I have attended several law school symposiums that articulated the complexities of prosecuting child rape and come to understand how far away from solving these problems our nations judicial system really is. In one of my GAL cases, a 40 year old man had terribly molested a child over a four year period and was not made a party to the case. He was still in the home accused of molesting another (three year old) child almost ten years later.

The following article from UNICEF in the Huffington Post focuses on adolescent girls in third world nations, but I would point out that child rape in my caseload has been significantly younger than ten years of age.

Ann M. VenemanUNICEF Executive Director
Posted: March 7, 2010 11:35 AM
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International Women’s Day: A Time to Focus on Adolescent Girls

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-veneman/international-womens-day_b_489069.html
Last week in Guatemala I visited a UNICEF centre that houses girls as young as thirteen who have been rescued from brothels. The stories of suffering are simply unimaginable — horrific situations of rape, prostitution, torture and lost innocence.

With the help of UNICEF and its partners, many of these girls are now being given the opportunity to heal and build a better life through education and care. While these girls have been rescued, unfortunately so many more remain trapped in an underground world of abuse.

Stories such as these are not uncommon in many other parts of the world and serve as a reminder of the work that must be done to ensure young girls and women are better protected.

Millions of adolescent girls live in poverty, experience gender discrimination and inequality, and are subject to violence, abuse, and exploitation. The result is not only the suffering of girls themselves, but a continuing cycle of oppression and abuse.

While progress has been made towards equal rights and equal access for women and girls in areas like basic health and education, too often adolescent girls are still excluded. Investment in education and health are essential, but so too are much tougher laws, penalties, and prosecutions against the abusers.

Education is one key to better lives for girls, their families and their communities. Expert studies estimate that every extra year a girl spends in secondary education lifts her income by more than 15 per cent. Better educated girls have better employment and health prospects and, as they grow to womanhood, they pass these benefits to their children.

There is a strong link between the educational levels a country provides for its girls and the size of that country’s economy. But more importantly, education empowers women and gives them the opportunity to have a greater voice in society.

As we recognize International Women’s Day this March 8th, the international community, together with governments around the world, must work more aggressively to ensure that every girl has the right to a childhood that provides her with the opportunity to reach her full potential.

Ann Veneman is Executive Director of UNICEF. International Women’s Day is recognized on March 8, 2010. For more information about issues impacting women and young girls visit UNICEF.org.

Send us your stories.

The vast majority of the children we will be tying up & confining come from very troubled homes. Or, as former MN Supreme court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz has stated, about 90% of the youth in juvenile justice have come through child protection services.

Before a child can become removed from a home through child protection services, they have lived for a long time in an abusive or neglectful home and have been tortured as defined by the World Health Organization.

It’s not the happy children that we will be restraining - it’s the three million children that are reported to child protection in America each year.

In my experience, the WHO’s definition of torture fits the life experience of a child that has been removed from an abusive home; “extended exposure to violence and deprivation” has been their life. The U.S. has no other child protection policy than the IMMINENT HARM DOCTRINE.

The link between an abused child’s past tortured life and future troubled life is clear to most of us that have lived with or worked with these damaged children long enough. It causes me great pain to see my guardian ad-Litem kids handled like mad animals (tasered, confined, beat up by under-trained staff in under-resourced detention centers)

These are the children that develop behavior problems in school, get into trouble with delinquency, juvenile justice & the court system. Without appropriate services, they are on a one way path to criminal justice, poverty, preteen pregnancy & dysfunctional lifestyles (and that is often forever).

Our schools, jails, and courts are filled with abused and neglected children.

Thirteen million prison and jail releases in the U.S. last year, & America has more crime and criminals per capita than any other nation in the world. All because we can’t stop punishing abused and neglected children.

States that have discovered restorative justice and a therapeutic approach for youth are saving money and getting terrific results. States that continue to punish and incarcerate are feeling the burden of failure of public policy.

Children with serious behavioral problems need help getting to normal.

Most children with serious behavioral problems that don’t get help end up leading dysfunctional lives. It is far less costly to help a child get to normal than to let the child develop into a dysfunctional adult.

A good number of the children I have worked with in child protection have never had a nice day in their life, have a great need for mental health services, and do not respond well to threats or punishment.

The need for early childhood programs and mental health help is tremendous. Most states are using way to many psychotropics along with brute force and punishment against children that have already endured horrifically tortured home lives.

The A.C.E. study in Ramsey County demonstrated that about 70% of the serious and violent crime committed by youth in the county was committed by youth from under four % of the families in the county.

Our current policies of punishment instead of treating the behavior problems of children has failed and will continue to fail.

If our policies are to be measured by what they produce, it must be said that America’s politics of punishing abused and neglected children (restraint, confinement, imprisonment, lack of a humane approach to children), are producing juvenile delinquents, preteen mothers, overcrowded prisons and unsafe cities. Internationally, we are no longer a leader in the quality of life indices that we lead in for so long.

Minneapolis Minnesota has a mental health model in its school system that could work for the nation. Missouri went from 90% recidivism in its juvenile justice system to almost 90% success in just a few years with a therapeutic and caring approach to youth.

The economics of saving children through these models is proven and our mandate to care for the weakest and most vulnerable among us has been with us since time began, yet we continue to charge eleven year old children in adult criminal court & legislate to heap more punishment on abused and neglected children.

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A child’s right to be heard is the essence of the guardian ad-Litem program. Think about it. Voiceless, helpless children enduring unspeakable horrors, sometimes for many years with no one to turn to for help.

The World Health Organization defines Torture as extended exposure to violence and deprivation. That is how I see child abuse.

In my experience as a guardian ad-Litem, a child often doesn’t even know that these terrible adult behaviors are wrong or they they have not done something to cause them.

Unspeakable crimes are committed against children but its not a crime in most third world nations, and it is rarely discovered if child protection services are under-trained or under resourced in industrialized nations.


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Developing nations struggle to provide any protection for young children unlucky enough to be born into violent or dysfunctional families. Girls are still treated like objects in much of the third world.

When I spoke at the UN a few years ago, a woman from Africa explained that there “were not words” to describe the commonality of the abuse perpetrated upon children in her country.

Today’s New York Times had a terrible example in Yeman, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/opinion/04kristof.html
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Divorced Before Puberty

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: March 3, 2010

It’s hard to imagine that there have been many younger divorcées — or braver ones — than a pint-size third grader named Nujood Ali (about the same age as Jerry Lee Lewis’ first wife in the U.S. fifty years ago).

So to read that Ireland is implementing a guardian ad-Litem program, which gives a child a voice in his/her own life was a definite step forward for humanity last week.

The Irish Times – Monday, March 1, 2010
Implementing best practice on the right of children to be heard

The proposed wording for the constitutional amendment on childrens rights provides an opportunity for a world-class system allowing children’s voices to be heard

THE PROPOSED wording for the amendment to the Constitution on children’s rights includes a reference to “the right of the child’s voice to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child, having regard to the child’s age and maturity”. This was enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, to which Ireland is a party.

Being afforded the opportunity to be heard by the decision-maker on matters affecting oneself is one of the cornerstones of due process, not only in criminal law cases, but also in civil law cases, such as child care and family law cases, in which children’s interests are often at stake.

While legal representation may be appropriate for older teenagers in order to be heard, most children will require help in transmitting their views to the court. In Ireland, this assistance takes the form of the guardian ad litem (guardian in law), usually an independent social worker. However, provision for the right of children to be heard through either mechanism in civil law cases in Ireland has, to date, been minimalistic and ad-hoc.

The Child Care Act 1991 permits the appointment of a guardian ad litem for a child involved in proceedings relating to care and supervision orders, where the child is not a party to proceedings. This is a matter for the discretion of the judge, and practice varies between regions and individual judges. Furthermore, the appointment is paid for by the HSE, which can raise conflicts of interest, because child care cases often involve children being taken into the care of the HSE.

The Children Act 1997 provides for the appointment of a guardian ad litem in family law proceedings. This provision has not entered into force, so it is not used in practice. The net effect of inadequate legislation in both child care and family law proceedings is that the majority of children are left unheard in matters directly concerning them.

It is useful to look at the experiences of other countries in order to consider how the right of children to be heard could be adequately provided for in Ireland. There is a strong presumption in favour of the appointment of guardians ad litem in the respective systems of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In fact, guardians ad litem are automatically appointed unless the court is satisfied that it is not necessary to do so. This ensures a level of consistency in appointment between regions and individual judges.

The legislative provision for hearing children in family law cases as opposed to care cases is not as strong in these neighbouring jurisdictions, but at least some systems are in place. In family law proceedings, the court may be assisted by Children’s Court officers in Northern Ireland and Family Court advisers in England, who may interview the children involved to obtain their views.

In the Scottish system, all children in family law cases receive a form from the court, inviting them to let the judge know whether they wish to express views. In any civil proceedings in Scotland, the equivalent of a guardian ad litem can be appointed by the court to protect the interests of the child (for example if there is a conflict of interest between child and parent/s).

Children are considered competent to instruct a solicitor from the age of 12, and solicitors can accept instruction from children under this age if they consider the children have the capacity to instruct.

It is useful to consider the comments of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child on the right to be heard. The committee advises states to avoid stipulating minimum ages at which children should be heard, but instead to have processes in place for assessing the capacities of children to form views if the issue arises. The committee urges that children should have a large measure of choice about whether to speak directly to the judge or whether to be heard through a representative.

The right to be heard is interpreted by the committee as including the right of children to have their views seriously considered. Children’s views should hold a significant amount of weight if they are clear, reasonable and independent. Children should also be provided with adequate information at all stages (unless this is inappropriate), and should have the outcome of the case explained to them, including the position of their views within the process.

