Most lawmakers know what a big percentage of their budgets is going to social programs like child welfare and child protection.
Not as many understand how tax dollars they appropriate are working to solve the problems they are meant to solve.
National Adoption Month
One out of 25 U.S. families have an adopted child. Half of the 135,000 adoptions are from the foster care system. There are over 100,000 eligible children waiting to be adopted.
Minnesota’s Child Protective Services (CPS) received 85,000 child abuse calls in 2019 (about 1/3 of the calls were investigated).
Report documents system failures in cases of Minnesota Children Killed due to Maltreatment short (KSTP video)
This Annie E. Casey Foundation survey of Black youth in February 2021 demonstrates a rising trend of Black youth incarceration Post COVID.
Black youth in juvenile detention on Feb. 1, 2021, reached a pandemic high, while that of white youth was the second lowest recorded in more than a year.
Grace, a Black 15-year old who was sent to a juvenile detention center for failure to submit schoolwork.
In an email to Grace’s caseworker, her teacher stated that Grace was “not out of alignment with most of my other students.”
Tens of thousands of children have struggled to adjust to the online learning environment the coronavirus created. ProPublica cites 15,000 high schoolers in Los Angeles alone failing to log in or complete schoolwork. Yet, a judge presiding for Oakland County Family Court Division, ruled in May that not completing schoolwork violated Grace’s probation.
It’s impossible to determine the frequency of cases like Grace’s, but one thing is clear. Children’s health and safety must be prioritized. We will continue urging states to stop admissions and to release kids from juvenile facilities. No child should be in juvenile detention for missing homework.
Recent Star Tribune articles about juvenile justice and explosive growth of crime in our community miss the heart of the matter. We keep putting fires out that could have been prevented. The car jackings, transit crimes and other juvenile violence making life miserable for so many of us didn’t begin when these children became juveniles. It started with traumas suffered in the home mostly caused by parents that suffered the same violence and abuse as children.
Teachers, social workers, law enforcement and foster/adoptive parents dealing with State Ward children are often the last chance that a child has to grow up to lead a normal life.
As part of KARA’s TPT documentary project I interviewed Minneapolis City Councilman / Mayoral candidate Don Samuels recently. He described his experiences as a volunteer CASA guardian ad-Litem, North Side resident, and city councilman that were relevant to child well-being and child protection.
This conversation about the study of MN child fatalities is eye opening and terribly sad. Ignoring brutality being done to children allows it to continue and to fester. Let’s all commit to caring for other people’s children. It will be a better place to live for all of us if we do.
What is transparent and measured can be identified and improved. What is not transparent and measured remains unknown and can fester.
In business, Cost Benefit Analysis focuses on ROI (return on investment). ROI is based on “assets”, “net income” & “profitability”. That’s what business is about (money). Corporations have extremely detailed and accurate methods of measuring their “money”…
What the jury and others may not have known before the life sentence is that by the age of 14 Miller attempted suicide four times. The first time he tried to kill himself was at the age of six.
Due to experiencing abuse by his stepfather and his mother being a drug addict and alcoholic. The victim was actually his mother’s drug dealer at the time.
LA & New Jersey ending prison and jails for juveniles and Colorado’s super successful juvenile restorative justice
From the Washington Post yesterday, most foster care children on antipsychoctic drugs get them for far too long and without medical justification. 2/3 of the nearly 700 claims studied raised high-risk “quality of care” issues. As a long time CASA volunteer guardian ad-Litem, many of my case kids were on multiple drugs simultaneously and many of them hated being forced to use them. Some kids threw the drugs away.
In Minneapolis, I would like to know (there should be more transparency) if six year old Kendrea Johnson’s suicide by hanging involved psychotropic medications. She was a very troubled foster child, in therapy and had talked about homicide and suicide. When Jeff Weise killed himself, his grandfather and 14 others he had talked about suicide and homicide and was taking Prozac.
7 year old foster child Gabriel Myers hung himself and left a note about how he hated Prozac. KARA’s video interviews include families, a City Councilman, and other professionals talking about antipsychotic medications, very young children and suicide. This subject needs our attention now. It is cruel punishment for a child suffering from the traumas of abuse and removal from a birth home to be dealt with.
There are 3 children’s hospitals in the metro area and NO children’s mental health hospitals and there are 800 to 1000 emergency psychiatric visits at HCMC every month (many of them children).
This conversation is overdue.
