Pliny, 2500 years ago.

Here are articles related to this discussion that will give perspective to the commonality of child sex abuse and programs that deal with it;

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/02/01/20-of-western-australia-child-abuse-is-sex-abuse/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/01/24/crimes-against-children-study-new-hampshire-university/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/01/22/national-center-for-prosecution-of-child-abuse/

According to Geography Matters – Child Well-Being in the States Georgia ranks 42nd in infant mortality, 43rd in birth to teen moms, & 46th in child abuse deaths.

Georgia has ranked between 41st and 45th for many years among the states in education.

http://www.startribune.com/nation/84190787.html?elr=KArks:DCiUMEaPc:UiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr

http://mlb.msg.com/article/0cPh4sU7rxeoO

http://www.epistle.ws/Georgia.html

http://www.everychildmatters.org/National/Resources/Geography-Matters.html

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If this article strikes you, please forward it to your groups and news organizations.

These conversations need to be had if things are to improve for children in this nation.

2 Important truths; most of the youth in the juvenile justice system have come through child protection services, & a large percentage of these youth suffer from mental health issues.

Children don’t become involved in child protection systems unless they have suffered extended exposure to violence and deprivation in their birth homes.

The World Health Organizations definition of Torture is; Extended Exposure to Violence and Deprivation – Trauma.

New York is now spending about $250,000 per year / per youth in their juvenile justice system.

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

In my experience as a guardian ad-Litem in MN I have watched really terrible things happen to very troubled children under the direction of people and programs that were supposed to be “helping” the child.

One young boy walked home many miles without a coat, on a sub zero MN night (with no home to go to) from a juvenile facility after being severely abused.

While it would be easy to blame the people in the institutions, it is really the fault of poor public policy, resulting from lack of understanding of underlying issues.

Mental health is all about functioning within our communities. Bear that in mind as you read the New York Times article and the following KARA pieces.

My note on the following; The amount of psychotropic medications being proscribed to this population is enormous in relation to the the therapy that is needed but not available.

For Detained Youths, No Mental Health Overseer
By JULIE BOSMAN New York Times

Published: February 10, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/nyregion/11youth.html

Other Invisible Children mental health articles;

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/03/10/a-grim-truth-about-big-pharma/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/06/21/amy-shermans-blog-for-floridas-at-risk-children/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/06/05/study-early-therapy-can-save-teens-from-depression/

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

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/07/23/abandoned-abandoned-again-and-tasered-whats-next-for-at-risk-youth/

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African American and American Indian children are disproportionately represented in the system as well as in their probability of leading dysfunctional lives as they age out of foster care.

These recent news posts will bring you up to date on the difficulties being faced by the people of California (and other states) in dealing with the policies and politics of abused and neglected children

A few more observations from California’s Blue Ribbon Commission;

Fewer than 150 full & part time judicial officers preside over the entire dependency court system (many thousands of children are being reported each year).

Full-time juvenile dependency court judges carry an average caseload of 1,000 cases.

Children and parents sometimes do not meet their attorneys until moments before their hearings (reports are often incomplete, it’s hard to get all the facts straight in a few moments).

The median time for a hearing is 10 to 15 minutes (this often determines the fate of a family for many years to come).

Judges are often assigned to juvenile court for short rotations, instead of the recommended three years. (my comment; judges do not always have a good understanding of what they are getting into in juvenile court and it can take some time to adjust to this kind of law practice.

Short term assignments to the juvenile court pretty much insures that about the time the judge begins to understand the complexities of the issues faced by these families and community trying to serve them, the judge moves on – no one is served by this)

Families are often involved with more than one system, yet courts and other agencies do not easily share data or information that may be critical to the families’ circumstances.

In my own case as a guardian ad-Litem, I have seen the results of a seven year old terribly abused boy given back to the custody of his terribly abusive father even though the father had a court order (from an adjoining state) keeping him away from young boys. Yes, it has completely destroyed the boy. He is mentally unhealthy and has HIV AIDS today.

My note; every state is facing problems like this. Few states appreciate the value of investing in systems that will save the children they are serving.

California has about 48 initial child abuse reports per 1,000 children according to the kidsdata.org

Article on LA County childcare approach to children in foster care;
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-foster-care5-2010feb05,0,201241.stor

The Department of Children and Family Services will suspend its effort to reduce the number of children in foster care in the wake of the deaths of several children formerly in its care.

By Garrett Therolf
February 5, 2010

Los Angeles County has suspended a long-standing effort to reduce the number of children in foster homes because keeping more of the children with their birth families could be unsafe, the county’s top child-welfare official said.

FOR THE RECORD:

Foster care: The headline for an article in Friday’s Section A about foster care in Los Angeles County incorrectly said county child welfare officials planned to “end” an emphasis on family over foster care. As the story reported, Department of Children and Family Services Director Trish Ploehn told a reporter last week that such reunifications would not happen as frequently as in the past until new reforms were in place to ensure safety. The county still plans to reunite or preserve families whenever possible. —

The decision marks a turnaround for the Department of Children and Family Services, which for many years has sought to cut the foster care rolls, in part by trying to mend troubled families. The department’s leaders have cited the decline in foster children — from a high of 52,000 in 1997 to a low of 19,900 last year — as one of their proudest achievements.

“I do want these numbers to start going down again but only when I can assure everyone that the work we are doing results in safety for that child who is going home,” said Trish Ploehn, the department’s director.

“I don’t know how much more we can go down in the numbers, though,” she said. “We are a very large county, and it’s possible that we are already at the level where we are supposed to be.”

The decision is the most significant of several reforms made by the department after a series of high-profile child deaths last year, some of which involved the department putting too much faith in its ability to rehabilitate families. In 2009, The Times reported that reunifications led to some children’s further injuries and even deaths. Isabel Garcia, for instance, starved to death two months after child-welfare officials deemed that she, her five siblings and their parents were all doing well.

Toddler Angel Montiel and his siblings were reunited with their parents after the couple enrolled in parenting classes, drug testing and other “family preservation” services.

He subsequently was beaten to death. An autopsy found dozens of injuries, some fresh and some healed, including broken bones and burns. Originally charged with murder, his mother pleaded no contest to manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

“These cases had a very deep effect on the department,” Ploehn said.

Under the department’s policies, social workers had been encouraged to keep children in their original homes by helping parents deal with problems believed to underlie abuse, including addiction, anger, unemployment and mental illness.

At the same time, the county increased the number of child-parent reunions, reduced the time such reunifications take and — for children who couldn’t go home — doubled the number of adoptions.

In 2007, the department wagered that it could drive the numbers down further. It entered an experimental federal program that pays the county a limited sum for foster care services. If it exceeded that amount, the county had to pay the difference. If it spent less, the county could use the savings to reduce child abuse and neglect as it saw fit.

The policy pivot by Ploehn is likely to be controversial. Foster care has many critics who say children often are dispatched to one place after another without any sense of permanence or normal family life, and end up homeless and unemployed in adulthood.

A group called DCFS Give Us Back Our Children often demonstrates outside Edelman Children’s Court in Monterey Park, saying that too many children are removed from families unnecessarily.

One member, Sabreen Shabazz, 56, of Los Angeles, cares for her 11-month-old granddaughter, who was removed from her daughter’s custody.

Shabazz worries that her granddaughter might be unnecessarily sent to foster care because the family lives on only $845 a month and sometimes struggles to pay for apartment repairs ordered by the department.

“DCFS has a family preservation unit and they need to focus on that work more, not less,” said Janet Mitchell, a friend who attends the group’s monthly meetings. “Look at Sabreen: She’s a loving grandmother who just needs help. They live in poverty, but the child is happy because she is loved.”

In 2009, at least 17 children died of abuse or neglect even though child-welfare officials were well aware of their troubled family histories. Fourteen youngsters suffered such deaths in 2008.

Among the other reforms under way:

* Three hundred workers are being redeployed to the child abuse investigations unit at a cost of $37.5 million, reducing the average investigator’s caseload from 25 to 18.

* An improved computer system is being developed to provide child-abuse investigators with more information from other county agencies — mental health, for example, or law enforcement — about troubled families.

* An additional layer of review is being added to child-abuse investigations before they can be declared “unfounded.”

* Dozens of workers are being disciplined for their poor handling of cases that ended in death.

By some key measures, however, the county is falling behind schedule on reform efforts, especially the computer system.

That project is overseen by County Chief Executive William T Fujioka because it requires coordination with many county departments.

The need for such a system has been repeated in more than a dozen reports over almost two decades. Each concluded that county agencies were not exchanging vital information that could prevent death and injury to abused children. None inspired significant change.

