Vote For Minnesota’s At Risk Youth Here (today)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Religion, Politics + the Law

Please contact Senator Terri Bonoff and request her support of SF 2411. Sample language is provided below. Please personalize it, if you wish, and email it to Senator Bonoff at sen.terri.bonoff@senate.mn or call her at 651-296-4314. As the bill is being heard on Tuesday, please send your email or call as soon as possible.

Also, please let us know if you were able to call or email your Senator. Thank you!

Sincerely,

Johnna K O’Neill
Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota
(507) 993-2925
johnna@safepassagemn.org
www.safepassagemn.org

Dear Senator Bonoff –

On Tuesday, April 5, the Senate Finance Committee, K-12 Budget Division will consider SF 2411 which will increase the number of early learning scholarships and give priority to children in foster care or the child protection system. Quality early learning experiences have been proven to reduce child abuse and neglect. More funding directed at the prevention of child maltreatment is essential. In addition to better outcomes for individual children and their families, society benefits from stronger families, less crime, and decreased social service costs.

Please support SF 2411 to ensure there is adequate funding for the proven benefits of quality childcare.

Thank you for your efforts on behalf of abused, neglected, and at-risk children in Minnesota.

NAME
ADDRESS
CITY, ST ZIP

KARA Update & 2015 Children & Youth Issues Briefing Friday January 23rd

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, KARA News and Events

Friday was spent at the annual Children and Youth Issues Briefing conference in St Paul. I reconnected with board members from CASAMN, Greg Brolsma, Police Chief from Fairmont MN with great insights about how the issues of abuse and neglect impact the larger community, and Rich Gehrman from Safe Passage For Children MN.

My biggest take away from the many speakers today was this statement by Becky Roloff CEO of the YWCA in Minneapolis (paraphrased) because a child’s future ability to cope in school and in life is almost completely formed by five, I’ve changed my definition of a generation. It’s not 20 years, it’s five. Every five years, another generation of children able to cope or not cope in school, with peers, and in life enters our community.

Becky’s larger point being, either we throw ourselves into crisis nurseries, early childhood programs, and affordable quality daycare, or we will continue to create new generations of troubled five year olds headed for failure and lifetimes of special needs and dysfunctional lifestyles.

Emerging Policy Initiatives, Youth Perspectives, MN Children’s Cabinet, Governor’s address, and Legislative leaders delivered multiple perspectives about children’s issues. When the video of the event is posted I will put it up on KARA’s website.

2 other thoughts that will stick with me from this meeting are;

1) the short sighted and repeated reference to affordability with little reference to the extraordinary cost of not valuing children enough to insure basic health and skills,

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2) Governor Dayton’s remarks about how infighting among service providers could damage his efforts to provide funding for badly needed programs (which certainly would not serve the children we were there to talk about).

The cost of children not able to achieve the coping skills needed to succeed in school, with peers, and in life, are exponentially higher than providing subsidized daycare, crisis nurseries, and early childhood programs.

Without help, the traumas of abuse and neglect last a lifetime and cost a fortune over that person’s lifetime. Art Rolnick’s work at the Federal Reserve proving a 17 dollar return on each dollar invested in early childhood programs for the average child pales in comparison to the dollar invested in the at risk child. A single child in my caseload cost the county (and County) in excess of two million dollars) that could have been a fraction of that cost if addressed adequately (and he is still a young man with a long, expensive, dysfunctional life in front of him).