What we don’t know cannot be dealt with and will not be improved. Let’s stop the next awful six year old suicide.
At Rutherford County’s Hobgood elementary school,
An 8 year old, two 9 year old’s and an 11 year old walk into a principal’s office…
And are arrested and handcuffed (“out of habit” said officer Jeff Carroll).
https://www.flipcause.com/secure/cause_pdetails/OTg4ODM
Youth are two to three time more likely to confess to crimes they did not commit than adults.
Police interrogations using fabricated statements are most likely why. Kids are more intimidated by law enforcement than adults and they break down faster.
There’s just no upside in sending youth to jail. Incarcerating them for crimes they did not commit is a sign of a dysfunctional system. A system that creates what it was designed to stop.
Thank you Spire Credit Union, Highland Banks, Sunrise Banks and participating Rotaries
for building KARA’s Financial Literacy program this year.
For more info on this program contact
Hello@invisiblechildren.org
“Mental Health Crisis + Emergency Rooms” is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s a strong piece demonstrating the huge increase in chemical restraints and ER mental health visits by children, but it misses the heart of the story.
We the people are serious about continued investment in our punishment model.
Expelling kids from daycare and elementary school is common. Charging youth in adult courts is too. The nation’s Supreme Court recently reinstated lifelong (no chance for release) sentencing for crimes committed by juveniles.
Instead of investing in healing broken children we invest our tax dollars into courts that punish kids from traumatizing violent and toxic homes. Are we bad at math or pro growing crime, criminals and broken communities.
KARA’s Last minute gifting ideas!
Is there a foster or adoptive family in your life that would appreciate a gift card or cash donation this holiday season? Be a Secret Santa if you choose.
If you have never donated to Kids At Risk Action, please consider
your donation to our 501c3 nonprofit today.
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Thank you for your attention to the issues of abused and neglected children.
The KARA Team.
Most major U.S. cities experienced a huge increase in carjackings in the last two years. Many are violent – all are traumatizing. The majority are committed by juveniles – some of them under 14 years old. Repeat offenders are common. From the perspective of at risk youth and policing…
The violence, excitement and control for disaffected youth makes this an easy and low punishment crime. Courts have been lenient on most of the crimes committed by youth.
Out of the blue murderous psychosis in normal people is rare.
It’s not likely that this boy led a normal life prior to this violence.
When 14-year-old Ryan Turk cut ahead of the lunch line to grab a milk, he didn’t expect to get in trouble. He certainly didn’t plan to end up in handcuffs. But Turk, a black student at Graham Park Middle School, was arrested for disorderly conduct and petty larceny for procuring the 65-cent carton. The state of Virginia is actually prosecuting the case, which went to trial in November.
Changing the rules of the game requires federal, state, and local reforms. With little evidence that police in schools make students safer and plenty that they facilitate harm to students’ liberty and well-being, the Department of Justice should end the cops program’s SRO grants to districts. Taxpayers should not be on the hook for billions that promote unjust school conditions and put kids at greater risk of future involvement with the criminal justice system. And students should feel like they can talk to school officials when they have problems without forfeiting their constitutional rights and winding up in the back of police cars.
As former Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz so aptly stated, “the difference between that poor child and a felon is about eight years”
Vote for mental health services and child friendly programs for at risk children and call your state legislators and tell them to do the same.
Once these very troubled children become old enough to impact their surroundings they do so in a most troubling manner. That’s why our jails are full and our schools are troubled.
From the study; “In other words, by one mechanism or another, more than 200,000 individuals under the age of 18 are prosecuted in criminal court each year. There are three trends in the data worth noting…
“I’m not for killing kids and stuff” (officer Omar Bellow). For eight seconds officers fired 66 rounds from Glock service weapons towards the children. You can read the NY Times article details here. There is nothing easy about being in law enforcement in America today (or teaching, or social work, health services or child care). The numbers of seriously troubled youth are off the charts and so many children have serious often violent behavior problems.
For most of us in Child Protective Services, KARE 11 / Lauren Leamanczyk’s investigative reporting on the absence of facilities for troubled foster and adopted State Ward children is a recurring nightmare.
Where does your state rank in protecting children & what can you do to make improvements. These statistics tell the stories of our best and worst states around the nation
Expelled from elementary school, pregnant in junior high and facing a criminal justice system before they are able to drive a car.
The cost to society in taxes, public health, education and safety is astronomical and the people policing, teaching and caring for these children are stuck in centuries old punishment models that guarantee failure, perpetual pain and broken communities.