An important factor in proper implementation of the right of children to be heard would be the existence of a regulatory body to oversee its application in both types of proceedings. Such an organisation could administer the guardian ad litem service and provide for social reports and other means of enabling children to express views where those children wish to do so. It could also ensure that the guidance from the UN committee is put into practice.

The system in Ireland will have to be vastly improved to vindicate the right of children to be heard. The proposed constitutional amendment provides us with a chance to improve practice and to develop a world class system enabling Ireland to abide by directions of the UN committee, incorporate best practice, and surpass provision elsewhere.

Aoife Daly is completing a PhD on the right of children to be heard at the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, and teaches a course on children’s rights at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway

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As a volunteer guardian ad-Litem working with abused and neglected children in my county, I have watched services for at risk children disappear and the horrible results that follow. It is becoming unbearable at this time of economic unrest.

Seniors of the 1950’s were well served by the public support they received when people stood up for them at the time.

Where is that support for the millions of children reported to child protection services in this nation each year and why is it that 90% of the youth in juvenile justice have passed through child protection systems and are headed for criminal justice & U.S. preteen pregnancy and STD rates are the highest in the world?

I remember a nation that stood by its weakest and most vulnerable citizens. Where did they go?

FEBRUARY 21, 2010

A Critical Look At The Foster Care System:How Widespread a Problem?

A Critical Look At The Foster Care System:
How Widespread a Problem?
http://unhappygrammy-grandparentsblog.blogspot.com/

A New York University Survey determined that over 28% of the children in foster care had been abused while in the system. The cases noted were frightening. Louisiana a study indicated that 21% of abuse and neglect cases involved foster homes. Hundreds of Louisiana foster children were shipped to Texas.

Stephen Berzon of the Children’s Defense Fund explained the shocking findings of the court before a Congressional subcommitte, saying: “children were physically abused, handcuffed, beaten, chained, and tied up, kept in cages, and overdrugged with psychotropic medication for institutional convenience.”

The rest of this report is terrifying. Many states have decades long histories of ignoring the physical violence and overt sexual abuse of very young children. This report names names, dates, and places.

California paid $18 million to children that were abused while in its custody. This is a frightening story.

I agree with Children’s Rights Project attorney Marcia Robinson Lowry: “There are a lot of injuries, a lot of abuse. The most significant thing is the psychological death of so many of these kids. Kids are being destroyed every day, destroyed by a government-funded system set out to help them.”

Each state must look hard at the outcomes it wants to achieve. Recent studies show that 80% of children aging out of foster care are leading dysfunctional lives

There is an institutional violence done to children when the system is too busy, too under-trained, or under-resourced to include family members.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2010
A Critical Look At The Foster Care System:How Widespread a Problem?

A Critical Look At The Foster Care System:
How Widespread a Problem?

——————————————————————————–

HOW WIDESPREAD A PROBLEM?
One of the most comprehensive surveys of abuse in foster care was conducted in conjunction with a Baltimore lawsuit. Trudy Festinger, head of the Department of Research at the New York University School of Social Work, determined that over 28 per cent of the children in state care had been abused while in the system.

Reviewed cases depicted “a pattern of physical, sexual and emotional abuses” inflicted upon children in the custody of the Baltimore Department.

Cases reviewed as the trial progressed revealed children who had suffered continuous sexual and physical abuse or neglect in foster homes known to be inadequate by the Department. Cases included that of sexual abuse of young girls by their foster fathers, and that of a young girl who contracted gonorrhea of the throat as a result of sexual abuse in an unlicenced foster home.[1]

In Louisiana, a study conducted in conjunction with a civil suit found that 21 percent of abuse or neglect cases involved foster homes.[2]

In another Louisiana case, one in which thousands of pages of evidence were reviewed, and extensive testimony and depositions were taken, it was discovered that hundreds of foster children had been shipped out of the state to Texas.

Stephen Berzon of the Children’s Defense Fund explained the shocking findings of the court before a Congressional subcommitte, saying: “children were physically abused, handcuffed, beaten, chained, and tied up, kept in cages, and overdrugged with psychotropic medication for institutional convenience.”[3]

In Missouri, a 1981 study found that 57 percent of the sample children were placed in foster care settings that put them “at the very least at a high risk of abuse or neglect.”[4]

A later report issued in 1987 found that 25 percent of the children in the Missouri sample group had been victims of “abuse or inappropriate punishment.”

Children’s Rights Project attorney Marcia Robinson Lowry described the findings of the Missouri review before the Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families:

The most troubling result of the Kansas City review was the level of abuse, undetected or unreported, in foster homes. 25% of the children in the sample were the subject of abuse or inappropriate punishment. 88% of those reports were not properly investigated.[5]

SEXUAL ABUSE
A recent class action lawsuit filed on behalf of foster children in the State of Arizona serves well to indicate the extent of sexual abuse of children in state care.

The suit alleges that over 500 of an estimated 4,000 foster children, a figure representing at least 12.5 percent of the state’s foster care population, have been sexually abused while in state care.

The action also charged that “the acts and omissions of Defendants were done in bad faith, with malice, intent or deliberate indifference to and/or reckless disregard for the health, safety and rights of the Plaintiffs.”[6]

But the problems associated with foster placements in Arizona are not limited to sexual abuse. During a recent two year period, one foster child died on average every seven and a half weeks in the state of Arizona. Four of them were reported as having been “viciously beaten to death” by their foster parents.[7]

The sexual abuse of children in government custody would appear to be a particularly widespread problem.

In Maryland, a 1992 study found that substantiated allegations of sexual abuse in foster care are four times higher than that found among the general population.[8]

In Kentucky, sex abuse in foster care was “all over the newspapers,” according to department head Larry Michalczyk.

The former Commissioner explained that within a few years of time, his state saw a child die while in residential placement, a lawsuit filed against a DSS staff member on behalf of a foster child, and legislative inquiries into its child protection system.[9]

Kentucky would prove to be a problematic state, as case reviewers would find that only 55 percent of the children in the state’s care had the legally mandated case plans.[10]

Perhaps the most significant indicator of the true extent of sexual abuse in foster care was a survey of alumni of what was described as an “exemplary” and “model” program in the Pacific Northwest, argues University professor Richard Wexler.

“In this lavishly-funded program caseloads were kept low and both workers and foster parents got special training. This was not ordinary foster care, this was Cadillac Foster Care,” he explained.

In this “exemplary” program, 24 percent of the girls responding to a survey said they were victims of actual or attempted sexual abuse in the one home in which they had stayed the longest. Significantly, they were not even asked about the other foster homes in which they had stayed.[11]

The Children’s Rights Project has initiated a number of successful civil suits against foster care and child welfare systems. One such landmark suit was brought against the Illinois foster care system. Attorney Benjamin Wolf instituted the legal action after concluding that the states foster care system functioned as “a laboratory experiment to produce the sexual abuse of children.”[12]

Yet by many accounts, the sexual abuse of children in the state’s care has increased along with the increase in placements, successful lawsuits notwithstanding. Even Patrick Murphy, the outspoken Cook County Public Guardian, admits that sexual abuse of children in the care of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has probably increased.[13]

SYSTEMWIDE ABUSES
According to an Associated Press investigation, in nearly half the states, cases take years to come to completion as agencies repeatedly fail to investigate abuse reports in a timely fashion, find permanent homes for children, or even keep track of those children under their care and custody.[14]

For various reasons, ranging from failure to provide adequate supervision and oversight of workers, to failure to provide safe child care facilities, 22 states and the District of Columbia have been ruled inadequate by the courts and now operate under some form of judicial supervision.[15]

But the reader should not be reassured that such problems are isolated only to those states which have been successfully litigated against. As Children’s Rights Project attorney Marcia Robinson Lowry explained to a Congressional subcommittee: “We have turned down requests from a number of other states to institute additional lawsuits, solely because of a lack of resources.”[16]

A 1986 survey conducted by the National Foster Care Education Project found that foster children were 10 times more likely to be abused than children among the general population. A follow-up study in 1990 by the same group produced similar results.[17]

The American Civil Liberties Union’s Children’s Rights Project similarly estimates that a child in the care of the state is ten times more likely to be abused than one in the care of his parents.[18]

In a legal action brought by the Children’s Rights Project against the District of Columbia child welfare system, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that:

because of the appalling manner in which the system is managed, children remain subject to continuing abuse and neglect at the hands of heartless parents and guardians, even after the DHS has received reports of their predicaments. The court also found that youngsters who have been taken into the custody of the District’s foster-care system languish in inappropriate placements, with scarce hope of returning to their families or being adopted.
The Court also found that the agency entrusted with the care of children “has consistently evaded numerous responsibilities placed on it by local and federal statutes.” Among the deficiencies cited was “failure to provide services to families to prevent the placement of children in foster care.”[19]

Frustrated by the lack of progress after years of litigation, child advocates succeeded in placing the District of Columbia child welfare system into full receivership in 1995, making it the first such system in the nation to come under the direct control of the Court.[20]

In a Pennsylvania case, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit wrote in a 1994 decision: “It is a matter of common knowledge (and it is not disputed here) that in recent years the system run by DHS and overseen by DPW has repeatedly failed to fulfill its mandates, and unfortunately has often jeopardized the welfare of the children in its care.”