Once again, the deadline for many of the improvements — such as adding data from county hospitals and local police departments — has passed without action. Work on longer-term goals has barely begun.

Overall, the department’s reform efforts also have been stymied by a 9% reduction in its $1.7-billion budget this year. That’s not likely to improve any time soon: Ploehn has been ordered to plan an additional 9% cut for next year.

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

Department of Family Services For The Record on DCF’s article;
http://mayorsampressrelease.blogspot.com/2010/02/update-la-times-issues-for-record-on.html

Got a comment? Let us know your perspective and share your ideas.

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From where I stand, the reported decrease in incidents of serious child abuse tells only part of the story, and is certainly not a cause for celebration.

If anything, this years financial chaos and increase to poverty is having a multiplier effect on families experiencing abuse and violence.

While strides were made during the years measured, there are serious problems in accepting the results as “mission accomplished”.

First, any measurement of child abuse today would need to reflect the number of cases not being accepted as a result of reduced programs and reduced funding due to the financial chaos in our economy.

This is becoming evident in the increase in juvenile justice and criminal justice cases the courts are seeing and the continued increase in prison and jail budgeting at the state and county level.

Second, while the study reflects a good start by some states, many states put very few resources into their programs and simply continued to put youth in prison and ignore preteen mothers (the next generation of abused and neglected children).

It is almost as if there are third world nations within the U.S. that fight for the right to abuse their own young people; as Texas has done when it refused federal funding for health insurance for the children of migrant farm workers, and just last month refusing the governments’s big grant for failing Texas schools.

Texas is just one example of a state that ranks at the very bottom of all the states along with Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, in how it treats its youngest and most vulnerable citizens.

APNewsBreak: US Study Shows Drop in Child Abuse
APNewsBreak: Federal study finds sharp drop in serious child abuse between 1993 and 2006
By DAVID CRARY AP National Writer
NEW YORK February 2, 2010 (AP) Read article; http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=9730224

A massive new federal study documents an unprecedented and dramatic decrease in incidents of serious child abuse, especially sexual abuse. Experts hailed the findings as proof that crackdowns and public awareness campaigns had made headway.

An estimated 553,000 children suffered physical, sexual or emotional abuse in 2005-06, down 26 percent from the estimated 743,200 abuse victims in 1993, the study found.

“It’s the first time since we started collecting data about these things that we’ve seen substantial declines over a long period, and that’s tremendously encouraging,” said professor David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire, a leading researcher in the field of child abuse.

“It does suggest that the mobilization around this issue is helping and it’s a problem that is amenable to solutions,” he said.

The findings were contained in the fourth installment of the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, a congressionally mandated study that has been conducted periodically by the Department of Health and Human Services. The previous version was issued in 1996, based on 1993 data.

The new study is based on information from more than 10,700 “sentinels” — such as child welfare workers, police officers, teachers, health care professionals and day care workers — in 122 counties across the country. The detailed data collected from them was then used to make national estimates.

The number of sexually abused children decreased from 217,700 in 1993 to 135,300 in 2005-2006 — a 38 percent drop, the study shows. The number of children who experienced physical abuse fell by 15 percent and the number of emotionally abused children dropped by 27 percent.

The 455-page study shied away from trying to explain the trends, but other experts offered their theories.

“There’s much more public awareness and public intolerance around child abuse now,” said Linda Spears, the Child Welfare League of America’s vice president for public policy. “It was a hidden concern before — people were afraid to talk about it if it She also noted the proliferation of programs designed to help abusers and potential abusers overcome their problems.

Finkelhor, whose own previous research detected a drop in abuse rates, said the study reveals “real, substantial declines” that cannot be dismissed on any technical grounds, such as changing definitions of abuse.

He suggested that the decline was a product of several coinciding trends, including a “troop surge” in the 1990s when more people were deployed in child protection services and the criminal justice system intensified its anti-abuse efforts with more arrests and prison sentences.

Finkelhor also suggested that the greatly expanded use of medications may have enabled many potential child abusers to treat the conditions that otherwise might have led them to molest or mistreat a child.

“There’s also been a general change in perceptions and norms about what one can get away with, so much more publicity about these things,” he said.

One curious aspect of the study was the manner of its release. Although HHS had launched the study in 2004 and invested several million dollars, it was posted a few days ago on the Internet with no fanfare — neither a press release nor a news conference. Finkelhor, noting that experts in the field had been impatiently awaiting the study, described this low-profile approach as “shocking.”

The findings might be disconcerting to some in the child-welfare field who base their funding pitches on the specter of ever-rising abuse rates, said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.

“The best use of scarce child welfare dollars is on prevention and family preservation — not on hiring more people to investigate less actual abuse,” said Wexler.

The study found some dramatic differences in child abuse rates based on socio-economic factors. Poor children were three times more likely than other kids to experience abuse, and rates of abuse in African-American families were significantly higher than for whites and Hispanics.Family structure also was a factor — for example, children whose single parent had a live-in partner faced an abuse rate 10 times that of a child living with two parents.

Wexler said a primary reason for the overall drop in abuse rates was the relatively prosperous economy during the period under study.

“The fact that the economic gains were unequal explains why maltreatment declined less in black families,” he said.

The main author of the study, Andrea Sedlak of the Rockville, Md.-based research firm Westat Inc., said she was heartened by the overall findings of declining abuse rates. However, she was troubled to find that more than half of child maltreatment incidents are not investigated by child-protection agencies.

“Is the system still so strapped?” she asked. “There’s still a lot of material here saying the system has a long way to go.”

The study does not cover the recent period in which the United States plunged into a recession, prompting some reports of increased domestic violence and abuse in hard-off families.

New York-based Children’s Rights claims that Georgia is failing abused and neglected children. The Department of Human Services has been under a consent decree since 2005 that came out of a class action lawsuit in 2002 claiming the division was mismanaged and overburdened.

I find it hard to accept that abused and neglected children in our advanced nation, find it so hard to receive adequate help to get a fair start in life.

With budget cuts throughout the nation, states that were already underfunding, under-supporting & doing poorly for children in child protection service before this economic collapse are beginning to see these unhappy results. Growing caseloads in juvenile and criminal courts, more preteen pregnancies, and unhappier communities.

Report says problems persist with Ga. foster care
By ERRIN HAINES – Associated Press Writer

ATLANTA — A national child advocacy group monitoring the state’s foster care system is planning to meet with the agency to discuss allegations of continued abuse and neglect.
New York-based Children’s Rights claims in a new report that the state has relaxed monitoring and enforcement of private agencies contracted to provide homes for foster children and that abuse and neglect have risen among Atlanta’s foster children.

Child safety has always been the agency’s priority, said Dena Smith, spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services, which includes the Division of Family and Children’s Services.
“We’ve done great things in the sense of keeping children safe,” Smith said on Friday. “Even this report says that we’ve done better than ever.”

The division has been under a consent decree since 2005. The agreement stems from a 2002 class action lawsuit in which Children’s Rights claimed that Georgia’s child protection agencies were overburdened and mismanaged. The group alleged that children languished for months in dangerous shelters, and others lived in dirty and overcrowded conditions.

Under the terms of the decree, DFCS agreed to independent monitoring and periodic progress reports.
Friday’s report covers the first six months of 2009 and was issued by independent monitors appointed by the court to track the state Division of Family and Children’s Services’ progress under the terms of the settlement.

It is the seventh report issued to date.

Related to the report’s findings, Children’s Rights also sent a letter dated Jan. 19 to Department of Human Services counsel Brenda Woodard requesting a meeting to discuss the group’s concerns.

While the report points out that some case managers still have far too many children under their watch and that the agency is taking too long to place children in permanent homes, the agency has made improvements in case manager visits to children in foster care and visits among siblings in foster care.

The report also accuses the state of relaxed monitoring and enforcement of private agencies contracted to provide homes for foster children. Smith said more resources have been directed to monitoring those providers and that DFCS is meeting regularly with those agencies.

“This will reflect in a positive way in our next reporting period,” Smith said.

The author, Nancy Folbre points out that , full-time, year-round child care for young children costs more than public university tuition in 44 states.

As a guardian ad-Litem, I’ve been chartered to removed children from a home where the father could not afford day care and the waiting list for subsidized day care was so long he could not hope to be awarded a subsidy.

January 18, 2010, 7:23 AM
Remembering the Little People: Accounting for Kids
By NANCY FOLBRE

Nancy Folbre is an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

by Nick Nguyen

Most families with kids prioritize spending on them. The public sector doesn’t. In fact, it’s pretty hard to figure out exactly what the government spends on children compared to what it spends on other age groups, like the elderly.

