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How To Help
Make a difference: Join our army Spread the word and share resources and ideas. Work to discover more effective approaches to solving our nation’s problem with the fair and ethical treatment of abused and neglected children. Use this site to find others of like minds Copy important pages from this book if you can’t afford to buy it. Mail, fax, and email important pages to your legislators, public officials, teachers, and social workers. Abused and neglected children cannot contact their senators to have laws changed that affect them. We all need to do our part to help win the war that is being waged against the youngest and most vulnerable among us. Contact these Minnesota based organizations: www.grandkidsandme.com Effective Grandparenting www.friendsofchildren.org Friends of Abused and Neglected Children www.signingwithbabies.com Sign Language Instruction www.themlc.org Childhood Literacy Contact these national organizations:
*Join our online Grassroots dialogue: http://invisiblechildren.org/weblog/
*Learn about the guardian ad-Litem program, state of MN; national organization; www.friendsofthechildren.com ,
For addresses and emails for your lawmakers go to: Federal Legislators; www.congress.org and www.house.gov State Legislators;
For your local school administrators, go to your schools website or call the schools in your district.
Sample Letter to Policy Makers:
Copy this letter, add your own observations send it to your lawmakers and school officials.
Dear Lawmaker/Administrator/School official, As a citizen who is concerned with the impact of public policy on our nations schools and children, I need to know that you are aware of important trends and data that indicate a need for public policy change. First, some information; Nationally, over fifty percent of all juveniles in the Juvenile Justice system have diagnosable mental illnesses. These are serious psychological issues that create behavior problems for the child that are often dangerous and disruptive in our schools and communities. Very few mentally ill children receive adequate mental health services. Seriously ill children are often treated with psychopic drugs without a child psychiatrist or the necessary mental health therapies. Mental health Child Protection statistics is very hard to discover. What does exist indicates that about the same percentage of children in the Child Protection system have diagnosable mental illnesses as exists in the Juvenile Justice System. Almost all the children in the Juvenile Justice system have come out of the Child Protection system (MN Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz has estimated "90 percent"). Almost all the adults in the Criminal Justice system have come out of the Juvenile Justice system (for over twenty years). America is the only nation in the world to project the need for future prison space by counting the number of children in Child Protection, or that fail third grade reading tests (California and Arizona.) The U.S. has created a prison feeder system for poor and abused children. Government officials, the media, and the public are currently blaming teachers and administrators for the failure of public education. Teachers and school administrators in turn, are blaming immigrants and lack of support by government and the public for the dismal performance of their schools. About 800,000 children enter Child Protection systems annually in the U.S. A growing percentage of these children are medicated with psychotropic drugs because they are a danger to themselves and others. Poor and abused children have stunted vocabularies when they enter school. These children are so far behind normal students when they start school that they can never fit in or catch up. They need our help to attain a basic level of performance. Understand and appreciate the impossibility of teachers providing safety and mental health services to hundreds of thousands of children while at the same time delivering a quality education to normal children. Today, many teachers spend most of their time controlling just a few very problematic pupils. For too many years now, 25 percent of American High School Seniors have been illiterate upon graduation. As your constituent, I want you to vote for legislation that makes life better for abused and neglected children. Current public policies have filled our prisons, wrecked our schools, and made many of our cities unsafe to live in. Support education and child friendly legislation. Put a stop to mean spirited political policy that abandons the weakest and most vulnerable among us. I respect and support you in the difficult work that you do. Help me to work with you to make a positive difference in our community. Thank you,
Your constituent, XXXX Add your own local data or stories; Such as, Minneapolis Roosevelt High school had a graduation rate of 28 percent in 2004, the City of Minneapolis schools had a graduation rate of 53% in 2004. 48 percent of African American boys dropped out of the Minneapolis Public Schools in 2004. Statistics are available through a phone call to your cities school system, local TV or newspaper reporters, or a quick search of the Web (I use Google). Here is a wish list of policies that would positively impact poor and abused children. Include those that are most relevant to your community:
1. Health care for all children including mental health services and mental health assessments for all children removed from their homes by child protective services will lead to healthier children. 2. Stop prescribing psychotropic medications to children without proper mental health therapies. 3. A greater investment in abuse prevention strategies like home visiting, crisis nurseries, and parental education will lower the number of children in child protection systems. 4. Support for child care and early education (Head Start type programs) will take the burden off of schools and create happier communities with less crime. 5. Increased investment in finding, supporting, and educating foster and adoptive parents with attention paid to recruiting from minority communities will lower the number of children in the Juvenile Justice system. 6. By replacing punishment and incarceration of nonviolent young offenders with programs that work will lower the number of criminals in the criminal justice system and break the cycle of violence and drug abuse that has climbed to such high rates in our communities.. 7. Better training, greater resources, and lower caseloads for social workers and mental health workers will give the children in the systems a far better chance to succeed. Better results will pay big dividends to our communities and reduce the future tax burden significantly. 8. Increased investment in programs that deal in GLBT issues, child prostitution, and other dangerous childhood behaviors will save lives and it is the right thing to do. 9. By concentrating investments in those communities that are experiencing the greatest failure rates we get a double return on our money. Those communities will become far more livable for the entire population and at the same time, the cycle of poverty and violence will be greatly reduced. 10. A guardian ad-Litem for every child in child protection with a GAL system that allows personal contact, mentoring, and long term relationships with the children they serve can insure that children don't fall through the cracks and are not abandoned for the second time. 11. A big brother/big sister program that insures each child in child protection at least one long-term adult relationship in their life will serve the child as an anchor that will help them in their stuggle to lead a normal life. 12. By ending Child homelessness and children living with untreated mentally ill or drug addicted parents a large percentage of those conditions that lead to abuse and neglect will have been eliminated. This will prove to be a savings to us when the children go on to lead normal lives. Add your comments and experiences to our online web dialogue by posting them at; www.invisiblechildren.org/weblog Thank you. Mike Tikkanen
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