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Ranch For Kids (the beatings will continue until the morale improves)

AAA Featured Slider Post, child abuse, child care, Foster Care, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding, Public Policy, Reporting, The StatesBy Mike Tikkanen August 16, 2019 Leave a comment

Montana is not the only state to shut down a licensed child care facility for abused of abused children. Every state has the problem. The Great Falls Tribune news in Montana today of “egregarious, chronic and persistent child abuse and neglect by this licensed child care facility is just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone from Montana reading this should contact their State Representative and complain that the DHS hearings should NOT be kept confidential and closed to the public. You paid for this facility to do terrible things to these children and you need to know what has been done if you don’t want it repeated. This is a core problem with child protection systems everywhere; no transparency or accountability until someone dies or the violence to children becomes horrific and unhideable. KARA believes that once the community becomes aware of the depth and scope of the problems tortured children are forced to live with, more care and resources will become available. Until then, these stories will be the norm.

Minnesota recently closed two facilities and thereporting here gives a snapshot

The Cost of Saving Money (better late than never)

child abuse, child care, Health and Mental Health, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding, Public PolicyBy Mike Tikkanen August 10, 2019 Leave a comment

Let’s get behind the poor souls doing the work of social work, teaching, healing, parenting, policing and otherwise involved in the lives of badly behaving children that have been traumatized by child abuse and the society that has added to their problems instead of solving them**.

“What we do to our children, they will do to society” (Pliny the Elder 2000 years ago)

Arming Teachers/Shooting Students (advocating for less violence and a more civil society)

AAA Featured Slider Post, Child Death, Guns, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding, Public Policy, Statistics & FactsBy Mike Tikkanen August 7, 2019 1 Comment

How many teachers signed up to pack a weapon when they entered the profession? Turnover in education is already a huge problem. Packing a gun is what police and soldiers do. Shooting someone takes real and extensive training.

Arming teachers, the commonality of school lock downs and active shooter student training and placing the army or police force inside of our schools are extreme measures being taken that instill fear in students and make teaching more like combat than education. Wiki list of school shootings in America.

Federal Funding, Zero Tolerance and Inadequate Alternatives mean that more states are policing schools with armed officers. Before the 1970’s police were almost absent from elementary and junior high schools.
Today in American schools

It Didn’t Start In a Vacuum (crime – impact & statistics)

ACES, Crime and Courts, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Public Policy, Statistics & FactsBy Mike Tikkanen August 5, 2019 Leave a comment

DJ Tice Star Tribune article recently made crime very real by describing his wife’s rape, his own assault and home burglary along with the awful Barry Latzer assumption that 80% of Americans could become victims of a violent crime in their lifetime.

No obfuscation here.

Crime hurts when it happens to you or someone you love.

What best should be done about crime and punishment is our national conundrum.

Damn the data, “hanging’s too good for em’ and “lock em up” our national chant for fifty years bringing us such data as;

The Data Is In – Child Abuse is a Public Health Crisis

AAA Featured Slider Post, child abuse, child suicide, Health and Mental Health, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Public Policy, Statistics & FactsBy Mike Tikkanen July 22, 2019 Leave a comment

Where other advanced nations create safety nets for struggling families, we build giant jail and prison systems that have been filled to capacity for decades along with incongruous realities like;

Hard to Watch; Immigration & Children as Political Footballs

Crime and Courts, International Child Abuse, Politics and Funding, Public Policy, Statistics & FactsBy Mike Tikkanen July 16, 2019 Leave a comment

Dropping napalm on children and families in Vietnam (PBS video) was an unforgivable evil. Thousands of small children died by napalm.

Burned alive is the most painful death anyone can suffer. Survivors live with scars and trauma that never end.

Today, my government takes helpless babies & children from parents and places them in the custody of money driven defense contractors who warehouse them in cages at vacant shopping centers by the thousands.

The American Psychological Association condemns this act as needlessly cruel threatening “the mental and physical health of both the children and their caregivers”.