It’s even harder to figure out why we spend the way we do.

A new fact sheet detailing public expenditures on children in the United States has just been added to a growing inventory of Brookings Institution and Urban Institute reports on this topic.

Two salient patterns emerge. First, public spending on children amounts to about 2.2 percent of the gross domestic product. By comparison, we spend about 5.3 percent of G.D.P. on the elderly.

Second, public spending per child goes up after children reach age 6, despite considerable research showing that younger children enjoy especially significant benefits from early-childhood education.

Largely as a result of differences in public subsidies, full-time, year-round child care for young children costs more than public university tuition in 44 states.

Evidence also suggests that young children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of poverty. Yet 19 percent of children in the United States lived in poverty in 2009.

Parents continue to bear most of the costs of rearing the next generation, while the elderly reap significant benefits — whether they have helped raise children or not. Children grow up to become working-age adults paying the taxes that help finance Social Security and Medicare.

Of course, working-age adults hope to grow old and take advantage of those benefits as well. But the ratio of the taxes we pay to the benefits we receive over the life cycle depends in part on the relative size of different age groups, as well as the evolution of public policies and the rate of economic growth.

Comparisons of spending on different age cohorts sometimes elicit concerns about “intergenerational warfare.” But ignoring distributional conflicts doesn’t make them go away.

More serious thinking about both current and potential conflicts could help us negotiate better solutions to them.

Children can’t effectively advocate for themselves, because they don’t wield votes, much less send their own lobbyists to K Street. By the time they grow up, it’s too late to influence the policies that partly determine their own success in adulthood.

In Germany, concerns about the under-representation of the young have generated proposals to amend the constitution, lower the voting age to include teenagers, and give parents additional votes on behalf of their young children.

Teenagers and parents might not always use such votes well, but isn’t some representation better than none?

In the United States, the racial-ethnic differences may weaken commitments to public spending on children. Census projections for 2010 show that non-Hispanic whites represent only about 55 percent of the population under 18, compared to 80 percent of the population 65 and older.

But precisely because our tax system redistributes income over the life cycle, we all have a stake in improving the productivity of the younger generation.

You can’t create human capital without creating and nurturing, as well as educating, little humans.

Why not modify our national income accounts to label both private and public expenditures on children as investment, rather than as consumption?

This could help move discussions of spending on children into mainstream economic debate. It could also encourage more consideration of how the costs and benefits of investments in children should be distributed.

As recent critiques of gross domestic product emphasize, the success of our economy depends largely on the ways in which we define success.

In other words, it’s the accounting, stupid.

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/01/25/friends-of-texas-vs-friends-of-children/

“What we do to our children, they will do to our society” Pliny the Elder 2500 years ago.

*Texas has low literacy rates and low graduations rates because they have such a large number of illegal immigrants in their schools. Most of their parents don’t care if they learn English or not, as long as the schools babysit them all day. Hooray for Texas refusing those federal funds. The funds come with strings attached and states have to give over even more control to the federal government everytime they take funds. Hooray for Governor Perry!
By Bill Merryman Operations Manager at WorkflowOne

*Abandoning children has severe consequences for a community for many years to come. The U.S. is a nation of immigrants.

We save no money when children don’t have the skills to read or finish school.

Not educating children leaves communities filled with dysfunctional citizens that go on to have more troubled children and families (and ridiculous prison populations).

The U.S. has five percent of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prison population. Texas is also a national leader in rates of incarceration and crime.

It’s a cycle that has been repeating itself in parts of our nation for some years now.

Here is how Texas treats its children compared to the rest of the nation;This is where Texas rates among the 50 states:

Child Well-Being Indicators

Infant Mortality 20th
Child Death (1-14) 29th
Teen Deaths (15-19) 14th
Births to Teen Moms 50th
Late/No Prenatal Care 33rd
Child Poverty 44th
Uninsured Children 50th
Juvenile Incarceration 34th
Child Abuse Deaths 45th
Child Welfare Expenditures 42nd
Total Tax burden* 41st
Overall Rank** 46th

April 2008, Every Child Matters, Geography Matters

*Thanks for the comments, Michael!
We Texans need to start loving our state and its children more, and respecting the needs of our youngest citizens–not trashing those needs!
I must say this–Rick Perry could–if he really wanted to–do a better job as a Native Texan AND as a topmost public servant.
He’s showing to all that he does not love Texas’ children enough to adequately serve them as a responsible, accountable, taxpaid role model.
Once young Texans turn age 18, Perry’s secret desire is to use them as pawns to get himself relected again, and keep self-serving power (much like many anti-American foreign leaders I know) as long as he can in his lifetime–in the hands of a few, immature rich whites–not in the hands of the many, as an American-style democracy such as Texas is suppose to truly have.

A Texas high school graduate like Perry is supposed to learn and act respectfully and, in a mature, competent, professional manner, with that acquired taxpaid knowledge, but the actual applying of that knowledge has yet to be seen nor fulfilled during his term of office.
By Steve Spacek Government Consultant/Researcher/Analyst

*Liberal tripe. This post is undoubtedly from a socialist who never read a government subsidy or mandate that they didn’t like. The program this post decries because Texas refused to participate was also deemed unfit by the TEACHERS UNION. If your program is so poor that even a union says it sucks it has to be bad. Ronald Reagan had it right when he aptly stated “Government isn’t the solution to the problems we face, Government IS the problem”. Never more true than it is today.
By George Keesee Supervising Project Controls Consultant

*How bad must it get for children in Texas before the citizens of the state stand up for them?

The economics of uneducated youth failing in school and later in the community cost the state for their entire lives as they become preteen moms and are in and out of jail and never become productive citizens.

The politics of hate are expensive as well as senseless.

To George’s socialist comment; I’ve owned and operated businesses for 35 years, and spent twelve years as a volunteer guardian ad-Litem working with abused and neglected kids and have seen how hard it is for teachers working in underfunded schools in communities with mean people, who when they can’t argue with the data or the facts in front of them, just call you names.

The bottom line is that this nation is great because it had great schools that produced bright citizens that brought us here.

There is little difference between letting bridges collapse into the river because of lack of maintenance (35W Minneapolis MN 2 years ago) and letting children become preteen moms and adolescent felons because the schools and early childhood programs are not supported (Texas).

It costs a tiny percentage of a rebuilt bridge (almost a billion dollars) to maintain it so it doesn’t fall in the river (MN did not maintain its bridge), and if you are up for the challenge, put a pencil to the cost of 20 to 30 years of institutionalization of the massive numbers of felons Texas is home to, add the estimated losses due to crime and violence per felon, and ask yourself if it might not be a better investment to see that children receive an education and become normal productive citizens.

Missouri just went through a similar exercise;

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

*I think considering the number of “ILLEGAL” aliens in Texas, we do a pretty good job. I think the stats are skewed due to the illegals. I do not think we,as Texans, disregard any childrens needs. I have had experience where assistance to children is misappropriated by the parents. This is not an easily fixed situation
By Lynn Harris Equipment Sales & Production Consultant

*I beg to differ with Lynn’s statement that Texans don’t disregard any children’s needs.

What is the difference between Governor Bush rejecting federal funding to insure the children of migrant farm workers a few years ago, and this Governor rejecting the funding for all Texas children’s education today?

It is obvious that Governor Bush was willing to let the children of migrant farm workers suffer needlessly to make a political statement.

It is equally obvious that Texas has the worst literacy rates, child abuse death rates, uninsured child rates, child poverty rates, birth to preteen mom rates in the nation, and that Texans would rather keep it that way than help people they see as undeserving lead a better life.

Even if they are babies and very young children.

There is not a religion on the planet that allows the abandonment of children.

Texas, you are better than this.

www.invisiblechildren.org

http://twitter.com/KidsAtRisk

*Michael, the problems with Texas schools (and schools in many other states) is that they have lost their focus on what they should and should not do. First of all, I question that constitutionality of the Federal government even being involved in educational matters, let alone the state’s involvement. Regardless, because of all of the red tape and the added expenses that come with it, there is too much that interferes with the most important mission of any school: teaching. All of the woes that currently exist will not go away because we throw more money at it. There has to be a desire from the teachers, the parents, and the students.

Parents need to be teaching their kids how to live, behave, and learn. Teachers need to teach the students what they need to know to make a living, not how to pass the next standardized test. Students need to understand that without an adequate education, they will not have a worthwhile life. Unfortunately, the Federal government with all of their great programs have brought about the literal dumbing down of America because schools cannot be effective.

As for “[t]here is not a religion on the planet that allows the abandonment of children”, should religion not start in the home first? The parents should care about their own children enough to make them better people. It’s not really the government’s responsibility.