If you knew that the vast majority of youth in Juvenile Justice came through Child Protective Services, would you;
37% of children overall and 44% of Black children are reported to child protection services in America by the time they turn 18. (American Journal of Public Health 1.17)
Repurposing Federal Foster Care dollars have become a “revenue stream” for counties because taking foster child money goes “unnoticed” (from the article). In a perfect world, a County person would raise hell about repurposing foster child dollars to adults (but they don’t because they could lose their job). There is little reporting of and no transparency in the Child Protection System.
The Conversation, with Al McFarlane, DR Oliver Williams and Mike Tikkanen exploring issues facing at risk youth in our community today (1 hour with video).
This article from the ACEs Too High website provides an everyday guide with must know information for folks working with traumatized children and youth. With too many children not being afforded an escape to the safety of a classroom because of the Covid19 virus, there will be a growing danger as substantially more badly abused children fill our classrooms in the fall (or winter or spring) of next year.
When I met her, I saw a beautiful, quiet and curious little girl. I was Isabella’s (not her real name) first teacher and wish to remain anonymous.
After 7 full years of abuse and neglect she entered my special ed classroom in Arizona…
This Thanksgiving, about 6 million American children are being raised by their grandparents (double what it was in 1970). Almost half of these grandparents have economic or social service needs for themselves and their grandchildren that are unmet.
It is estimated that for every child in foster care with relatives, there are 20 living outside of care with relatives (usually grandparents).
Terrible trauma (like generations of slavery) and the behaviors and conflicts it creates need to be identified and discussed if they are to be fixed. Do we want higher graduation rates and lower crime and recidivism rates for our at risk youth and families?
Charlamagne Tha God has Launched a Mental Wealth Alliance Foundation to establish fundamental and far-reaching generational support for Black Mental Health.
Share this widely.
how COVID is impacting children’s mental health
and hammering education and child well-being and Tips for Helping Students Recover From Pandemic Stress
These short videos capture the realities of child abuse.
Share them widely and more of us will know how to do more for kids in painful places.
ACEs
Trauma empowerment comes from identifying and understanding what has happened. As a CASA guardian ad litem, I’ve come to know many abused children. I was the second person John ever told of the things that were done to him when he was a boy – he died last year at 80. John lived for 30…
Give To The Max Day Helps KARA Build our Financial Literacy Program!
Fairview Masonic Children’s hospital has been overwhelmed with 145 emergency pediatric psych cases since September. A makeshift shelter in an ambulance garage is all that’s available at Fairview Masonic to protect children suffering from the traumas of child abuse and homelessness.
The majority of violent and serious crime has always been committed by juveniles. Most juvenile offenders have come through Child Protective Services (MN Supreme Court Chief Justice KATHLEEN BLATZ “the difference between that poor child and a felon is about 8 years).
California and Arizona have used failed 3rd grade test scores to assist in forecasting prison capacity growth. (Corrections Digest, April 12, 2002)
In 2022, 23% of Black and American Indian third graders in Minneapolis MN read at grade level.
6.11.21 NY votes to raise the minimum age of arrest from 7 to 12 and considers prohibiting the shackling of children and youth in family court.
KARA Current Initiatives
This powerful ACEs Too High article contains tons of statistics and information related to the depth and scope of child abuse in America. What has struck me most is…
Massachusetts has the lowest minimum marriage age with parental consent of 14 years old for boys and 12 years old for girls. Afghan parents sell their 7 year-old daughters into arranged marriages & the Taliban has for years practiced child sex abuse.
Tennessee may soon have child brides in common with the Taliban and Afghan parents.
Star Tribune Nowhere To Go For Most Troubled Youth, crime, preteen moms and juvenile injustice
about a third of kids in NY’s foster care identify as LGBTQ and nationally, about 24% do. 40% of homeless kids in NY City identify as LGBTQ and 42% of them had been in foster care.
This NY Times article focuses on how hard life is for them. Many of these youth and children are in foster care because their parents rejected them.
Many are homeless, depressed and leading dysfunctional lives.
Every year about 12,000 children aged 5-14 years old are admitted to psychiatric hospital units for suicidal behavior. This and all the information following are PRE COVID.
Young children who have attempted suicide are up to 6 times more likely to attempt suicide again in adolescence
Growing Up Foster, ‘The foster care system is broken’
There are an estimated 12,000 foster children in Minnesota, more than 8,000 of whom live in foster homes,