1/3 of foster children have mental health issues serious enough to be forced onto psychotropic medications.
Of the 2 million youth arrested in America every year, 70% or them have mental health issues – half of them have severe, chronic and often multiple diagnosis.
That’s what teachers and schools face every day with one school nurse if they are lucky enough to have one.
DetailsSign KARA’s Petition for American Lawmakers to
Ratify the UN Rights of the Child Treaty
America is the only nation on earth that is not a party to the international rights of the child treaty of 1989.
Children have no voice in the media, courts, homes and they can’t vote for legislation to keep them safe from harm.
DetailsHow 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
Killing your parents is against the law in every state. No matter what they have done to you or for how long.
Killing your children is legal in 27 states. Religious exemptions make it legal to withhold lifesaving medical care for your child.
American children have no rights. Children are property in America.
Detailsat the time, argued that subsidized daycare was unnecessary (like bus service and bridge maintenance—his words) and he diverted all the money allocated to subsidized daycare for poor families and children into a “general fund.”
The waiting list for low-cost daycare climbed from 34 to over 7,000 families. People quit applying.
My state was saving money at the expense of 1- and 2-year-olds. Drunk uncles and boyfriends became daycare providers overnight, and terrible things happen to children when that occurs…
“What we do to our children, they will do to society” (Pliny the Elder 2000 years ago)
Louisiana (the World’s Prison Capitol), Georgia, Mississippi, Oklahoma & several other states have incarceration rates 20 times that of incarceration rates in most other industrialized nations. The best prisons in the world release good neighbors back into the community American prisons release hardened criminals with mental health problems and an 80% change of recidivism within five years.
Federal Prisons are 131% of design capacity – 2015 18 states are over capacity. 800% increase in women in prison since 1980.
These statistics and research calculate crime in America today and its cost…
DetailsMontana 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
DetailsDJ 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;
DetailsWhere 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;
DetailsDropping 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”.
DetailsAt 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).
Detailsin 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…
DetailsWe 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
DetailsI 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.”
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.
DetailsThese 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.
DetailsTrauma 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
DetailsIt 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.
DetailsAmerican 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
DetailsChildren 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.
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.
DetailsGroup 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.
DetailsWHAT 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.
DetailsPlease 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).
DetailsAlmost 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.
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