Minnesota Child Abuse + Child Protection (fall 2021)
These articles about child abuse and child protection
have been gathered in Minnesota over the last 60 days
These articles about child abuse and child protection
have been gathered in Minnesota over the last 60 days
Doggy day care is at least as costly (on average $50/day) than child care (on average $45/day) should make us think a little harder about how we value children in America. Kinship care subsidies in some states are below $10/day.
What’s it like to be a grandparent caring for a very troubled teenage grandchild living on social security?
This had to have been one of the most detailed Childline referrals the county had ever seen, not to mention Sally had a wonderful, dedicated psychiatrist. As the time went by, the treatment team eagerly awaited the results of her abuse referral, as she had won over the hearts of all the hospital staff and we all wanted to see her safe and free from harm.
The referral came back as unfounded.
Due to her intellectual and neurodevelopmental disabilities, she was deemed in-credible.
COVID restrictions have locked many more students into toxic homes and made it much harder for teachers to have the relationships necessary to have meaningful conversations and provide help to end the abuse.For many children being able to attend school physically is their only reprieve from an abusive home life and only chance to confide in an adult that can provide a path to safety.
Friends of KARA,
PLEASE
Use the Kids At Risk Action
resource library
to find help for child protection and wellbeing issues.
What is central in this discussion is the gravitational pull that abandoned children feel to connect with family and the importance of kinship care in this in the equation for each child placement.
Medicine is changing – and it needs to.
Read about KARA’s pilot Portages program to provide 100 youth
with a powerful new mental health resource (share this widely)
COVID is Hammering Children’s Mental Health
These charts show steadily rising trends over the ten year period before COVID. The data pointing to youth planning suicide in the past year is very serious (2019).
This is the longest and most powerful and articulate suicide note I’ve ever read and it has great meaning to me for its power to relate these two incomprehensible sorrows (abuse & suicide).
Suicide is now the 2nd leading cause of death among 10 to 24 year olds. Over 1 million children under 6 are prescribed psychiatric drugs in America today.
Kids At Risk Action is excited to launch our financial literacy groups and grant program in Minnesota! The financial literacy peer group program is a resource to learn, discuss, get help and answers to personal questions. It’s a resource for better answers and personal tools for avoiding money mistakes and growing financial wellbeing. KARA’s facilitated…
Recent Child Self-Harm & Suicide (state reporting summer 2021)
Safe Passage for Children has followed up on the task force convened after the colossal failure of child protective services responsible for the death of Eric Dean and found that some of it’s recommendations were being ignored. This is a powerful piece
For abused children, there have been no classrooms to escape to and many mandated reporters have been unable to visit children to hear their stories and see their bruises.
This must feel like a war to children living in toxic homes.
The United Nation’s-Secretary General Antonio Guterres has warned that being confined with abusive partners during the pandemic has led to a “horrifying global surge in domestic abuse”. This well organized domestic violence resource guide with hotlines and practical advice …
Mandated Reporters genuinely fear for their safety and reputation and regularly fail to report (or, “see”) horrific child abuse to avoid potential damage to themselves.
Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota has delivered hard news on what appear to be terrible practices guiding child protection in our community.
Disabled children are 3 to 10 times more likely to be abused than children without disabilities.
Of all the things not working in America today, our punishment model is running smoothly.
It’s creating exactly what some of us must want; crime, violence, teen and preteen moms, extraordinary social and financial costs and a reputation for punishing the most vulnerable and damaged among us.
The inability to read almost ensures a child’s failure in school and in life. School failure, feelings of worthlessness, depression and self-hate lead to giving up and the terrible choices left to children that have no hope.
These recent articles reflect the stories of America’s at risk children and youth.
If we don’t know the issues, there doesn’t seem to be a problem.
If we don’t see a problem there is no need for a solution.
Their stories are real.
Find their story in your state.
ACE research shows a strong historical pattern of criminality in families of child delinquents. Using Cohen’s estimates, we calculate the multi-generational “multiplier effect” to be between $3.4 and $11.5 million. In these families, criminality is likely to grow exponentially.
over time, institutions cling to self-destructive habits and fight tooth and nail to keep them. Child protective services is not different
Growing up gay is a trauma to start with. Being anxious and feeling alone and different is at the heart of the abuse suffered by both. The traumas of growing up gay and growing up abused are similar.
KARA advocates for the people, policies and programs that improve the lives of abused and neglected children. KARA Signature Video (4 minute) For years FREE BIKES FOR KIDS MN has given away tons of bikes each summer. This year they have put out a call for volunteers to help them make it happen. CLICK here…
Youth are two to three time more likely to confess to crimes they did not commit than adults.
