At Rutherford County’s Hobgood elementary school,
An 8 year old, two 9 year old’s and an 11 year old walk into a principal’s office…
And are arrested and handcuffed (“out of habit” said officer Jeff Carroll).
https://www.flipcause.com/secure/cause_pdetails/OTg4ODM
Youth are two to three time more likely to confess to crimes they did not commit than adults.
Police interrogations using fabricated statements are most likely why. Kids are more intimidated by law enforcement than adults and they break down faster.
There’s just no upside in sending youth to jail. Incarcerating them for crimes they did not commit is a sign of a dysfunctional system. A system that creates what it was designed to stop.
Thank you Spire Credit Union, Highland Banks, Sunrise Banks and participating Rotaries
for building KARA’s Financial Literacy program this year.
For more info on this program contact
Hello@invisiblechildren.org
“Mental Health Crisis + Emergency Rooms” is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s a strong piece demonstrating the huge increase in chemical restraints and ER mental health visits by children, but it misses the heart of the story.
We the people are serious about continued investment in our punishment model.
Expelling kids from daycare and elementary school is common. Charging youth in adult courts is too. The nation’s Supreme Court recently reinstated lifelong (no chance for release) sentencing for crimes committed by juveniles.
Instead of investing in healing broken children we invest our tax dollars into courts that punish kids from traumatizing violent and toxic homes. Are we bad at math or pro growing crime, criminals and broken communities.
KARA’s Last minute gifting ideas!
Is there a foster or adoptive family in your life that would appreciate a gift card or cash donation this holiday season? Be a Secret Santa if you choose.
If you have never donated to Kids At Risk Action, please consider
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Thank you for your attention to the issues of abused and neglected children.
The KARA Team.
Most major U.S. cities experienced a huge increase in carjackings in the last two years. Many are violent – all are traumatizing. The majority are committed by juveniles – some of them under 14 years old. Repeat offenders are common. From the perspective of at risk youth and policing…
The violence, excitement and control for disaffected youth makes this an easy and low punishment crime. Courts have been lenient on most of the crimes committed by youth.
Out of the blue murderous psychosis in normal people is rare.
It’s not likely that this boy led a normal life prior to this violence.
When 14-year-old Ryan Turk cut ahead of the lunch line to grab a milk, he didn’t expect to get in trouble. He certainly didn’t plan to end up in handcuffs. But Turk, a black student at Graham Park Middle School, was arrested for disorderly conduct and petty larceny for procuring the 65-cent carton. The state of Virginia is actually prosecuting the case, which went to trial in November.
Changing the rules of the game requires federal, state, and local reforms. With little evidence that police in schools make students safer and plenty that they facilitate harm to students’ liberty and well-being, the Department of Justice should end the cops program’s SRO grants to districts. Taxpayers should not be on the hook for billions that promote unjust school conditions and put kids at greater risk of future involvement with the criminal justice system. And students should feel like they can talk to school officials when they have problems without forfeiting their constitutional rights and winding up in the back of police cars.
As former Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz so aptly stated, “the difference between that poor child and a felon is about eight years”
Vote for mental health services and child friendly programs for at risk children and call your state legislators and tell them to do the same.
Once these very troubled children become old enough to impact their surroundings they do so in a most troubling manner. That’s why our jails are full and our schools are troubled.
From the study; “In other words, by one mechanism or another, more than 200,000 individuals under the age of 18 are prosecuted in criminal court each year. There are three trends in the data worth noting…
“I’m not for killing kids and stuff” (officer Omar Bellow). For eight seconds officers fired 66 rounds from Glock service weapons towards the children. You can read the NY Times article details here. There is nothing easy about being in law enforcement in America today (or teaching, or social work, health services or child care). The numbers of seriously troubled youth are off the charts and so many children have serious often violent behavior problems.
For most of us in Child Protective Services, KARE 11 / Lauren Leamanczyk’s investigative reporting on the absence of facilities for troubled foster and adopted State Ward children is a recurring nightmare.
Where does your state rank in protecting children & what can you do to make improvements. These statistics tell the stories of our best and worst states around the nation
Expelled from elementary school, pregnant in junior high and facing a criminal justice system before they are able to drive a car.
The cost to society in taxes, public health, education and safety is astronomical and the people policing, teaching and caring for these children are stuck in centuries old punishment models that guarantee failure, perpetual pain and broken communities.
If you knew that the vast majority of youth in Juvenile Justice came through Child Protective Services, would you;
37% of children overall and 44% of Black children are reported to child protection services in America by the time they turn 18. (American Journal of Public Health 1.17)
Repurposing Federal Foster Care dollars have become a “revenue stream” for counties because taking foster child money goes “unnoticed” (from the article). In a perfect world, a County person would raise hell about repurposing foster child dollars to adults (but they don’t because they could lose their job). There is little reporting of and no transparency in the Child Protection System.
The Conversation, with Al McFarlane, DR Oliver Williams and Mike Tikkanen exploring issues facing at risk youth in our community today (1 hour with video).
This article from the ACEs Too High website provides an everyday guide with must know information for folks working with traumatized children and youth. With too many children not being afforded an escape to the safety of a classroom because of the Covid19 virus, there will be a growing danger as substantially more badly abused children fill our classrooms in the fall (or winter or spring) of next year.
When I met her, I saw a beautiful, quiet and curious little girl. I was Isabella’s (not her real name) first teacher and wish to remain anonymous.
