Saying Goodbye to the CASA Guardian ad Litem Volunteer Program

SAYING GOODBYE TO 1000’S OF VOLUNTEER CHILD ADVOCATES & Community Involvement & Trust In One More Community Institution. Since 1981, thousands of community volunteers have spent thousands of hours working to better the lives of Minnesota’s at-risk children.  End this program, they will disappear and no more will follow.

This will result in weakened community awareness, less community involvement and an incalculable loss of…

Child Protection Stories Wanted

KARA is working to make lawmakers and policy makers see the value of community volunteer CASA guardian ad litems in Child Protective Services.

To do this, we are seeking stories from 18 & up folks that have come through child protection with the help of a volunteer CASA guardian ad litem.

You may remain anonymous.

Please contact me directly – mike@invisiblechildren.org with STORY in the subject line.

Children Are Dying On Your Watch (said the judge to CPS)

children are dying on your watch” and calling them “callous”, saying “they do more to protect their bureaucracy than the children in their care”.  Safe Passage for MN’s Children recent investigative reporting on Minnesota children murdered by their caregivers while in Child Protective Services might prompt a similar judicial response…

Why CASA Guardian Ad Litems (in their words)

The following are recent survey responses by CASAs answering the question “What community CASA volunteers bring to abused children and the Child Protection System they serve. Several spelling and grammatical changes have been made for clarity. We advocate for these children without paycheck and without allegiance to anyone or anything other than the child. We…

Hennepin County Child Well-being Advisory Committee Meeting Summary (with KARA notations)

The complete report can be read HERE. This post emphasises the GAL program’s effort to eliminate the CASA community volunteer Guardian ad Litems. The author made notes and corrected several minor spelling errors (notes are in parenthesis and in bold).

Hennepin County participants: Jodi Wentland; Dan Rogan; Lori Whittier; Evangeline Filosi; Patricia Zagaros; Sherry Smith; Lisa Bayley; Kwesi Booker; Michelle Lefebvre; Lori Munsterman; Fintan Moore; Lauren Kewley; Madeline Johnson; Shanese Reed; Rachelle Loewenson Stratton; Meredith Martinez: Lolita Ulloa 

Child Murder by Caregiver While In CPS

The American Medical community has joined forces to declare a national emergency in children’s mental health, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Today’s declaration is an urgent call to policymakers at all levels of government — we must treat this mental health crisis like the emergency it is,” said AAP President Lee Savio Beers, MD, …

Remembering Young LGBTQ Lives & Moving Interview (guest post)

How did you come to terms with your identity?

Being queer and the sexuality part wasn’t as hard for me. I always knew I liked women. The journey was then finding out who else I liked and what I didn’t like. I feel like when you first join the community, you’re not always presented with how many identities there are. I feel like a lot of people tend to come in uneducated, and I think that’s definitively how I came in. I come from a very homophobic town, so we didn’t have that many people that were out. I didn’t know much. I started identifying as queer because I’m still not sure. My gender identity took a lot longer…

What Child Protection Means In Minnesota

From Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota today; This Peabody Award Winning video documents the critical issues that lead to the gruesome murder of 6 year old Eli Hart and dangers facing all of Minnesota’s abused and neglected children. 

Hundreds of children have died while known to Child Protective Services. Some have been tortured over time. Many more children have suffered years of  trauma as the institution standards and practices of CPS have deteriorated.

There are no metrics or reporting made available about children’s suffering at the hands of their caregivers or the self-harm or suicide attempts of traumatized kids in the system.

LGBTQ Foster Care, Suicide & Ground Truths

About a third of kids in NY’s foster care identify as LGBTQ and nationally, about 24% do.  40% of homeless kids in NY City identify as LGBTQ and 42% of them had been in foster care.

This NY Times article focuses on how hard life is for them.  Many of these youth and children are in foster care because their parents rejected them.

Many are homeless, depressed and leading dysfunctional lives.

Every year about 12,000 children aged 5-14 years old are admitted to psychiatric hospital units for suicidal behavior. This and all the information following are PRE COVID.

Young children who have attempted suicide are up to 6 times more likely to attempt suicide again in adolescence

Minnesota Children Killed By Caregivers While Known to CPS (& how to stop it)

 There is a real lack of data and transparency in CPS which makes it hard to know outcomes short of child death.
72% of of the 88 child maltreatment deaths studied (complete study below) were known to CPS. We do know that there were many reports of life changing violence, neglect and abuse but few follow ups. 

What’s It Like For Troubled Teens in Minnesota?

What’s it like to be a CASA guardian ad Litem (child protection worker) unable to find safe housing and mental health services for the 14-year-old struggling foster boy in your caseload? His self-harming and violent behaviors could change if he had help to manage childhood traumas. He could go on to lead a productive life.…

Child Suicides, Self Harm & Statistics

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association have joined forces to declare a national emergency in children’s mental health, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Today’s declaration is an urgent call to policymakers at all levels of government — we must treat this mental health crisis like the emergency it is,” said AAP President Lee Savio Beers, MD, in a statement.

A Modest Proposal (satire & similarities)

300 years ago, an Irish Minister wrote an explosive satire that was misinterpreted by many readers of his day (printed in its entirety below). In a gruesome and widely read logical argument, Swift offered a plan that would relieve the suffering of Irish families and their youngest children…

Back in the day, these writings were the modern equivalent of you tube or a precursor to Twitter and consumed voraciously by all who could read (or read them to others).

Public policy treated poor Irish more like animals than people and Irish children were doomed to lives of crime, prostitution, and abject poverty.

Was Swift’s underlying argument that death might be preferable to children doomed to disease, crime, prostitution, & the cruelties suffered by abandoned children of his time?

