Dear Reader, This year, KARA provided over $10,000 in Financial Literacy enrichment grants to program participants, executed three college and community center INVISIBLE CHILDREN CAMPUS CONVERSATIONS, 23 business and community presentations, and almost finished KARA’s new book AMERICA’S CHILDREN IN 100 CHARTS in 2024. As the year comes to a close, we want to…
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CASA MN Newsletter (Guardian ad Litem News & Updates)
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This short article by Laurel Ferris in Women’s Press clearly articulates what CASA Guardians do and why children need them.
From the article;
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Dear Reader,Allowing the State board to eliminate 10,000 future volunteers (over the next 40 years) at a time when we are reporting on children murdered by their parents may be an unfixable mistake costing even more children their lives.
Rebuttals to the State MAD report from several top child advocates here;
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The tortured death of 4 year old Eric Dean in 2013 prompted the first in depth reporting on parental child murder I can remember. CASAMN gave the reporter (Brandon Stahl) an award and had him speak at our annual conference.
At that time, several children in my caseload had been almost murdered by their caregivers.
A number of my caseload kids (4,5, and 6 year old children) had suffered years of unspeakable sexual abuse and other violence. Their stories never made the paper.
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Eliminating the volunteer nature also changes the role of Guardian ad litem. Being an “outsider” provides a perspective others don’t have. It allows one to challenge the status quo and identify new opportunities. We can speak out. Eliminating volunteers, to my mind, will mean that everyone in the courtroom has a vested interest in a system that pays them to be there.”
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A Storm Is Brewing (4m) Will CASA GAL program end because of misinformation?
Let’s Go KARA (3m) Supporting Child Friendly Initiatives
Don Shelby on Child Protection (30 seconds)
When we say it’s not brain surgery it’s because a task is easy – it doesn’t demand much training or experience. There are times the phrase is meaningful and times it is painfully inappropriate. This article in the Star Tribune explains that corrections officers, human services technicians and staff in state veterans homes will not…
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Chair Parkin and MN GAL Board members:
Considering all the challenges facing the Minnesota Guardian ad Litem program, it is devastating to our state’s most vulnerable children that so much effort has been misdirected here.
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The analysis by MAD is not, in my view, sufficiently compelling in some important respects to support the board in managing this risk. While I understand from a previous board meeting I attended as well as a legislative hearing on the topic that the board has been guided in this deliberation by staff, this decision is yours alone, and you alone will be accountable for what happens in the future as a result.
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While the article from the Child Welfare Monitor by Judith Schagrin
refers to Child Protection conditions in Maryland,
it is clear the crisis exists in every state.
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We are fighting to keep the community volunteer CASA
Guardian ad Litems in the Child Protection System.
We need your written public comments here.
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To save the CASA volunteer program in MN your comments need to be heard by program management. Please review the report and the rebuttal and share your views in the link above. CASAMINNESOTA’s rebuttal to the MMB report appears below.
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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
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KARA reports on the issues of child abuse and child protection This article submitted by Baypath University Student Lauren Begin KARA Public Service Announcement (30 seconds) KARA Signature Video (4 minute) INVISIBLE CHILDREN campus programs here Mount Pleasant officials want state regulators to close Westchester County child treatment center Officials in Mount Pleasant, New York…
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SAYING GOODBYE TO 1000’S OF VOLUNTEER CHILD ADVOCATES & Community Involvement & Trust In One More Community Institution. Since 1981, thousands of community volunteers have spent thousands of hours working to better the lives of Minnesota’s at-risk children. End this program, they will disappear and no more will follow.
This will result in weakened community awareness, less community involvement and an incalculable loss of…
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Child poverty more than doubled between 2021 and 2022. Child poverty and near poverty in America was around 60% when I grow up in 1960’s. Compared to other industrialized nations we have never been a leader – always between 25th and 40th in child poverty rankings among our peers. From the 1960’s through the 1990’s, our childhood poverty rates hovered around 30% (significant multiple of the other advanced nations).
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The COVID lockdown has kept at risk children in toxic homes for long periods without access to mandated reporters or the safety they provide. The traumas suffered and behavior issues that follow severe abuse need to be addressed for these young citizens to lead normal lives.