Frankly, if we eliminate all of the taxes needed to fund all of these educational programs from Federal and state, we probably could pay more in local school taxes to help improve our schools and still have some of our own money left over. The problem with these programs is that money is not spent well and the same amount generated at the local level may provided even more without all of the strings attached.
By Christopher Reed Programmer/Statistical Consultant/Trainer

*The Texas Miracle and standardized testing came from the Bush administration.

I agree that improvements are needed, but disagree that a nation can have an adequate education system funded by bake sales and city / state taxes.

America has come this far only because it out educated the rest of the industrialized world and was able to out invent, and out produce the rest of the industrialized world with a superior work force.

We are now reaping the results of abandoning the weakest and most vulnerable among us for the last 25 years, as early childhood programs and education have gone begging year after year until graduation rates are almost as appalling as the rates of incarceration in most of America’s large cities. And yes, there is a correlation.

Education is the engine of progress and prosperity. No nation can achieve its potential for greatness without investing in its human capital. The extent to which children successfully negotiate the treacherous passage to adulthood depends on the earliest years of brain and emotional development. That explains why early childhood education is crucial to society.

Instead, some states are investing in the creation of at-risk children and assuming colossal costs of corrective measures that mostly fail regardless of how earnestly they are pursued.

The results of this undocumented policy are many:

1. A child is a work-in-process toward citizenship. A successful citizen adds $5 million of economic value to society in his/her life. If unsuccessful, that person instead costs society several million dollars in expenses. Therefore, the lost opportunity value between a success and a failure is somewhere between $5 and $10 million per child.

2. Young children are humiliated when they read below grade level. A wealthy society that rejects proven programs to avoid the humiliation of children is an immoral society (Houston’s school superintendent claims that there are 100,000 children in his schools not reading at grade level that could use federal dollars to help them learn how to read)..

3. Children who read by the third grade seldom are ever involved with the criminal justice system. Four of five incarcerated juvenile offenders read two years or more below grade, and a majority are functionally illiterate.

4. America has over two million prison inmates, the highest rate in the world and five to ten times that of European countries. Another five million Americans are involved in the criminal justice system for probation, parole, or supervision, all unproductive activities & there were 13 million prison and jail releases in the U.S. last year. Many states are spending a larger percentage on their prisons than on their schools.

5. Several states forecast needed prison growth based on third grade reading scores. Our federal prisons are operating at 130% of capacity.

6. No industrial nation equals the United States in neglecting the basic needs of working families with children.

My comment on religion was mis interpreted. I simply meant that there is not a religion on the Planet that allows the abandonment of children. We should all care what happens to our communities children. Or, somewhat selfishly, “what we do to our children, they will do to our society” Pliny the elder 2500 years ago.

*I have a novel idea, and it’s free, let’s put a concerned adult mentor with every child in Texas.
I will kick off the event, by mentoring my grandson, who lives with me.
I have followed this program for 45 years and have had great success with it, as I have 3 adult children and 3 Grand children, none of whom are in prison or on track to be street people.
By Lynn Harris Equipment Sales & Production Consultant

*Are the state government or school leaders saying no to the ADD money they receive in their schools to label normal kids as sick? No… they do not, of course.
This has little political impact and also the money is easily traced and always reach the purpose (it is so easy to label a very energetic kid, with lack of familiar attention, eating the garbage nutritionists recommend, as having ADD).

*Perhaps the schools do not need more money, so the political campaigns.
What do you think would be the politicians answer if those 700M were for a political campaign? Do you really think they would decline?
By Jose Alves Executive Director at Oxygen Trader
Texas has the HIGHEST INCARCERATION RATE of all US states–over 172,000.
Here’s the rates for selected Texas counties in 2006, courtesy Texas Commission on Jail Standards:

County (County seat) /Incarceration rate per 1,000 residents

Smith (Tyler) 4.71
McLennan (Waco) 3.54
Galveston (Galveston) 3.34
Dallas (Dallas) 3.11
Bexar (San Antonio) 2.74
Harris (Houston) 2.50
El Paso (El Paso) 2.15
Tarrant (Fort Worth) 2.12
Hidalgo (Edinburg) 1.81
Denton (Denton) 1.81
Coryell (Gatesville) 1.05

Its a shame that many of my home state’s public officials are sadly abandoning children–the future of Texas–by underfunding/keeping at bay dollars needed by youngsters to get a basic, fair education, yet recklessly throws away precious tax dollars on prisons, designed strictly to incarcerate–not to educate defendants–while continuously failing, year after year, to rehabilitate those juveniles sentenced–and, the crime rate across Texas keeps on skyrocketing!! Many of these public officials–Rick Perry downward–still fail to see/envision a possible reality–found with some other competing state- when tax dollars are indeed properly spent and accounted/targeted for education, not incarcerations:
States with higher education attainment rates have lesser rates of crime amongst their citizenry.
By Steve Spacek Government Consultant/Researcher/Analyst

*The problem with this argument is that too many people equate the government with society. This is incorrect. Society is based on a sense of community. If we would eliminate all of these “programs” from the Federal govenrment and allow for the money to stay home, in the community, then the people who will directly benefit from a better educational system will also have the funds available to pay for it.

Then again, it’s not just the money. If we could eliminate the bureaucracy of the Federal government, thus reducing the tax burden and thus leaving more of own money at the local level, then we could use more money locally and still have more buying power to go with it. Also, making it easier for some of us who have the ability and the knowledge to be able to teach without jumping through the hoops that the government has put into place, the quality of teaching might go up without much added cost.
By Christopher Reed Programmer/Statistical Consultant/Trainer

*An Opinion:
In many cases, even if you have the best educational system in the world, if the student goes home from that system to a home where the adults could care less whether the kids get educated, or are unable to encourage them, the result is failure. Many poverty level adults are in need of basic read/write skills themselves, so a student is exposed to 6-8 hours of uplifting education, then 16 to 24 hours of negative influence.
There is no way, with small exception, for the children to WIN!
By Lynn Harris Equipment Sales & Production Consultant

These posts underline the divide in our society today.

Those on the left are screaming at the top of their lungs that if we don’t spend money then we don’t care about solving problems.

Those on the right are offended by the cavilier attitudes towards the sacrifices these expenditures cause, and are equally troubled when the ever mounting expeditures don’t yeild the promised solutions.

Those of us in the middle are just that, caught in the middle.

I am old enough to remember the disasterous outcomes in the 1970’s of all the social spending that was done in the 1960’s. The inflation rates, the massively high unemployement, the equally high interest rates that bancrupted and diminished small business almost to the brink of extinction. None of which I look forward to experiencing again, yet these “progressive” leaders seem hell bent to revisit.

When the supposed “experts” dismiss a spending program as ineffective and not in the best interest of their group, it is shear folly and demigoddery (is that even a word?) to continue to bash those in leadership who deem it not in the best interests of us all to participate. The only people who want this money spent in Texas are the bloated educational bueraucrats who will get fat paychecks out of it. None of the teachers want it because it gives federal idiots the power to dictate what, where, when and why to our children with no local perspective allowed or invited. You think educational policy is contentious now, wait till the feds get to tell you what you HAVE to teach and HOW it has to be taught.

The prision analogy is a red herring. Washington DC has the highest per pupil expenditures in the entire US and their crime rates and rates of incarceration are equally high. The number of inmates inside the prison system has little if anything to do with education, save one metric. Those who walk away from the educational process without metriculating through it are locked up in higher percentages than those who stick it out. That doesn’t mean we should spend MORE money per pupil, that means we need to hold parents and students ALIKE more accountable.

The solution is not MORE money, the solution is get more bang for EACH buck. Rick Perry was right to walk away from this boondogel. Even the teachers say that. I trust them more than a special interest shill.
By George Keesee Supervising Project Controls Consultant

*I would have thought that equating increased spending with improved education was a completely discredited rationale by this time. I wish Ronnie had stuck to his guns and eliminated the Department of Education. What better way to demonstrate care for children than by standing by one’s principles?
By Russell Zech Construction and Engineering Learning and Organizaitonal Development Consultant

*I’m not certain, and I’m not even a native Texan, that it is very productive to extrapolate what goes on in Houston to the rest of Texas.
By Russell Zech Construction and Engineering Learning and Organizaitonal Development Consultant

*Certainly Houston/Harris County’’s “no zoning,” anything goes, no ethics, immoral land use policy–I know of no other Texas not American city of substance wanting to eminate the 601 square mile, physically ugly, polluted, backwards Houston landscape. In fact, poor, unchecked outdoor commercial environmental conditions in Houston neigborhoods and elsewhere across Texas, allowing unzoned, unchecked code enforcements, are not conducive, end up abusing and waisting kids minds in their ability to learn/obtain a proper, human civilizing education, often turning them into hardened criminals. Still another circumstance contributing to why more convicted executed felons come out of Harris than any other US county, and Texas, as a state.
By Steve Spacek Government Consultant/Researcher/Analyst

*This is why we homeschool!
By Jennifer Sparks President of My Source Energy LLC

Few states think through the consequences when youth do not meld into the community to become healthy and productive citizens. Here’s one great example, this program Katz said is successful: 61 percent of the women have high school diplomas or GEDs, 97 percent are enrolled in school and 60 percent have found part-time work or are in school full-time.; http://www.miamiherald.com/492/story/1398131.htmlMiami-Dade nonprofit offers affordable housing to women aging out of foster care.