Expecting Different Results From Prison for Kids

MN A.G. Keith Ellison’s response to the public outcry for punishment is normal (And that’s a shame).  Our need for punishment over restorative justice is the American way. We don’t care if charging children and youth as adults brings more crime and recidivism.

Suicidal Children & Hospital Beds

For every six-year old foster child’s successful suicide (Kendrea Johnson), there are hundreds of attempts and many hundreds of self-harming incidents in hospitals and Child Protective Services (CPS) – many if not most of these incidents are never reported.

For every child killed while in child protection (recent Safe Passage investigative study of child maltreatment deaths) there are hundreds of children starved, beaten, raped and otherwise abused that  are never known outside the home

5 Month Old Aaliya Goodwin Death & Why From Safe Passage For Children Investigation

Aaliya Goodwin. This is one of the 88 stories of children dying at the hands of their caregivers reported in the recent Safe Passage For Children investigation of child death in Minnesota. The report suggests why this tragedy is happening in our state and how we can make life safer for at risk children (in…

Eli Hentges – 1 of 88 Stories of Child Death at the Hands of Caregivers

Eli Hentges. This is one of the 88 stories of children dying at the hands of their caregivers reported in the recent Safe Passage For Children investigation of child death in Minnesota. The report suggests why this tragedy is happening in our state and how we can make life safer for at risk children (in the read more at the end of the article). Please share this with your contacts and State Representative.

8 Year-Old Tayvion Davis Death & Why (from the Safe Passage Investigative Report)

This is one of the 88 stories of children dying at the hands of their caregivers reported in the recent Safe Passage For Children investigation of child death in Minnesota. The report suggests why this tragedy is happening in our state and how we can make life safer for at risk children (in the read more at the end of the article). Please share this with your contacts and State Representative.
Tayvion Davis, Hennepin County

Child & Youth Suicides Feb 2023 (find your state here)

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association have joined forces to declare a national emergency in children’s mental health, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Today’s declaration is an urgent call to policymakers at all levels of government — we must treat this mental health crisis like the emergency it is,

If You Live In MN You Should Do This

The Safe Passage Report on Child Maltreatment Deaths is a remarkable report – not in a good way. It demonstrates how common it is for Minnesota children to die from abuse in the home even after they have become known to CPS. This report is still only the the tip of the horrors facing abused children as;

DHS did not cooperate with the investigator,
Four counties did not respond,
Child deaths reported were only those that had court filings or had been reported in the media

2 Year-Old Sophia O’Neill Death & Why (from the Safe Passage Investigative Report)

This is one of the 88 stories of children dying at the hands of their caregivers reported in the recent Safe Passage For Children investigation of child death in Minnesota. The report suggests why this tragedy is happening in our state and how we can make life safer for at risk children (in the read more at the end of the article). Please share this with your contacts and State Representative. Sophia O’Neill, Hennepin County

If You Live In MN This Simple Act Can Help At Risk Children

If you read this blog, you know how hard it is for Minnesota’s abused and neglected children to find the help they need to thrive. If you have not read the investigative report of child fatalities known to CPS by Safe Passages for Children of MN, please read it here. Pages 22+ tells the sad…

2 year-old Lylah Koob’s Death & Why (from the Safe Passage Report)

This is one of the 88 stories of children dying at the hands of their caregivers reported in the recent Safe Passage For Children investigation of child death in Minnesota. The report suggests why this tragedy is happening in our state and how we can make life safer for at risk children (in the read more at the end of the article). Lylah Koob, Goodhue County

Police vs Social Worker (when the wrong one shows up)

People suffering from untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed in interactions with law enforcement. Recently in Utah, a 13-year-old boy with autism was shot several times by police after his mother dialed 911 to request help as her son was experiencing a mental breakdown.

Alito’s Story

Repeated self-harm and hospital trips for healing were his normal behavior when he was depressed. He would cut himself and stuff objects into the wound – a paper clip, staple or anything he could find. This poor boy was a product of rape and incest.

His mother was raped by her father when she was 13. She abandoned her son to State Care at birth. Acanto never experienced love or the warmth of a family. Alito shared with me that the only love or tenderness he ever felt was nurses caring for his wounds.

Do Kids Count? (it depends on where you live)

Conditions in Child Protective Services (CPS), foster care or in the lives these children live are unknown to most of us.

When the community doesn’t perceive a serious problem it will ignore it and the problem festers. This is why many city dwellers are afraid to ride the bus, prisons are full, and schools are struggling.

The Real World of Child Abuse (statistics)

There is more to child abuse than bruises, rape and starvation.

27 states allow withholding life saving medical treatment from children if you tell people your religion forbids it . Criminal and civil immunity means it is not murder when the child dies.

A few years ago, Kansas State Rep Gail Finney vowed to pass a bill that allowed caregivers to leave bruises and cause bleeding. Arkansas State Rep Charles Fuqua promoted the death penalty for rebellious children (based on religious grounds).

MN Child Fatalities From Safe Passages Reporting

CONTACT:  Rich Gehrman, Executive Director, Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota (651) 303-3209; gehrm001@umn.edu  Report documents multiple systemic failures in cases Of Minnesota children killed due to maltreatment  8 YEAR OLD AUTUMN HALLOW’S MURDER (KSTP video)   Minnesota Child Fatalities from Maltreatment 2014 – 2022 Executive Summary From the report; This study of children who died in…

KARA – CASA Ad Grant Initiative ($120,000 annually)

KARA’s Google Ad Grant Initiative for CASA’s

The U.S. has 950 CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) organizations consisting of community volunteers trained as County Guardian ad Litems advocating for abused and neglected children in Court within Child Protection Services.