Breaking The Cycle Of Abuse
For every dollar spent on Healthy Families, $4 to $7 in saved in intervention and health care costs, according to program statistics.
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April is Child Abuse Prevention Month
Prevent Child Abuse MN holds its Healing Fields from April 29th to May 2nd at the Minnesota State Capitol. The theme of the field is “the Future of America depends on Healthy Children.
DetailsThe Importance of DayCare, DC, LA,
As a guardian ad-Litem, I have seen plenty of cases where unsavory family members and other questionable practices become the only available answer to a family that cannot find daycare.
DetailsNational Child Protection Training Center
Developed in 2004, the Child Advocacy Studies Minor started at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota. The curriculum was designed to bring the goals of the National Child Protection Training Center to the field by providing students with real-world experience
DetailsWhat Have We Come To?
Money losing newspapers are hard pressed to assign reporters to these tragic stories. As a guardian ad-Litem, I had a case with 49 police calls to a home before the children were removed (& only because the seven year old attempted to kill the five year old in front of the officer). I believe that the seven year old had been prostituted.
DetailsThe Volunteer Spirit
The CASA program I came through is a volunteer program that connects volunteers to abused and neglected children in their community. CASA provides a great learning experience as well as a terrific service to children unlucky enough to be born into tragic circumstances.
DetailsAbused & Neglected Children Around The Nation
Without reduced funding to manage the increased calls coming in from the community distress that results from the poverty and chaos from our declining economy, social service agencies are becoming unable to respond adequately to the calls they are receiving.
DetailsEducation Is The Engine of Progress & Prosperity
No nation can achieve its potential for greatness without investing in its human capital. The extent to which children successfully negotiate the treacherous passage to adulthood depends on the earliest years of brain and emotional development. That explains why early childhood education is crucial to society.
DetailsAbandoning Abandoned Children
The list of inner city schools struggling to educate the children of those who could not get to (or for reasons of loyalty, love, or ethics) decided not to, escape to the suburbs where the schools still function is long.
My old high school, Edison, graduates less than 50% of its students, its sister school across town has graduated less than 30% of its students for five years.
DetailsInternational Women’s Day March 7
When I wrote the book Invisible Children in MN there were less than 900 cases of child rape reported in the state I live in (MN). If that were true, I personally knew of about 50 cases, and there were about five hundred guardian ad-Litems besides myself in the state. I know that there were many more cases of child rape in this state that year.
DetailsAbusing Children At Home & In School – The Life Of An Abused Child
The link between an abused child’s past tortured life and future troubled life is clear to most of us that have lived with or worked with these damaged children long enough. It causes me great pain to see my guardian ad-Litem kids handled like mad animals (tasered, confined, beat up by under-trained staff in under-resourced detention centers)
DetailsIreland Implements guardian ad-Litem Program
A child’s right to be heard is the essence of the guardian ad-Litem program. Think about it. Voiceless, helpless children enduring unspeakable horrors, sometimes for many years with no one to turn to for help.
The World Health Organization defines Torture as extended exposure to violence and deprivation. That is how I see child abuse.
DetailsActing Like A Responsible Adult Part II
In the 1950’s I remember the public outrage when TV and newspapers uncovered senior citizens eating dog food out of cans and living under bridges. It was a a warm hearted, hot blooded citizen outcry that supported more social security for the aged, more health care, and more safety. Because of that outcry, politicians saw to it that support at many levels was increased to seniors.
DetailsActing Like A Responsible Adult
America’s aging population is retreating into retirement with its pensions and savings and leaving young families with failing schools, health systems, and communities.
DetailsRuben Rosario on Victor Vieth’s Dream of Ending Child Abuse
As a guardian ad-Litem, I know that most child abuse cases are not reported. Recently an acquaintance admitted to witnessing the prostitution of a very young girl and not reporting it. He had remorse and felt endangered.
DetailsBooks Not Yet Written
A Few years ago Judge Heidi Schellhas gave me a printout of the psychotropic medications the very young children in her child protection courtroom were proscribed. The impact of seven year olds on Prozac, Ritalin and other powerful medications is still with me.
DetailsChildren’s Health Trends
Dr. Bruce Perry http://www.childtrauma.org/ctamaterials/default.asp gives credible argument that 25% of Americans will be special needs people in few generations if we do not act forcefully to mend our approach to the mental health needs of abused and neglected children.
DetailsA Modest Proposal, or If Children Could Riot
KARA is seeking a 21st Century Modest Proposal. If you are a writer and given to challenges, please read Swift’s “Proposal” below, and write your own as you see it applying to American children & include it as a comment, or send it to Info@invisiblechildren.org
DetailsDay Care In America, NY v MN
“It’s unfortunate, because this day care is used by working families, for the most part single-parent families and they’re low income,” he said, adding, “If this place is shut down, it would really be a shame.”
DetailsSomeplace Where We Can Be A Family
The “burden of eviction is Heavier on Black Women, Research in Milwaukee Shows” reads the New York Times today, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/us/19evict.html
DetailsCivil Justice, Mental Health, Children, Education, & Politics
Last night I attended the Patrick Henry High School community Forum on the impact that children’s mental health has on the entire education and juvenile justice systems held by Representatives Mindy Greiling and the Civil Justice Committee Chair Joe Mullery.
DetailsHealth & Human Services In Minnesota (Largest Share of Budget Cuts)
Federal Reserve board directors Art Rolnick and Rob Grunewold have well researched and established the effectiveness of early childhood programs.
DetailsKansas Losing Health Care For 40,000 Children
Almost all developed nations have affordable health care. Why are we unable to provide health care even for America’s children?
DetailsBlaming Social Workers When Children Die
If American institutions are to be defined today by what they actually create instead of what they were designed to create, then child protection services creates preteen mothers and adolescent felons, and juvenile justice creates mentally unstable adults (paraphrasing Kathleen Long Angels and Demons
DetailsCASA Comments On This May Not Be The Case
My fear and disappointment come from the growing problems being experienced in many states just maintaining programs that are absolutely necessary for providing the most minimal protection for abused and neglected children.
The growing poverty and trouble that poverty breeds are causing great stress and terrible things to happen to children all over America right now.
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