Another CASA volunteer voice

Sickening news and a kick in the pants

David Strand Columnist

It's bad news that our nation is in deep trouble. The good news is that over 80 percent of Americans know it and want the Bush administration's mess fixed.

The Star Tribune reported Aug. 13 that the St. Paul Police revoked an earlier permit granted to the Welfare Rights Committee allowing an assembly in front of the Xcel Energy Center at the Republican National Convention. The advocacy group had planned to gather low-income families with small children and people "with mobility issues."

The city of St. Paul and its Police Department should be ashamed! That goes for all Minnesotans that have brains that work.

St. Paul spokesman Brad Meyer said the permit was canceled "for security reasons." Also cited was the permit had been granted before they knew President Bush would be speaking on the first night of the convention. Heaven forbid that the president might accidentally see poor families with little kids and people in wheel chairs as he enters the Xcel to read his teleprompter.

This is a reminder that what passes for public policy in America is disgusting. In the last column it was noted that the Plutocracy index in 2006 smashed the earlier record high of 1928, three decades after it had hit an all-time low. Since 1978 incomes for 90 percent of Americans have actually declined when adjusted for inflation. Those at the top now earn about 1,000 times more than nine of 10 Americans.

At 70, I recall a life of good fortune. This included working for an affluent corporation and traveling on a generous expense account. We flew first class to foreign countries, stayed in luxury hotels and dined in the finest restaurants. We worked with well educated people to build factories and to start new businesses. We were treated like royalty, and it was more than nice.

Even considering four decades of exhilarating professional life, my most powerful lesson followed retirement in 1996. This happened when I volunteered as a guardian ad-litem for Hennepin County from 1998 to 2000.

Guardians are court-appointed advocates assigned to help Juvenile Court judges decide the fate of children removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect. It is part of the Child Protection System in our state.

The hardest was to look into the eyes of these unlucky kids and realize that they had no chance for a normal life. I could only take that for two years. It was a "kick in the pants" that opened my eyes.

I finally saw the truth. Unlike other advanced countries where public policy stands or falls based on approval of the public, America's policies are determined by the power of money. In his book The Wrecking Crew, author Thomas Frank reveals that the richest counties in America are not in California or near oil rich Houston, Texas. Numbers 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7 all encircle our nation's capitol. Special interest money pours into the federal lobby industry which makes sure the outpouring of taxpayer money is many multiples of the inflow. Moreover, lobby costs are also tax-deductible business expenses. Guess who picks up the shortfall?

Minnesotans will behold this lavish influencing firsthand during the upcoming Republican National Convention. The public demonstrations will be minor distractions compared to real power marketed in fancy cocktail parties, upscale dinners for rich contributors, and in fleets of limousines embellished with wet bars and virtual reality internet.

Republicans and their friendly influence peddlers are mostly to blame for this debacle, but Democrats have earned a share, too. Some Washington Democrats need a "swift kick in the pants." People everywhere are hurting, especially American kids growing up in poverty, a stat where we disgracefully lead the developed world.

Now the St. Paul police use security concerns as an excuse to keep underprivileged families from getting too close to the rich and powerful who run this country.

What do they fear? That some child will hold up a sign asking for a place for his family to sleep at night?

David Strand is a former volunteer guardian ad-Litem in Hennepin County and currently director for the county DFL party.

Brutal Truths and Best Practices Forum

Save the date; Friday, Oct 17th 9am to noon

(Registration link below

qualifies for 3 CEUs)

Our Child Protection System
Brutal Truths and Best Practices Forum at Century College

Join our focused and energetic conversation about children in need of protection and the people, programs, and policies that impact them. Have your views and questions heard.

After the panel discussion, attendees will form small working groups and helped to identify and investigate their own issues, discovering better answers, and ultimately creating an action plan, which they will share with the larger group. (about 90 minutes)

At the end of the session, attendees will be offered an opportunity to form and participate in ongoing action groups to explore and determine solutions for issues of personal concern. These groups will be sponsored by KARA, but will be expected to operate on their own, i.e. establish their own agenda and meeting schedule. KARA in turn will schedule quarterly Roundtables where each of the working groups will have the chance to report out.

Take away:

1. You will have the opportunity to hear (and participate in) a lively discussion about how the different parties view the resources, practices, and people that make up child protection.

2. You can participate in a small work group session that will help you better understand issues.

3. You will learn how to have a greater impact on the system.

4. You will have the opportunity to join an action group committed to exploring and resolving an issue of special importance to you.

Moderator; Neal St. Anthony, Star Tribune


Panel Members:

Pamela Alexander, Former Judge and current President of the MN Council on Crime and Justice

Our Voices Matter - A Youth from the system speaks.

Becky Lourey, Senator and adoptive mother of eight

Glenace Edwall, Head of Ramsey County Children’s Mental Health


Rob Grunewald, Federal Reserve Board co-author (with Art Rolnick) of Early Childhood Development: Economic Development with a High Public Return, and speaker on Early Childhood Programs (Fed Gazette 2003).