The original complaint, filed by the Children’s Rights Project on April 4, 1990, alleged that systemic deficiencies prevent the Pennsylvania department from performing needed services, and that it consistently violates the due process rights of both parents and children:

Specifically, plaintiffs claim that these amendments confer the right not to be deprived of a family relationship; the right not to be harmed while in state custody; the right to placement in the least restrictive, most appropriate placement; the right to medical and psychiatric treatment; the right to care consistent with competent professional judgment; and the right not to be deprived of liberty or property interests without due process of law.[21]
One of the plaintiffs in the Pennsylvania suit was “Tara M.” on whose behalf the ACLU charged the city of Philadelphia with neglect. Human Services Commissioner Joan Reeves guaranteed the young girl an adoptive home with specially trained parents.

In August of 1996, Tara M. would make the headlines once again, as her new foster parents were sentenced for “one of the most appalling cases of child abuse” Common Pleas Court Judge Carolyn E. Temin said she had ever heard.

Nine-year-old Tara has had three skin grafts and wears a protective stocking in recovery from burns over more than half her body. Police said the foster parents punished the girl by stripping her, forcing her into the bathtub and dousing her with buckets of scalding water. This was the very best of care the city could provide for Tara, a girl who had already endured years of physical and sexual abuse in the several foster homes into which she had been placed over the years.[22]

The Children’s Rights Project has also been involved in suits against child welfare systems in the states of Connecticut, Kansas, Louisiana and New Mexico, and the cities of Kansas City, Missouri; Louisville, Milwaukee, and New York City.[23]

Says Children’s Rights Project attorney Marcia Robinson Lowry: “There are a lot of injuries, a lot of abuse. The most significant thing is the psychological death of so many of these kids. Kids are being destroyed every day, destroyed by a government-funded system set out to help them.”[24]

In California, as of 1989 Los Angeles County alone had paid $18 million in settlements to children who had been abused while in its custody.

One such case involved a nine-year-old boy who weighed only 28 lbs., and who could hardly speak after the suicides of his parents. County social workers failed to visit him in his foster home for four months.

During that time, he was beaten, sodomized, burned on his genitals and nearly drowned by his foster parents. He became a spastic paraplegic. By 1990 the state was threatening to take over Los Angeles County’s child welfare system.[25]

The California-based Little Hoover Commission, in examining the functioning of the foster care system determined: “That children can come to harm–and even die–while supposedly under the protection of foster care is not in dispute.” Some cases cited by the Commission included:

A foster mother arrested in Los Angeles on charges of beating to death her 23-month-old foster son, allegedly over toilet training problems.
A Los Angeles woman arrested for the attempted murder of a 19-month-old foster child who she said fell from a jungle gym. Doctors believed the severe head injuries, which may result in blindness, could only have come from abuse.
A Sacramento woman who was injured in a car accident who voluntarily placed her daughter in a foster care facility. During a tantrum by the child, an employee of the facility wrapped her in a blanket and squatted on her. She was later discovered dead.[26]

MINIMIZING THE ABUSES
Child welfare departments are rarely forthcoming with information about the actual extent of harm that comes to children in their care. It is largely through audits and casereadings associated with legal actions that the actual extent of abuses in the foster care system come to light.

The reasons for this may not be as complex as they are often made to appear.

Child welfare officials who have managed to entrench themselves in lifetime civil service positions in the more desirable nooks and crannies of the child welfare system have a vested interest to protect, and those who run public bureaucracies have devised their own “rationalized myths” to protect their interests, argues sociologist John Hagedorn.

The myths of “doing good” benefit those who are advantaged by existing institutional arrangements. Even as politicians are constantly criticizing “bureaucracy” and “bureaucrats,” they approve millions of dollars worth of public funds to keep the bureaucracies running. As Hagedorn succinctly explains:

It’s simply too risky for bureaucrats to admit that their agency may not be “doing good.” The erosion of that myth may lead someone to investigate them or even propose cutting their budgets.[27]
But if there is one thing that is riskier for bureaucrats than admitting that their system may not be doing good, it is that it is doing far more harm than good.

Thus we find situations such as that in which the California Department’s legal division discovered a “secret room” in the Los Angeles Department containing 15 filing cabinets holding approximately 3,000 case files on foster care facilities that had problems which were not reported to the state.

In one case, ten foster children slept on the floor of a garage, while ten more were crammed into an upstairs bedroom. Three had been abused, one with a fractured skull and two broken limbs. Yet the home was not closed until months after the conditions were discovered.[28]

Thus we find caseworkers in a Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services office running files relating to a botched investigation through a paper-shredder.[29]

Thus we find a New York City caseworker indicating as “unfounded” the repeated rapes of a young girl in institutional care, notwithstanding the testimony of credible witnesses.[30]

Thus we find an agency administrator in Oklahoma quietly dismissing two agency employees accused of the sexual abuse of foster children without so much as a blot on their records.[31]

Thus we find what was described as a “whitewash of wrongdoing” in an edited audit of a child welfare office in Utah, and death threats made against the rare brave legislator who dared to push for the public release of the unexpurgated document.[32]

Thus we find a report of system-wide abuses at the Columbus-Maryville “shelter” in Illinois suppressed by Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy.[33]

THE QUIET ABUSES
With the high rate of multiple placements that most foster children endure, the possibility that they may experience overt physical or sexual abuse becomes an increasing certainty with each move. Yet even those children who are not subjected to overt physical or sexual abuse in state care often endure conditions tantamount to abuse.

Due to the overuse of foster care, the high number of children in custody often results in children being placed on a bed-available basis.[34]

The number of conventional foster homes in the public sector has dropped from 125,000 in 1988 to 100,000 today–and the “exodus continues,” says Gordon Evans, information director for the National Foster Parent Association in Houston.

Evans notes that the average number of children per home is 3.7–up from about 1.4 in 1983–and he estimates that “tens of thousands” care for six, seven, and eight youngsters at a time.[35]

Because of the shortage of conventional foster homes, and due in no small measure to the unwillingness of child welfare agencies to provide meaningful services to families, children continue to be shuttled off to institutional or residential placements on a bed-available basis.

Julie and her twin brother Juan were two such children. They were placed with their grandmother who tried to obtain needed services for them. The agency neglected to provide services, instead shuttling them in and out of five placements in which they often failed to receive proper medical care for their health problems.

The agency then sent Julie and Juan, at the age of two, to an institution for adolescent boys. When their grandmother visited them she discovered that Julie had been physically abused. The twins were then placed with a foster mother who again abused them, while failing to provide proper medical care.

Juan, after suffering a great deal of pain, died at age 3 before he could be returned to his grandmother. Julie’s condition worsened after her brother’s death, and she died at age four. The advocacy group Children’s Rights sued the city of New York for damages, and a jury awarded $87,500 to Julie’s estate. Her surviving sister plans to use the money to attend college.[36]

Julie and Juan’s story is in many respects typical. Because of the shortage of conventional foster homes due to the high number of children being unnecessarily placed in care, children often have labels assigned arbitrarily for purposes of placement.

Children may end up in a place like the Hegeman Diagnostic Center in Brooklyn, where a twelve-year-old girl who had been raped in a foster home was brought–only to be sexually abused by other girls at the center.

“We believe that assaults, sexual and otherwise, occur daily at the center,” said Karen Freedman of Lawyers for Children.[37]

Or they may wind up in a private residential treatment center like Indian Oaks in Manteno, Illinois, on the grounds of what used to be the state mental institution.

“Indian Oaks occupies one building, but the rest is desolate, empty, broken buildings,” says Peter Schmiedel, supervising attorney of the Special Litigations Team in the Office of the Public Guardian. “It’s something out of a bad, eerie movie.”

Says Schmiedel: “If ever you want to see something terrible, go to the DCFS intake shelter at Columbus-Maryville. Go downstairs where they keep the teenagers. The place used to be a morgue. It’s a room without windows, crowded, wall-to-wall beds.”

These beds were created in response to DCFS saying they need more beds, adds Schmiedel. “It’s market-driven forces, children as industry.”

Part of Schmiedel’s job is to go through unusual incident reports. “We must get two or three hundred a week,” he says, some of which include serious reports of physical and sexual abuse in treatment centers and foster homes. “It’s frightening–we don’t know which cases are the most serious.”

“You see what some parents do to their kids, but then you see what happens to kids who are removed from their homes and put into foster homes… I mean, the stories are grotesque.”[38]

Or consider the plight of those foster wards locked in detention in the San Francisco Youth Guidance Center Facility–maintained in small locked cells alongside alleged juvenile offenders who are themselves awaiting adjudication of their cases. A grand jury found the conditions endured by these children to be far worse than that endured by adult criminals in the County prison.[39]

THE SILENT NEGLECT
Even for those fortunate enough not to find themselves warehoused in glorified prisons, mental hospitals or congregate care facilities, overcrowding, medical and educational neglect are still the norm for many of the nation’s foster children.

A 1993 action filed in Utah is in many ways typical. The National Center for Youth Law filed the class-action on behalf of about 1,400 children in foster care and another 10,000 alleged to have been abused and neglected.

The action charged that the state failed to provide adequately trained caseworkers, medical treatment and education to children in its care, that it used unlicensed foster homes and homes that did not meet federal standards. It also alleged that children bounce around in the system and languish in foster care. A subsequent legislative audit largely confirmed the allegations.[40]

By 1994, the Utah legislature approved what the Governor called a “SWAT Team approach” to handling the system wide deficiencies in its foster care and child protective services programs.[41]

By 1995 it had established “Judicial M*A*S*H units,” courtrooms with temporary judges to handle the backlog of hundreds of children waiting for rulings on their cases.[42]

Also typical of recent actions is a Youth Law Center suit in California which accused Eloise Anderson, director of the Department of Social Services, of refusing to carry out state and federal laws which require audits of county child welfare programs.

