The Value of Healthy Children
Children that have suffered severe or prolonged abuse need a counseling regimen that will be part of their life for a long time. Short term counseling for severely damaged children is just one more abandonment.
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Reality Training
I’m certain that community investment in troubled youth is a sound investment. It also strikes me that any nation that values children would find a way to invest in children.
DetailsWhat we do to our children
At the very least, tell your legislator you are tired of full prisons, dangerous streets, and failing schools. Tell them that you support mental health services for children.
DetailsUnhappy Schools
Investing in early childhood programs and mental health services could actually save us money, and certainly make our streets safer, and our communities more pleasant to live in.
It’s not so much about money– Minnesota’s 2001 GDP (gross domestic product) ranks greater than Austria, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Hong Kong, Denmark, and a hundred other nations.
DetailsTasers and School Children
There is no safety net for many of the poor neglected and abused children they care for. There is no child psychiatrist for a sexually abused seven-year old, or for the starved and tortured six-year old. Go to school. Get well. Take these pills. We just don’t have a budget for the services you need.
DetailsMental Health Issues
“One-quarter of all Americans met the criteria for having a mental illness within the past year, and fully a quarter of those had a “serious” disorder that significantly disrupted their day-to-day lives, according to the largest and most detailed survey of the nation’s mental health…The numbers suggest that the United States is poised to rank Number One for mental illness globally.
DetailsDear Judge John
There have been over one hundred social workers, foster parents, and other adults in my life since I left my dad. None of them have stayed for more than a few years. My feelings of abandonment have been reinforced over one hundred times. I have lived with twenty-seven foster families and group homes. My explosive personality and lack of trust make it hard for me to stay in one place too long.
DetailsWish List for Abandoned Children
Add your ideas and share your stories and experiences by posting them here.
The First 12 are my thoughts, the next 6 are from Victor I Vieth, UNTO THE THIRD GENERATION: a call to end child abuse in the U.S. within 120 years, Journal of Agression, Maltreatment & Trauma
Book review: Armchair Interviews
The author packed the book with his passion and purpose: society’s involvement in children’ in abusive and dysfunctional homes’ foster care and the system in general. If you care about your community’s welfare, it is a “must read.”
DetailsShortsighted Culture
The economic impacts of bad contemporary policy making will disable our communities for years to come if we continue to ignore the critical physical, emotional and mental health needs of these vulnerable children. By continuing to operate in the same haphazard fashion, medicating and incarcerating at risk children, who deserve so much better, we doom ourselves to continued crisis, crime, teenage pregnancy, drug use and overcrowded prisons.
DetailsGrand Rally
This is one of America’s most active and powerful resources in the struggle to save our At Risk Children.
Grandparents need the attention and appreciation of our policy makers to help them in their efforts.
Support the MN Kinship Care Givers. They do some very hard work for some very special people.
http://mkca.org/
DetailsSaving Money Saving Children
About 90% of the children in juvenile justice systems have come out of child protection systems (MN Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz). About 90% of the adults in the criminal justice system have come out of the juvenile justice system. We have created a Prison Feeder system.
DetailsChild Summit
Managing child protection cases, she said, “means one judge, one family. It means you don’t [delay] these cases because someone is sick. You don’t make a kid wait in foster care three months while we tend to adult problems. It means that when parents leave the courthouse, they have a written notice of the next court hearing and a written case plan so they’re not wondering what the judges meant.”
DetailsPerspective
It’s just that our policy makers don’t appear to appreciate the failed history of punishing abused and neglected children.
Most lawmakers ask, “where is the money going to come from?” when they should be asking, “where is the money going?”
DetailsA Myth That Will Bring Down America
There is a myth about our public education system that has the potential of bringing down our nation. The myth is that the lack of funds does not plague America’s schools.
Details100 Years of Juvenile Justice
At the William Mitchell Law School today, I learned that Minnesota has been a genuine leader in Juvenile Justice in America for one hundred years.
Detailsguardian conference
Most women drew longer sentences (under federal mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines) than the perpetrator, they lost custody of their children, and in almost all cases, they had not profited from the criminal’s activity. See Incarcerated Mothers and Their Children.
DetailsIs Undertreatment of Mental Health Counter-Productive?
Children 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.
DetailsMissouri Model
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.
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The Longest Day
From a legal perspective the most under-protected persons in America are sexually abused children.
One study indicated that 11% of judges and 51% of prosecuting attorneys admitted that they had deliberately confused the child (witness) during the proceedings.
What this means in practice, is that the nine-year old girl sitting on the stand in the courtroom is being bullied by intense and deliberately confusing cross-examination about her abuse.
Everyone at the sysmposium agreed that children are not mentally capable of undergoing adult type cross examination, but it is clear that this still happens in many cases.
DetailsHardworking People – Prevent Child Abuse Minnesota
The energy Connie brings to her mission is something to witness. There are many others just like her, who for years have worked daily to bring positive change into the lives of troubled children.
DetailsLawmaking
People respond to money. Most of us can’t grasp the long-term costs to the community of a child born into a dysfunctional family that never has the opportunity to develop the social skills necessary to lead a healthy life. The ability to learn, play well with others, and live in society is not delivered by the stork.
DetailsEverybody 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…
DetailsSpeak Up For 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
By Definition
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.
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