Link to Registration:

https://webproc.mnscu.edu/registration/search/detail.html?campusid=304&courseid=002049&yrtr=20093&rcid=0304&localrcid=0304&partnered=false&parent=search

Regardless of whether a person would like to register for a credit or a non-credit course, they do need to go through the steps to register/enroll by entering their name, address, phone, as well as creating a username and password.

If they would like to register by calling in to our staff, they are certainly welcome to. Our registration staff can be reached at 651-779-3341 between the hours of 8 AM-7 PM Mon-Thurs and 8 AM-4 PM on Fridays. Anyone at that number can assist the caller with registering for the course. They will still need to provide their name, address, phone, etc. as well as providing their credit card information for the $15 course fee. We accept Visa, MasterCard and Discover Card over the phone (Discover Card is not accepted via the online registration process however).

Our registration staff can also assist those individuals who would like to register over the Internet if they have questions.

KARA (Kids At Risk Action) 501c3 NonProfit, is a resource and conduit for abused and neglected children and the people that love, live with, and work with them.

This website exists to make information easy to find and to facilitate communication while building grassroots support for abused and neglected children and their issues.

KARA’s mission is to advocate for the welfare of at-risk children and youth through the identification and promotion of people, programs, and policies that work.

Related Information

• Invisible Children website: http://www.invisiblechildren.org/
  
• Invisible Children blog: http://www.invisiblechildren.org/weblog/

In Whose Best Interest?

Questioning Child Protection Policies

What drives the policies and programs that rule the lives of abused and neglected children?

Within the Child Protection system, like most big organizations, the fear of change is omnipresent (omnipotent?).

A director closely monitors and directs the critical elements of national/state policies within their jurisdiction. A program gets too edgy, it will lose funding, dry up and blow away.

While this is rarely stated bluntly, there is little question as to what happens when the sub organization seeks to point out failure or demand change outside the national/state guidelines.

I have recently sensed the fear of an administrator torn between making waves to point out a serious system flaw (doing real damage to children) at the risk of drawing the national organizations attention.

It’s not really a choice, for a program director torn between losing funding (organizational suicide), or safeguarding the organization by not speaking out.

This question would be less problematic if our institutions were getting the results they were designed to achieve (if results were positive).

To this point, Kathleen Long, author of ANGELS AND DEMONS clearly articulates,

“If you measure the success of our institutions by what it is they actually create versus what they were designed to create”, (the following are my words) our Child Protection system creates mentally unhealthy youth, future felons, and pregnant teenagers.

Children in Child Protection are suffering twice the level of PTSD as soldiers returning from Iraq.
80% of children aging out of foster care are leading dysfunctional lives.

Almost half the youth in the juvenile justice system have at least two severe mental health diagnoses.

The amount of psychotropic medications prescribed to children in Child Protection is horrendous (and the vast majority of these children receive grossly inadequate mental health care).

Will abused and neglected children forever remain stuck between the sexual abuse, violence and drug use within a dysfunctional family and the unresponsive and under-resourced agencies chartered to care for them?

One of my first cases involved a judge returning a four year old boy to his father. The father was in prison and had a court order in an adjacent state to stay away from young boys (due to his sexual assaults on young boys).

Over a four year period this boy was tied to a bed, left for days alone in an apartment, starved, sexually abused and beaten severely. Recovering from this type of abuse might have been possible had he received sufficient care and resources. He did not.

The boy is now 19, and his life was altered forever in many terrible ways by a judge’s misguided decision to return him to his father.

Would a judge that understood the depth and scope of the problems abused children suffer from have made the same decision? Do we routinely appoint judges to Child Protection cases that do not understand or appreciate the nature and substance of the issues that will forever impact At Risk children? I think so.

I have many more sad tales from 12 years as a guardian ad-Litem. Most people working in Child Protection have similar stories.

This is not a small problem. Three million children a year are referred to Child Protection agencies in America. If witnessing the rape and assault of your mother were considered child abuse, the number would be closer to Six Million.

The cost of making better decisions for our At Risk kids would be exponentially less than the costs we continue to pay for with disruptions in our schools, crime in our communities, ongoing institutionalization, and of course, the misery of millions of children growing up to lead unhappy and dysfunctional lives (and starting their own unhappy families).