*Torturing immigrant children for political reasons is a vile act and it needs to be called out. *The World Health Organization defines torture as “extended exposure to violence and deprivation”.

Child Protection & Privatized Group Homes (when they hurt the children they care for)

child abuse, child care, Foster Care, Guardian ad-Litem, mass incarceration, Politics and Funding, Public Policy, Statistics & FactsBy Mike Tikkanen July 12, 2019 Leave a comment

At that time, the institution spent the weeks trying to convert him to their religion instead of helping him. The month long visit was painful and not helpful.

The State of Minnesota forcibly closed the privatized group home at St Cloud for repeated violations including head banging that caused concussions & sex in front of staff. 2 St Paul boys group homes have been closed recently and there has long been a shortage of qualified foster homes in outstate Minnesota (as it is all around the nation).

This video demonstrates how terrible privatized group homes can become (Florida forces 48% of their state wards onto Prozac like drugs and now lives with eleven year old’s prostituting themselves out of their foster group homes).

Child Care – Brutal Truths & Worst Practices

AAA Featured Slider Post, child abuse, child care, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding, Public Policy, Statistics & Facts, The StatesBy Mike Tikkanen July 11, 2019 Leave a comment

in many states, single Parents pay over 50% of their income for infant center care and married parents with 2 children pay over 100% of their household income for center based care (or they would if they could make it work). Minnesotans pay over 15 thousand dollars for infant care (when public college tuition is 11 thousand dollars.

For a nation claiming to value children – one could argue it’s for the dollars they bring in and not their future role as citizens. Drunk uncle/boyfriend daycare is an awful thing the media…

International Child Well-Being News (June 1019)

child abuse, International Child Abuse, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Occasional Authors, Politics and Funding, Public Policy, Sad Stories, Statistics & Facts, videoBy Mike Tikkanen June 30, 2019 Leave a comment

We all look to the government to provide support in order to protect our children.

Eshanee’s reporting points to a disturbing trend of state inaction in preventing or even intervening in child welfare violations.

To hold our governments accountable and to ensure the well-being of children, more of us need to

contact our local politicians and policy makers and make our concerns known.

Children have no voice in politics, law or the media.

We must be relentless to effect change.

Be the Squeaky Wheel for Children

Ensuring Children Will Die Lawsuit in Indiana (the other way of getting better public policy)

Adoption, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding, Public Policy, Reporting, Statistics & Facts, The StatesBy Mike Tikkanen June 28, 2019 Leave a comment

I visited Indiana a few years ago after the governor redirected funding from parents adopting special needs children after the adoptions had been completed (AFTER). Then governor mitch daniels directed those dollars to people most successful in dismantling services to abandoned children.
The complaint (new lawsuit) alleges that Indiana removes children from their homes to be placed into foster care at a “staggering rate — more than double the national rate” and then fails to keep them safe while in DCS custody “often placing them in inappropriate, unstable or overly restrictive placements; fails to provide necessary support services and medical and mental health care; and fails to provide meaningful case management.”

Civil Rights of A Three Year Old (and what happens without them)

child abuse, Child Death, Children's Rights, Foster Care, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Public PolicyBy Mike Tikkanen June 27, 2019 Leave a comment

Zepora Fortenberry will spend 27 months in prison for watching her boyfriend Charles Homich punch 3 year-old Zayden Lawson to death.

Zayden was one of two foster children this mom cared for along with her two biological children.

For weeks (or months) Zayden and his siblings lived in sheer terror of Zepora’s boyfriend.

It must have been torture and traumatizing for the other children to witness the insane and evil violence repeatedly done to Zayden in their home while their mother watched.

Beat Up, Dead & Prostituted – Kids In CA’s, Florida’s Privatized Foster Care & Juvenile Systems (videos)

Child Death, Crime and Courts, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), mass incarceration, Politics and Funding, Public Policy, The StatesBy Mike Tikkanen June 26, 2019 Leave a comment

These videos are disturbing but accurate. Not knowing cannot help the state ward children of Florida (the password is “foster”). What we know, we can change. What we don’t know, gets worse until we do know.