Police interrogations using fabricated statements are most likely why. Kids are more intimidated by law enforcement than adults and they break down faster.
There’s just no upside in sending youth to jail. Incarcerating them for crimes they did not commit is a sign of a dysfunctional system. A system that creates what it was designed to stop.
Today, the chronic high stress of the COVID lockdown is growing anxiety, depression and behavioral problems everywhere, but especially in the homes of at risk children.
The severity of the mental health issues hammering traumatized children suffering from the abuse, neglect and traumas of an entire year of COVID lockdown without respite will become apparent to all of us soon.
“Through his work with Safe Passage, Richard has brought transparency and accountability to the Minnesota child welfare system,”
CHILD ABUSE & CHILD PROTECTION IN YOUR STATE
America has long failed to understand and address the underlying issues that drive behaviors of traumatized children. Many end up suspended, expelled or in juvenile justice. Teen and preteen pregnancies are significantly more common among them than with their peers also.
What the jury and others may not have known before the life sentence is that by the age of 14 Miller attempted suicide four times. The first time he tried to kill himself was at the age of six.
Due to experiencing abuse by his stepfather and his mother being a drug addict and alcoholic. The victim was actually his mother’s drug dealer at the time.
In 2020, he child and teen gun death rate in the U.S. was more than 3 times higher than that in Turkey, the country with the next highest rate; 11 times higher than in Israel; 19 times higher than in Switzerland and 85 times higher than in the United Kingdom
his CASEY Foundation survey shows the population of Black youth in juvenile detention on Feb. 1, 2021, reached a COVID pandemic high, while that of white youth was the second lowest recorded in more than a year.
Youth who ‘aged out’ of foster care urged to return
New funding will provide $964 or more per month to eligible youth
KARA’s team is collecting information from teachers, law enforcement, social workers, foster / adoptive parents, university students, adult survivors and traumatized youth to identify and address the causes of child abuse
What’s it like for the social worker or guardian ad Litem knowing that the child they are talking to online is living in a toxic home of violence, child abuse and drugs?
America’s militarized police force has become a front line mental health responder in communities suffering from the traumas of job loss, poverty, pandemic anxiety and sickness.
This is likely to result in more George Floyd type killings, more racial outrage and the violence that comes with it.
What is the equation for a healthy human being or a healthy community? If there is an equation, the wrath of COVID is becoming a huge negative central to the calculation.
Where does your state rank in protecting children & what can you do to make improvements. These statistics tell the stories of our best and worst states around the nation
Success Stories & Failure (unassigned child abuse cases)
We all like a happy ending. Especially when kids are involved.
Children living through the lockdown have more trauma and abuse. They will need help healing and to learn new skills to succeed in school & in the community – become a voice for children
Today’s Star Tribune article by Erin Golden should put the shivers into all of us for several reasons.
COVID collateral damage; Teachers Turning to Other Careers shines a light on the punishing effects of ACES on education in our state…
Nicholas Christof’s article in the NYTimes today points a finger at “pro-family” people “preserving” child poverty in America.
Lest you believe this a stretch, America stands out as the country with the highest child poverty rate and one of the lowest levels of social expenditure. This has been true for many years.
This means food insecurity for five year olds, and the statistical probability that homeless ten year olds are three times more likely to be sexually abused than other children.
There is a heartlessness behind the politics of separating immigrant babies from their mother (over 5000) and not returning those children to their birth parents (over 1000 still are separated today).
We the people now have public policies that have led to the sad reality that;
37% of children are reported to child protection agencies in this nation by their 18th birthday.
almost one third of American children will have a criminal record by their 23rd birthay
80% of youth aging out of foster care lead dysfunctional lives
I’ve come to know 50 beautiful babies and children that have had their souls murdered.
All fifty of my caseload children lived with chronic and serious beatings, rape, starvation and neglect repeatedly over a period of years.
They all died a tragic death of self.
Some watched their mothers being beaten or raped repeatedly, others were beaten, neglected or raped repeatedly. Some of them were regular drug users by 8 or 9 years old.
America’s pilgrims brought with them a punishment model that remains the heart of our civic and group think today.
COVID is coming down hard on foster children.
Pre-COVID, 80% of aged out foster children went on to lead dysfunctional lives.
Dallas News, on March third 2016, almost 6000 children needing immediate contact were not visited by CPS within the mandatory deadline for extreme cases