Caroline Hood’s Star Tribune article today highlights core social service issues making even a safe life impossible for more and more people. Quotes herein come from her article.
Caroline is President of RS Eden, a nonprofit providing services for mental health, substance abuse, housing and criminal justice support. She makes a powerful argument for holistic investments in human services.
For the naysayers among us, this post will address one more compelling reason for taking Caroline’s advice: Money. The taxes, insurance, cost of crime, and lifetimes of services that don’t do what they are meant to do.
What becomes of the people that pass through our social services? Using the metrics we apply to industry; we are faced with scary data and negative trends.
Do not blame the people providing the services. These failures are because we “are trying to provide 21st century care with resources and systems” from the 1900’s. The work is difficult, sometimes dangerous, and often disappointing.
If MN’s Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz is right, 90% of youth in Juvenile Justice have passed through Child Protective Services. It is also true that the majority of felons in prison have passed through Juvenile Justice. Finally, for twenty years, America’s prison recidivism rate has been over 80% at nine years. Is this what it looks like? How much does this cost per person? How many children pass through CPS annually? What is the cost of high numbers of traumatized children living without healing and the skills to live a productive life? These are questions of the 21st century that have great impact on our schools, healthcare, public safety and quality of life.
Ask yourself if our institutions are creating what they were designed to stop.
Are our institutions manufacturing broken people with little chance of leading a productive life? How many of them are living dysfunctional lives (40-50-60 years) hurting themselves and others while passing through CPS, Juvenile Justice, and our prisons and jails?
Caroline Hood’s observation that the closing of St Anne’s Place (for children and women in need) demonstrates another serious failure of our public safety system not keeping its women and children safe. This is another underfunded, underperforming institution unable to keep its people safe.
What do you mean “another”?
A recent investigative report by Safe Passages For Children of Minnesota has demonstrated how Child Protective Services failed to keep children alive when 200 vulnerable children died at the hands of their caregivers while in CPS. Most of the deaths were of children under two years old. Worse yet, this is the only investigative report of its depth and scope in the nation. What about the other 49 states? Please prove me wrong about this and send me any investigative report you think compares to this one (mike@invisiblechildren.org).
To fully understand the seriousness of the issues raised in this post, please read at least a few pages of the report in the link above. You will see how and why these children died and how they could have been saved. Small efforts on the part of an overwhelmed and underfunded CPS. CPS is chartered to keep children safe. St. Anne’s place was trying to keep women and children safe.
We will address mental health and education in a following post. The holistic approach Caroline suggests is a better answer for making people and communities safe and living a higher quality of life.
WE NEED MODELS THAT PRIORITIZE THE WELLBEING OF THOSE BEING SERVED.
THIS WILL PROVIDE HEALTHY CHILDREN AND FAMILIES AND
A POSITIVE RETURN ON INVESTMENT THAT IS NOT BEING SEEN TODAY
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This article submitted by former CASA volunteer guardian ad litem Mike Tikkanen
#Carolinehood, #rseden, #childabuse, #housing, #criminaljustice, #mentalhealth, #safepassageforchildren,#kidsatrisk,#kara, #socialservices,#childprotection,#cps