BY JONATHAN DAVILA

JDAVILA@MIAMIHERALD.COM
In Miami-Dade County, more than 130 girls become too old for foster-care eligibility every year, according to a study by Our Kids, a Florida-based nonprofit.

They’re given a monthly stipend of about $1,135 by the county and are required to attend school to keep receiving it.

“I was living paycheck to paycheck. It was kind of crazy,” said Rachel Johnson, a 25-year-old former foster child who aged out of the system at 18.

Some of the women end up pregnant, homeless or dropping out of school.

Enter Casa Valentina: a tax-exempt nonprofit since October 2006 dedicated to providing women who are too old for foster care with affordable housing and several educational and life-training services.

Located at 2990 SW 35th Ave., the program is for women 18 to 22 years old who do not have children and are not pregnant. They must also be drug free and must be in some sort of school: high school, a GED program or college.

The goal is to make educated, independent women out of the former foster children.

“The underlying focus of our program is academic achievement,” said Chelsea Wilkerson, Casa Valentina’s executive director. “We believe strongly that in order for one to be independent and self-sufficient, you need to be able to complete your education and have some sort of degree or vocational certificate.”

Casa Valentina hires professional tutors for its clients. It also conducts training sessions throughout the year that teach its women financial literacy, safe sex, nutritious cooking and several other skills. The women are housed in fully furnished apartments that include all utilities as well as computers, printers, Internet access and television. The housing and all of the program’s services cost each woman $320 a month.

“The $320 is under a third of their income. It gives them the opportunity to save for their futures,” said Sharon Katz, the program director for Casa Valentina.

Johnson eventually joined the program. She became its first graduate and also an example of the program’s leniency — she was already 22 years old when she began and stayed until she was 24.

Before joining, she lived in a tiny, one-bedroom Liberty City apartment while she attended to Miami Dade College full-time.

“It was OK, but the neighborhood wasn’t safe. I didn’t like it,” she said. “Certain landlords lie to you and get you to sign a contract — they’d increase rent on us without telling us. It was a struggle. People try to take advantage of you.”

Johnson, a former foster child who was sexually abused at age 5, was unhappy and had self-esteem issues when she joined the program.

Soon enough, she became Casa Valentina’s poster child. She spoke to other members and people in the community about her struggles growing up. It made some people cry. It inspired others.

She began feeling better about herself. The program wasn’t only a place to live and learn for her, it also served as a place where the she got confidence and self-esteem boosts.

“What I gained out of the program is, I say, my self worth,” Johnson said. “I’ve never been a good person with my self esteem. They helped me build myself up. They taught me how to love myself more and appreciate my accomplishments.”

Johnson is now a senior at Florida International University majoring in criminal justice. She also works at a Hallandale Beach law firm as a records clerk — good experience for an aspiring attorney who wants to attend St. Thomas University law school.

Not all of the young women in the program have reached college like Johnson, though, and Casa Valentina hires professional tutors to get them up to speed.

“We have a lot of girls who come to us reading at a second- or third-grade level. . . . A lot of them are 18 years old, but they’re sophomores in high school and really struggle academically,” Wilkerson said. “They get frustrated and a lot of times they end up dropping out of school, and that’s something that we really work hard to prevent.”

Other young women have trouble taking care of their medical needs and Casa Valentina helps them in that aspect.

“A lot of them have never gone to a doctor on their own before. We take them to the doctor. We take them to the dentist. We help them communicate with the doctor what the medical problem is until they’re ready to do it on their own. . . . A lot of it is just modeling how you do things,” said Wilkerson, noting some of the young women didn’t have parents who were good role models.

Katz said the program is successful: 61 percent of the women have high school diplomas or GEDs, 97 percent are enrolled in school and 60 percent have found part-time work or are in school full-time.

Wilkerson said it’s inspiring to see the women mature and develop. But there’s one moment that is really touching for her.

“Taking corsages to girls when they’re getting ready for prom,” she said.

Eventually, she’d like to see the program expand to include the “unserved population”: pregnant women and young men who age out of foster care. and try seriously to help these children in their transition to adulthood. A small investment goes a long way to helping

April 2008, Every Child Matters, Geography Matters

Child Well-Being Indicators

Infant Mortality 20th
Child Death (1-14) 29th
Teen Deaths (15-19) 14th
Births to Teen Moms 50th
Late/No Prenatal Care 33rd
Child Poverty 44th
Uninsured Children 50th
Juvenile Incarceration 34th
Child Abuse Deaths 45th
Child Welfare Expenditures 42nd
Total Tax burden* 41st
Overall Rank** 46th

Texas and a number of other states have systematically de-funded or under-funded children’s healthcare, social services, and education. Teachers are forced to be mental health workers and social service providers because of this. In most states there are few amenities for teachers or students.

These states have the mistaken belief that they are saving money by ignoring poverty and abused and neglected youth and then dealing with the crisis when the children have serious problems in school and go on to become preteen moms and adolescent felons.

Today over 75% of children entering New York’s juvenile justice system have drug and alcohol issues over half have mental health problems, and one third have developmental disabilities. The state spends about $210,000 per child annually and 75% of the children are re-arrested within three years (California spends almost $250,000 per youth per year).

A few years ago Missouri had the same problem and solved it by concentrating on reducing confinement, a humane approach to youth combined with the mental health needs of children, and restorative justice.

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

This study by Harvard identifies the depth of the educational crisis in Texas;

CONFRONTING THE GRADUATION RATE CRISIS IN TEXAS. Daniel Losen, Gary Orfield, and Robert Balfanz. Executive Summary.

http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/dropouts/texas_10-17-06.pdf

As a longtime businessman and volunteer guardian ad-Litem, it is clear to me that children that receive help early on can do well in school and go on to be healthy adults and contributing citizens.

Children that are left to poverty and the the criminal justice system are a problem for schools and our communities. Early childhood programs and investments in schools pay huge dividends (and are the only real answer to the problems we face as a nation).

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2005/10/12/a-myth-that-will-bring-down-america/

We as a community need to appreciate the value of healthy citizens and the cost of ignoring at risk children.

Articles on the topic;

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/03/02/kara-action-group-manifesto-for-early-childhood-education/

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

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2007/07/04/by-definition/

Here are the responses to this discussion from the Friends Of Texas Linked In Website;

*Texas has low literacy rates and low graduations rates because they have such a large number of illegal immigrants in their schools. Most of their parents don’t care if they learn English or not, as long as the schools babysit them all day. Hooray for Texas refusing those federal funds. The funds come with strings attached and states have to give over even more control to the federal government everytime they take funds. Hooray for Governor Perry!

By Bill Merryman Operations Manager at WorkflowOne

*Abandoning children has severe consequences for a community for many years to come. The U.S. is a nation of immigrants.

We save no money when children don’t have the skills to read or finish school.

Not educating children leaves communities filled with dysfunctional citizens that go on to have more troubled children and families (and ridiculous prison populations).

The U.S. has five percent of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prison population. Texas is also a national leader in rates of incarceration and crime.

It’s a cycle that has been repeating itself in parts of our nation for some years now.

Here is how Texas treats its children compared to the rest of the nation;This is where Texas rates among the 50 states:

Child Well-Being Indicators

Infant Mortality 20th
Child Death (1-14) 29th
Teen Deaths (15-19) 14th
Births to Teen Moms 50th
Late/No Prenatal Care 33rd
Child Poverty 44th
Uninsured Children 50th
Juvenile Incarceration 34th
Child Abuse Deaths 45th
Child Welfare Expenditures 42nd
Total Tax burden* 41st
Overall Rank** 46th

April 2008, Every Child Matters, Geography Matters

*We Texans need to start loe and its children more, and respecting the needs of our youngest citizens–not trashing those needs!