Among the deficiencies cited in the lawsuit: “children in California’s child welfare system have been subjected to inadequate supervision, substandard conditions and inadequate health care and education.”[43]

On a national level, the General Accounting Office recently examined the issue of whether the nation’s foster children were being adequately serviced with respect to their health care needs. The GAO found that:

despite foster care agency regulations requiring comprehensive routine health care, an estimated 12 percent of young foster children receive no routine health care, 34 percent receive no immunizations, and 32 percent have some identified health needs that are not met
an estimated 78 percent of young foster children are at high risk for human immunodeficiency virus as a result of parental drug abuse, yet only about 9 percent of foster children are tested for HIV
young foster children placed with relatives receive fewer health-related services than children placed with nonrelative foster parents, possibly since relative caregivers receive less monitoring and assistance from caseworkers
that the Department of Health and Human Services has not designated any technical assistance to assist states with health-related programs for foster children and does not audit states’ compliance with health-related safeguards for foster children.[44]
As for the educational needs of children in state care, the situation is equally as distressing.

Miami attorney Karen Gievers, former President of the Florida Bar Association, filed a lawsuit in 1996, alleging that while 73 percent of Florida children among the general population graduate from high school or get an equivalent diploma, less than half of the state’s foster children do.[45]

In 1995, a suit was filed in Florida against its Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. The suit sought to shut down the Department, forcing HRS to stop taking children into foster care until it could better aid the 9,300 children already under its supervision. According to Howard Davidson, director of the American Bar Association’s Center on Children and the Law:

You could carbon-copy the lawsuit filed in Florida in every state. . . We have a child welfare system that’s near collapse.[46]
Even for those children who are not necessarily subjected to overt physical or sexual while in state care, life in state care often fails to provide them with permanence or stability.

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation reports that most foster care placements bear no resemblence to the ideal short term stay on the way to family reunification. Rather, “the devastating norm for foster children is multiple moves, extended stays, and no stable family ties.”[47]

Or, as Bruce Boyer, supervising attorney for the Children and Family Justice Center of Northwestern Law School notes, “there are a set of harms that follow a kid in foster care even if they are treated as well as the foster care system is capable of treating children. For those kinds of harms there is no mechanism for holding decision makers accountable; the only one who suffers is the child.”[48]

The most tragic aspect of all this is that most of the children subjected to the abuses of foster care don’t need to be there. And, it is largely because the system is flooded with so many children that don’t belong in care that these abuses continue to mount.

The situation is perhaps best summarized by a California based Santa Clara County Grand Jury report. “The Grand Jury did not see clear and convincing evidence that the foster care system operates with the best interest of the child in mind. It did find that the interest of the child often took a back seat to the interest of others.[49]

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

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

http://www.twincities.com/ci_14437150

As a guardian ad-Litem, I know that most child abuse cases are not reported. Recently an acquaintance of mine admitted to witnessing the prostitution of a very young girl and not reporting it. He had remorse and said that he had felt confused and endangered at the time.

I personally experienced a case with 45 police calls to an abusive home before the girls were removed from the home (where child abuse had been occurring and prostitutes had been arrested). The seven year old had been the victim of extended sexual abuse (I assumed prostituted).

“As a nation, we have done more to address child abuse in the past 30 years than occurred in the first 200 years of our history,” Vieth writes in an academic paper that has been well-received in the child-protection and justice fields but is virtually unknown in mainstream circles. “Unfortunately, the obstacles that remain are nothing less than mountains.”

One of them is the sad reality that many children suspected of being abused are not reported to the child-protection system.

Vieth cites a 2000 study that found that 65 percent of social workers, 53 percent of physicians and 58 percent of physician assistants did not report all cases of suspected abuse.

Most telling are two hypothetical cases involving teachers — not only mandated reporters, but also possibly the one trusted adult a child comes into daily contact with the most outside the home. Of 197 teachers who took part in the test, only 26 percent said they would contact authorities if a child told them that a relative was touching their genitals. Only 11 percent would do so in the second test, which involves a child accusing another teacher of touching their private parts.

Vieth also notes that even when cases are reported, most are never investigated. A government-commissioned national report this year on abused and neglected children found that most cases of maltreated children “do not get CPS (child-protection services) investigation.”

AIM HIGH

Vieth cites obstacles to reform: inadequate funding and training, as well as the fact that the issue is not a top public or political concern (I would call this a great understatement/MT).

“How many of the people running right now for governor have been asked to submit or have a position paper on child abuse and neglect like they do on crime, health, terrorism or child obesity?” Vieth asked.

I would also take Victor’s statement a step further and ask, how many people running for any public office meet this test?

There are very few political figures willing to speak about this topic. It is a sad truth that our schools are filled with children in need of special services to correct years of maltreatment in the home that will keep them from becoming normal functioning adults. Teachers are being asked to “manage” really difficult children with minimal resources or training and then blamed when the school performs badly.

America does not report or track the amount of psychotropic medications our children are taking nor do we provide adequate mental health services to children that need help until they have committed an act demanding of attention (and not often is the service adequate).

Recent studies show that up to 80% of youth aging out of foster care are leading dysfunctional lives. There are many steps between growing up in a troubled home and aging out of foster care that our communities can make the difference between growing up healthy and spending a life in and out of institutions.

http://www.twincities.com/ci_14437150

Rubén Rosario
Columnist
St. Paul Pioneer Press
345 Cedar Street
St. Paul, MN 55101
651 228-5454
e-mail: rrosario@pioneerpress.com
www.twincities.com

Ruben’s article;Ruben Rosario: A man’s dream of ending child abuse in U.S. within 120 years
By Rubén Rosario
Updated: 02/22/2010 11:36:19 AM CST

It was the maggot-infested baby that sealed it for Victor Vieth, the man who has a plan to end child abuse in America within 120 years.

Come again? I’ll get back to that, as well as what hybrid corn and the “perfect” chicken have to do with eliminating child abuse.

But back to the maggots tale.

Vieth, who grew up in Winona, was then a rookie prosecutor in Watonwan County in southwestern Minnesota, fresh out of Hamline University Law School. He inherited a “routine” termination of parental rights civil case, which is never routine. They might as well have handed him, on the spot, a tech tutorial on uranium waste disposal. He had never been taught or prepped for something like this.

One of his witnesses, a young male social worker, was struggling to defend himself under a blistering cross-examination as to why he violated state law and took it upon himself to remove the maggot-covered child from the abusive home. Only law enforcement was allowed to do that. You broke state law, the man was told.

“I saw this man break down and cry and say that the baby was covered with maggots, and what was he supposed to do?” recalled Vieth, the founder and executive director of the National Child Protection Training Center at Winona State University.

“We won the case, but it was life-changing for me,” Vieth said. “I went home that night and told my wife what I wanted to do with my life.”

Of course, given the subject matter, there would be more lump-in-the-throat tales that would affirm Vieth’s decision to make the plight of abused and neglected children his life’s work.

There was the 7-year-old girl at his teacher wife’s private school in Virginia. At the time, Vieth headed the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse in Washington, D.C.

The girl was caught performing oral sex on a female classmate. Vieth’s wife, Lisa, reported the incident to the principal. Another case reported to the principal involved a boy so malnourished that he ate crumbs off the classroom floor. When the principal declined to contact authorities in either case, Vieth’s wife and other staffers, at the risk of termination, did it themselves.

MOST CASES NOT REPORTED OR INVESTIGATED

Vieth’s nearly 7-year-old, federally funded center has trained hundreds of front-line professionals — ranging from cops to prosecutors, social workers and nurses — on child-abuse prevention, detection and investigation. It uses mock courtrooms and meth-lab, crack-house and upscale-suburban-home settings to instruct investigators and others on how to sift through clues that might substantiate an allegation of child abuse or neglect.

Plans are to replicate the research- and evidence-based curriculum at 40 other universities in the nation in the coming months, Vieth said.

Better training of professionals who may come into contact with an abused or neglected child is one of the key measures Vieth cites in his intriguing call to end child abuse in America within three generations.

“As a nation, we have done more to address child abuse in the past 30 years than occurred in the first 200 years of our history,” Vieth writes in an academic paper that has been well-received in the child-protection and justice fields but is virtually unknown in mainstream circles. “Unfortunately, the obstacles that remain are nothing less than mountains.”

One of them is the sad reality that many children suspected of being abused are not reported to the child-protection system.

Vieth cites a 2000 study that found that 65 percent of social workers, 53 percent of physicians and 58 percent of physician assistants did not report all cases of suspected abuse.

Most telling are two hypothetical cases involving teachers — not only mandated reporters, but also possibly the one trusted adult a child comes into daily contact with the most outside the home. Of 197 teachers who took part in the test, only 26 percent said they would contact authorities if a child told them that a relative was touching their genitals. Only 11 percent would do so in the second test, which involves a child accusing another teacher of touching their private parts.

Vieth also notes that even when cases are reported, most are never investigated. A government-commissioned national report this year on abused and neglected children found that most cases of maltreated children “do not get CPS (child-protection services) investigation.”

AIM HIGH

Vieth cites obstacles to reform: inadequate funding and training, as well as the fact that the issue is not a top public or political concern.

“How many of the people running right now for governor have been asked to submit or have a position paper on child abuse and neglect like they do on crime, health, terrorism or child obesity?” Vieth asked.

He recalled a child sexual abuse victim who said she deliberately ate herself to obesity to make herself so unattractive that her father would stop abusing her.

“People don’t realize that many of the other problems we have stem from” child abuse, he said.

Vieth’s “battle plan” to end child abuse in three generations includes:

Higher-quality reporting and investigations of child abuse and neglect.
University-level, annual training of professionals entering mandated-reporter occupations.
Better training of child-protection investigators.
Better-trained prosecutors to go after egregious child abusers.
Better public and political advocacy among child-protection workers as well as victims on the issue of child abuse and neglect.
I asked him why he set the bar so high.

