Ember Reichgott Jung's Radio Show

Yesterday, (December 29th,2005) I had the opportunity to speak on Ember Reichgott Jung's radio show* on the topic of Invisible Children. It was a terrific conversation that has further convinced me that there exists a core issue that must be addressed before meaningful change can take place. It is that people in positions of power and influence do not understand the nature or severity of the problems we speak of. Without understanding there will be no positive discourse that can build public support for systems and programs that work.

It is because the topic is complex and unhappy that we avoid it. Because those people who make and enact public policy do not comprehend the magnitude and seriousness of the problem chose not to discuss it. Because there is such limited discussion (and media coverage) the average citizen is largely clueless as to what good public policy would be.

Child Protection, Schools, Health and Juvenile Justice systems are filled with well meaning hardworking people that are frustrated with their own failure to achieve positive results. Everyone has a perspective, but no one knows what good comprehensive public policy needs to be.

Our institutional systems remain anathema to the healthy development of millions of American children. Until we accept the realization that dialogue must precede action (intelligent action) we will continue to abuse neglected children within our public institutions and our communities will suffer the grim results of millions of preteen mothers and adolescent felons.

Children deserve better, we deserve better than what we are now experiencing. Let’s all work to learn and raise awareness by starting this very important dialogue.

*Type "tikkanen" into the search box & the show will pop up and start to play.

Missouri Model

CHILD WATCH™ COLUMN
MISSOURI DIVISION OF YOUTH SERVICES: A MODEL FOR THE NATIONBy Marian Wright Edelman

In a recent column I wrote about the dangerous increase in the criminalization of our children, asking how we got here. Of course, this leads to a second key question: how do we get out? Researchers and practitioners agree that mentoring, tutoring, gang prevention, substance abuse prevention, dropout reduction, community service, quality after-school and summer programs and jobs, and nurse-visitation initiatives are among the right preventive investments in our nation’s youth.

But since 2001, the Bush Administration has proposed funding reductions in federal youth prevention and intervention close to 66 percent. Actual funding has dropped more than 40 percent, with additional cuts being considered for next year — a reckless budgetary decimation of the very programs and services that help keep children out of trouble and on the right path in life.

If we know what works, how can we possibly allow children, particularly poor and minority children, to consistently get the short end of the stick of our budgetary priorities?

Eliminating youth services costs us much more in the long run in terms of our criminal justice system, incarceration and other public costs. Conservative estimates place the total savings of diverting one child from a lifetime of crime at about $1.5 million. Much more importantly, that child has the opportunity to succeed in life – an opportunity that is each person’s God-given birthright. There are models for how we can do this for more of our nation’s children. The state of Missouri’s approach to juvenile justice services gives us one example of how to get things right.

Experts praise Missouri's Division of Youth Services as a "guiding light" of juvenile justice reform, and they credit Mark Steward, the division’s recently retired director, with building – and sustaining – the finest state juvenile corrections system in the country. Dubbed the "Missouri model" by reformers in other states, the youth corrections system strongly emphasizes rehabilitating young offenders in homey, small-group settings that incorporate constant therapy and positive peer pressure under the direct guidance of well-trained counselors.

When a young person commits a crime, judges generally reserve commitment to a Division of Youth Services residential facility as the final option for only the toughest of cases – about 1,300 each year. For most youths, "aftercare" consists of a prolonged relationship with a case manager. Many youths are also assigned a "tracker"— often college students, or sometimes residents of the youth's home community, who meet with them regularly to monitor their progress. Missouri also operates 11 nonresidential "day treatment" centers year-round during school hours, and these facilities offer a way station for many teens after leaving a residential facility.

How do we know Missouri’s approach is working? A long-term recidivism study showed that only eight percent of youths released in 1999 were incarcerated in youth or adult corrections three years later, while 19 percent were sentenced to adult probation – meaning nearly three-fourths of these youths had avoided either prison or probation for at least three years. Compared with other states, Missouri's results are remarkable.

Besides the obvious future savings that accompany its low recidivism rates, the Missouri model is also substantially cheaper than many of its counterparts around the country. In 2004, Missouri’s Division of Youth Services devoted nine out of every ten dollars in its budget to treatment services.

