Comment Thread On The Child Beating Bill In Kansas

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - US Based

Friends of KARA, below are the comments made on a network debating the Kansas state bill that would allow the beating of children by virtually any caregiver and the leaving of bruises. The good news is that most people hate it for its neanderthal approach to child rearing but there are a fair number of folks that just want the right to beat children.

My mom was born 9 years prior to women’s rights being passed in America. Before this, almost no amount of violence was illegal against a man’s wife. Not so different with children in America today. The passing of this law in Kansas will demonstrate just how tragically ill informed state legislators can be.

Children In The News – read about your state here (thank you child welfare.gov)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - US Based

ID: Bill to protect children of faith healers in Idaho will not get a hearing
Associated Press – February 26, 2014
House leaders ruled out a hearing on a bill meant to curb the number of children who die because their parents choose faith healing and not medical assistance for religious reasons.
http://www.katu.com/news/local/Bill-to-protect-children-of-faith-healers-in-Idaho-will-not-get-a-hearing-247401091.html

GOP Is Right; We Are Spending Too Much (because we invest too little)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - US Based

David Strand is a KARA board member, he has lived in Finland, worked on the making of public policies for children and written about how other advanced nations make public policy on children’s issues. He is a frequent contributor to KARA’s web pages. Look up his other articles under “select a category – David Strand” on the right hand side. David’s article today;

Edwin Green (recently deceased and not his real name) was an executive for 3M from the 1960’s into the 80’s. He once gave me a lecture on business philosophy, a lesson that resonates in today’s climate of political impasse. Edwin mentored me and asked why I was bothering to study for an MBA at night school. I replied my engineering education was quite narrow and studying business helped me understand working at 3M. Smiling broadly, Edwin told me he (also an engineer) hadn’t studied business but “he knew how to run a business.” Mostly, he said, all you have to know is when “to spend a nickel to make a dime”, his one-minute lecture.

Safe Passage For Children Of MN (unintended consequences of legislation)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - MN Specific

Guardrails Plus Guidelines

Legislation often has unintended consequences. For example a proposed Minnesota bill would eliminate smoking from foster homes. Makes sense for new licenses, but it could disrupt current placements where children are doing well.

Rather than addressing every situation with a law or regulation, consider ‘guardrails’ for ones that are clearly out of bounds, and guidelines for the rest.

A guardrail for example would be that an adult who has sexually perpetrated on children should never have access to kids. Guidelines would help determine if a father who had a felony 15 years ago gets consideration in a custody decision.

Guidelines require ongoing training, quality control, and accountability for outcomes. But they are more efficient than continually working around inflexible rules. Plus, they give skilled workers room to apply their expertise.

Paranoid Golden Valley Residents Drive Children’s Mental Health Services Out Of Town

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - US Based

Golden Valley residents reached a pinnacle of fear and loathing this week when they showed up at a Council meeting with pitchforks and torches to kill the possibility of developing a center for children with mental health issues (weekday hours only).  The few hysterical GV residents  huffing and puffing and misrepresenting the issues (equating youth…

Another Screened Out Of Child Protection Baby Dies In MN

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Child Abuse and Deaths

Freda Perdue, 33, was charged Friday in Ramsey County District Court with child neglect and child endangerment.

According to the criminal complaint:

Police were called last Saturday to the East Metro Place in White Bear Lake on a report of a male infant who was not breathing.

Police found Perdue crying next to the baby, who appeared to have blood around his nostrils. He was taken to St. John’s Hospital in Maplewood, where he was pronounced dead.

Perdue told police that the night before she had laid the baby on his back on a mattress where her three other sons and a neighbor boy were sleeping.

Snakes In Guatemala vs Guns In America

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - International

Last weekend, after 20 years of handling snakes, Jamie Coots received his final bite. A rattler got him in the back of the hand. It happened as Coots, a Pentecostal minister, was leading the Saturday night service at his church in Kentucky. Two hours later, he was dead.

The same thing happened two years earlier in West Virginia. Mack Wolford, another serpent-handling preacher, succumbed to a rattler’s venom.

After scores of deaths from messing with snakes, you’d think people would give it up. But they haven’t.