What We Do To Our Children, They will Do To Us

America's marquee 'Children don't count' David Strand Columnist Oh, it's so painful! Deep in our guarded innermost self, we believe something with great passion. Evidence to the contrary cannot shake our firmly held conviction. We cover our ears, our eyes and from our mouth erupts some primordial sound to render our senses numb. "Don't show me proof that my belief is wrong. Don't confuse me with facts. My mind is made up." Our precious America, we are taught, is the exception to the world. No other nation can even come close. Tragically, a great many children suffer from a denial of the reality in our country. The evidence is confirmed by new studies reported in the mainstream media. In March the Center for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of a study of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) among teenage girls. It was a shock. One in five white teens and half of African-American young women are infected with a STD. Across all groups the incidence was one of every four teens, and climbing! In April, the America's Promise Alliance released a report showing that only half of students in public schools in America's largest cities earn graduation diplomas. In 17 of the 50 largest cities the graduation rate was below 50 percent and as low as 25 percent. Overall the high school graduation rate across the nation is barely 70 percent. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, founding chair of the alliance said, "When more than one million students a year drop out of high school, it's more than a problem, it's a catastrophe." Despite decades of feeble attempts to improve our public schools, the downstream consequences for the criminal justice system have been devastating. It is literally busting at the seams. The May 10 issue of The Economist poses the question about America, "Land of the free?" From 1980 to 2006, the prison incarceration rate exploded by more than quintupling, to the highest prison inmate rate in the world. In spite of massive confinement construction, the U.S. federal prisons are now filled to 131 percent of capacity. Meanwhile, these critical issues that plague our children are absent from the presidential campaigning that floods the media. Only when John Edwards was in the race was there any emphasis on the problems of at-risk families and children. In endorsing Barack Obama, Edwards extracted a promise that this issue will not be forgotten. I have heard little about it since. Some prominent people have tried to prevent today's epidemic of STDs. Included were recent Surgeon Generals Jocelyn Elders, David Satcher and Richard Carmona. They all advocated comprehensive sex education for our children. Satcher even published "The Surgeon Generals Call to Action to Promote Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior" in 2001. Another study is "Teenage Sexual and Reproductive Behavior in Developed Countries, Can More Progress Be Made?," 2001, Alan Guttmacher Institute. The latter study compared the United States with Great Britain, Canada, France and Sweden. In every category of STD incidence, rate of pregnancy, abortions and births, the United States experienced the highest rates, by far. For example, the teen pregnancy rate of the U.S. is four times the French rate, three times the Swedish rate and twice as high as Great Britain and Canada. According to the researchers, our higher poverty rates and a lack of comprehensive reproductive biology educations are major factors holding us back. Contrary to popular belief, the research also shows that all-inclusive education, including abstinence and prevention, has no effect on the age of first experience or the frequency of sexual activity among teenagers. But the deeply held belief that providing our youth with factual information will encourage them to have sex is as firmly entrenched as it is patently false. "We must keep them ignorant so they don't get any bad ideas." The bottom line is that STDs are an epidemic among our children, and our high school dropout rate is a catastrophe, contributing to an explosion of prison incarceration that is unsustainable. By ignoring these problems and denying that they exist is quite simply collective insanity. One would think that even conservatives would support programs proven to keep our children protected on their way to adulthood. Apparently not. Since the start of the current school year, more than two dozen high school students in the Chicago schools have been shot to death. Are we ready for the carnage heading our way? Pliny the Elder said, "What we do to our children, they will do to us." David Strand is KARA board member.

From Child Protection to Soldier

School Military Recruiting Could Violate International Protocolby Jim LobePublished on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 by Inter Press ServiceCommon DreamsWASHINGTON

Pressed by the demands of the "global war on terrorism", theUnited States is violating an international protocol that forbids therecruitment of children under the age of 18 for military service,according to a new report released Tuesday by a major civil rights groupthat charged that recruitment practices target children as young as 11 years old.

The 46-page report, "Soldiers of Misfortune", was prepared by theAmerican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for submission to the U.N. Committeeon the Rights of the Child.

This is the reason why the United States is the only nation in the world that has not ratified the UN Treaty on the Universal Rights of Children. (Actually, Somalia also has not because they don't have a government.)

We insist on sending many children to military high schools where they learn the ways of military training and life, a custom most prevelent in the South. This is an opportunity to remind people of our preference of military solutions to most problems, contributing to our reputation of a pariah of the world.

Why talk, when we can fight. David Strand

Why educate children, when they make such great soldiers. Mike Tikkanen

Yes, We Do Know

Dear editor,

Today's (5/6/08) Minneapolis Star Tribune article "Disorders are likelier in adopted teenagers" reviewing Margaret Keyes U of M research, is not helpful to children in child protection.

While the article concentrates on infant adoptions and it does state that adopted kids are 2.5 to 6 times more likely to show up for counseling than non adoptive kids, the author makes the claim that "No one understands why adopted children are more troubled, nor how often those emotional problems extend into adulthood".

As a long time volunteer guardian ad-Litem working with children in child protection, it hurts me to see this kind of statement in print.

If there is one thing we should know about American children that have been removed from their birth homes, it is that they have suffered extended exposure to violence and deprivation.

This is the definition of the "Imminent Harm Doctrine" which is the legal statute that allows children to be removed from their family.

Extended exposure to violence and deprivation is also the World Health Organizations definition of torture. Children are not removed from their birth parents unless the home environment has endangered the life of the child. That is the law.

Of the 50 children I have advocated for over twelve years, all had experienced severe and chronic violence and neglect. Sexual abuse of children is not uncommon. Their stories would make you cry www.invisiblechildren.org

To express wonder at why abused children develop emotional problems as they age is misleading and unfair to these children.