“Why not? Anything less is unacceptable,” he said. He brought up Martin Luther King Jr., another dreamer.

“It wasn’t just about the civil rights movement,” Vieth said. “His goal was ending bigotry for all time.”

He brought up Henry Wallace, President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of agriculture, who also had a Don Quixote-like quest: ending world hunger.

Wallace pushed hard for hybrid corn production to the point that bushel yields per acre tripled from 1931 to 1981. He also crusaded for chicken breeding.

“Even a quarter-century after his death in 1965, one-third of all the eggs consumed in the United States and nearly 50 percent of the eggs consumed in the world were laid by descendants of Wallace’s chickens,” Vieth writes.

A WORTHY DREAM

Sure, world hunger is still out there. So is bigotry. So is child abuse. Why? Many reasons. But where would we be without dreamers?

Vieth believes progress also requires a revolutionary shift in values and attitudes.

“We don’t tolerate child abuse, but we comfort ourselves in the notion that it’s something that happens somewhere else, not in our home, back yard or community,” Vieth said.

“We find comfort in holding onto the stereotype of the dirty old man, and we delude ourselves into thinking that it couldn’t possibly be the person sitting next to us at church for years or the pastor or the priest.

“Child abuse can be eliminated,” he added. “But it will take all of us.”

Dream on.

Rubén Rosario can be reached at rrosario@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5454. .

To read Victor Vieth’s paper, “Unto the Third Generation: A Call to End Child Abuse in the United States within 120 years,” go to http://www.untothethirdgeneration.com./

Sweden has largely eliminated child sex abuse http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/10/13/positive-role-models/

There is hope, but we must all participate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jeff Weise was asking for help,

Needs work, but it’s a start.

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www.mnprogressiveproject.com/

Add to that the serious growing issues of diabetes that conservatively predicts that fifty percent of American’s children will be obese within three years, & that three times as many American children are proscribed psychotropic medications as are European children, is a strong indication that our public policies are not child friendly.

We are all too familiar with the sad fact that the U.S. tries 150,000 juveniles as adults each year, and that most juvenile justice cases have been child protection cases, paints an even darker picture for poor inner city children.

New York Times article on Rising Rates of Chronic Health Problems for Children;
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/health/research/23child.html
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Public policy at the time treated the Irish more like animals than people and their children were doomed to living lives of crime, prostitution, and destitution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are we a community without compassion?

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

A Modest Proposal

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

By Jonathan Swift (1729)

About this text.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The End

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

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

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Minnesota’s Governor had killed programs that made day care affordable for low wage earners on the pretense that the state would be fiscally better off without them.

Without subsidized daycare, this hard working man’s children would have been taken from their family, placed in foster/adoptive homes, costing the state many times as much money as daycare would have.

Add to that the disruption in the lives of these already at risk children and their likely damaged performance in school plus the all too common behavioral problems that result from this kind of chaos all add up to what we are trying to distance ourselves as a nation; more juvenile prison fodder, more preteen moms, and more dysfunctional adults.

As our former Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz has stated, “the difference between that poor child and a felon is about eight years”.

This Governor believes his decisions to be grounded in fiscally sound policy.

I argue that this policy is wasteful and immoral.

We are destroying families and costing the community both in the short term and in the long term, far more money than subsidizing of day care for low wage earners.

Presently, day care workers are paid at the same rate food service workers are in the U.S. (the lowest paid workers in the nation). This is an indication of how the nation values its young (and we still can’t afford daycare).

New York Times Article;

New York City Seeks to Close 15 Day Care Centers in Budget Cut

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By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: February 3, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/nyregion/04daycare.html

More than a half-dozen gentrified neighborhoods in Brooklyn would lose subsidized day care centers for low-income families under proposed city budget cuts, Bloomberg administration officials said Wednesday.

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Josephine Rodriguez of the Court Street Day Care Center, one of those on a list to be closed.
A list of the 15 day care centers that are scheduled to close in July, 10 of them in Brooklyn, was released by the Administration for Children’s Services, and the agency tried to head off protests by unions, elected officials and families that have vowed to fight the closings.

City officials countered that most of the centers to be closed are in neighborhoods that no longer need as many slots for children in low-income families.

Those neighborhoods include Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Prospect Heights and Clinton Hill, according to the list of day care centers provided by Children’s Services; 324 other centers will stay open.

Other centers that would be closed are in Coney Island, Morningside Heights in Manhattan and Jamaica and the Rockaways in Queens. Melanie Hartzog, a deputy commissioner at Children’s Services, said that gentrified communities like Clinton Hill had a heavy concentration of eligible children 20 years ago, “but that’s not the case today, so there is a mismatch.”

Many of the day care centers first opened two decades ago, when rents in the city were far lower. The city signed long-term leases on the centers’ spaces, but the centers are run by nonprofit organizations that contract with the city. Some of those leases will expire soon, and city officials said it was too expensive to renew them.

All of the children who currently attend the day care centers will be offered spaces at nearby locations, Ms. Hartzog said. She said that some of the facilities were run-down and in need of expensive repairs, providing more reasons to discontinue their funds. Many of them were not operating at capacity.

Families eligible for subsidized day care pay a weekly fee of $5 to $153, based on income and family size.

The budget cut would save the city $9 million next year and reduce the number of day care slots by 1,200, or nearly 5 percent of the total capacity.

Andrea Anthony, the executive director of the Day Care Council of New York, an umbrella group for day care centers, said she was planning an emergency meeting on Friday to mobilize sympathetic elected officials and families. “To say the least, we think it’s a devastating cut,” she said. “In the last four years, we’ve lost kindergarten classrooms, we’ve lost after-school programming and now we’re going to lose child care centers.”

George Raglan Jr., the executive director of District Council 1707, the union that represents more than 25,000 social services employees in New York, said that hundreds of day care center employees would lose their jobs.

“I believe that they’re closing these centers because they’ve been wanting to cut subsidized child care for a long time,” Mr. Raglan said. “They just want to shut them down. They don’t care if they’re doing well.”

One center that is scheduled to close, the Court Street Day Care Center in Cobble Hill, was founded more than 30 years ago by the American-Italian Coalition of Organizations, a nonprofit group.

In the beginning, the center served many Italian, Hispanic and black families, said Jerry Chiappetta, the organization’s executive director. Now it shares a block with a chocolatier and an upscale grocery store, and is used mainly by black and Hispanic families, many of whom live in nearby Red Hook.

Mr. Chiappetta said he was told that the center would be shut down because of its high maintenance cost, including rent and utilities.

“It’s unfortunate, because this day care is used by working families, for the most part single-parent families and they’re low income,” he said, adding, “If this place is shut down, it would really be a shame.”

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U of Wisconsin research shows that poor minority women are almost twice as likely to face eviction as minority men (1 of 14 vs. 1 of 25). Irresponsible behavior by live-in fathers and boyfriends and reporting domestic violence to the police often trigger evictions.

The disruption and trauma of eviction & broken homes, forces children out of schools, ruins credit ratings, creates homelessness, increased drug & alcohol abuse, violence and child abuse.

It also puts a burden on schools, increases crime, and preteen pregnancies. The cycle continues.

The costs to our community are made clear by the recent ACE study that proved that almost 70% of the serious and violent crime committed by juveniles in Ramsey County was committed by children living in 2 to 4% of Ramsey County families.

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The economics of healthy families is exponentially less costly than paying for the many years of institutionalization and the added encumbrance on our communities when unhealthy children grow up to become unhealthy adults.

Consider the burden these children place on our school systems. Few people outside of education have any idea about the serious behavior problems abused and neglected children bring to school. No record is kept of 9 year olds on psychotropic medications or the treatment they do not receive.

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Smart people from mental health and education spoke on stigma, truancy, intervention & juvenile justice. A very smart person from the community stepped forward and spoke about mental health as perceived from within the community.

By the end of the evening it was made clear that the 47,000 arrested juvenile arrests in MN last year were related to high school dropout rates and the safety of city streets. No reference was made to the A.C.E. study of two years ago indicating that over 70 percent of all violent and serious crime in Ramsey County was committed by youth from 3% of the families within the county.

Thank you to all of the committed individuals that work in education, social services, mental health and justice trying to make these institutions responsive to the massive needs within our communities.

Please appreciate the frustration from those of us who know that preteen moms and juvenile felons deserve better from our policy makers than the hard politics that have continued to underfund mental health and young families at the expense of prisons, punishment, and jails.

I am pleased that we are having public forums on the topic for more than a few reasons;

As a community, the topic has been uncomfortable and avoided for too long. Last nights discussion on “mental health” and how to be mentally “healthy” was positive and meaningful and a model for other forums and future discussions.

As a guardian ad-Litem, I came to know many traumatized children that had no access to adequate mental health services and watching them grow into dysfunctional adults has been painful.

Missouri went from 90% recidivism in its juvenile justice system to about 10% over just a few years as it transitioned into a restorative justice model that treated youth as children in need of counseling instead of adult criminals (about 30% of American youth are tried in adult courts).

California locks up young people longer than any other state — on average young people spend about 3 years in the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). More than a year of this time is tacked on by DJJ guards, who extend parole hearing dates for disciplinary and other reasons.

This flies in the face of research that shows that positive incentives are much more effective at helping kids improve than are negative, disciplinary actions. And, because DJJ spends $234,000 a year to lock up each youth, it’s not only unfair and ineffective, it’s incredibly expensive.

MN Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz commented that 90% of the youth in juvenile justice had passed through child protection. As a long time guardian ad-Litem working with children in child protection, it hurts me greatly to see children born into almost certain lives of early pregnancy, crime, and incarceration.

