United Nations Youth Conference (2007 – what’s changed?)
19 years ago, Kids At Risk Action led a workshop on child abuse and childhood trauma at the United Nations Youth Conference in New York, as part of the Youth Assembly’s effort to understand why some children don’t learn and what it would take to protect them. Participants from around the world talked about the lack of language for “child abuse” in some countries, the acceptance of child rape as a grim fact of life in others, and the deep hunger for better answers for children trapped in violent, chaotic homes.
Today’s Reality: School Failure, Teacher Turnover, and Youth Crime
Since that United Nations Youth Conference, the problems we warned about have only become more visible in American schools and communities. Many districts now struggle with higher failure and dropout rates, growing teacher‑turnover—especially in high‑poverty schools—and classrooms where trauma‑driven behavior regularly overwhelms teaching time, while youth crime and incarceration remain stubbornly high and closely linked to untreated childhood abuse and neglect.
Attendees from several developing nations described child rape as a grim fact of life. People came from all over the world to learn how to make a difference in the lives of at‑risk children, and the audience was diverse and deeply engaged. Hamid Karzai, then President of Afghanistan, was one of many internationally known speakers who addressed the conference.
California’s Surgeon General, Nadine Burke Harris, has since declared Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) a public health epidemic and public‑school crisis. Today, the medical community’s understanding of ACEs and the value of a trauma‑informed approach to helping at‑risk children is far more promising—but only if we have the will to put that knowledge into practice.
Our workshop, “Why Some Children Don’t Learn,” showed how little most of us understood in 2007 about childhood trauma and the lifelong brain and behavior changes it causes. We talked about how those changes keep children from developing the skills and self‑regulation needed for a healthy, fulfilling life, and about the severe shortage of healing resources for children suffering from deep trauma. During the 90‑minute session we focused on helping attendees understand the mental health and behavior issues of abused and neglected children the resources they need to gain coping and learning skills so they can function in our schools, homes, and communities.
A primary goal of mine was to show how Post‑Traumatic Stress is common among abused and traumatized children and to make a clear case for why educators, social workers, foster and adoptive parents need far more and better resources if we expect children to succeed with friends and family, at home and in school. I also wanted participants to see how vital it is to advocate not only for the children, but also for the people doing the hard daily work with abused and neglected kids.
Too many teachers even then were leaving their field or transferring out of inner‑city schools to suburban or private schools because of the danger and difficulty of working with violent and unstable children, often without meaningful support. Since the Youth Assembly, the pressures have grown: pandemic learning loss, higher reported anxiety and depression among students, increased incidents of classroom violence, and steadily rising teacher‑turnover rates in many states. In some districts, especially those serving high‑poverty communities, annual turnover now rivals or exceeds one in four teachers, and schools struggle every fall just to put a licensed adult in front of every class.
Our schools are showing the results with high failure and dropout rates, widening achievement gaps, and classrooms where crisis management often overwhelms actual teaching. Our communities show the results in high crime rates and the world’s highest rates of incarceration. California’s Surgeon General has warned that ACEs are both a Public Health Epidemic and a Public Schools Crisis; the stories KARA collects make it clear that every state faces the same issues—not just California. Youth violence, self‑harm, and justice‑system involvement remain tightly linked to untreated childhood trauma, school failure, and the absence of stable adults who can stay in these helping professions long enough to make a difference.
Economists and public‑health researchers have tried to estimate the financial cost of underserving abused and neglected children, and the numbers are staggering: when you add up special education, emergency mental‑health care, juvenile justice, adult prisons, lost productivity, and intergenerational cycles of victimization and offending, the lifetime cost of one severely traumatized child left without help can reach into the millions of dollars.
Multiply that by the tens or hundreds of thousands of children cycling through under‑resourced child‑protection systems and failing schools, and you begin to see that our refusal to invest early all but guarantees we will pay far more later—in money, in public safety, and in human potential thrown away.
Without strong community support for programs and policies that shore up our schools, child‑protection agencies, mental‑health systems, and frontline workers, continued exodus from these essential fields and the continued failure of the children they serve should not surprise us.
At the Youth Assembly years ago, many workshop attendees told me why they quit social services altogether. Descriptions of recurring failures, a lack of resources, and the negative recognition given them along with being blamed for the death of a child when it happened.
These workers could make three times as much money being a nanny for one child in New York (and be appreciated for it) and be able to avoid the exhaustion and stress of a huge caseload of deeply needy children, without the tools to help them, watching them fail, and being blamed for their lack of progress. Their hearts were genuinely with the children in need, but without support, burnout in this field takes a brutal toll.
If you ever have the chance to visit New York, take the tour at the United Nations. It helped me see the shared issues we face and the good people working to improve the lives of children everywhere. Our tour was led by a bright young man from Uruguay who gave us a sense of the UN’s history and evolution. The aura of cooperation and striving for a better world seems to drift from the walls. At the same time, there are many sorrowful reminders of tortured people, eleven‑year‑old boy soldiers, murdered and raped children, and nations committing horrific violence upon their own innocent populations and their neighbors.
The need for an organization committed to mediating disputes and protecting the vulnerable is enormous. The violence that is so historic and common among us is painful to see. We are stuck with that history; we can only hope and work for something better.
Be involved.
Speak for a child.
Contact your State Representative by phone and email. Keep these issues in front of them:
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All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children
INVISIBLECHILDREN – KARA (KIDS AT RISK ACTION
“What we do to our children, they will do to our society”
(Pliny the Elder, 2000 years ago)
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