A child protection judge has provided me the annual psychotropic medical prescriptions taken by very young children in her courtroom. I have not seen children in child protection receive the therapy that should have accompanied the drugs. Five year old kids proscribed Prozac. Ritalin is a cocaine derivative.

I have experienced four and five year olds trying to kill themselves.

To expect these children to go to school, play well with others, and become fully functional human beings without special attention is just wrong.

MN former Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz has stated that the vast majority of children in the Juvenile Justice System have come out of the Child Protection System. Marion Wright Edelman (Children's Defense Fund) clearly articulates the relationship between abused children and prison. Almost all

Criminal Justice inmates have passed through the Juvenile Justice System.

More than half of the youth in the Juvenile Justice System have mental health problems (about half of this number have multiple and severe diagnosis).

It is clear to me that most of the three million children per year that are referred to child protection services, need and deserve much more help than they currently receive.

Children that receive inadequate help go on to lead dysfunctional lives (80% of the youth aging out of foster care are leading dysfunctional lives).

Troubled children would not go on to disrupt our classrooms and hurt our school performance (25% of U.S. high school graduates are functionally illiterate) and they would not be arrested and sent to prison (44% of the adult male African American Hennepin County residents were arrested in 2001).

Art Rolnick at the Federal Reserve has done extensive work on this issue and proven that early childhood education is a terrific return on investment for our community.

Speaking openly about children in child protection and focusing on their needs to make the economic argument for helping them, would give us safer streets, better schools, and empty jails and prisons.

We would also have happy functioning members of our community instead of the troubled youth we have today.

Today's cost of incarceration, failing schools, and unsafe streets are exponentially greater than the costs of intervention and prevention

It is also the right thing to do.

Ignoring or misunderstating children's issues is not helpful to them (or us).

We very much do know why adopted children are more troubled and that their emotional issues do extend into adulthood. We also know what needs to be done to help them.

I'm a child advocate. Let's help them.

Mike Tikkanen http://www.karagroup.org/ 

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California Dreaming

Last week the State of California achieved perfect synchronicity in its public policy making when it announced that criminals would be released early because the state could no longer afford to keep them incarcerated.

This news reminded me that when I began my work as a guardian ad Litem there were states predicting the need for prison expansion based on the number of failed third grade reading scores within its schools.

Instead of investing in reading for third graders (and early childhood education), California began investing in a third strike punishment model and building tens of thousands of prison beds.

Today, crime, courts, and incarceration are the largest piece of California's state budget. The prison lobby is the largest lobby in the state, and California recidivism is above 70% (the highest in the world?)

The state now has the dubious distinction of spending more on prisons than on education and one of the highest violent crime rates in the nation

Former MN Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz and Marion Writght Edleman (Children's Defense Fund Founder) have pointed out that almost all the youth in our juvenile justice system have come through chiild protection services and the vast majority of adults in the criminal justice system are graduates of our juvenile justice system.

California now has a perfect prison feeder system.

Nationwide, about 25% of America's youth are being tried in adult courts today. Once these youth are treated as adults in our court systems, they rarely leave the system. Juveniles are more likely to be raped and brutalized, and suicidal, than adults within the system (they are just more vulnerable).

California's great investment in its criminal justice system has ruined tens of thousands of lives and paid very poor dividends to its citizens. It is horribly expensive, almost all the inmates recommit crimes within three years, and now they are letting the inmates out quickly because they are out of money to feed and house felons (let them rob and steal for their dinner).

The math is pretty straightforward:

X years and Y dollars of early childhood education/programs = children that can go to school and learn to read* graduate and build a meaningful life within our community. They go on to have jobs, raise normal families, and lead meaningful lives, versus

Spending those same dollars on prisons and punishment that has bought us recidivism, astronomical crime costs (1.5 to 2 trillion dollars annually) failed schools, and a persistent fear of walking home in our neighborhoods at night. What does forty years of social services and incarceration cost a community? What is the value of a healthy productive citizen?

This cycle will not be broken overnight. We will have to invest in programs that make children ready for school (it is a proven solid investment) and ready for life.

Our thirty year spree of "the floggings will continue until the Morale improves" policy making model has created more felons and mentally unhealthy people than any other nation in the world.

Are we able to change the direction of our public policies so that thirty years from now, all children will be valued as potential citizens and given access to health and education that are critical to participating in their community?

Minnesota has just experienced three consecutive years of double digit prison (investment) growth. Hennepin county arrested 44% of its black adult male population in 2001. Nationally, 13% of Black men can't vote because they are felons. The racial disparity is clear to some of us.

After 12 active years in the County Child Protection system, I can testify that early childhood programs work as a deterent to crime and as a fiscally responsible means of running a county (or a state).

All children want to be happy creative beings. It is human nature. We can either facilitate this, and save tons of lives and money, or continue to build more crime and prisons and let our prisoners out early when we run out of money.