I must say this–Rick Perry could–if he really wanted to–do a better job as a Native Texan AND as a topmost public servant.

He’s showing to all that he does not love Texas’ children enough to adequately serve them as a responsible, accountable, taxpaid role model.

Once young Texans turn age 18, Perry’s secret desire is to use them as pawns to get himself relected again, and keep self-serving power (much like many anti-American foreign leaders I know) as long as he can in his lifetime–in the hands of a few, immature rich whites–not in the hands of the many, as an American-style democracy such as Texas is suppose to truly have. A Texas high school graduate like Perry is supposed to learn and act respectfully and, in a mature, competent, professional manner, with that acquired taxpaid knowledge, but the actual applying of that knowledge has yet to be seen nor fulfilled during his term of office.
By Steve Spacek Government Consultant/Researcher/Analyst

*Liberal tripe. This post is undoubtedly from a socialist who never read a government subsidy or mandate that they didn’t like. The program this post decries because Texas refused to participate was also deemed unfit by the TEACHERS UNION. If your program is so poor that even a union says it sucks it has to be bad. Ronald Reagan had it right when he aptly stated “Government isn’t the solution to the problems we face, Government IS the problem”. Never more true than it is today.

By George Keesee Supervising Project Controls Consultant

*How bad must it get for childrenving our stat in Texas before the citizens of the state stand up for them?

The economics of uneducated youth failing in school and later in the community cost the state for their entire lives as they become preteen moms and are in and out of jail and never become productive citizens.

The politics of hate are expensive as well as senseless.

To George’s socialist comment; I’ve owned and operated businesses for 35 years, and spent twelve years as a volunteer guardian ad-Litem working with abused and neglected kids and have seen how hard it is for teachers working in underfunded schools in communities with mean people, who when they can’t argue with the data or the facts in front of them, just call you names.

The bottom line is that this nation is great because it had great schools that produced bright citizens that brought us here.

There is little difference between letting bridges collapse into the river because of lack of maintenance (35W Minneapolis MN 2 years ago) and letting children become preteen moms and adolescent felons because the schools and early childhood programs are not supported (Texas).

It costs a tiny percentage of a rebuilt bridge (almost a billion dollars) to maintain it so it doesn’t fall in the river (MN did not maintain its bridge), and if you are up for the challenge, put a pencil to the cost of 20 to 30 years of institutionalization of the massive numbers of felons Texas is home to, add the estimated losses due to crime and violence per felon, and ask yourself if it might not be a better investment to see that children receive an education and become normal productive citizens.

Missouri just went through a similar exercise;

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

Best wishes
By michael tikkanen Founder at KARA Kids At Risk Action

*I think considering the number of “ILLEGAL” aliens in Texas, we do a pretty good job. I think the stats are skewed due to the illegals. I do not think we,as Texans, disregard any childrens needs. I have had experience where assistance to children is misappropriated by the parents. This is not an easily fixed situation
By Lynn Harris Equipment Sales & Production Consultant

*I beg to differ with Lynn’s statement that Texans don’t disregard any children’s needs.

What is the difference between Governor Bush rejecting federal funding to insure the children of migrant farm workers a few years ago, and this Governor rejecting the funding for all Texas children’s education today?

It is obvious that Governor Bush was willing to let the children of migrant farm workers suffer needlessly to make a political statement.

It is equally obvious that Texas has the worst literacy rates, child abuse death rates, uninsured child rates, child poverty rates, birth to preteen mom rates in the nation, and that Texans would rather keep it that way than help people they see as undeserving lead a better life.

Even if they are babies and very young children.

There is not a religion on the planet that allows the abandonment of children.

Texas, you are better than this.

Last Updated: January 12. 2010 12:47PM
Child poverty, neglect on rise in Michigan
Catherine Jun / The Detroit News

Childhood poverty, neglect and abuse continue to rise in Michigan, troubling signs that children continue to bear the brunt of the state’s economic woes, according to a report released today.

Read more: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100112/METRO/1120362/1409/METRO/Child-poverty–neglect-on-rise-in-Michigan#ixzz0d4mLZOj4More than 40 percent of Michigan students were eligible and received free or reduced federal lunches in 2008, according to Kids Count in Michigan, a report released by the Michigan League of Human Services. That’s up from 30.7 percent in 2001.

Even in Oakland County, the state’s wealthiest county, more children (age 17 and younger) are falling into poverty: 11 percent compared with 8.6 percent in 2005.

Statewide, one in five children lives in poverty.

At the same time, many of the programs that serve as a safety net to families are being cut, said Jane Zehnder-Merrell, senior research associate at the League.

“The erosion of economic security has a huge impact on kids,” she said.

Poverty is tied to a 16 percent increase in confirmed cases of abuse and neglect since 2000, said Denise Glover, project director at the Child Care Coordinating Council of Detroit/Wayne County.

Glover said impoverished parents often cannot provide heat in their homes, often viewed as a measure of child neglect. Or they may take out their financial stress on their children.

“Tempers flair and the frustration levels increase,” she said. “Children become the victims.”
The report, which is based on the most current data available to the league, did find some positive trends, including a decline in childhood deaths — 18.9 deaths per 100,000 children ages 1 to 14, down from 23.1 in 2000.

Infant mortality also showed a decline — to 7.8 deaths per 1,000 infants from 8.1 in 2000. The rate of births to teens fell 20 percent over the decade.

Detroit recorded measurable improvements in childhood mortality, as well as in teen pregnancy rates and prenatal care since 2000.

Bill Ridella, deputy director of the city’s health department, credited the improvements to better coordination between health departments, school clinics and local hospitals in providing health education to teenagers.

But the city still rates worse than the state’s average on child health.

“The health of the women in our community remains an issue,” said Carolynn Rowland, the city’s maternal infant health director.

Amy Good, chief executive of Alternatives for Girls, said the data doesn’t show what has happened since 2007, when teen pregnancy began to increase after a steady decline.

The Detroit agency, which provides shelter for homeless and at-risk teens, lost state funding last year, which amounted to 6 percent of its budget. As a result, the nonprofit group only accepts homeless women.

“It’s a terrible thing to have to say to someone … call us when you’re homeless,” Good said.
In Macomb County, the rate of low birth-weight babies worsened, to 8.3 percent, from 6.8 percent in 2000.

A $1.83 million federal grant for an Early Head Start program hopefully will change that, said Laura Bracali, at the Macomb County Community Services Agency.

The program will prioritize high-risk mothers and infants, providing nurse visits, access to immunizations and providing counseling on nutrition.

“Those are part of our goals,” Bracali said.

cjun@detnews.com (313) 222-2019

Read more: http://www.detnews.com/article/20100112/METRO/1120362/1409/METRO/Child-poverty–neglect-on-rise-in-Michigan#ixzz0d4mXrQsV

Texas has suffered the lowest graduation rates in the nation with the worst racial disparities.

To so pointlessly and blatantly refuse money for strapped schools when the Houston superintendent writes “I have 100,000 kids in Houston who don’t read at grade level” is putting another generation of Texas children at risk.

Texas had taken $250,000 from the Gates Foundation to complete the grant application and had a good chance of at being awarded funding.

The risk of youth not being able to read by the third grade going on to lead dysfunctional lives is well documented. .

Children depend on the government for their education. This government is investing its capital in politics rather than children.

Texas is laying off teachers, cutting useful programs and closing schools.

Texas has also suffered from one of the highest rates of crime and incarceration in the nation. It is well established that educated children have a far better chance of becoming productive citizens and the people of Texas would all benefit from that.

Governor Perry, these are your state’s children.

Please reconsider this counterproductive and political decision.

Texas Shuts Door on Millions in Education Grants

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/education/14texas.html?ref=education
By SAM DILLON
Published: January 13, 2010
Texas will not compete for up to $700 million in federal education money, Gov. Rick Perry said on Wednesday, calling the Obama administration’s main school improvement grant program an unacceptable intrusion on states’ control over education.

Mr. Perry’s decision, days before a Jan. 19 deadline, interrupted months of work by Texas officials and a consulting company financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to prepare the application for the federal grant competition, known as Race to the Top. Texas had been eligible to win up to $700 million of a total of $4 billion the department will award for encouraging charter schools, improving teacher instruction, overhauling schools and joining an effort to adopt common academic standards.

“We would be foolish and irresponsible,” Mr. Perry said, “to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special-interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington.”

Mr. Perry, who is seeking re-election in November, is locked in a tough Republican primary battle with Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, and both candidates have been trying to appeal to conservative voters.

