Postscript… I too have had 4 year old and 7 year old suicides as a Hennepin County guardian ad-Litem and a judge that has shared with me the pages of documented Prozac, Ritalin, and other Psychotropics given to very young children. This conversation needs to take place at a higher level (where something can be done about it).
“Where will these children now go? What safe haven will be available to help children who have experienced the raw pain and hurt of child abuse?
Meanwhile, county officials recently acknowledged that at least 32 children in L.A. County died from abuse or neglect in 2008. That set off another round of questions about what was needed to make kids safer.
“It’s awfully hard to change your thinking habits if a parent is depressed and everything is so chaotic around you,” observes Clarke. Future studies, says Garber, will look at whether treating the parent for depression makes a difference…
Those who molest family members get lighter sentences than outsiders, data show.
Minnesota Reading Corps is a statewide initiative to help every Minnesota child become a successful reader by the end of 3rd grade.
Missouri went from 90% recidivism in its juvenile justice system to about 10% over just a few years as it transitioned into a restorative justice model that treated youth as children in need of counselling instead of adult criminals (about 30% of American youth are tried in adult courts).
On May 4, 2009 a small crowd of about 100 citizens – social workers, politicians, child advocates, and children – gathered on the lawn of the Minnesota State Capitol to bring attention to Minnesota’s “Forgotten Children.” The 187 children placed in foster care each week in Minnesota all have unique circumstances but they all share one thing in common: They need advocacy in the legislature to address not only their current needs but the future issues they will face as they transition into adulthood.
Wisconsin officials have agreed to an aggressive new plan aimed at fixing persistent problems in the state-run system responsible for providing care and protection to abused and neglected children in Milwaukee. The new Corrective Action Plan is being implemented to meet key requirements of a longstanding court order secured by Children’s Rights, mandating the Milwaukee child welfare system’s reform.
Kids At Risk Action (KARA) has posted videos on our YouTube Channel of the 2008 KARA Forum held at Century College. To view more videos of our events, visit our page at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/kidsatriskaction.
Here is a sample of the 2008 Kids At Risk Action (KARA) Forum:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jCTBZmy40Y
“I want to remind people that family values do not stop at the Rio Grande River. People are coming to our country to do jobs that Americans won’t do, to be able to feed their families.” — Former President George W. Bush
I wonder what “W” would say about the 11-year-old Worthington, Minn., boy who returned home from school one day, oblivious to events that would alter his life forever, to find no one there except his 2-year-old brother, left to fend for himself.
Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter # 237 Michigan Lawsuit Uncovers Psychiatry’s Dark Secret: Psychiatric Drug-Induced Movement Disorders in Young Children by Ben Hansen – From the Spring 2007 newsletter of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology ( www.icspp.org). Last month the New York Times exposed yet another example of unethical marketing practices…
Education is the engine of progress and prosperity. No nation can achieve its potential for greatness without investing in its human capital. The extent to which children successfully negotiate the treacherous passage to adulthood depends on the earliest years of brain and emotional development. That explains why early childhood education is crucial to society.
America’s public policy regarding at-risk children is an economic and moral failure:
Learn the key issues facing abused and neglected children, what programs and policies work to improve their lives, and how you can be a better advocate for at risk children.
Periodically I speak in public and record those events in this space.
My mission in life and in this cause is moral, but my arguments begin with the practical. Public education is the real world for 90 percent of your children, and America’s. The wisest path to public education reform in our country is to deliver the children in far better shape to formal school. That is what early investment is all about. It is neither socialism…nor the creation of a “nanny state,” but rather simple decency and wisdom and what our country is about when we are at our best.
These children cannot afford high powered lobbyists to plead their case,
Eight year old boy shot and killed his father and another man…police have asked that the boy be tried as an adult.
IMPROVEMENTS:
More information on how to get involved to improve the system
Email this article • Print this article Conservative family values are a fraud David Strand Columnist Mitt Romney addressed the GOP Convention in St. Paul and said, “The liberals don’t have a clue.” The Country Club audience loved it! As proud conservative Romney preaches family values and points his finger at liberals, he has three…
In my experience as a CASA guardian ad-Litem working with children over twelve years, I have only rarely seen adequate services provided. A County Judge has provided me with the psychotropic medical prescriptions of the five and ten year old children that have passed through her courtroom in child protection
Even considering four decades of exhilarating professional life, my most powerful lesson followed retirement in 1996. This happened when I volunteered as a guardian ad-litem for Hennepin County from 1998 to 2000.
