Vulnerable, Abandoned Children. It’s Who We Are.

Thank you Lewis Zeidner and Mary Beth Lardizabal for your Star Tribune Reporting. This article is based on their reporting.

Hundreds of MN children are being abandoned by their caregivers in MN hospitals. Many are children raised in toxic homes then shuttled off into State/County foster and group homes where dysfunctional/violent behaviors become unmanageable for people not skilled in working with trauma victims. 173 group homes have closed in recent years due to safety violations and overwhelmed staff and facilities. In my working as a Hennepin County CASA volunteer guardian ad Litem, I’ve had many children with multiple foster placements (29 placements is the record for one of my case children).

This cascade of abandoned children is stressing medical providers on top of COVID’s excessive demands and employee burnout. It’s not new. The reporting is new and needs to continue. Years ago, HCMC reported over 1000 emergency mental health visits/month (pre COVID).

Imagine your child born to a dysfunctional family of violence, drug abuse and lacking parenting skills. What’s it like to be removed from the only home you’ve ever known and fostered by a group home or foster parent that is unable to deal with your often self-harming or otherwise violent behaviors?

Now you live in a hospital emergency mental health ward where life is crazy busy and just crazy much of the time.

Will these hospitals end up suing the State/County to keep children safe? If children had legal rights of the Rights of the Child Treaty of the 1980’s (as they do in every other nation except the U.S.) they could defend themselves. But they don’t and they can’t.

Add to this the recent investigative reporting by Safe Passage for Minnesota Children (the first of its kind in America) and the picture is very grim for at risk Minnesota children. Are we really this awful?

Please contact your State Rep and inform them of the conditions facing vulnerable and abandoned Minnesota Children.