RECENT MN CHILD MURDERS
8 YEAR OLD AUTUMN HALLOW’S STORY
(KSTP video)
Minnesota’s Child Protective Services (CPS) received 85,000 child abuse calls in 2019 (about 1/3 of the calls were investigated).
CPS was a stressed institution pre COVID. It’s worse today. Workers are leaving the fields of social work, teaching, healthcare, law enforcement and education growing numbers. Working with troubled youth has become harder and more dangerous because kids are more broken and require more help than they did a few years ago (and there are more of them).
How can we know that these children are finding the help they need to succeed as they pass through Child Protective services?
Today, there are few metrics tracking to see if *fostered children are safe, re-entering the system, addicted, graduating/failing/dropping out, pregnant at 15, in juvenile justice or leading dysfunctional lives.
If we knew more, we could make decisions grounded in reality and improve outcomes.
Safe neighborhoods and working schools require children grow up in safe homes. Unsafe homes have domestic violence, child abuse and trauma that make skill building, learning in school & personal growth a distant dream.
Many abused children with under/untreated traumas go on to lead dysfunctional lives. They create unsafe neighborhoods committing crimes (often violent and charged as adults). Today, they are committing carjackings, transit and street crimes at higher numbers than they were pre COVID. Today, growing numbers of vulnerable people (seniors, women and those living in our inner city) are afraid to take the bus/rail, go downtown or walk after dark.
Most of our institutions are stressed, and some are creating what they were designed to stop.
To fix this, we must measure what matters and improve outcomes that need improving.
Business, Schools, Courts and Justice have transparency to regularly report institutional outcomes.
The same needs to happen in CPS.
This article is written because a 40 year old volunteer community program is being marginalized at time it is most needed. Had data been reported about the work done by 10,000 Minnesota CASA volunteer guardian ad litems we could put it here and you could see it. Many thousands of MN children have had the good fortune to have community CASA volunteer guardian ad Litem advocate for them as they passed through Child Protective Services. This information doesn’t exist though. Because of that, this well established community volunteer program (one of almost 1000 in the U.S.) might disappear. This will not bode well for the children passing through Child Protective Services.
*HIIPA laws are often used improperly to thwart this kind of reporting. We want data, not names and HIIPA was designed to shield privacy not social reality.
KARA Public Service Announcement (30 seconds)
KARA Signature Video (4 minute)
KARA proposes Child Protective Services
including the Guardian Ad Litem Program
measure and track :
Are children safe?
Did concurrent permanency planning with relative/kin begin on Day 1?
Are children spending the least amount of time under court jurisdiction?
Are parents participating in services that reflect the best interest of the children?
Are children receiving appropriate services including trauma informed care?
Are the physical, cultural, educational and mental health needs of the children being met?
Are children being reunited with parents when it is in the best interest of the children?
How many children are re-entering the child protection system?
We think this is a strong list of critical outcomes. They come directly from the State’s self reported Guardian ad Litem Purpose. But we are not seeing these metrics reported or tracked on these critical outcomes by the State or County.
This former volunteer CASA guardian ad Litem is thinks that not reporting metrics about outcomes, we can’t make improve decision making and can never know where best to put our resources. We will forever keep doing things that don’t work. Please share this with your legislative friends and other policy makers.
KARA reports on the issues of child abuse and child protection
This article submitted by CASA volunteer Mike Tikkanen
KARA Public Service Announcement (30 seconds)
KARA Signature Video (4 minute)
INVISIBLE CHILDREN campus programs here
All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children