Three months ago, a 15-year-old boy died in Ohio. A local TV station said it happened when he brought a snake and “passed it to a 16-year-old friend.” A similar tragedy occurred the same day in California, when a homeowner “was showing his friend a snake.” “It’s a shock that something like this could happen,” said a neighbor. “I had no idea there was ever a snake in the home.”

On Dec. 1, a young man died in Florida after friends brought a snake to his apartment. “They passed it around,” according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, and the snake delivered the fatal wound when the man’s girlfriend picked it up. “It was a stupid accident,” said the dead man’s grandfather. “It never should have happened.” On Dec. 20, a 3-year-old boy died in Arizona after discovering his parents’ snake. A local TV station reported that “the parents told investigators the snake was inadvertently misplaced for a short time. That’s when the child found it.”

70 Child Abuse Deaths In California’s Child Protection System

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - US Based

When paramedics arrived, eight-year old Gabriel Fernandez was not conscious. His skull was cracked. Three ribs were broken. Bruises and burns covered his body. Two teeth were knocked out of his mouth. X-rays would later show that the third-grader had BB pellets embedded in his lung and groin. Gabriel’s mother, Pearl Fernandez, 29, and her boyfriend Isauro Aguirre, 32, told the paramedics that Gabriel’s injuries were self-induced. Later Aguirre said that he delivered ten or so blows to Gabriel’s stomach for lying and “being dirty.”

Before Gabriel’s death, his mother was the target of six investigations of child abuse. One of Gabriel’s teachers reported the boy coming to school battered. One of Gabriel’s therapists reported that Gabriel said that he was forced to perform oral sex on a family member. Gabriel told a teacher he’d been beat with a belt buckle until he bled and his mother shot him with a BB gun. Gabriel wrote a suicide note, found by his teacher.

According to documents obtained by the LA Times and a recent wrongful death lawsuit filed by Gabriel’s grandparents, Gabriel was never interviewed privately by a social worker about his abuse. Fernandez and Aguirre have been charged with first degree murder of a child. The two have yet to enter their pleas. Two months after Gabriel’s death, four DCFS employees related to his case were fired.

Faith Healing & Another Child Death In Philadelphia

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - US Based

8 month old Brandon Schaible died of treatable pneumonia because his parents don’t believe in medicine.

This is not as rare as one would hope. In Idaho, 144 children have died in the Followers of Christ Church due to lack of medical care. Religious shield laws are everywhere (does your state have them?

Idaho makes it legal to deny children medical care (including to death). In Oregon 15-month-old Ava Worthington. 16-year-old Neil Beagley. 8-month-old Alayna May Wyland. 9-hour-old David Hickman died that way. Below are articles related to child death due to religious practice and the legal underpinnings (further down) that make withholding medical treatments from children legal.

Hitting Children & Leaving Bruises On Kansas Children Could Be The Law Next Session

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - US Based

State Rep Gail Finney says whacking children is about restoring parental rights (along with the rights of teachers and other caregivers) and not child abuse. I guess that depends on how you define abuse. Imagine letting other people whack your child and leaving bruises.

Kansas already allows whacking children without leaving marks, but that just doesn’t pass Gail’s smell test. She wants to see red.

Gail has vowed to continue bringing it up if it doesn’t make it this year. Kansas ranks 36th among the states in child death & 29th in juvenile incarceration according to Geography Matters, Child Well-Being among the states.

Another Failed State (no protection from child rape and no foster parents in Montana)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - US Based

Kids with chaotic family situations, with behavior and mental health issues, as young as you can imagine, end up needing emergency housing. The need for foster families trained to help these kids is ever present.

Youth Dynamics is a non-profit organization operating across Montana. Katie Gerten works out of the Kalispell office licensing people to be foster parents. She said in the past six months she’s has about 20 children referred to her office to be placed in foster care that she had to turn down. She said it’s hard to find people up for becoming foster parents.

Childhood Trauma & Psychosis (another study; University of Liverpool)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Mental Health + Over Medication

REVIEW FINDS THAT CHILDHOOD TRAUMA CAN LEAD TO PSYCHOSIS

An international team of researchers, led by a University of Liverpool psychologist, has published a review of recent research and concluded that there is strong support for the hypothesis that early trauma in childhood (including abuse and neglect) can effect brain development in ways that increase the probability of developing psychosis later in life.