Florida To Completely Privatize Juvenile Correctional Facilities. In an effort to reduce costs, Florida’s state-run residential programs for juveniles will soon be completely privatized. … About 95 percent of Florida’s youth residential facilities for underaged offenders are now privately run.

Tasered and Tried as Adults – America’s punishment model and ten year old’s

Crime and Courts, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), mass incarceration, Public PolicyBy Mike Tikkanen June 24, 2019 Leave a comment

Trauma doesn’t heal itself and America doesn’t provide much more than Prozac for tortured 12 year olds.

For an in depth and moving photo graphic look into incarcerated children in America’s Juveniles In Justice, check out Richard Ross

Taxes 2 Year Olds (what the feds know that we should)

Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding, Public Policy, Resources, Statistics & FactsBy Mike Tikkanen June 21, 2019 Leave a comment

It turns out that investing in children and young families provides the highest return on investment a government can make.

It’s apparent how terrible many government investments are and it’s easy to see how providing skills and basic needs for children and you families are superior investments to giving the homeless bus tickets to other states so they would be a burden elsewhere.

June Sad Stories (I) 2019 (find your state here)

child abuse, Child Death, International Child Abuse, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding, Public Policy, Sad Stories, Statistics & Facts, The StatesBy Mike Tikkanen June 19, 2019 Leave a comment

American states are struggling to find answers for ending adverse childhood experiences and saving at risk children by reversing the explosive growth of child abuse and neglect.

Today, many state ward children are 4th and 5th generation abused children raising their own families without parenting skills and with serious drug, alcohol and mental health issues.

37% of children overall and 57% of Black children are reported to child protection services in America by the time they turn 18. (American Journal of Public Health 1.17)

6 to 12 million children a year are reported to child protection services and in most states, 1/3 of foster children still forced onto psychotropic medicines

United Nation’s Rights of the Child Treaty (sign here now)

International Child Abuse, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding, Public PolicyBy Mike Tikkanen June 19, 2019 2 Comments

Children have no voice in the media, courts, homes or legislature.

Child rights in America today are the rights of women in 1917 (a personal possession – a slave or pet).

Only a fraction of parental violence and abuse against children is ever reported, a tiny percentage of that number is ever prosecuted and parents can legally withhold life saving medical care from their children in 37 states and some states put only token resources into child protective systems leaving children trapped in a lifetime of violence, trauma and abuse.
Please join KARA in sending your support to president Obama in asking Congress to sign on. Without this treaty, children in this nation have almost no rights outside of the Imminent Harm Doctrine that forbids parents from (almost) killing their children. After many years as a volunteer guardian ad-Litem, countless tragic stories of horrific abuse, backlogged courts and troubled child protection systems, these children need the basic rights outlined in this treaty. It is the right thing to do.

Be A Squeaky Wheel For Children

education, for the record, Health and Mental Health, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding, Public Policy, Statistics & Facts, The StatesBy Mike Tikkanen June 14, 2019 Leave a comment

Annual teacher turnover is highest in Arizona (24%) and New Mexico (23%) Minnesota is 14th highest in teacher turnover.

After my workshop in New York at the United Nations Annual Youth Assembly, a line of ex social workers formed to tell me their stories of why they quit. Annual social worker turnover has been 20 to 40% for many years with individual agency rates as high as 65%.

Police officer turnover rates fall in the middle of teacher/social turnover rates (about 14%) but their suicide, divorce & substance abuse rates are significantly higher.

Drugging Our Children (the winner is North Dakota)

AAA Featured Slider Post, ACES, Health and Mental Health, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Public Policy, The StatesBy Mike Tikkanen May 30, 2019 Leave a comment

Generational child abuse in America today is a public health crisis costing cities, states and counties exponentially more money every year. Huge parts of County and State budgets are dedicated to the chaos child abuse creates.