Guardians are court-appointed advocates assigned to help Juvenile Court judges decide the fate of children removed from their homes because of abuse or neglect. It is part of the Child Protection System in our state.
The hardest was to look into the eyes of these unlucky kids and realize that they had no chance for a normal life. I could only take that for two years. It was a “kick in the pants” that opened my eyes.
Our Child Protection System
Brutal Truths and Best Practices Forum at Century College
Join our focused and energetic conversation about children in need of protection and the people, programs, and policies that impact them. Have your views and questions heard.
After the panel discussion, attendees will form small working groups and helped to identify and investigate their own issues, discovering better answers, and ultimately creating an action plan, which they will share with the larger group.
“If you measure the success of our institutions by what it is they actually create versus what they were designed to create”, (the following are my words) our Child Protection system creates mentally unhealthy youth, future felons, and pregnant teenagers.
Our precious America, we are taught, is the exception to the world. No other nation can even come close. Tragically, a great many children suffer from a denial of the reality in our country.
The evidence is confirmed by new studies reported in the mainstream media. In March the Center for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of a study of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) among teenage girls. It was a shock. One in five white teens and half of African-American young women are infected with a STD. Across all groups the incidence was one of every four teens, and climbing!
Pressed by the demands of the “global war on terrorism”, theUnited States is violating an international protocol that forbids the recruitment of children under the age of 18 for military service, according to a new report released Tuesday by a major civil rights group that charged that recruitment practices target children as young as 11 years old.
The 46-page report, “Soldiers of Misfortune”, was prepared by theAmerican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for submission to the U.N. Committeeon the Rights of the Child.
If there is one thing we should know about American children that have been removed from their birth homes, it is that they have suffered extended exposure to violence and deprivation.
This is the definition of the “Imminent Harm Doctrine” which is the legal statute that allows children to be removed from their family.
Extended exposure to violence and deprivation is also the World Health Organizations definition of torture. Children are not removed from their birth parents unless the home environment has endangered the life of the child. That is the law.
Of the 50 children I have advocated for over twelve years, all had experienced severe and chronic violence and neglect. Sexual abuse of children is not uncommon. Their stories would make you cry www.invisiblechildren.org
To express wonder at why abused children develop emotional problems as they age is misleading and unfair to these children.
Last week the State of California achieved perfect synchronicity in its public policy making when it announced that criminals would be released early because the state could no longer afford to keep them incarcerated.
This news reminded me that when I began my work as a guardian ad Litem there were states predicting the need for prison expansion based on the number of failed third grade reading scores within its schools.
Instead of investing in reading for third graders (and early childhood education), California began investing in a third strike punishment model and building tens of thousands of prison beds.
A recent ACE study proved that almost 70% of the serious and violent crime committed by juveniles in Ramsey County was committed by children living in 2 to 4% of Ramsey County families.
“Defining our institutions by what they actually create instead of what they were designed to create”* would be the first step in making the changes necessary to fix our poorly understood and vastly under-resourced system.
A recent study indicates that up to 80% of children aging out of foster care are leading dysfunctional lives. A Minnesota judge has provided me the Prozac, Ritalin, and other psychotropic medication prescriptions taken by children in her courtroom (most of them under ten years old) and it points at one of the key issues thay might explain why so many youth leaving the foster care program find it hard to cope with life.
More importantly, supporting day care for disadvantaged children is the right thing to do for all Minnesota’s kids.
In a public meeting at Hamline, Rolnick lamented that this ‘no brainer’ idea is overshadowed at the Capitol by wasteful sports stadiums (and cries for lower taxes*).
More of us need to raise our voices for children if there is going to be a change in public policy toward the weakest and most vulnerable among us (children have no voice but ours in this political system).
* authors words
At that time in Minnesota there were 15 child psychiatrists in the entire state (population about 4 million) and the student to counsellor ratio in MN high schools was 900 to 1.
As a child advocate (long time guardian ad Litem) I strongly feel the need for mental health therapy for those who need it. The children I work with have been severely traumatized and need adequate attention paid to their needs.
A few weeks ago I listened to Larry Rosenstock from High Tech High in San Diego talk about his inner city high schools that send one hundred percent of their graduates onto college. It is real, it is achievable, and it is simple in how it works. Educators and students are given ample…
People respond to money. Most of us can’t grasp the long-term costs to the community of a child born into a dysfunctional family that never has the opportunity to develop the social skills necessary to lead a healthy life. The ability to learn, play well with others, and live in society is not delivered by the stork.
