Minnesota Reading Corps
Minnesota Reading Corps is a statewide initiative to help every Minnesota child become a successful reader by the end of 3rd grade.
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Not My Role Model
Missouri went from 90% recidivism in its juvenile justice system to about 10% over just a few years as it transitioned into a restorative justice model that treated youth as children in need of counselling instead of adult criminals (about 30% of American youth are tried in adult courts).
DetailsFORGOTTEN CHILDREN RALLY STATE CAPITAL
On May 4, 2009 a small crowd of about 100 citizens – social workers, politicians, child advocates, and children – gathered on the lawn of the Minnesota State Capitol to bring attention to Minnesota’s “Forgotten Children.” The 187 children placed in foster care each week in Minnesota all have unique circumstances but they all share one thing in common: They need advocacy in the legislature to address not only their current needs but the future issues they will face as they transition into adulthood.
Detailshttp://www.childrensrights.org/
Wisconsin officials have agreed to an aggressive new plan aimed at fixing persistent problems in the state-run system responsible for providing care and protection to abused and neglected children in Milwaukee. The new Corrective Action Plan is being implemented to meet key requirements of a longstanding court order secured by Children’s Rights, mandating the Milwaukee child welfare system’s reform.
DetailsKids At Risk Action’s YouTube Video Channel
Kids At Risk Action (KARA) has posted videos on our YouTube Channel of the 2008 KARA Forum held at Century College. To view more videos of our events, visit our page at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/kidsatriskaction.
Here is a sample of the 2008 Kids At Risk Action (KARA) Forum:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jCTBZmy40Y
DetailsRuben Rosario: Immigration Raids Traumatize Children
“I want to remind people that family values do not stop at the Rio Grande River. People are coming to our country to do jobs that Americans won’t do, to be able to feed their families.” — Former President George W. Bush
I wonder what “W” would say about the 11-year-old Worthington, Minn., boy who returned home from school one day, oblivious to events that would alter his life forever, to find no one there except his 2-year-old brother, left to fend for himself.
A Grim Truth About Big Pharma
Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter # 237 Michigan Lawsuit Uncovers Psychiatry’s Dark Secret: Psychiatric Drug-Induced Movement Disorders in Young Children by Ben Hansen – From the Spring 2007 newsletter of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology ( www.icspp.org). Last month the New York Times exposed yet another example of unethical marketing practices…
DetailsKARA Action Group Manifesto For Early Childhood Education
Education is the engine of progress and 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.
America’s public policy regarding at-risk children is an economic and moral failure:
DetailsMike Tikkanen Speaker
Learn the key issues facing abused and neglected children, what programs and policies work to improve their lives, and how you can be a better advocate for at risk children.
DetailsMike’s Next Speaking Engagements
Periodically I speak in public and record those events in this space.
DetailsMN Early Childhood Summit Speech David Lawrence
My mission in life and in this cause is moral, but my arguments begin with the practical. Public education is the real world for 90 percent of your children, and America’s. The wisest path to public education reform in our country is to deliver the children in far better shape to formal school. That is what early investment is all about. It is neither socialism…nor the creation of a “nanny state,” but rather simple decency and wisdom and what our country is about when we are at our best.
DetailsHealthier Children = Safer & Happier Communities
These children cannot afford high powered lobbyists to plead their case,
DetailsA Rough Day in the News
Eight year old boy shot and killed his father and another man…police have asked that the boy be tried as an adult.
DetailsReview of Our Century College Forum
IMPROVEMENTS:
More information on how to get involved to improve the system
DetailsConservative family values are a fraud
Email this article • Print this article Conservative family values are a fraud David Strand Columnist Mitt Romney addressed the GOP Convention in St. Paul and said, “The liberals don’t have a clue.” The Country Club audience loved it! As proud conservative Romney preaches family values and points his finger at liberals, he has three…
DetailsPTSD study of abused children
In my experience as a CASA guardian ad-Litem working with children over twelve years, I have only rarely seen adequate services provided. A County Judge has provided me with the psychotropic medical prescriptions of the five and ten year old children that have passed through her courtroom in child protection
DetailsAnother CASA volunteer voice
Even considering four decades of exhilarating professional life, my most powerful lesson followed retirement in 1996. This happened when I volunteered as a guardian ad-litem for Hennepin County from 1998 to 2000.
Guardians are court-appointed advocates assigned to help Juvenile Court judges decide the fate of children removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect. It is part of the Child Protection System in our state.
The hardest was to look into the eyes of these unlucky kids and realize that they had no chance for a normal life. I could only take that for two years. It was a “kick in the pants” that opened my eyes.
DetailsBrutal Truths and Best Practices Forum
Our Child Protection System
Brutal Truths and Best Practices Forum at Century College
Join our focused and energetic conversation about children in need of protection and the people, programs, and policies that impact them. Have your views and questions heard.
After the panel discussion, attendees will form small working groups and helped to identify and investigate their own issues, discovering better answers, and ultimately creating an action plan, which they will share with the larger group.
DetailsIn Whose Best Interest?
“If you measure the success of our institutions by what it is they actually create versus what they were designed to create”, (the following are my words) our Child Protection system creates mentally unhealthy youth, future felons, and pregnant teenagers.
DetailsWhat We Do To Our Children, They will Do To Us
Our precious America, we are taught, is the exception to the world. No other nation can even come close. Tragically, a great many children suffer from a denial of the reality in our country.
The evidence is confirmed by new studies reported in the mainstream media. In March the Center for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of a study of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) among teenage girls. It was a shock. One in five white teens and half of African-American young women are infected with a STD. Across all groups the incidence was one of every four teens, and climbing!
DetailsFrom Child Protection to Soldier
Pressed by the demands of the “global war on terrorism”, theUnited States is violating an international protocol that forbids the recruitment of children under the age of 18 for military service, according to a new report released Tuesday by a major civil rights group that charged that recruitment practices target children as young as 11 years old.
The 46-page report, “Soldiers of Misfortune”, was prepared by theAmerican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for submission to the U.N. Committeeon the Rights of the Child.
DetailsYes, We Do Know
If there is one thing we should know about American children that have been removed from their birth homes, it is that they have suffered extended exposure to violence and deprivation.
This is the definition of the “Imminent Harm Doctrine” which is the legal statute that allows children to be removed from their family.
Extended exposure to violence and deprivation is also the World Health Organizations definition of torture. Children are not removed from their birth parents unless the home environment has endangered the life of the child. That is the law.
Of the 50 children I have advocated for over twelve years, all had experienced severe and chronic violence and neglect. Sexual abuse of children is not uncommon. Their stories would make you cry www.invisiblechildren.org
To express wonder at why abused children develop emotional problems as they age is misleading and unfair to these children.
California Dreaming
Last week the State of California achieved perfect synchronicity in its public policy making when it announced that criminals would be released early because the state could no longer afford to keep them incarcerated.
This news reminded me that when I began my work as a guardian ad Litem there were states predicting the need for prison expansion based on the number of failed third grade reading scores within its schools.
Instead of investing in reading for third graders (and early childhood education), California began investing in a third strike punishment model and building tens of thousands of prison beds.
Economics 101
A recent ACE study proved that almost 70% of the serious and violent crime committed by juveniles in Ramsey County was committed by children living in 2 to 4% of Ramsey County families.
DetailsDefining Institutions by What they Create
“Defining our institutions by what they actually create instead of what they were designed to create”* would be the first step in making the changes necessary to fix our poorly understood and vastly under-resourced system.
Details