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The push to diminish/eliminate the CASA Volunteer workforce of Hennepin County’s Guardian ad Litem Program is impacting office morale for both paid and volunteer GALS. We’ve gone from about 250 volunteers to 32 remaining under new leadership in the last five years. CASA’s supporting program, CASAMN has over 200 volunteers waiting to be GALs –…
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If beatings, rape and terrible things done to child victims in my CASA volunteer Guardian ad Litem caseload were done by me, I would be in jail today. If sex abuse of these children were involved, I would be restricted from living in certain areas of my community and notice of where I live required to…
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SAYING GOODBYE TO 1000’S OF VOLUNTEER CHILD ADVOCATES & Community Involvement & Trust In One More Community Institution. Since 1981, thousands of community volunteers have spent thousands of hours working to better the lives of Minnesota’s at-risk children. End this program, they will disappear and no more will follow.
This will result in weakened community awareness, less community involvement and an incalculable loss of…
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KARA is working to make lawmakers and policy makers see the value of community volunteer CASA guardian ad litems in Child Protective Services.
To do this, we are seeking stories from 18 & up folks that have come through child protection with the help of a volunteer CASA guardian ad litem.
You may remain anonymous.
Please contact me directly – mike@invisiblechildren.org with STORY in the subject line.
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children are dying on your watch” and calling them “callous”, saying “they do more to protect their bureaucracy than the children in their care”. Safe Passage for MN’s Children recent investigative reporting on Minnesota children murdered by their caregivers while in Child Protective Services might prompt a similar judicial response…
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The following are recent survey responses by CASAs answering the question “What community CASA volunteers bring to abused children and the Child Protection System they serve. Several spelling and grammatical changes have been made for clarity. We advocate for these children without paycheck and without allegiance to anyone or anything other than the child. We…
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The complete report can be read HERE. This post emphasises the GAL program’s effort to eliminate the CASA community volunteer Guardian ad Litems. The author made notes and corrected several minor spelling errors (notes are in parenthesis and in bold).
Hennepin County participants: Jodi Wentland; Dan Rogan; Lori Whittier; Evangeline Filosi; Patricia Zagaros; Sherry Smith; Lisa Bayley; Kwesi Booker; Michelle Lefebvre; Lori Munsterman; Fintan Moore; Lauren Kewley; Madeline Johnson; Shanese Reed; Rachelle Loewenson Stratton; Meredith Martinez: Lolita Ulloa
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The American Medical community has joined forces to declare a national emergency in children’s mental health, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Today’s declaration is an urgent call to policymakers at all levels of government — we must treat this mental health crisis like the emergency it is,” said AAP President Lee Savio Beers, MD, …
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Returning abused children into the care of criminally violent caregivers is a death sentence for many children. Speak for a child and share this information…
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Children dying at their caregiver’s hands while known to Child Protective Services
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Social media, political and community outrage
and COVID Lockdown stress are overwhelming mental health caregivers and institutions in every community – Child suicide/self-harm are rising dramatically Speak out, Share this widely
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Costs of not knowing the reality of child abuse, trauma and child protection in Minnesota are high Children are dying at the hands of caregivers while in Child Protective Services
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Metrics are the heart of the matter. Measuring the wrong things wastes money, makes failure likely and problems fester…
Tracking, recording and making available meaningful information shines a light on what’s working and failing – The opposite is continued darkness…
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How did you come to terms with your identity?
Being queer and the sexuality part wasn’t as hard for me. I always knew I liked women. The journey was then finding out who else I liked and what I didn’t like. I feel like when you first join the community, you’re not always presented with how many identities there are. I feel like a lot of people tend to come in uneducated, and I think that’s definitively how I came in. I come from a very homophobic town, so we didn’t have that many people that were out. I didn’t know much. I started identifying as queer because I’m still not sure. My gender identity took a lot longer…
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This is a book about childhood trauma, its impact on children and the impact traumatized youth are having on our communities and society. It is a guide to seeing and dealing with the most critical issues and causes of abuse, and solutions.
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From Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota today; This Peabody Award Winning video documents the critical issues that lead to the gruesome murder of 6 year old Eli Hart and dangers facing all of Minnesota’s abused and neglected children.
Hundreds of children have died while known to Child Protective Services. Some have been tortured over time. Many more children have suffered years of trauma as the institution standards and practices of CPS have deteriorated.