Because the waiting list for subsidized daycare is one year into the future for the father of the children I represent (as a county guardian ad-Litem) there is a good chance that his two small children will be taken from him by the county and adopted by someone he has never met.
It is also possible that he may not be able to visit his children if they are adopted.
On November 16th I gave two presentations at the 24th Upper Midwest Conference on Adolescents & Children In Need in Arden Hills MN;
“WALKING THE TALK FOR CHILDREN” &
“WHY SOME CHILDREN DON’T LEARN IN SCHOOL”.
And most of all, how we can become comfortable being “the voice” for At Risk Children in our communities.
I have delusions about how to be helpful to CDF for Item B.
Half of an experience like this is meeting so many smart and committed people from every corner of the country. We can learn so much by just sitting next to someone from Missouri, Chicago, or even St. Paul.
The nice lady from Missouri understood why her state was getting such terrific results from their Juvenile Justice system. She could have taught us some very important things (but she was not on the agenda).
The energy Connie brings to her mission is something to witness. There are many others just like her, who for years have worked daily to bring positive change into the lives of troubled children.
I am the Grandmother of Amy* And we are in desperate need of many new/more voice’s of everyone of the grandparents that have lost our right to be able to see our grandchildren! Either because of the other parent getting custody or just because.
I’m now hated by one of the children I was best friends with as a guardian ad-Litem. She wants to be reconnected with her mother (which I agree with) and have her younger siblings moved back into her mother’s care (which I don’t agree with). This will be my fourth court battle with her mother…
Only ten percent of the citations issued in Hennepin County to people of color are prosecuted (90% are dismissed). 44% of African American men living in Hennepin county were arrested in 2001 (without any duplicate arrests). At least six major cities in America have Black male unemployment rates of between 40% and 50% and ex felon rates of between 50% and 60%. There are over 600,000 felons leaving prison each year in America. Minnesota ranks behind only Milwaukee in racial disparity within our courts and prisons (Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas have better records than Minnesota).
This week I was introduced to Free Arts, an organization that gives painting, dancing, singing, acting and other active Arts participation to abused and neglected children. I’ve talked with University professors about the ‘one thing’ at risk children can put passion into without fear of rejection. This is a wonderful program directed by a passionate…
Recommended parenting TechniquesTo improve Attachment The American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) recently released findings that are endorsed by the American Psychological Association regarding Reactive Attachment Disorder and attachment therapies. A task force formed by APSAC reported that there are many non-controversial interventions designed to improve attachment quality that are based on…
The following is my synopsis of the Minnesota Medical Associations March 2006 article on Child Maltreatment by Dr. David McCollum. It’s meant for medical professionals, but I found it very well written and understandable; (the article) http://www.mmaonline.net/publications/MNMed2006/March/clinical-mccollum.htm Dr. McCollum clearly articulates the relationship between childhood abuse and a lifetime of physical and mental health issues.…
Economic Security was the topic of the most recent Hamline University Dialogue ((4/20/06). It was remarkable to hear Art Rolnick (Fed Reserve Board Chairman), Chris Farrell (Chief Economics correspondent American RadioWorks), and Jenny Keil (Associate Professor of Management and Economics at Hamline) relate the economic security of our nation to the education and well being…
From a legal perspective the most under-protected persons in America are sexually abused children.
One study indicated that 11% of judges and 51% of prosecuting attorneys admitted that they had deliberately confused the child (witness) during the proceedings.
What this means in practice, is that the nine-year old girl sitting on the stand in the courtroom is being bullied by intense and deliberately confusing cross-examination about her abuse.
Everyone at the sysmposium agreed that children are not mentally capable of undergoing adult type cross examination, but it is clear that this still happens in many cases.
Boston’s Catholic Charities to halt adoptions (Star Tribune 3.11.2006) because of the churches concern with sexuality issues. There are not nearly enough loving adoptive homes for the multitude of waiting children. Because of budget cuts, war, and some would argue, misplaced priorities, state and federal programs to help at risk children are in jeopardy all…
My family has a one-hundred year history of chronic alcoholism and some drug abuse. I have had friends and family with schizophrenia, and relatives with other serious mental health issues. Many of my friends have suffered from depression. I have attended multiple funerals for suicides that were my workmates and friends. Does it help anyone…
Mom (Carol) was in court today with her daughter (Ann) even though mom’s parental rights were terminated seven years ago. The social workers and I thought that there might be a mutual benefit for mother and daughter to reattach (supervised visits with a therapist) after all these years because Ann was such a mess and…