It’s what we do not see that hurts us.
Invisible and misunderstood things fester.
These are solvable problems
that must be faced and dealt with.
The COVID wave is a real thing
it’s happening and
it will be with us for decades to come.
Please share this with your State Rep
(find them here)
Abused and neglected children locked in toxic homes during COVID are impacting our schools, public health and safety. If left unaddressed, this will make life much harder for many Americans for a very long time.
Think about what has happened through the eyes of a child locked in a toxic home for two years of the pandemic. They had no access to mandated reporters or escape. These children lived with more trauma and violence with no access to teachers and other mandated child abuse reporters that could have interrupted their suffering. Trauma changes the brain and creates behaviors that plague the child for a lifetime if not addressed.
Prior to COVID, teachers and other mandated reporters saw the signs of trauma and abuse and reported it. Child Protective Services could become involved and provide interventions, family services and relief to significant percentages of abused children.
COVID locked children in their homes for the better part of two years. This kept them from connecting to mandated reporters (especially teachers).
Remember this about the reporting of child abuse during COVID’s lockdown: the perpetrator was in the home as abused children interacted with their teachers online. Very little self-reporting happened during COVID.
Many children did not participate on line and many more only sporadically. COVID created more stress, substance abuse, and dysfunctional parental behavior and locked more abused and neglected children into more toxic homes for longer periods of time. More harm was done.
Extended exposure to violence and deprivation is the World Health Organization’s definition of torture.
Few Americans have awareness of the impact of ACEs on at-risk children. The little we think we know is often half true or not true.
These are complex mental health issues that define how the brain works and how mental wellbeing is achieved or damaged.
The lifelong consequences of childhood trauma are almost unknown to our public and policy makers.
There are reasons this is so.
- Child violence, rape, torture and trauma are terrible topics that are most often avoided, or obfuscated and minimized. Hard truths about what the child endured (rape, beating, starvation) are often couched in words like “maltreatment” that could mean receiving a hard spanking.
- Child abuse is a family matter to be kept from State Agencies and prying eyes. Most child abuse is never reported and only in egregious cases of death or torture evidenced in the media.
- War, fake news, climate change, and poisoned politics are crowding out the growing problem of child abuse and trauma.
- The lack of transparency in the institution of Child Protective Services (CPS) is preventing the size and severity of this issue from being known.
- Data and stories that could give context to the depth and scope of this problem are not available.
- CPS is the only American institution to so consistently not report important metrics or conditions about the children they work with. This has little to do with HIPPA laws, but hides how many children State Ward children are self-harming, suicidal, *sexually abused, failing in school and so many other important measures of success and failure.
The frequency and severity of child abuse in America is mostly invisible except for dead and tortured children discovered by reporters. These are not common public conversations in America.
Few people understand how our institutional response (CPS) to traumatized children and families is creating more problems than it is solving.
Because we don’t understand why our institutions are struggling today, there is little hope that our punishment of children model of expulsion and incarceration will end in my lifetime.
The COVID lockdown will be making life miserable for teachers, law enforcement, health care workers, foster families, and will continue to disrupt our communities for decades as it delivers the double whammy of greater numbers of undertreated and untreated troubled children as they become troubled juveniles and adults.
We can reverse these trends by replacing our centuries old punishment models of expulsion and incarceration with skill building and healing. Traumatized children can evolve into healthy moms and dads and constructive community members – but wishing will not make it so. Please share this and contact your State Representative to let them know you are a supporter of at risk children.
What we do to our children, they will do to society”
(Pliny the Elder 2000 years ago)
Children are at a greater risk than they have ever been.
Forward this to your State Rep (find them here)
with a note from you
to interrupt the trauma and torture of children.
INVISIBLECHILDREN – KARA (KIDS AT RISK ACTION
*According to the Child Welfare Outcomes State Data Review Portal for Minnesota, the incidence of sexual abuse in child protection cases has been increasing over the years. The reported percentages for sexual abuse were 17.9% in 2014, 20.9% in 2015, 23.7% in 2016, 24.9% in 2017, and 26.4% in 2018
. These figures indicate a concerning upward trend in the incidence of sexual abuse among children within Minnesota’s child protection cases. (Kids At Risk Action note: This volunteer CASA guardian ad litem believes most child rape / sexual abuse is never reported and the data is likely between 1/3 and 1/2 of abused have had extensive sexual abuse in their homes over long periods and that the upward trending reported is due to better reporting methods and not an increase in child sexual abuse).
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