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Jan212023

Grace’s Story (Thank you ChildrensRights.org)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Children's Rights, Juvenile + Criminal Justice

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.

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Jan192023

Metrics of Minnesota’s Child Protection (what does your state measure?)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, CASA, GAL and Child Protection, Child Abuse and Deaths, Juvenile + Criminal Justice, Reporting and News - MN Specific

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.

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Jan72023

Measuring What’s Important

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, CASA, GAL and Child Protection, Reporting and News - MN Specific

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”…

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Jan12023

92% of Foster Care Kids Using Psychotropic Meds Get Them For Unacceptable Reasons

Adoption, Foster and Kinship Care, All Posts from Kids at Risk Action

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.

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