Support our effort to positively redefine the lives of at risk children, join our grassroots enet; http://www.karagroup.org/

Economics 101

My passion for the topic and love for public speaking often places me in front of business groups making a basic economic argument for mending abused and neglected children.

It pains me that this simple lesson in finance is so hard to comprehend for so many people.

One untreated, *traumatized" child can spend thirty or forty years in and out of institutions (child protection/juvenile justice/criminal justice), hurting themselves and others along the way.

Former MN Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz says that "the difference between that poor child and a felon, is about eight years".

Most of these poor children becomes unhealthy adults and have their own poor children (now that's exponential). Many preteen mothers have adolescent felon falthers with little hope of raising a happy or functional family. Recent studies show that almost 80% of children aging out of foster care are leading dysfunctional lives.

A recent ACE study 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.

The economics of treating at risk children early is proven to be exponentially less costly than paying for the many years of institutionalization and the added encumbrance on our communities when they are not institutionalized.

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.

It can reasonably be argued that the approximately three million U.S. children reported to child protection services each year are passing through our public schools. Educators are required to manage a significant number of seriously troubled children while trying to bring meaningful instruction to large classrooms with less and less resources and public support each year.

For the last several years 25% of America's graduating seniors have been functionally illiterate and our inner city high school dropout rate is approaching 50%.

On the world stage, we have fallen from our many years at the very top rank of all educational and qualitiy of life indices (among the 24 other **industrialized nations) to the very bottom in almost all of these measurements.

It is not educators or schools that have failed us. It is the unpreparedness, and serious problems brought to school by the millions and millions of troubled children that have overwhelmed our institutions.

In 2006 MN schools had 900 students per counsellor in its high schools. New Jersey removed all of its counsellors and mental health workers (all students needing help were sent to jail).

Under the NCLB almost all non "critical" programs have been forced out of our schools. Troubled youth find little help to deal with their serious problems (in 2005 MN had a total of 15 child psychiatrists).

The number of students unable to read by the third grade relates directly to and is a accurate predictor of high school dropout rates. Not graduating from high school is an accurate predictor of future criminal behavior.

Some states have predicted the need for future prison space by extrapolating from failed third grade reading scores. Minneapolis MN (Hennepin County) arrested 44% of its Black adult male population in 2001 (with no duplicate arrests).

America's cost of prisons and jails has grown exponentially since the drug king pin laws and mandatory minimum sentencing guidlines were passed into law twenty years ago. The price tag for crime in the U.S. is estimated at between 1.1 and 1.6 Trillion dollars each year (insurance and incarceration cost figures).

It is pretty clear that helping each child cope with a troubled family life, learn to read, make friends, and become a functioning juvenile will add contributing members to our communities and save us millions of dollars (that is without calculating the very real costs of violence to our friends and families and our growing number of tortured inner city neighborhoods)

Can you help me to bring this message to a few more people so our policy makers can begin to understand the importance of supporting programs, people, and policies that help at risk children?




*In the U.S., the Imminent Harm Doctrine requires that a child's life be endangered by his parents before being removed from the home. This is one definition of trauma.
Many abused and neglected children live for years in violent abusive homes. The World Health Organization's definition of torture is "extended exposure to violence and deprivation".

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is twice as common among children in child protectin systems as it is among war veterans returning from Iraq.

**Those 24 nations with 200 year old democracies. Today we rank ourselves about in the middle of the 48 "emerging nations" instead of the much more accurate and meaningful "last" among the industrialized nations.

Defining Institutions by What they Create

October Blog

This outstate Minnesota story bears repeating. I have come to know this family. They don't drink, do drugs, or have a history of crime or violence. John has always worked. They love their children. This is their side of the story. I spent five days working with John and have come to believe him.

Mary and John and their four young children suffered a house fire that ruined part of their home last year after the birth of their last child.

John was working too much (the fire repairs made them broke) and Mary was suffering from post partum depression.

The house fire required John to make quick repairs to accomodate the family until they could adequately rebuild. The house was messy because of this and Mary's depression.
They did not have insurance for their fire repairs and were struggling with the cost of repairs to rebuild their home.

Mary called child services to get help.

Instead, the county removed their children from them a few weeks before Christmas (putting them in separate homes), and then fought with John and Mary for months to keep the children from returning home. When the children were returned, it was one child at a time, visitation was made very difficult, and instead of helping the family get back on its feet, charged them $6000 in court costs.

The trauma experienced by these children during this process was terrible and it is still with them.

As a guardian ad-Litem, I have experienced this fear first hand. There is nothing more frightening to a child than to believe that mommy and daddy are gone. Young children do not understand court procedures and words don't comfort.

Children experience real and long term pain and suffering as a result of this trauma. Removal from the birth home should never be taken lightly and children should receive professional help to deal with their trauma during and afterwards.

This family reached out for help to overcome a personal disaster and depression. Instead they were treated very badly.
In the end, the presiding judge reversed the aggressive position of the social workers with hard words to the department.

