Thank you, Child Welfare Monitor/Marie Cohen, for publishing and Liliana Flores for writing your powerful article (link to the article).
Selected from the article:
“Imagine going to school with bumps on your head and bruises on your back and legs from being repeatedly punched and kicked; this was my reality as a kid. Youth with lived experiences in foster care face countless challenges, even when the abuse finally stops – one way or another. For me, it stopped because at age 12 I reported it. I then found myself in foster care and having to navigate the complicated child welfare system, speaking little English and knowing nothing about how the child protection system (CPS) works in this country. Although my experience in care was hard for numerous reasons, including substance use, incarceration, homelessness, and being undocumented, I am alive only because this country has a system of protection in place for children and youth like me who have been victimized by their parents.
The movement to abolish the current child welfare system –spearheaded by the organization upEND and its co-founder, Alan Detlaff–has sparked useless controversy and divided the community of people who are concerned with child safety, permanency, and wellbeing. Former foster youth like me, who are pursuing college and graduate education, are silenced in our classrooms. Also silenced are our allies, who are shamed for wanting to pursue a career in child welfare. The child welfare abolition movement originated from academics like Detlaff who have no lived experience of foster care. Who are these ivory tower elites to tell anyone that foster care is unnecessary and should be eliminated when they’ve not lived through it themselves?”
Liliana points out the hypocrisy of claiming the community and the family will take care of their own when egregious violence and child death at the hands of caregivers is a horrible problem in our nation today.
It’s true that Child Protective services are struggling to keep children safe and that there is a severe shortage of quality foster homes to help save and heal children that have suffered rapes, beatings, and other terrible things over long periods in their birth homes. Childhood trauma lasts forever.
Returning children to toxic homes for more abuse and trauma is terrible for the child and the community.
Part of the real problem is our propensity to not talk about the problem in meaningful language. Most people know almost nothing about the cruel reality facing children growing up in toxic homes. We avoid the topic. When we do speak about it, we euphemize, obfuscate and use words that soften the abuse and violence children face every day.
The word, “Maltreatment” means anything from being screamed at to the things in the EGREGIOUS VIOLENCE & CHILD DEATH links in the paragraph above. To understand this dear reader, you should click on those links and study why KARA is so passionate about protecting at-risk children.
The lack of transparency in the institution of Child protection needs to end. Without meaningful information about child outcomes, policy makers do not know what works or fails as policy.
Because the U.S. will not ratify the United Nation’s RIGHTS OF THE CHILD treaty of the 1980s (the only nation in the world not to have) American children have no voice in their homes, the media, the Statehouse or courts.
It’s why a child can marry in over 20 states in America and have no standing in court to divorce an abusive husband. It’s why a child cannot directly bring charges against an abusive parent. It is why children go on to lead dysfunctional lives and why we have so much violence, school failure, childhood trauma, crime, and prisons compared to so many other nations.
WHEN YOU Share KARA’s reporting with FRIENDS, INSTAGRAM & FACEBOOK and most of all, your State Representative (find them here) abused children become visible and change will come a little bit faster. When enough of us become informed and speak up for abused and neglected children, you will improve their lives and our communities!
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