After 7 full years of abuse and neglect she entered my special ed classroom in Arizona…
This Thanksgiving, about 6 million American children are being raised by their grandparents (double what it was in 1970). Almost half of these grandparents have economic or social service needs for themselves and their grandchildren that are unmet.
It is estimated that for every child in foster care with relatives, there are 20 living outside of care with relatives (usually grandparents).
Terrible trauma (like generations of slavery) and the behaviors and conflicts it creates need to be identified and discussed if they are to be fixed. Do we want higher graduation rates and lower crime and recidivism rates for our at risk youth and families?
Charlamagne Tha God has Launched a Mental Wealth Alliance Foundation to establish fundamental and far-reaching generational support for Black Mental Health.
Share this widely.
how COVID is impacting children’s mental health
and hammering education and child well-being and Tips for Helping Students Recover From Pandemic Stress
These short videos capture the realities of child abuse.
Share them widely and more of us will know how to do more for kids in painful places.
ACEs
Trauma empowerment comes from identifying and understanding what has happened. As a CASA guardian ad litem, I’ve come to know many abused children. I was the second person John ever told of the things that were done to him when he was a boy – he died last year at 80. John lived for 30…
Give To The Max Day Helps KARA Build our Financial Literacy Program!
Trauma, Children, Family, Community
Fairview Masonic Children’s hospital has been overwhelmed with 145 emergency pediatric psych cases since September. A makeshift shelter in an ambulance garage is all that’s available at Fairview Masonic to protect children suffering from the traumas of child abuse and homelessness.
The majority of violent and serious crime has always been committed by juveniles. Most juvenile offenders have come through Child Protective Services (MN Supreme Court Chief Justice KATHLEEN BLATZ “the difference between that poor child and a felon is about 8 years).
California and Arizona have used failed 3rd grade test scores to assist in forecasting prison capacity growth. (Corrections Digest, April 12, 2002)
In 2022, 23% of Black and American Indian third graders in Minneapolis MN read at grade level.
6.11.21 NY votes to raise the minimum age of arrest from 7 to 12 and considers prohibiting the shackling of children and youth in family court.
KARA Current Initiatives
This powerful ACEs Too High article contains tons of statistics and information related to the depth and scope of child abuse in America. What has struck me most is…
Massachusetts has the lowest minimum marriage age with parental consent of 14 years old for boys and 12 years old for girls. Afghan parents sell their 7 year-old daughters into arranged marriages & the Taliban has for years practiced child sex abuse.
Tennessee may soon have child brides in common with the Taliban and Afghan parents.
Star Tribune Nowhere To Go For Most Troubled Youth, crime, preteen moms and juvenile injustice
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
Growing Up Foster, ‘The foster care system is broken’
There are an estimated 12,000 foster children in Minnesota, more than 8,000 of whom live in foster homes,
Child Protection Statistics and Carjackings;To solve carjackings and 83% and 90% recidivism rates, we need to track the successes and failures of children in State care if we are to improve their lives and strategies in place today.
For decades, Evangelical Christians and the Catholic Church have led the charge disenfranchising Gay couples from adopting or fostering America’s most vulnerable children
Foster Care Reporting Post COVID
How are the children living in foster care doing in your state?
This Star Tribune article by Neal St. Anthony points to a threat to the community volunteer Guardian Ad Litem program in this time of institutional stress.
If you knew that 10,000 Minnesota’s CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) volunteers provided civic engagement, first person narratives, reporting, institutional transparency and many thousands of advocacy hours for babies, children & youth over the last 40 years in Minnesota’s Child Protective Services would you;
For decades foster families have found most states unwilling to cover the costs of caring for the poor kids placed in care because of abuse and neglect.
In about half the States, kennelling/dog boarding pays more dollars than fostering a child. Dogs don’t need diapers or the near constant attention a troubled youth from Child Protective services does.
People food is also more expensive than dog food. Dogs don’t need shoes or shirts or money for “things” that children need and do.
This Annie E. Casey Foundation survey of Black youth in February 2021 demonstrates a rising trend of Black youth incarceration Post COVID.
Black youth in juvenile detention on Feb. 1, 2021, reached a pandemic high, while that of white youth was the second lowest recorded in more than a year.
It has been stated by program management that CASA volunteer time spent with abused and neglected children is of no value. Ask that question of any child removed from the only home they have ever known now passing through the cold scarey institution of judges, courts, foster and group homes where you don’t know anyone and new adult faces come and go after short periods.
Plenty of data Stories and literature provide proof
Adolescents who had more than one suicide attempt prior to their initial hospitalization were 102% more likely to be re-hospitalized within 5 years for a suicide attempt than adolescents who had no prior attempts2.
Not far from my home, six year old Kendrea Johnson suicided by hanging while in foster care. Gabriel Fernandez & Seven year old Gabriel Myer suicides drew national media attention about the same time.
My first visit to a four year old State Ward as a CASA volunteer guardian ad Litem was at the suicide ward of a local Hospital. That visit to a tiny little girl who failed to kill herself has caused me to rethink child protection.
Kendrea (6) and Gabriel (7) successfully hung themselves a few years ago. They came from different states but suffered the same afflictions. Kendrea lived not far from me.
As a CASA guardian ad Litem, the commonality of self hate by the children I worked with in child protection – being so different, so unlovable that even your mother abandoned you, is devastating.
Happy GrandParent’s Day (volunteering, kinship & raising a grandchild)
If you knew that the vast majority of youth in Juvenile Justice came through Child Protective Services, would you;