This process did nothing for the benefit of the children or the home they live in. In fact, the $6000 court costs have set the family back even more, and the children will carry their PSTD type fears for years to come.

In my twelve years as a guardian ad-Litem I have worked with about fifty children and have never met a social worker that meant to hurt anyone, or act out of meanness.

Social work is complicated business that involves a great deal of knowledge across a broad spectrum of factors. Training and public policy are critical to the adminidstration of programs and methods that are meant to protect children.

Depression and poverty are a part of many lives in this nation and every nation.

Punishing people for human problems serves no one. Calling what happened to this family child protection is a misnomer. Child protection would have been to help this family solve it's problems (not add to them).

"Defining our institutions by what they actually create instead of what they were designed to create"* would be the first step in making the changes necessary to fix our poorly understood and vastly under-resourced system.

It is only "We The People" that will bring attention to our dissatisfaction with public policies that need redirection and resources.

Not calling your state representatives and not voting won't help.

Please submit your own stories to me and I will post those that I am able to.

Get Active

*Quote from Kathleen Long, Author of Demons and Dragons

Bad Public Policy

The bridge failure will end up costing about one billion dollars (below) and if our policy makers would wake up, they will see that it was about five hundred times more expensive than the requested bridge maintenance that would have kept the bridge in "pristine condition"**

Are we doomed to see our once safe city streets, superior schools and, child protection system, fall apart just like the bridge? As a CASA volunteer and child advocate, I am well connected to the benefits of taking care of children when they are young to avoid their collapse when they are juveniles.

Former Supreme Court 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 new anti tax paralysis, the serious issues faced by children in child protection are not dealt with until someone gets hurt (and it is exponentially more costly to institutionalize people over their lifetimes than it is to give them the skills to lead normal lives). http://www.invisiblechildren.org/

Minneapolis City Pages September 5th, Economy In Freefall article quoted Governor Pawlenty as estimating the addition costs of gas and extra miles due to the bridge collapse at $400,000 per day (146 million dollars over the next twelve months).

An accurate calculation must include a fair minimum amount for the (lower estimate) 144,000 cars that used this bridge every day. Forty eight cents per mile is the IRS allowance for automobile deductions and this does not include the headache factor of stopped traffic and longer commutes that I seem to be experiencing.

Assuming an average of five additional miles for each car each way (some people take the longer 694/494 route around town and others drive fewer miles through downtown city streets or the 280 detour). Multiplying five miles each way for 144,000 cars per day equals 1.4 million miles per day times the IRS forty eight cents equals $691,000 per day, or almost twice the governors estimate.

Even if the bridge is completed in eighteen months from the date of collapse, this additional cost will be almost four hundred million dollars. With no extra consideration for the ten to twenty minutes at each end of our commute we can honestly call this a hard cost of the bridge failure.

Add the 393 million dollar estimate (StarTrib Sticker Shock 10-2-07) for the new bridge, and the sure to be substantial lawsuit settlements for wrongful death and injury from the victims of this disaster, and some value for the businesses that are failing because of their new inaccessibility, and a billion dollars becomes a realistic estimate of the total hard cost of NOT MAINTAINING OUR BRIDGE.

**New York's twenty year veteran bridge engineer, Samuel Schwartz (NYT OP-ED 8.13.07) estimated that an average of 178,000 dollars annual maintenance would keep each one of his states bridges in pristine condition.

It was five hundred times more expensive for our public policy makers to ignore the advice of the bridge maintenance engineers than it would have been to listen to them. The no tax people have cost Minnesotans a billion dollars and killed and wounded one hundred and thirteen people (and added substantial time to our commutes).

I am making a similar calculation for the children in America's child protection systems, http://www.karagroup.org/. 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 with these tight fisted and mean spirited people wrecking our bridges and ruining our children.

United Nations Conference

My response to the email from the United Nations asking me to do a workshop at the fourth annual Youth Assembly in New York was that it might be a mistake. She assured me that it wasn’t, and that my message as a volunteer guardian ad-Litem was of interest to this conference.

My Invisible Children workshop drew over ninety attendees and many of them actively participated in the almost forty minute dialogue that followed my presentation.

These were people that came a long way to be involved and learn how to make a difference. Most of my workshop attendees were from the U.S., with a few people from the other industrialized nations. The larger conference audience was much more diverse, representing many nations. Hamid Karzai, President of Afganistan was one of many internationally known speakers at the conference.

As soon as possible, I will post my workshop audio on our KARA website .

Until then, most of the workshop discussion was centered around “Why Some Children Don’t Learn” and to help attendees understand the mental health issues of abused and neglected children and what resources they need to gain the coping and learning skills necessary to function in our schools, homes, and communities.

A primary goal of mine was to show how Post Traumatic Stress is common among children that suffer from extended exposure to violence and deprivation, and make a solid case for why educators, social workers, foster and adoptive parents, and others dealing with abused and neglected children need more and better resources if they are to make progress in helping these children succeed with friends and family, at home and in school.