The only way out for these children is a system of education, mental health, and civil justice that concentrates on the most vulnerable citizens in our community.

They have no lobby or PAC fund to attract politicians to their cause. It is up to us, those that work in the field, foster & adoptive parents, and advocates, to speak up for them.

Let CIVIL JUSTICE COMMITTEE Chair Joe Mullery know that you want justice and mental health services for youth.

Joe Mullery (DFL) 58A – Minnesota House of Representatives
Representative Joe Mullery. * 367 State Office Building 100 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Saint Paul, Minnesota 55155 651-296-4262 …

Show map of 4101 Vincent Ave N, Minneapolis, MN 55412
www.house.leg.state.mn.us/members/members.asp?id=10442 – Cached – Similar –

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Mr Pawlenty has already slashed programs for healthcare and daycare for the poor and focused his his attention on building prisons and increasing incarceration to control the effects of poverty in Minnesota. The state has reached half a billion in prison expense for the last fiscal year and five years of double digit prison population growth.

Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz has stated that the “difference between that poor child, and a felon, is about eight years”.

Minneapolis arrested 44% of its adult Black Men in 2001 under the supervision of the Governor’s appointed Public Safety Director Rich Stanek, who was forced to resign after the racial slurs he commonly used were printed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

“Children that are victims of failed personal responsibility are not my problem, nor are they the problem of the state of Minnesota” was Tim Pawlenty’s statement to Andy Dawkins and David Strand when they asked if he would support programs for abused and neglected children.

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It’s not just the meanness of the politics that are so hard to bear, but the lack of foresight and refusal to grapple with the critical underlying problems of the people making public policy.

These are generational issues that continue until the cycle is broken. The economics of short sighted politics don’t make sense.

Federal Reserve board directors Art Rolnick and Rob Grunewold have well researched and established the effectiveness of early childhood programs.

Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz states, “ninety percent of the youth in our juvenile justice system have come through child protection”. Identified and treated early, young children can be given the skills to succeed in school and our community.

Ignored because of our anti tax paralysis, the serious issues faced by children in child protection are not dealt with until behaviors become uncontrollable and someone gets hurt (it is exponentially more costly to institutionalize people over their lifetimes than it is to give them the skills to lead normal lives).

Three million children per year are reported to child protection agencies, 90% of the children in juvenile justice have come through C.P., and almost all felons have come through J.J. The cost of extensive institutionalization, the crimes they commit, their impact on our schools, city streets, and quality of life are profound.

Early childhood programs with more training and resources for child protection workers would save us billions in prisons, schools, courts, insurance, and pain as at risk children become functional adults instead of felons and preteen moms.

Home values within our inner cities are often half (or less) than they would be in a safe suburb. The insurance estimates of crime alone in the U.S. are between one and one point six trillion dollars annually.
It is costing us a fortune to ignore the maintenance of our bridges, courts, schools, and children.

It is time to counter the short sighted and inaccurate assumptions of the anti tax people. Our quality of life has suffered terribly wrecking our bridges and ruining our children.

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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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White hot issues like this are easily decided and blame will be quickly affixed to the social worker that should have known, filed more accurate and timely reports, and not made mistakes.

Hard to fight that logic.

A sorrowful underlying truth in defense of these humble, well meaning, and underpaid people is that on top of the tremendous strain of large & difficult case loads, they are under-trained and under-supported for the work they do (and yes, I really do mean this – the social workers I’ve met have all wanted to make a difference in the lives of the disenfranchised – and without sufficient help, they cannot do their work effectively).

We as a community have become quick to throw rocks and blame people, while not taking time to look for the core problems, think critically, and work meaningfully to fix them (like we do so very well in industry).

If we ran social services like we run industry, the reporting function would find the bottlenecks, changes would be made, & fewer children would suffer because resources would show up where needed.

Industry knows that spending on plant and equipment and maintenance are a far better investment than collapsed and rebuilt bridges (35W Minneapolis MN 2007).

We as a community are right to demand accountability and reporting. At the same time, we need to provide the resources, training, and measurement tools to manage these systems effectively. Effective institutions are the outcome of study and investment.

We are what we are as a nation because we invested in a timely fashion in the schools, highways, and industry, and infrastructure as it was necessary.

If American institutions are to be defined today by what they actually create instead of what they were designed to create, then child protection services creates preteen mothers and adolescent felons, and juvenile justice creates mentally unstable adults (paraphrasing Kathleen Long Angels and Demons

What is happening in California today result in a terrific backlash against the hardworking and well meaning social workers that are buried beneath caseloads that they can’t possibly do justice to. The growing poverty in LA county at the same time human services are drying up, non profits are unable to deliver basic needs as they have in the past, can only make county workers more frenetically busy and unable to produce effective outcomes (more dead children to be blamed for).

I empathize with their terrible situation. It was not social workers that has brought about the deaths of 31 children in LA county over the last two years.

It was the underlying crime & prisons, drugs, poverty, violence, and the public policies we as a nation have (that most other first world nations approach differently).

Read the LA times article;L.A. County welfare agency refuses to release files on children’s deaths
Officials cite 2007 disclosure law in barring access to data on recent cases. By Garrett Therolf
February 13, 2010
Los Angeles County’s embattled child welfare agency has clamped down on the release of information about 12 recent deaths among children who have passed through the child welfare system.

The decision follows a series of articles in The Times last year that detailed flawed casework. The cases prompted some reforms at the county’s Department of Children and Family Services, including enhanced training for social workers.

But the state law that allowed much of the information to reach the public has been a source of discontent for Department of Children and Family Services Director Trish Ploehn. She has complained to a reporter that the law unfairly “denigrated” her department by placing such a harsh spotlight on the most tragic cases.

This week, she declined to release any records in the 12 most recent child deaths, invoking a provision of the law that allows prosecutors to keep parts of the records confidential during a criminal inquiry.

Among 31 deaths over the last two years that met the county’s standard for abuse or neglect, Ploehn said she identified 18 cases in which social workers committed serious errors. The group of 12 cases now being withheld includes some of those cases.

Ploehn’s decision had the strong support of at least one county supervisor.

David Sommers, a spokesman for Supervisor Don Knabe, said his boss “adamantly believes the personal and tragic details of a child’s death should not be raked over by this newspaper. He stands behind the expert opinion of the county counsel, who says we are in full compliance with the law, and not the interpretation by lawyers and reporters representing the Los Angeles Times.”

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the law in 2007 to allow public access to information when a child dies of abuse or neglect.

The law’s preamble stated: “Without accurate and complete information about the circumstances leading to the child’s death, public debate is stymied and the reforms, if adopted at all, may do little to prevent further tragedies.”

The law made an exception, however, for instances in which the district attorney states that information might jeopardize a criminal inquiry. Child welfare agencies across the state were ordered to redact such information before release.

William J. Grimm, an attorney for the Oakland-based National Center for Youth Law, which successfully lobbied for the law, said his agency regularly requests records from all of California’s 58 counties. Two small counties have denied records on as broad a basis as Los Angeles.

“The law doesn’t permit a blanket, across-the-board approach to entire cases,” Grimm said. “It requires the D.A. to go into each case and not just redact everything but redact only those things that imperil an investigation. The sort of response you received in Los Angeles was not the intent nor was it justified by the text of the law.”

In the cases of the most recent deaths, the agency said Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley’s objections covered the entire files for four children, including basic details such as the victim’s name.

For the remaining eight cases, the agency said unidentified law enforcement agencies covered the entire files.

State law extends the right to object in this way to only the district attorney, but agency officials said they extended the privilege to law enforcement agencies under guidance from the California Department of Social Services.

District attorney’s office spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said she polled senior child abuse prosecutors but was unable to find anyone who knew of an objection. She recommended asking the agency for the name of the prosecutor who objected, but the agency’s attorney, Katie Bowser, declined.

“We don’t think we have to give you that,” Bowser said.

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

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Study released indicates sharp drop in child abuse in the U.S.
Child abuse drops sharply in U.S.
Study: Incidents declined by 26 percent from 1993 to 2006

NEW YORK – 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.

Full Article: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=9730224

It is interesting how this study compares to the ones by the Center for Disease Control on “The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study” and the National Survey on Drug Use’s Report (Dec. 17th ,2009) in the article titled , “Violent Behaviors Among Adolecent Females”. What implications will this new federal study have in regards to child welfare policy?
Posted 11 days ago | Reply Privately
Comments (7)

michael tikkanen
Founder at KARA Kids At Risk Action

I would not celebrate too quickly.

From where I stand today, the reported decrease in incidents of serious child abuse is not real in child protection services around the country.

It is a reflection of the number of cases not being accepted as a result of reduced programs and reduced funding due to the financial chaos in our economy

Where this is becoming evident is in the increase in juvenile justice and criminal justice cases.

We will soon be building more prisons (there were 13 million prison and jail releases in the U.S. last year). America now has 25% of the world’s prison population and only 5% of the world’s population. We charge 150,000 youth in adult courts each year.

These are just a few recent articles on lost programs in various states;

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/11/12/another-state-abandons-children-most-effective-program/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/01/02/prevent-child-abuse-wyoming-to-close/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/01/19/michigan-16-confirmed-increase-in-child-abuse-neglect-cases/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/01/27/georgia-child-protection-too-many-children-too-few-resources/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/10/27/ruben-rosario-rising-toll-of-child-abuse-deaths-reaquires-attention-action/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/09/20/978/

And an article on why it pays to keep programs for at risk youth;

http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=56880
Posted 10 days ago | Delete comment

WW
Therapist
Michael, I’m sure you would agree with Linda Spears of the Child Welfare League of America’s statement, “There’s much more public awareness and public intolerance around child abuse now,” especially since “It was a hidden concern before – people were afraid to talk about it if it was in their family.” I honestly think the article and study helps the general public have a better understanding when looking at the complexities of child abuse.

michael tikkanen
Founder at KARA Kids At Risk Action
See all michael’s activity »
Yes, I do agree that there is much more public awareness and public intolerance of child abuse and that is a good thing.

