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Sep32012

Everything Seems To Be Wrong With Them; The Other America

Adoption, Foster and Kinship Care, All Posts from Kids at Risk Action

It is a very rare child that can walk from traumatic abuse into a classroom and just “be normal”. The biology of trauma means physiological change happens. Before a human being can proceed to the next level of growth, like sitting for 8 hours a day in a classroom & passively soaking in lesson after lesson while interacting normally with other children, adults, and figures of authority, real healing needs to happen.

I have seen very competent extremely committed foster and adoptive parents come unglued when faced with the insanity shown by 5, 7, and 9 year olds who have been tortured. The World Health Organization defines torture as “extended exposure to violence and deprivation”.

All of the 50 children I worked with as a CASA volunteer had “extended exposure to violence and deprivation” (about half of them had been sexually abused, some as young as 2).

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Aug312012

Indiana’s At Risk Children & Governor Mitch Daniels;

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - US Based

efforts of a governor currying political favor at the cost of poor young lives.
Mitch Daniels needs to be identified for his personal policies ruining young lives; these policies are at the same time costing the state more money than useful and promising policies would.
By eliminating funds guaranteed to families adopting special needs children, he put the state in the precarious position of defending lawsuits and made the adopting of special needs children a giant problem in the years to come (who will adopt Indiana’s special needs children next year?)
These are recent Indiana child protection headlines for the State Of Indiana;

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Aug302012

Get The Word Out For Invisible Children

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, KARA News and Events

Click on this link to request that libraries carry KARA’s INVISIBLE CHILDREN book & raise awareness for at risk children http://www.hclib.org/pub/search/suggestionforpurchase.cfm

Title; Invisible Children Author; Mike Tikkanen Publisher; Expert Publishing, Andover MN

Book & audiobook ISBN 13: 978-1-931945-34-9 ebook ISBN 978-0-9825912-7-7

PRICE; $16.95 (book), $24.95 (audiobook), $2.99 (ebook) FORMAT; BOOK, AUDIOBOOK, & EBOOK

http://www.hclib.org/pub/search/suggestionforpurchase.cfm

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Aug272012

August 27, 2012 CASA “Speaking From the Heart” Recognition Dinner Press Release:

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, KARA News and Events

Being the one constant in the lives of abused and neglected children has its obvious rewards but the words of a recipient conveys the meaning in one child’s life. Says Melissa, “My CASA volunteer was a positive constant in my life…I thank her for showing me that my biological mother may have taken away my childhood, but I am in control of what I will do the rest of my life.” And the meaning it holds for volunteers? Susan, a CASA advocate since 1994, puts it succinctly. “…It has been and remains one of the most rewarding and meaningful experiences in my life.”

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Aug192012

School Starts Soon Be Glad It Does; Uneducated Citizens Value Football, Beer, & Reality Shows Above Safe Streets, Healthy Children, or a Functioning Democracy

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Day Care and Education

The foundation of democracy is an educated citizenry; not an incarcerated citizenry – the U.S. has 5% of the world’s population & 25% of the world’s prison population (Minneapolis MN arrested 44% of its adult black men in 2001, no duplicate arrests).

Politicians making political hay by berating teachers for failing schools instead of identifying and solving the problems should be forced into a course on what the student body looks like today and required to make sensible statements about programs and solutions that might work.

What we do to our children they will do to our society (Pliny 2500 years ago – explain this to your neighbors)

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Aug162012

National Grandparents Day September 9th & A Great Day To Recognize All Grandparent Caregivers

Adoption, Foster and Kinship Care, All Posts from Kids at Risk Action

From my guardian ad-Litem experience a few years ago, I want to thank the single grandmother who adopted 4 of her grandchildren (one a quadripalegic six year old) and all the other hard working committed kinship caregivers that have stepped forward to make life better for their children’s children when the troubled family could not be kept together. In my case, this sweet lady explained that when the youngest child was 18, grandma would be 88.

What courage, love, and commitment

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Aug142012

Destroying Child Protection Records In Iowa, A Better Iowa For Children?

All Posts from Kids at Risk Action, Reporting and News - US Based

On several occasions in my guardian ad-Litem work I was unable to bring charges against very dangerous child abusers and I observed their continued violent and sexual abuse of children over many years (I would venture one of these men is still having sex with very young children 16 years later).

Both the judge & my supervisor explained to me that in these cases, the choice was to remove the child or live through watching a child disintegrate on the witness stand and remain in the home with the perpetrator.

In Iowa’s case in the above article, the counties are out of funding and sending children back home to serious perpetrators of child abuse by simply erasing past histories. Every state does it, some are awful (Kentucky)

If there are no records, no one is accountable when terrible things happen to children.

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