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KARA Public Service Announcement (30 seconds)
KARA Signature Video (4 minute)
When I was young my mom made a mistake and my siblings and I were placed into foster care for the first time. I loved my foster parents. School was fun for me…everyone was nice. But then we had to move. My foster mom told us how much she loved us, but because she didn’t know how to do African American hair, we were moved to a new family.
It was a bigger town and I hoped to make many new friends, and I did…but seeing other kids running into the arms of their parents made me miss mine even more. As the days passed, things changed for me…and not for the better. I turned into the awkward kid, the problem child. I was moved on to other homes…homes where people didn’t care how they treated me…I know some people are only in it for the money. I was placed in two homes I absolutely hated and learned things no kid should know.
I was in and out of schools where the kids made fun of me because I was in “special ed” and I was in and out of mental wards, as well.
In third grade I got sick and tired of it all and made up my mind to kill myself. But God had bigger and better plans for me. A friend I had back then saved my life. She sat next to me on the floor crying. As I was fading away she told me over and over, “You’re gonna be somebody and you will have a story to tell.” She brought me out of my darkness.
Things got a lot worse. I was moved to another family away from my siblings. Their kids took baths first and I got the dirty water. I was alone most of the time and got whooped sometimes. When I was told by my foster mom that “your dad died because he never loved you and you will never be nothing,” I snapped. I kicked her down a flight of stairs and I was sent to a treatment center for seven weeks.
I can say my life isn’t always easy today but the woman I am is way better than the girl I was before.
I have learned important things: people make mistakes; what parents do should not define their kids; not all foster kids are bad but most important to me is that all kids are “somebodies” and have a story to tell.
This edited interview was contributed by Arizona State University student Milisha Butner in KARA’s Riipen intern program
Only a fraction of child/youth suicides are successful. Very few are recorded and made public. The vast majority of self-inflicted harm remains invisible.
Trauma care, coaching and mental health services are badly needed by young people today as the COVID pandemic is locking children into toxic homes with little or no access to the adults that could help them.
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.2 in 5 LGBTQ youth in the U.S. “seriously considered” suicide in the past year. The COVID lockdown, mean politics and cruel media are making life miserable for a great many at risk children and young adults.
Kids At Risk Action reports on children’s mental health, suicide and self-harm
The COVID pandemic is making life much worse for at risk children in America
CDC charts child suicide pre COVID
Child suicide reporting October & November
#childsuicide
#selfharm
#foster
#kara