I also work hard to explain why we need to be advocates not only for the children, but for the people dealing with abused and neglected children.

Too many teachers are leaving their field or transferring out of inner city schools to suburban or private schools. The danger and difficulty of working with violent and unstable children is real and growing.

Our schools are showing the results with high rates of failure and dropouts. Our communities are showing the results of high crime rates and the world’s highest rates of incarceration.

Without support at the community level for programs and policies that support America’s institutions, continued exodus from these most important fields and resulting failure of the children they serve must be expected.

One of the workshop attendees told me afterwards that she had recently quit working in her much loved field of social services because of the lack of resources and negative recognition given to her and her coworkers.

Her comment (rephrased) was that she could make three times as much money being a nanny for one child in New York (and be appreciated for it- my insight) than she could caring for a huge caseload of really needy children without having the resources needed to make a difference in their lives, watching them fail, and at the same time, be blamed for their lack of progress (it truly is depressing).

Her heart was genuinely with the children in need, but it is grueling work and without the resources, or support of the community (or the system) one can only stand so much failure (it becomes personal).





Addendum;

If you ever have the chance to visit the United Nations and take the tour, do it.

Our tour was lead by a bright young man from Uruguay who was able to give us the sense of history and evolution of the UN.

There is an aura of cooperation and striving for a better world that drifts from the walls. At the same time there are many sorrowful examples of tortured people, eleven year old boy soldiers, murdered and raped children, and nations committing horrific violence upon their own innocent populations and their neighbors.

The need for an organization committed to mediating disputes seems so necessary. The violence that is so endemic among us seems so useless. We are stuck with the latter, we can only hope for the former.

By Definition

Definitions


If institutions are to be defined by what they create instead of what they were designed to create, Kathleen Long Angels and Demons what would an objective analysis tell us today?

How are our schools functioning, what are the results from foster care, is juvenile justice serving its purpose, do the courts work, and how successful is our prison system?

Internationally, our high school performance has fallen from world leader to trailing in almost every category. We now compare ourselves to “emerging nations” so that we are 43rd out of 121 emerging countries instead of 21st out of the 24 industrialized nations in language, math, history, physics, and most other subjects.

25% of America’s high school graduates are functionally illiterate upon graduation; one out of three of them could not find Florida on a recent map test. In Minneapolis, the sister school (Roosevelt) to the one I attended (Edison) has graduated under 30% of its students over the last three years, the city average graduation rate is just over 55%.

Former MN Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Blatz stated that 90% of the youth in the juvenile justice system had come through the state’s child protection system (almost all criminal justice inmates come out of the juvenile justice system). Nationally, almost 25% of juveniles are tried as adults in the U.S. and a growing number of states allow children 13 and 14 years old to be tried in adult courts.

A recent study indicates that up to 80% of children aging out of foster care are leading dysfunctional lives. A Minnesota judge has provided me the Prozac, Ritalin, and other psychotropic medication prescriptions taken by children in her courtroom (most of them under ten years old) and it points at one of the key issues thay might explain why so many youth leaving the foster care program find it hard to cope with life.

In my experience in the child protection system as a guardian ad-Litem, it is a rare state ward that has found adequate mental health services (many of them are proscribed psychotropic medications with minimal professional help). Traumas experienced in the birth home and the following court process of removal leave permanent and painful scars. To treat these traumas with psychotropic medications and no long term / consistent therapy leaves children with problem behaviors and poor coping skills for the rest of their lives.

America has more people in prison per capita than any other nation. We also have more criminals and violent crime than any other industrialized nation. Nationally, 13% of Black men can’t vote because they are felons. In Minneapolis, 44% of African American men were arrested in 2001 (no duplicate arrests) African American Men's Study

If we are to define our criminal justice system by what it creates, it is successful in building more prisons than any other nation, maintaining terrifically high recidivism rates, keeping inmates in longer, and capturing huge percentages of African American men in the process.

Similarly, if we define the our child protection and juvenile justice systems by what they create, most of the inmates in criminal justice come from juvenile justice, and almost all of the youth in juvenile justice (in Minnesota) come from child protection services. It follows that children in child protection have a terrific potential for entering the criminal justice system.

It is painful for me as a citizen/guardian ad-Litem to watch the impact of mistreated (in their birth homes and as state wards) children passing through the system, failing in school, and aging out of foster care going onto lead dysfunctional lives.

What will it take for our communities to recognize that by abandoning the weakest and most vulnerable among us we not only destroy children's lives but perpetuate chaos and dysfunction in our communities?

Would we care more if we knew the cost to society for thirty to fifty years of institutionalization plus the cost of youth crimes and 14 year old girls having babies?

It is not the people working in these fields that are to be blamed*. There are millions of educators, foster & adoptive parents, social workers, court and justice personnel and others putting great effort into making life better for struggling children and families. I am one of them; http://www.invisiblechildren.org/

Our schools, courts/justice, child protection systems, and our health systems will not sustain our nation without a commitment to support from our communities and policy makers to do the right thing.