Anomalies in the brains of people diagnosed with mental health problems such as ‘schizophrenia’ have traditionally been used to support the notion that such problems are biologically based brain disorders that have little to do with life events.

For The Record – Minneapolis Arrests 44% Of Its Black Adult Male Population (2001 was not that long ago)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Juvenile + Criminal Justice

The central question posed by this report
is, “How can young African American men
and Hennepin County help each other
succeed?” For years, there have been
many mechanisms in place to benefit 18
to 30-year-old African American men; yet
the outcomes for many of these men
continue to be poor. For example:
• Forty-four percent are arrested
each year.
• They are 27 times more likely to go to
jail than young white men.
• Twenty-eight percent of these young
men enrolled in the Minneapolis Public
Schools graduate from high school in
four years.
• They are twice as likely to die
as young white men ages 18 to 30. read the whole report here;

Drilling For Mass Murder & Arming Teachers Institutionalizes Fear and Insanity In Our Schools (please stop)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Day Care and Education

All across America, schools are practicing lock downs and pretend mass shootings, arming teachers, bringing firearms and terror into school to traumatize ten year old children and make educators hate and fear their work.

Kansas is requiring its teachers to carry firearms, some states are using fake blood and real automatic weapons fire in their practice drills.

How many teachers signed up expecting to be issued a pistol on the first day of school?

Is this what you want your children to live with? I’ve had a gun pointed at me, it is traumatizing and practicing this on children should be a criminal act.

It is also a false premise that you can turn art teachers into capable crime stoppers.

Police and military personnel receive extensive and very real training to reach a point where they can function effectively under combat conditions. Most people are fooling themselves to expect much out of a few hours of weapons training when the real thing happens. God I hate the NRA.

Kansas is requiring its teachers to carry firearms, some states are using fake blood and real automatic weapons fire in their practice drills.

How many teachers signed up expecting to be issued a pistol on the first day of school?

Is this what you want your children to learn and live with? I’ve had a gun pointed at me, it is traumatizing and practicing this on children should be a criminal act.

It is also a false premise that art teachers become capable crime stoppers with a few hours of weapons practice. Believe me, it takes a special kind of person to draw down and accurately fire a weapon in a life death situation.

Police and military personnel receive extensive and very real training to reach a point where they can function effectively under combat conditions. Most people are fooling themselves to expect much out of a few hours of weapons training when the real thing happens. The NRA sells guns not textbooks (remember that).

Abused and Neglected Children’s News (thank you Child Welfare In The News)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Child Abuse and Deaths

MA: Patrick To Address Controversy Surrounding Child Welfare Agency
Associated Press – January 27, 2014
The failure of the Department of Children and Families to keep track of a missing 5-year-old boy whose family had been under its supervision is inexcusable but has given the state an opportunity to re-examine the agency and make changes, Gov. Deval Patrick said Monday. Also: Gov. Patrick: DCF review to be completed by the spring: http://www.myfoxboston.com/story/24554144/2014/01/27/gov-patrick-to-discuss-dcf-probe#ixzz2rh7CVuAs
http://www.wbur.org/2014/01/27/patrick-speak-dcf-controversy

Euthanizing Children (the right to die)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Child Abuse and Deaths

Brussels — Belgium faced fresh protests Wednesday as its parliament debated whether to extend a ground-breaking euthanasia law to terminally-ill children, making it only the second nation to allow minors the right to die.

“To see a sick child die is revolting, it is not just,” said Socialist parliamentarian Karine Lalieux as MP crossed swords on the ethically tough question that will be put to the vote on Thursday.

“But euthanasia doesn’t consist in killing a person but in freeing them from suffering,” she said. “Every child, every family must be allowed the choice to deliver a child from pain.”