Texas is one of two states, (Alaska is the other) that last year refused to participate in a nationwide effort, supervised by the National Governors Association and encouraged by the Obama administration, to write common curriculum standards. That posture had put Texas at a disadvantage in the federal competition. But the state education commissioner, Robert Scott, argued in an interview in the fall that Texas was well-positioned to win because of what he characterized as his state’s pioneering work in school reform. In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Scott said that his views had evolved and that the potential payoff for Texas had been too small to justify giving up state control.

“Even if we won the full amount, it would only run our schools for two days, so for that we weren’t going to cede control over our curriculum standards,” Mr. Scott said.

Mr. Perry’s decision ended weeks of speculation about the state’s intentions. Officials at the Texas Education Agency had already spent 700 to 800 hours preparing the state’s proposal, and the Gates Foundation had spent some $250,000 to provide consultants to assist the state.

Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, the state’s largest teachers union, said she supported the governor’s decision because the federal competition appeared to be leading toward adoption of a national test, which she opposes.

“I’m relieved because we’ve got enough problems with high-stakes tests already,” Ms. Fallon said.

But Terry Grier, superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, disagreed.

“I’m disappointed,” Mr. Grier said. “It was potentially a lot of money for our state. I’m not one to sell my soul for money, but I have 100,000 kids in Houston who don’t read at grade level, and I don’t agree with people who say resources don’t make a difference.”

A Pennsylvania judge was just sent to prison for receiving commissions for each youth he sent to a privately run juvenile detention center run by his friends.

Thousands of innocent youth paid for this crime. Illinois has recently stun gunned, choked, and brutalized young girls in its juvenile justice system.

A MN judge has sent me the Ritalin, Prozac, and other psychotropic medications proscribed to five, six, and seven year olds that passed through her courtroom (seldom receiving adequate mental health therapy to accompany these not yet recommended for children medications).

Missouri had suffered a 90% recidivism rate in its juvenile justice system, New York & California are close (and topping the expense charts at almost $250,000/per child per year) & all states seem to be moving toward trying more and more children as adults

Today’s NYTimes Report: Sex Abuse High at 13 Juvenile Centers

establishes that almost a third of juvenile justice detainees are victimized. About 12% are sexually abused & six of the sites had abuse rates of over 30%. WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly one out of every three youths at 13 juvenile detention facilities have reported some type of sexual victimization, according to a government study issued Thursday that found widespread reports of youth sex abuse at correctional centers.

Nationwide about 12 percent of youths held in state-run, privately run, or local facilities reported some type of sexual victimization, the Justice Department found in the first report of its kind. The rates varied widely between facilities.

Victimization included forced sexual activity with another youth and all sexual activity with staff.

”They were convicted of a crime. They have to serve time but they shouldn’t serve time in a manner in which they’re going to be abused or assaulted,” said Troy Erik Isaac, 36, who said he was sexually assaulted in a California juvenile facility.

At 12, Isaac was sent to a juvenile center for vandalism, and within days his 16-year-old cell mate raped him during the night, he said. Isaac reported it and eventually was moved. But Isaac said the rapes continued as guards looked the other way and he became too afraid to fight back.

”It’s a traumatizing experience for someone that is young. You take that with you wherever you go,” said Isaac, who spent most of his life in and out of prison until he started a community service organization, Hands On Advocacy Group, two years ago.

About 26,550 juveniles are held in such facilities around the country, and the survey — conducted for the government by Westat, a company based on Rockville, Md. — collected information from about 9,000 of them via anonymous computerized questionnaire. The survey was conducted from June 2008 through April 2009 and asked whether the young inmates had been abused in the previous year of detention.

About 10 percent of youths surveyed reported abuse involving facility staff people, and nearly all of those complaints were against female staffers, who made up less than half of the workers. About 2 percent of the reported abuse involving other young inmates.

Although advocates said the level of abuse wasn’t surprising, the prevalence of sexual abuse by staff, particularly female workers, was shocking, said Linda McFarlane, deputy executive director of Just Detention International, which fights to end sexual abuse of those who are detained.

”Many of these are already the most vulnerable and traumatized youth from all of our communities and they’re placed for custody because they’re considered to be a danger,” she said. ”If sexually abused in those very institutions that are supposed to help them prepare for life in the community, then it’s just an incredible travesty.”

The study identified six facilities where the survey found at least three out of every 10 inmates said they were sexually victimized while in custody: Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility in Indiana; Corsicana Residential Treatment Center in Texas; Backbone Mountain Youth Center in Swanton, Md.; Samarkand Youth Development Center in Eagle Springs, N.C.; Cresson Secure Treatment Unit in Pennsylvania; and the Culpeper Juvenile Correctional Center, Long Term, in Mitchells, Va.

Another seven sites reported nearly as high levels of sexual abuse or victimization: Victory Field Correctional Academy in Vernon, Texas; Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility; Shawono Center in Grayling, Michigan; Woodland Hills Youth Development Center in Nashville, Tenn.; L.E. Rader Center in Sand Springs, Okla.; Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center in Virginia; New Jersey Training School in Monroe Township, N.J.

The numbers were far different than the records kept by many states. Officials in several states, including Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee, New Jersey and Maryland, said they had very few or no substantiated complaints of sexual abuse in recent years at the facilities named in the report.

In New Jersey, the Juvenile Justice Commission has concerns with the Justice report, including ”methodological problems often associated with self-reporting.”he Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice was shocked that it had two facilities on the list, spokesman Bruce Twyman said. In the last year, the department had increased training for staff and upgraded video surveillance to combat sexual abuse, he said.

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”It’s not something that we’re proud of,” Twyman said. ”We look at it from this standpoint: Any sexual victimization is one too many so we want to be very aggressive about rooting it out, there’s no question about that.”

Indiana Department of Correction spokesman Doug Garrison said the agency saw the report as an opportunity to reinforce to staff and inmates that it has a ”zero tolerance” policy toward sex.

”There’s no such thing as consensual sex in a correctional facility, certainly not in a juvenile facility either,” he said.

In Texas, the news comes amid major reforms following a widely publicized abuse scandal.

”We have a zero tolerance policy on sexual misconduct,” said Jim Hurley, spokesman for the Texas Youth Commission. ”This is a very important subject for us, and something we are on top of at the Texas Youth Commission.”

During the time the survey was conducted the agency had 23 allegations of sexual misconduct. One was adjudicated and two remain open.

Genger Galloway, of Crockett, Texas, fought for many of the reforms that are in place now. Her son, Joseph, who was jailed for molesting his siblings at 15, said he was sexually assaulted by a female staff member and beaten and sodomized by a male inmate as a guard stood by in 2003.

Galloway lobbied the Texas legislature for change, but she said it was too late for her son.

”My son will never be the same,” she said. ”My son is full of hatred.”

Staff sexual misconduct was higher in state-run facilities than in privately or locally operated sites, the study found, and smaller facilities tended to have fewer reports of sexual victimization.

——

Potter contributed from Richmond, Va. Associated Press writers Kelley Shannon contributed from Austin, Texas; Emery Dalesio from Raleigh, N.C.; Charles Wilson from Indianapolis; Dave Dishneau from Hagerstown, Md.; Travis Loller from Nashville, Tenn.; Beth DeFalco from Trenton, N.J.; and Ramit Plushnick-Masti from Pittsburgh.

With state, county, and federal funding diminishing, it is painful to see the disappearance of one of few non profit services to abused and neglected children in Wyoming.

Read more;

http://www.sheridanmedia.com/news/child-abuse-prevention-group-close6898

Send them a donation to keep the doors open; Make checks payable to:
http://www.pcawyoming.org/donate.php
Prevent Child Abuse Wyoming
1902 Thomes Avenue, Suite 204B
Cheyenne, WY 82001

Today over 75% of children entering New York’s JJS have drug and alcohol issues over half have mental health problems, and one third have developmental disabilities. The state spends about $210,000 per child annually and 75% of the children are re-arrested within three years.

Other states look this bad too (California, Florida, Texas)

A few years ago Missouri had the same problem and solved it by concentrating on reducing confinement, a humane approach to youth combined with the mental health needs of children, and restorative justice.

What hurts most is that the youth I know in Juvenile Justice almost all have come out of child protection badly damaged from violent or neglectful families and unable emotionally or developmentally to cope with life.

Most of them have mental health issues that have been ignored even if they were “lucky enough” to have had help through child protection services. I don’t consider access to Prozac, Ritalin, or other psychotropic medications without adequate therapy a useful approach to dealing with the traumas of child abuse.