Group Homes & Foster Children

ACES, child abuse, Foster Care, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding, Public PolicyBy Mike Tikkanen May 16, 2019 Leave a comment

Group homes are the State’s stop gap keeping children from living under bridges and prostitution.

The shortage of foster and adoptive homes for state ward kids is a sad reality in every state.
Every child needs a family.

Every child needs a place to call home.

The trauma experienced by a child forcibly removed (unattached) from a birth home because of violence, trauma and abuse needs to reattach to someone – somewhere – somehow.

Invisible Children Campus Program

AAA Featured Slider Post, child abuse, education, Invisible Children, KARA Events, Politics and Funding, Public PolicyBy Mike Tikkanen May 9, 2019 Leave a comment

WHAT IS A PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS?

Polio, smallpox & measles were public health emergencies – policies & programs were created to end these crisis.
FIRST, A conversation.

A conversation about identifying and understanding the issues is a first step to discovering the policies & tools to interrupt generational child abuse and heal troubled children and families.

Once policy makers recognize the depth and scope of the problem, it becomes possible to divert resources and attention from policies and programs that don’t work to policies and programs that do work.

Until then, cities will suffer levels of violence, school failure, racial inequities and all the sadness and failure trauma survivors bring to the communities they live in.

Kids At Risk Action invites you to start the conversation in your community with KARA’s INVISIBLE CHILDREN Campus program.

Early Learning Scholarships (thank you Safe Passage for Children)

child abuse, Health and Mental Health, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Links To Helpful Orgs, Politics and Funding, Public PolicyBy Mike Tikkanen May 8, 2019 Leave a comment

Please take a moment and connect to your legislator through this Safe Passage Link and let your legislator know you want children to have access to quality early learning. It only takes a few minutes and gets the message to your representative.

This program reduces child abuse and builds healthy children and communities (and we all want that).

Canada’s Injustice to Indigenous Children (statistics & solutions)

Children's Rights, International Child Abuse, Invisible Children, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Occasional Authors, Politics and Funding, Public PolicyBy Mike Tikkanen May 2, 2019 Leave a comment

Almost half of Canada’s youth correctional services is made up of Indigenous youth, but they represent less than 10% of the general population. Self-harming behaviors and suicide rates among Indigenous youth are 11 times the national average and are the highest in the world.

Child Abuse – Minnesota’s Public Health Issue

CASA, Health and Mental Health, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Politics and Funding, Public Policy, Statistics & FactsBy Mike Tikkanen April 19, 2019 Leave a comment

Today’s edition presented multiple articles (linked below) on at risk children and mental health.

It has taken some years to get here but it is apparent to this volunteer CASA guardian ad Litem that my state is waking up to the public health crisis of child protection and children’s mental health.

County Sees Drop in Child Protection Caseloads (by almost half) is the best news I’ve seen about child abuse since the Governor’s Task Force on Child Protection was formed in 2014.

Investing in social workers (adding 262 workers) and transforming the system means…

Child Suicides & Self Harm Stories & Statistics (a hidden public health crisis)

child abuse, Child Death, Children's Rights, Kids At Risk Action (KARA), Public Policy, Statistics & Facts, The StatesBy Mike Tikkanen April 13, 2019 Leave a comment

Please share this with teachers, law enforcement and social workers in your circles

Current literature reporting included below

What to do when a six year old climbs out the window of your kindergarten classroom threatening to jump three stories to the concrete below?

What do you say to a seven year old girl with scarred arms that is obviously cutting herself repeatedly with a knife or razor?

It’s Enough To Make You Sick

child abuse, Crime and Courts, International Child Abuse, Politics and Funding, Public PolicyBy Mike Tikkanen April 6, 2019 Leave a comment

Being involved in child protection, you see people torture their children and it is traumatizing.

It’s gets worse if you witness the impact trauma and terror have on a child in your caseload and you watch school and peer failure and how a child’s life is destined to play out.

Unhealthy children become unhealthy adults.