Across the state the annual cost per bed in a residential treatment facility ranged from $41,400 to $55,000, while Maryland spent $64,000 per bed in 2003, and California spent a whopping $71,000. Even worse, far more young people in Maryland and California end up in prison as adults, meaning those states effectively pay twice as much for inferior treatment.
So if successful models like Missouri’s are out there, why isn’t the entire nation following them?

We know what works to keep our children safe and out of trouble. The question is will we actually provide the support for all at-risk children? Our children deserve the chance to survive and thrive and to be protected from the cradle to prison pipeline that steals too many young dreams and futures.

Marian Wright Edelman is President and Founder of the Children's Defense Fund and its Action Council whose mission is to Leave No Child Behind and to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities

Can undertreatment be counter-productive?

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting to the hardworking and committed service providers my talk on American institutions and their impact on abused and neglected children.

My talk is a hard discussion about the statistics, distrust, and outrage over failed schools, high crime, growing prison populations, and serious health problems and a direct correlation to abused and neglected kids.

The high point of my talk came during the open discussion when a Child Court Judge that I've known for many years challenged my promotion of mental health services. There were some sparks.

She is someone I genuinely respect both for her commitment to children and her deep knowledge of the issues impacting children. Six years as a Child Court Judge working with thousands of troubled children gives her a perspective of these issues not had by many others.

I surprised myself with my immediate reaction to her. Here was someone I anticipated would be fully understanding and appreciative of a child's need for guidance and help due to the trauma of abuse and Child Protective Services.

It has occurred to me, that she, like most of the people working with abused and neglected children, has never seen the positive results of a mental health therapy regimen.

This should be no surprise to me.

There are forty-nine child psychiatrists in the state of Minnesota. Most of them practice in the higher paying suburbs (Medical Assistance pays a small fraction of the rates paid in the suburbs).

What passes for mental health therapy in most counties is under-trained people (however well motivated) trying to understand and devise teaching/learning strategies for seriously mentally damaged children. These well meaning people are incapable of understanding or dealing with the
damage these children have suffered. Both the under-reporting of the severity and repetition of abuse and the lack of knowledge by the professional of the concrete impact of this abuse on the child, combine to insure minimal positive results from "mental health therapies".

In ten years of Court Appointed Special Advocacy (guardian ad-Litem) work (fifty children) I have never witnessed a child that has been provided anything like mental health therapy upon removal from their toxic home. One four year old boy had been tied to a bed and molested for four years, another four year old girl had been kicked so hard by her abuser that she went into convulsions. Their mental health stories are a study in neglect.The few Child Psychiatrists that do work with the thousands of traumatized youth in the system are overwhelmed and largely unable to deal effectively with their caseload.

The guardian ad-Litem children I worked with were provided truly marginal mental health therapies only years after they had been removed from their toxic homes and mostly after their own attempts at suicide.

That my friend the Judge would be able to look me square in the eye and say that "mental health therapy doesn't accomplish anything, why are you so in favor of it?, has caused me deep consternation.



Think about this.

If you had been infected with a terrible virus at four years of age but didn't get to a doctor until you were eight, and the doctor said to you, "yes it appears that you have a terrible infection and really needed antibiotics when you were four. It's too bad that you didn't get them when you needed them. What I can do, now that you're eight, is give you a prescription today."

But, because we only have 49 pills in stock, instead of a prescription for thirty pills over thirty days (which is how antibiotics effectively overcome infections), she writes you a prescription for one pill a month for three months (guaranteed not to work).

The under application of a treatment (of any treatment) is ineffectual and it gives the concept of treatment a bad name. I have repeatedly experienced poorly executed mental health therapies (for children in child protection) that were in fact counter-productive. At the same time more and more professionals believe that therapy doesn't work.

Children may suffer More abandonment & More trauma when their therapist prematurely leaves (quits the patient) than they would have experienced without treatment. I have yet to witness my county provide timely or adequate mental health therapies to any of the truly damaged children I have come to know through the Court System. Most of them take multiple prescriptions of psychotropic medications with very limited access to mental health professionals. The children's behaviors and development are living proof of ongoing mental trauma.

This is my argument against poorly understood and poorly executed mental health services.

I'm assuming that my friend the judge has never witnessed a positive transformation due to adequate application of mental health services. I know it is possible. I have friends to prove it.