MN Chief Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz puts it well when she says, “the difference between that poor child and a felon is about eight years” & about 90% of the youth in juvenile justice have passed through the child protection system. Here’s the NYTimes article in full;

ALBANY — New York’s system of juvenile prisons is broken, with young people battling mental illness or addiction held alongside violent offenders in abysmal facilities where they receive little counseling, can be physically abused and rarely get even a basic education, according to a report by a state panel.

Related
Draft Report on New York State’s Juvenile Prisons

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Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Violent offenders could be housed with young people in custody for lesser offenses, including truancy, the report said.

The problems are so acute that the state agency overseeing the prisons has asked New York’s Family Court judges not to send youths to any of them unless they are a significant risk to public safety, recommending alternatives, like therapeutic foster care.

“New York State’s current approach fails the young people who are drawn into the system, the public whose safety it is intended to protect, and the principles of good governance that demand effective use of scarce state resources,” said the confidential draft report, which was obtained by The New York Times.

The report, prepared by a task force appointed by Gov. David A. Paterson and led by Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, comes three months after a federal investigation found that excessive force was routinely used at four prisons, resulting in injuries as severe as broken bones and shattered teeth.

The situation was so serious the Department of Justice, which made the investigation, threatened to take over the system.

But according to the task force, the problems uncovered at the four prisons are endemic to the entire system, which houses about 900 young people at 28 facilities around the state.

While some prisons for violent and dangerous offenders should be preserved, the report calls for most to be replaced with a system of smaller centers closer to the communities where most of the families of the youths in custody live.

The task force was convened in 2008 after years of complaints about the prisons, punctuated by the death in 2006 of an emotionally disturbed 15-year-old boy at one center after two workers pinned him to the ground. The task force’s recommendations are likely to help shape the state’s response to the federal findings.

“I was not proud of my state when I saw some of these facilities,” Mr. Travis said in an interview on Friday. “New York is no longer the leader it once was in the juvenile justice field.”

New York’s juvenile prisons are both extremely expensive and extraordinarily ineffective, according to the report, which will be given to Mr. Paterson on Monday. The state spends roughly $210,000 per youth annually, but three-quarters of those released from detention are arrested again within three years. And though the median age of those admitted to juvenile facilities is almost 16, one-third of those held read at a third-grade level.

The prisons are meant to house youths considered dangerous to themselves or others, but there is no standardized statewide system for assessing such risks, the report found.

In 2007, more than half of the youths who entered detention centers were sent there for the equivalent of misdemeanor offenses, in many cases theft, drug possession or even truancy. More than 80 percent were black or Latino, even though blacks and Latinos make up less than half the state’s total youth population — a racial disparity that has never been explained, the report said.

Many of those detained have addictions or psychological illnesses for which less restrictive treatment programs were not available. Three-quarters of children entering the juvenile justice system have drug or alcohol problems, more than half have had a diagnosis of mental health problems and one-third have developmental disabilities.

Yet there are only 55 psychologists and clinical social workers assigned to the prisons, according to the task force. And none of the facilities employ psychiatrists, who have the authority to prescribe the drugs many mentally ill teenagers require.

While 76 percent of youths in custody are from the New York City area, nearly all the prisons are upstate, and the youths’ relatives, many of them poor, cannot afford frequent visits, cutting them off from support networks.

“These institutions are often sorely underresourced, and some fail to keep their young people safe and secure, let alone meet their myriad service and treatment needs,” according to the report, which was based on interviews with workers and youths in custody, visits to prisons and advice from experts. “In some facilities, youth are subjected to shocking violence and abuse.”

Even before the task force’s report is released, the Paterson administration is moving to reduce the number of youths held in juvenile prisons. adys Carrión, the commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, the agency that oversees the juvenile justice system, has recommended that judges find alternative placements for most young offenders, according to an internal memorandum issued Oct. 28 by the state’s deputy chief administrative judge.

Ms. Carrión also advised court officials that New York would not contest the Justice Department findings, according to the memo, and that officials were negotiating a settlement agreement to remedy the system.

Peter E. Kauffmann, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson, said the governor “looks forward to receiving the recommendations of the task force as we continue our efforts to transform the state’s juvenile justice system from a correctional-punitive model to a therapeutic model.”

The report contends that smaller facilities would place less strain on workers, helping reduce the use of physical force, and would be better able to tailor rehabilitation programs.

New York is not unique in using its juvenile prisons to house mentally ill teenagers, particularly as many states confront huge budget shortfalls that have resulted in significant cuts to mental health programs. Still, some states are trying to shift to smaller, community-based programs.

The report by New York’s task force does not say how much money would be needed to overhaul the system, but as Mr. Paterson and state lawmakers try to close a $3.2 billion deficit, cost could become a major hurdle.

Ms. Carrión has faced resistance from some prison workers, who accuse her of making them scapegoats for the system’s problems and minimizing the dangerous conditions they face. State records show a significant spike in on-the-job injuries, for which some workers blame Ms. Carrión’s efforts to limit the use of force.

“We embrace the idea of moving towards a more therapeutic model of care, but you can’t do that without more training and more staff,” said Stephen A. Madarasz, a spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association, the union that represents prison workers. “You’re not dealing with wayward youth. In the more secure facilities, you’re dealing with individuals who have been involved in pretty serious crimes.”

Advocates have credited Ms. Carrión, who was appointed in 2007 by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, with instituting significant reforms, including installing cameras in some of the more troubled prisons and providing more counseling.

But the state has a long way to go, many advocates say.

“Even the kids that are not considered dangerous are shackled when they are being transferred from their homes to the centers upstate — hands and feet, sometimes even belly chains,” said Clara Hemphill, a researcher and author of a report on the state’s youth prisons published in October by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School.

“It really is barbaric,” she added, “the way they treat these kids.”

As a postscript to this article, I would like to remind you that the percentage of the California state budget that went to higher education and prisons last year was 12% and 10% respectively. In 1979 the percentage was 15% and 3%. Many states mirror this perverse and economically indefensible approach to public policy.

Minneapolis MN arrested 44% of its adult black men in 2001 & nationally 13% of black men can’t vote because they are felons. From the data and my own years in child protection, I can make the argument that America’s public policy makes it statistically improbable for an African American male child to have much of a chance to lead a normal life.

Another state (Hawaii) has slashed education rather than think through measures that would be less damaging to children.

Saving money by denying health or mental health services, foster care*, education, or other critical developmental assets, to children is way more expensive than making children whole and insuring that they become contributing members of the community.

Minnesota will soon be facing huge cuts to children’s services due to the cuts made by our governor Tim Pawlenty. As the bridge fell into the river because it was not maintained, these children will fall into the category of troubled, dysfunctional, and nonproductive, costing the community for many years to come.

Visit a prison and consider the correlation between failed students and prisoners, and the cost of thirty years of institutionalizing a child. Add the cost and human suffering of crime, disruption in the schools from under treated at risk children and growing fear in our communities

Remember MN Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Blatz statement, “the difference between that poor child and a felon is about eight years”.

If we aren’t willing to provide education for children today, we ought not expect much governance from them when their turn comes as legislators and managers tomorrow.

God help us

*As a guardian ad-Litem, it was my job to support the county in its efforts to remove children from a very stable and fit father who could not afford daycare (and the list for subsidized day care had 4000 names in front of his). Putting four children into foster care could not have been less expensive than subsidizing day care for this man (think of the unnecessary pain caused the children – have we no soul?)

I do not cast stones at the workers. They are hard working people implementing policies drafted by elected officials. It is up to us (in a representative democracy) to see that we elect officials that create policies that have more soul and make more sense.

Do you know your state representative?

Find out and call her/him with the important message that you know that short term savings DO NOT APPLY to the politics of children.

As painful as this story is, I am happy to see a major newspaper printing the stories and data that shine a light into the frightening world of abused and neglected children.

The question we should all be asking ourselves is what life was like for these children before they were suffocated, burned, starved, and beaten to death.

Children forced to live in cages

Seven year old hangs himself

Murdered metro baby

It has been my experience as a guardian ad-Litem, that children spend many years being abused and neglected, often under the eye of an under – resourced social service provider. The worst abuse is invisible. The impact of abuse lasts forever. Early and extensive intervention can help an abused child lead a normal life.

I agree with Ruben Rosario, that the public has no clue about the depth and scope of child abuse. I would add that three million cases of abuse and neglect are reported each year, and only a small percentage of child sex abuse is ever dealt with openly or adequately.

This years death toll of murdered, hanged, and otherwise suicidal very young children is a powerful indicator that we as a community are failing the weakest and most vulnerable among us.

Without intervention, at risk children become adolescent felons and preteen moms, perpetuating the kinds of dysfunctional families that they were born into. The cycle can only end with our help. Our schools, city streets, and newspaper headlines will be much happier if we should make that choice.