Investing in children is the best investment this nation can make today. It’s what we are not doing that is expensive. The longer we wait, the more lives will be damaged, and the more it will cost us as a society. Pass it on.

*Blaming teachers (as many politicians do around election time) is not fair or productive. Teachers don’t teach for fame or wealth, they chose this field because they care about kids, learning, and community. Teaching is hard work at modest pay (the same can be said for social and justice workers).

More reading; Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Art Rolnick's Federal Reserve Board Article

Speak Up For Children

An early childhood memory was riding with dad when he delivered sweet corn from our garden to migrant farm workers who were living temporarily in our town stockyards. It must have been the fall of 1942 and I can still see the small groups of ragged men huddled around boiling pots over open fires.

As we left the grateful gathering, dad told me a story about his dad, my grandpa Halvor, who died two years before I was born. Dad said one of grandpa’s favorite sayings was, “there is no shame in being poor, but it sure is inconvenient.” Halvor was speaking from experience because he raised 22 children during hard times.

My family and most I know have fared better, but poor families continue to struggle. Recent Minnesota policy has seen cuts in medical assistance eligibility, an 82% increase in U on Minnesota tuition since 2001 and drastic cuts in support for child care, a critical need for families trying to survive on low paying jobs.

Right now there are THOUSANDs of qualifying families for state child care aid but they can’t get it because there is no money.

For those who care about kids this is an opportunity to do something.

Minnesota can speak up for children, who through no fault of their own, are ‘inconvenienced by poverty’. You can call your representative and senator and tell them to find money to pay for child care for the families who by policy deserve it, but can’t get it because there is no money.

Funding child care policies saves taxpayer’s money. Art Rolnick, head of research at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve has proof. A republican, Rolnick calculates that investing in early child care will return at least 17% annual compounded savings (after inflation) in downstream society costs.

Art’s calculations are conservative. By including the very real costs of crime, problems at risk children have in our schools and high costs within our health care systems, 17% may be just a fraction of what it costs our community to abandon poor children.

More importantly, supporting day care for disadvantaged children is the right thing to do for all Minnesota’s kids.

In a public meeting at Hamline, Rolnick lamented that this ‘no brainer’ idea is overshadowed at the Capitol by wasteful sports stadiums (and cries for lower taxes*).

More of us need to raise our voices for children if there is going to be a change in public policy toward the weakest and most vulnerable among us (children have no voice but ours in this political system).

* authors words

Saving Ourselves From the Next Virginia Tech

24 months ago in a small Minnesota town, a mentally unstable student murdered and wounded 14 students before killing himself (my April 2005 weblog posting).

Jeff Weise also kept an outrageous website openly referencing homicide and suicide. Jeff was also denied treatment and prescribed Prozac*. After the carnage, Red Lake community found the money for a mental health family center to counsel troubled youth.

At that time in Minnesota there were 15 child psychiatrists in the entire state (population about 4 million) and the student to counsellor ratio in MN high schools was 900 to 1.

As a child advocate (long time guardian ad Litem) I strongly feel the need for mental health therapy for those who need it. The children I work with have been severely traumatized and need adequate attention paid to their needs.

In my many years as a guardian ad-Litem it has been my experience that at risk children don't get help until after their behaviors have become unmanageable and dangerous. Often the help they get comes in the form of a pill and not the personal professional counselling that they really need.

A Hennepin county judge has shared with me the psychotropic drug medications being taken by children in her courtroom. It is truely unbelievable how many disturbed and undertreated youth walk among us.

When attention to mental health services comes earlier, our communities can save themselves from the immense suffering that follows these horrific events.

* Not too many years from now it is my hope that we will recognize the repercussions of legally drugging children with psychotropic medications without adequate mental health services. Today we can only read about these consequences in the newspaper.

More on at risk children

Everybody Wins

A few weeks ago I listened to Larry Rosenstock from High Tech High in San Diego talk about his inner city high schools that send one hundred percent of their graduates onto college.

It is real, it is achievable, and it is simple in how it works.

Educators and students are given ample room and incentive to explore the wonders of learning with a caveat that studies be personal and relevant.

Somehow, this formula has taken root and the results are the best that could be dreamed of.

Everyone loves it and everyone succeeds.

There are many reasons but no excuse for why this wonderful way of approaching education is not being replicated throughout the U.S.

All children deserve a shot at being educated and productive members of their community.

Presently our nations inner city graduation rates are between 50 and 60 percent (my high schools sister school, Roosevelt South has graduated under 30 percent of its students for the past 2 years).

America's school system used to be the envy of the world. Now it is hurting. We should all wish for success for all our children.

Review the High Tech High website, send it to your state Representative/Senator, your governor (if you are in MN = governor@state.mn.us )

We are a representative democracy. Without our input policy making is left to special interests (and we all know how well that works).

Good graduation rates morph into happier people and safer communities. Everybody wins.

We are all in this together.