There are no metrics or reporting made available about children’s suffering at the hands of their caregivers or the self-harm or suicide attempts of traumatized kids in the system.
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About a third of kids in NY’s foster care identify as LGBTQ and nationally, about 24% do. 40% of homeless kids in NY City identify as LGBTQ and 42% of them had been in foster care.
This NY Times article focuses on how hard life is for them. Many of these youth and children are in foster care because their parents rejected them.
Many are homeless, depressed and leading dysfunctional lives.
Every year about 12,000 children aged 5-14 years old are admitted to psychiatric hospital units for suicidal behavior. This and all the information following are PRE COVID.
Young children who have attempted suicide are up to 6 times more likely to attempt suicide again in adolescence
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Hundreds of MN children are being abandoned by their caregivers in MN hospitals. Many are children raised in toxic homes then shuttled off into State/County foster and group homes
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I must address the article in the KARA newsletter today (last Friday) where the failure to protect these known victims is not laid at the feet of CPS.
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There is a real lack of data and transparency in CPS which makes it hard to know outcomes short of child death.
72% of of the 88 child maltreatment deaths studied (complete study below) were known to CPS. We do know that there were many reports of life changing violence, neglect and abuse but few follow ups.
During the lockdown, abused children were literally trapped at home with their abusers. This multiplied the stress on Child Protection Services as an institution and on the social workers doing their best in an impossible situation.
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Free College for ALL MN Foster Youth
First in the Nation
A Really Big Deal
COVID’s impact on children’s mental health will be felt for a very long time. Especially vulnerable are children suffering from extended exposure to violence and deprivation that lived in toxic homes without access to help during the pandemic lockdowns – Read the MedPage article here…
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Neighborhood House in St Paul is hosting
KARA’s INVISIBLE CHILDREN Necessary Conversations Exhibit
April 24-28 for April – Prevent Child Abuse Month.
Stop by the Wellstone Center Atrium and Check us out
What’s it like to be a CASA guardian ad Litem (child protection worker) unable to find safe housing and mental health services for the 14-year-old struggling foster boy in your caseload? His self-harming and violent behaviors could change if he had help to manage childhood traumas. He could go on to lead a productive life.…
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The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s Hospital Association have joined forces to declare a national emergency in children’s mental health, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Today’s declaration is an urgent call to policymakers at all levels of government — we must treat this mental health crisis like the emergency it is,” said AAP President Lee Savio Beers, MD, in a statement.
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300 years ago, an Irish Minister wrote an explosive satire that was misinterpreted by many readers of his day (printed in its entirety below). In a gruesome and widely read logical argument, Swift offered a plan that would relieve the suffering of Irish families and their youngest children…
Back in the day, these writings were the modern equivalent of you tube or a precursor to Twitter and consumed voraciously by all who could read (or read them to others).
Public policy treated poor Irish more like animals than people and Irish children were doomed to lives of crime, prostitution, and abject poverty.
Was Swift’s underlying argument that death might be preferable to children doomed to disease, crime, prostitution, & the cruelties suffered by abandoned children of his time?
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MN A.G. Keith Ellison’s response to the public outcry for punishment is normal (And that’s a shame). Our need for punishment over restorative justice is the American way. We don’t care if charging children and youth as adults brings more crime and recidivism.
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Thank you Rich Gehrman and Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota for supporting Minnesota’s 10,000 CASA (over 40 years) Community Guardian ad Litem volunteers!
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For every six-year old foster child’s successful suicide (Kendrea Johnson), there are hundreds of attempts and many hundreds of self-harming incidents in hospitals and Child Protective Services (CPS) – many if not most of these incidents are never reported.
For every child killed while in child protection (recent Safe Passage investigative study of child maltreatment deaths) there are hundreds of children starved, beaten, raped and otherwise abused that are never known outside the home
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Aaliya Goodwin. This is one of the 88 stories of children dying at the hands of their caregivers reported in the recent Safe Passage For Children investigation of child death in Minnesota. The report suggests why this tragedy is happening in our state and how we can make life safer for at risk children (in…
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The statistics below represent only 88 of the almost 200 child maltreatment deaths since 2014. We only know of child deaths that were reported in the media or had court cases filed. We will never know how….
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