Beaten Child Verdict $166M In NJ The Largest Ever

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Religion, Politics + the Law

Despite findings of abuse, New Jersey Child protection returned four year old Jadiel Velesques to his violent family where he was beaten so badly he cannot walk or talk, is blind, and will need the care of nurses & doctors around the clock. DYFS said that reducing casework workload and strengthening training and supervision of caseworkers has happened already. This is the largest verdict against a child protective services agency in U.S. history. It hurts me to think that the caseloads could have been reduced and the training and supervision could have been strengthened before Jadiel was beaten. Just like we could have built the mental health facility the year before Jeff Weise murdered his grandfather, 14 others, and then killed himself.

Support Safe Passage For Children (abuse continues when it is not investigated)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - MN Specific

Safe Passage For Children is promoting legislation that will require counties to keep data on abuse reports which will identify when children are repeatedly reported as abused. As a long time CASA guardian-ad-Litem, I can recall plenty of instances where children were re-reported again and again before anyone looked into it. In one case, 49 police calls to the home in which a seven year old was prostituted (over four years). The definition of malfeasance and torture of a child.

Send this Link to your State Representative and anyone else you think might support Rich Gehrman and his Safe Passage for MN children.

In Whose Best Interest (MN courts returned this child to an abusive father 6 times)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - MN Specific

The number of Minnesota foster children removed from their homes after being reunited with their parents, known as the “re-entry rate,” has increased in recent years and is now nearly three times the federal standard. Thomas Stone is trying to find stability after more than a decade of turmoil in Minnesota’s child foster care system. He was returned to his abusive father a half-dozen times.

INVISIBLE CHILDREN Book Accepted Into Public Library Today

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, KARA News and Events

INVISIBLE CHILDREN will now be on the shelves of the public library. You can search for it online or click on this book link to reserve it. It has been some years in coming, and I like to think this is a sign that the conversation around abused and neglected children is finally getting the attention it deserves. Forward this to people that might want to know.

A Glimmer Of Hope (push for preschool)

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Day Care and Education

Preschool is having its moment, as a favored cause for politicians and interest groups who ordinarily have trouble agreeing on the time of day. President Obama devoted part of his State of the Union address to it, while the deeply red states of Oklahoma and Georgia are being hailed as national models of preschool access and quality, with other states and cities also forging ahead on their own.

With a growing body of research pointing to the importance of early child development and its effect on later academic and social progress, enrollment in state-funded preschool has more than doubled since 2002, to about 30 percent of all 4-year-olds nationwide. In just the past year, Alabama, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana and the city of San Antonio have enacted new or expanded programs, while in dozens of other places, mayors, governors and legislators are making a serious push for preschool.

Inside AZ Child Protection Politics

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - US Based

Does Legislature have the will to fix CPS this time?

At long last – or again, that is — we have an answer to why Ariana and Tyler Payne had to die, and Jacob Gibson and Schala Vera and 20-month-old Liana Sandoval, whose battered body was found wired to a rock at the bottom of a canal in 2001, one day after Child Protective Services found no evidence of abuse.

At long last – or again, that is – we know why Annie Carimbocas had to die, and Haley Gray and Vanessa Martinez and 3-year-old Angelene Plummer, who was beaten, burned, raped and murdered in 2005 after CPS declared eight times that she was safe.

At long last – or again that is – we know why Janie Buelna left us in 2011, her body scarred, her teeth broken, her leg ravaged by an untreated burn when a simple phone call by CPS might have saved her.

And 22-month-old Za’Naya Flores, who starved to death in 2012 while a CPS caseworker wrote monthly reports on her progress.

At long last – or again that is – we know what the heck is going on in Child Protective Services. And we know how to fix it.

The question is: will we?

On Friday, Gov. Jan Brewer’s Independent Child Advocate Response Examination team – a task force of troubleshooters tapped in December after the agency’s latest epic fail — released its report on what is wrong with Arizona’s most beleaguered agency.

KARA planning a course for Continuing Legal Ed; For the attorneys, how many of you would consider attending?

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, KARA News and Events

We appreciate any feedback we can get to create the most accurate and up to date coursework for those of you who want to better understand this complicated and evolving area of law. Are there parts of the child protection topic that would be most important to you? Tell us. We will be bringing a new perspective to a much under-served subject. Please forward this to your lawyer friends.

email me directly; info@invisiblechildren.org