My fear and disappointment come from the growing problems being experienced in many states just maintaining programs that are absolutely necessary for providing the most minimal protection for abused and neglected children.

The growing poverty and trouble that poverty breeds are causing great stress and terrible things to happen to children all over America right now.

All summer long I reported on the bad news surrounding abused and neglected children for KARA, Kids At Risk Action.

It frightens me to think that people “in the know” will get behind this good news about reduced child abuse as if it were a valid current measurement of the conditions faced by abused and neglected children in our communities at this time.

It is just not true.

We need to speak honestly for these children.

www.invisiblechildren.org
Posted 9 days ago | Delete comment

SH
CASA Advocate at Volunteer
I graduated as a CASA Advocate in November of 2009. As of yet I do not have a case, neither do seven other graduates. We were told there are no new cases since November of last year. I agree this is excellent, hopefully it is because of Children not be abused.
Posted 4 days ago | Reply Privately

michael tikkanen
Founder at KARA Kids At Risk Action
See all michael’s activity »
Let me clarify why I have made this statement Sandra;

When money is tight, programs are cut and cases are not accepted. If there are fewer cases accepted, CASA graduates will have less to do.

Most funding for abused and neglected children’s programs comes from federal, state, and county governments.

Even as we speak, budgets are shrinking and every community is searching to move money to where the need is greatest.

With the chaos in the economy, nonprofits have lost substantial portions of their endowments, which has forced them to cut back on their charitable giving for programs that help at risk youth..

Abused and neglected children suffered from underfunded programs before the economic chaos. Even without this report, their conditions would not be improving.

Below are just a few of the recently closed programs for abused and neglected children that I have written about;

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/02/06/californias-child-protection-problems-grow/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/01/27/georgia-child-protection-too-many-children-too-few-resources/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/01/19/michigan-16-confirmed-increase-in-child-abuse-neglect-cases/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2010/01/02/prevent-child-abuse-wyoming-to-close/

http://www.invisiblechildren.org/2009/11/12/another-state-abandons-children-most-effective-program/

Perhaps you are in a county that really is not experiencing child abuse.

I do hope that is true.

Best wishes,

Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/KidsAtRisk
Posted 3 days ago | Delete comment
LL

Thank you for all of those links, Michael, and for all the work you do. I haven’t been a CASA long enough to note any trends, but we are certainly overloaded with tragic cases.
Posted 2 days ago | Reply Privately

KM
Program Manager

Thank you Michael for providing us with this sobering news. By balancing this study with the reality that significant programs are being cut, you are helping others understand the full complexity of child abuse – especially the impact of our recent economic hard times. With more programs getting cut it makes total sense that there are fewer resources to help prevent and treat child abuse; and consequently, why we need your caution about the findings of this study. You are a continual, courageous force against those who so easily want to sweep child abuse under the carpet, and I greatly appreciate that you have hard facts to stem that reaction. Thank you so much!

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/

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

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

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

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

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

This article out of Florida captures my sentiment well;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pruchansky’s saddest story?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The bad news; 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.

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.

The potential for finding new money for progressive new programs (no matter how successful) in this climate is slim.

What can we do?

Does any one here have a story of a successful approach within their own community?

Please share.

Read NY Times article;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/education/08school.html

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For Students at Risk, Early College Proves a Draw
By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: February 7, 2010
Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times

Precious Holt, in class at SandHoke, resisted joining the program at first. “Now I’m excited,” she said, “because I’m a year ahead.”

When the bus arrives, she checks in with a guidance counselor and heads off to a day of college classes, blending with older classmates until 4 p.m., when she and the other seniors from SandHoke Early College High School gather for the ride home.

There is a payoff for the long bus rides: The 48 SandHoke seniors are in a fast-track program that allows them to earn their high-school diploma and up to two years of college credit in five years — completely free.

Until recently, most programs like this were aimed at affluent, overachieving students — a way to keep them challenged and give them a head start on college work. But the goal is quite different at SandHoke, which enrolls only students whose parents do not have college degrees.

Here, and at North Carolina’s other 70 early-college schools, the goal is to keep at-risk students in school by eliminating the divide between high school and college.

“We don’t want the kids who will do well if you drop them in Timbuktu,” said Lakisha Rice, the principal. “We want the ones who need our kind of small setting.”

Results have been impressive. Not all students at North Carolina’s early-college high schools earn two full years of college credit before they graduate — but few drop out.

“Last year, half our early-college high schools had zero dropouts, and that’s just unprecedented for North Carolina, where only 62 percent of our high school students graduate after four years,” said Tony Habit, president of the North Carolina New Schools Project, the nonprofit group spearheading the state’s high school reform.

In addition, North Carolina’s early-college high school students are getting slightly better grades in their college courses than their older classmates.

While North Carolina leads the way in early-college high schools, the model is spreading in California, New York, Texas and elsewhere, where such schools are seen as a promising approach to reducing the high school dropout rate and increasing the share of degree holders — two major goals of the Obama administration.

More than 200 of the schools are part of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Early College High School Initiative, and dozens of others, scattered throughout the nation, have sprung up as projects of individual school districts.

“As a nation, we just can’t afford to have students spending four years or more getting through high school, when we all know senior year is a waste,” said Hilary Pennington of the Gates Foundation, “then having this swirl between high school and college, when a lot more students get lost, then a two-year degree that takes three or four years, if the student ever completes it at all.”

Most of the early college high schools are on college campuses, but some stand alone. Some are four years, some five. Most serve a low-income student body that is largely black or Latino. But all are small, and all offer free college credits as part of the high school program.

“In 27 years as a college president, this is just about the most exciting thing I’ve been involved in,” said John R. Dempsey, the president of Sandhills. “We picked these kids out of eighth grade, kids who were academically representative at a school with very low performance. We didn’t cherry-pick them. Their performance has been so startling that you see what high expectations can do.”

Initially, the prospect of two years of college at no cost was less appealing to Ms. Holt than to her mother, Simone Dean, an Army mechanic at nearby Fort Bragg.

“I didn’t want to do it, because my middle school friends weren’t applying,” Ms. Holt said. “I cried, but my mother made me do it.

“The first year, I didn’t like it, because my friends at the regular high school were having pep rallies and actual fun, while I had all this homework. But when I look back at my middle school friends, I see how many of them got pregnant or do drugs or dropped out. And now I’m excited, because I’m a year ahead.”

he nation’s early-college high schools are still new, it is too soon to say whether strapped states will be impressed enough to justify the extra costs of college tuition, college textbooks and academic support,

Related

A recent report from Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit group that is coordinating the Gates initiative, found that in 2008, the early-college schools that had been open for more than four years had a high school graduation rate of 92 percent — and 4 out of 10 graduates had earned at least a year of college credit.

With a careful sequence of courses, including ninth-grade algebra, and attention to skills like note-taking, the early-college high schools accelerate students so that they arrive in college needing less of the remedial work that stalls so many low-income and first-generation students. “When we put kids on a college campus, we see them change totally, because they’re integrated with college students, and they don’t want to look immature,” said Michael Webb, associate vice president of Jobs for the Future.

The first early-college high schools — Bard College at Simon’s Rock, a residential private liberal-arts college in Great Barrington, Mass., and Bard High School Early College, a public school in New York City — were selective schools intended to cure the boredom that afflicts many talented high school students.

“The philosophy behind the school was that the last two years of high school are not engaging, and we would set up something that would make them intellectually exciting.” said Ray Peterson, the principal of Bard High School Early College.

But at the City University of New York’s early-college schools, the emphasis is less on preventing the senior slump than on aligning high school with college.

“Our students are actually planning for college-level coursework from their first day in the school,” said Cass Conrad, executive director for school support and development at CUNY, which has a dozen early-college high schools. “And their teachers plan backwards from college, to make sure they’ll know what they need to be successful in college-level classes.”

In the pine woods of North Carolina, SandHoke students start in a small Hoke County school down the road from a turkey-processing plant, and begin traveling to the Sandhills campus, nestled among the golf courses of Moore County, only as seniors. Their first college class, in 10th grade, is a user-friendly communications course taught by Cathleen Kruska, a high-energy teacher who had them discussing job interviews, learning which kinds of questions are legally permissible and doing mock interviews.

Ms. Kruska teaches the same course to college students at Sandhills, and said the only difference was that the high school students were needier.

These days, aspirations run high. Ms. Holt, for example, is aiming for medical school. She was disappointed last semester to get three B’s and two A’s.

“That’s not what I was hoping for,” she said, “and I’m going to work harder this semester.”

Her high standards have affected the whole family.

“My 13-year-old is going to apply to SandHoke for next year,” Ms. Dean said. “And I’m actually learning from Precious. When I’m done with the military, I want to get my degree.”

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Five time Nobel Peace Prize nominees Sara O’Meara and Yvonne Fedderson founded ChildHelp to raise awareness and funds to end child abuse. From their website;

National Child Abuse Statistics;

Children are suffering from a hidden epidemic of child abuse and neglect. Over 3 million reports of child abuse are made every year in the United States; however, those reports can include multiple children. In 2007, approximately 5.8 million children were involved in an estimated 3.2 million child abuse reports and allegations.

http://www.childhelp.org/resources/learning-center/statistics
Programs Prevention/Intervention

Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline 1-800-4-A-CHILD

Staffed 24 hours daily by professional crisis counselors, the Hotline is accessible throughout the U.S., its territories, and Canada.

Through interpreters, communication is possible in 140 languages. The confidential and anonymous Hotline offers crisis intervention, information, literature, and referrals to thousands of emergency, social service, and support resources.

Child abuse prevention and education program within elementary schools which reaches over 450,000 children annually.

Children’s Advocacy Centers
A coalition of law enforcement, prosecution, social service agencies, medical professionals, and crisis counselors working together to utilize a highly effective, one-stop approach to the investigation of child abuse. The concept of the Children’s Advocacy Center is also available within a mobile unit to provide services for abused children in remote areas.

What can I do?
By supporting Childhelp, you are playing a direct role in the treatment and prevention of child abuse. Your donations and purchases from the Childhelp store and the Gift of Hope gift catalog help a dedicated and passionate staff carry out Childhelp’s mission of meeting the physical, emotional, educational, and spiritual needs of abused and neglected children.

Residential treatment facilities (Villages)
Provide specialized, comprehensive care for severely abused children. In addition to psychotherapy, counseling, medical care, and on-site schools, the programs also include art, animal-assisted, music and recreational therapy to help heal the heart, soul, and body of each child in our care. Learn more

Therapeutic Group Homes
Provide a nurturing refuge for abused and neglected children until they can be placed in foster care, with adoptive parents or returned to their families, as determined by the courts. Learn more

Therapeutic Foster Care
Recruitment, training and certification for foster families with access to 24 hour professional counseling and support. Learn more

National Child Abuse Statistics;

Statistics
-Almost five children die everyday as a result of child abuse. More than three out of four are under the age of 4.

-It is estimated that between 60-85% of child fatalities due to maltreatment are not recorded as such on death certificates.

-A report of child abuse is made every ten seconds.

-Ninety percent of child sexual abuse victims know the perpetrator in some way; 68% are abused by family members.

-Child abuse occurs at every socio-economic level, across ethnic and cultural lines, within all religions and at all levels of education.

-Thirty-one percent of women in prison in the United States were abused as children.

-Over 60% of people in drug rehabilitation centers report being abused or neglected as a child.

-About 30% of abused and neglected children will later abuse their own children, continuing the horrible cycle of abuse.

-About 80% of 21 year old that were abused as children met criteria for at least one psychological disorder.

-The estimated annual cost resulting from child abuse and neglect in the United States for 2007 is $104 billion.
What can be done?

Treatment, Prevention and Research are key. Childhelp, one of the largest and oldest national, non-profit organizations dedicated to treatment and prevention of child abuse, provides a broad continuum of programs that directly serve abused children and their families. Childhelp also leads public awareness campaigns to educate the public and rally communities behind the child abuse.

What can I do?
By supporting Childhelp, you are playing a direct role in the treatment and prevention of child abuse. Your donations, purchases from the Childhelp store and the Gift of Hope gift catalogue, and time spent volunteering help a dedicated and passionate staff carry out Childhelp’s mission of meeting the physical, emotional, educational, and spiritual needs of abused and neglected children.

Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect in USA

-Abused children are 25% more likely to experience teen pregnancy

-Children who experience child abuse & neglect are 59% more likely to be arrested as a juvenile, 28% more likely to be arrested as an adult, and 30% more likely to commit violent crime.

-Children who have been sexually abused are 2.5 times more likely develop alcohol abuse

-Children who have been sexually abused are 3.8 times more likely develop drug addiction

-Nearly 2/3’s of the people in treatment for drug abuse reported being abused as children

Consequences of Child Abuse in the USA

-Eighty percent of young adults who had been abused met the diagnostic criteria for at least 1 psychiatric disorder at the age of 21 (including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, & post-traumatic stress disorder)

-Abused children are 25% more likely to experience teen pregnancy

-Abused teens are 3 times less likely to practice safe sex, putting them at greater risk for STDs

The Link Between Abuse As a Child & Future Criminal Behavior

-Fourteen percent of all men in prison in the USA were abused as children

-Thirty-six percent of all women in prison were abused as children

-Children who experience child abuse & neglect are 59% more likely to be arrested as a juvenile, 28% more likely to be arrested as an adult, and 30% more likely to commit violent crime.

The Link Between Child Abuse & Substance Abuse

-Children who have been sexually abused are 2.5 times more likely develop alcohol abuse

-Children who have been sexually abused are 3.8 times more likely develop drug addictions

-Nearly 2/3’s of the people in treatment for drug abuse reported being abused as children

Sources:
-Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and The Federal Administration for Children and Families. The CDC oublication: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

-Prevent Child Abuse America: Current Trends in Child Abuse Reporting & Fatalities: The 2000 Fifty State Survery

-National Center on Child Abuse Prevention Research: Prevent Child Abuse America; Current Trends in Child Abuse Reporting and Fatalities: The Results of the 1997 Annual Fifty State Survey

-Lung, C. & Daro D. (1996) Current Trends in Child Abuse Reporting and Fatalities: The Results of the 1995 Annual Fifty State Survey. Chicago: National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse. http://www.childabuse.com/fs9.htm

-US Department of Health & Human Services Administration for Children & Families. Child Maltreatment 2003: Summary of Key Findings

-National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse & Neglect Information. Long-term Consequences of Child Abuse & Neglect 2005

-US Department of Justice

-Child Abuse & Neglect Study by Arthur Becker-Weidman PhD

-National Institute on Drug Abuse 2000 Report

-DePanfilis, D. (2006). Child neglect: A guide for prevention, assessment and intervention. Dept.HHS, et al
-Long-Term Consequences of Child Abuse and Neglect. Child Welfare Information Gateway.Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006. Retrieved August 22, 2007 from http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/factsheets/
long_term_consequences.cfm

-Wang, Chung-Tung Ph.D. & Holton, John Ph.D. (2007). Total Estimated Cost of Child Abuse and Neglect In the United States. Prevent Child Abuse America funded byThe Pew Charitable Trusts

-U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration on Children Youth & Families. Child Maltreatment 2007 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2009). Retrieved April 3 2009 from http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb

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Before the earthquake, UNICEF estimates that tens of thousands of Haitian children were being sold as servants to rich Haitians each year.

Developing nations are often unable to provide even the most basic safety for their nations children (child endangerment, slavery, basic care) through the proper writing and passing of laws and standards that all sensible people could agree on. Enforcement is another issue entirely.

Helping third world nations control human trafficking, child prostitution, slavery, and other basic child safety standards is more that a noble endeavor.

It is critical to the success of our communities everywhere.

Without basic human dignity for all of us, the ruined lives and violence spawned by unhealthy, unhappy people impact all of us in some way, & for those in proximity to children that have suffered from its absence in many ways.

The world health organization defines torture as “extended exposure to violence and deprivation”.

Is child abuse and neglect torture?

In the U.S., the law governing the safety of a child in the home is the Imminent Harm Doctrine, which states that a child may be removed from the home if his/her life is endangered by the caregiver.

More on Haitian children;

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/haiti_statistics.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/19/unicef-ambassador-how-can_n_428719.html

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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

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After an apparently preventable death of a 12 year old girl in Australia, public outrage over lack of standards for child care prompted legislation at a federal level that has now come to pass.

When I spoke at the UN in 2008, a woman from Uganda said to me that there were not even words to describe the child abuse that took place in her country, and no programs to help abused children (at the end of the UN talk, you can hear her statement) http://www.invisiblechildren.org/home/ click on the link at the bottom of the page).

That puts definition to being a third world nation.Link to Australian eGov article; http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/32942

Australia Launches National Standards For Child Care For the First Time

Source: Government of Australia
Published Monday, 25 January, 2010 – 13:35

New national standards to safeguard the health, safety and wellbeing of children living in foster homes in all States and Territories will be developed by the middle of the year as a key measure under the Australian Government’s National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children 2009-2020.

The Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, today released details of measures being considered for inclusion as part of the new national standards.

“Currently, child protection systems vary markedly across the country, with each State and Territory having its own child protection policy, standards and legislation,” Ms Macklin said.

“We need national standards of care so children who cannot live with their families can grow up in a safe, secure environment. The implementation of national standards will provide a benchmark for the care of these children no matter where in Australia they live.”

Ms Macklin said some of the options canvassed include best practice standards for the assessment of foster carers as well as appropriate training and support. Another measure could be setting a benchmark for regular health checks for children in foster care.

“The tragic and apparently preventable death of a 12 year old Northern Territory girl and the Coroner’s findings on her death show just how important it is for the health and welfare of children in care to be regularly monitored.

“We also need to reduce the disruption to children’s lives caused when they are moved from one foster home to another. A 2009 study revealed that children had experienced an average of 5.7 placements in the last 5 years. By reducing the number of placements, children can have the stable and secure environment that’s essential for their long term development and wellbeing.”

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s report Child Protection Australia 2008-09, released today, there were more than 34,000 children living in out of home care at 30 June 2009.

This is an increase of 9.3 per cent, compared with the number of children in out of home care in the previous year.

The report also found that substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect increased by 1.7 per cent with almost 55,000 substantiated cases, affecting around 33,000 individual children.

The Government wants all those with an interest in out of home care to contribute their views and ideas to the development of national standards. Children, young people, carers, practitioners and organisations are all being encouraged to provide feedback.

The Australian, State and Territory Governments and non-government organisations will work with an advisory team from KPMG to develop the national standards for out of home care.

From next month, national consultations will start in all capital cities, as well as four regional locations in Queensland, Western Australia, New South Wales and the Northern Territory.

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