Repeated childhood trauma does cruel things to children. Things that never go away. Those things (behaviors/thoughts/self-harm/suicide) can be managed with help. Without help, depression, pain and sadness often become overwhelming.
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.
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
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
Free College for ALL MN Foster Youth
First in the Nation
A Really Big Deal
National Adoption Month
One out of 25 U.S. families have an adopted child. Half of the 135,000 adoptions are from the foster care system. There are over 100,000 eligible children waiting to be adopted.
From the Washington Post yesterday, most foster care children on antipsychoctic drugs get them for far too long and without medical justification. 2/3 of the nearly 700 claims studied raised high-risk “quality of care” issues. As a long time CASA volunteer guardian ad-Litem, many of my case kids were on multiple drugs simultaneously and many of them hated being forced to use them. Some kids threw the drugs away.
In Minneapolis, I would like to know (there should be more transparency) if six year old Kendrea Johnson’s suicide by hanging involved psychotropic medications. She was a very troubled foster child, in therapy and had talked about homicide and suicide. When Jeff Weise killed himself, his grandfather and 14 others he had talked about suicide and homicide and was taking Prozac.
7 year old foster child Gabriel Myers hung himself and left a note about how he hated Prozac. KARA’s video interviews include families, a City Councilman, and other professionals talking about antipsychotic medications, very young children and suicide. This subject needs our attention now. It is cruel punishment for a child suffering from the traumas of abuse and removal from a birth home to be dealt with.
There are 3 children’s hospitals in the metro area and NO children’s mental health hospitals and there are 800 to 1000 emergency psychiatric visits at HCMC every month (many of them children).
This conversation is overdue.
What we don’t know cannot be dealt with and will not be improved. Let’s stop the next awful six year old suicide.
KARA’s Last minute gifting ideas!
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Thank you for your attention to the issues of abused and neglected children.
The KARA Team.
For most of us in Child Protective Services, KARE 11 / Lauren Leamanczyk’s investigative reporting on the absence of facilities for troubled foster and adopted State Ward children is a recurring nightmare.
Repurposing Federal Foster Care dollars have become a “revenue stream” for counties because taking foster child money goes “unnoticed” (from the article). In a perfect world, a County person would raise hell about repurposing foster child dollars to adults (but they don’t because they could lose their job). There is little reporting of and no transparency in the Child Protection System.
When I met her, I saw a beautiful, quiet and curious little girl. I was Isabella’s (not her real name) first teacher and wish to remain anonymous.
After 7 full years of abuse and neglect she entered my special ed classroom in Arizona…
This Thanksgiving, about 6 million American children are being raised by their grandparents (double what it was in 1970). Almost half of these grandparents have economic or social service needs for themselves and their grandchildren that are unmet.
It is estimated that for every child in foster care with relatives, there are 20 living outside of care with relatives (usually grandparents).
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
Growing Up Foster, ‘The foster care system is broken’
There are an estimated 12,000 foster children in Minnesota, more than 8,000 of whom live in foster homes,
For decades, Evangelical Christians and the Catholic Church have led the charge disenfranchising Gay couples from adopting or fostering America’s most vulnerable children
Foster Care Reporting Post COVID
How are the children living in foster care doing in your state?
This Star Tribune article by Neal St. Anthony points to a threat to the community volunteer Guardian Ad Litem program in this time of institutional stress.
For decades foster families have found most states unwilling to cover the costs of caring for the poor kids placed in care because of abuse and neglect.
In about half the States, kennelling/dog boarding pays more dollars than fostering a child. Dogs don’t need diapers or the near constant attention a troubled youth from Child Protective services does.
People food is also more expensive than dog food. Dogs don’t need shoes or shirts or money for “things” that children need and do.
Happy GrandParent’s Day (volunteering, kinship & raising a grandchild)
School is about to start for students across the state. For many of our Foster leaders, the classroom was a place of refuge, where, unlike their time in foster care, they had agency and connections. Over 80% of high school Fosters want to continue with post-secondary education, but that dream was financially out-of-reach for…
The Covid-19 pandemic is keeping children locked in toxic homes in Minnesota -Too many fostered youth are aging out of care – We need more forever families for our fostered youth today.
Minnesota’s Free Foster Care College (starting fall of 2022).
Here are recent positive developments in support of free & low cost college for foster and adopted youth;
Nineteen states have at least one Statewide student aid Promise Program
Federal programs for foster/adopted youth in all states
The CASA volunteer guardian ad litem program provides a voice for a frightened child in the child protection system. Children removed from their homes become Wards of the State. Through the eyes of a child being in child protection is like being a cog in the wheel of a big machine. Delivered from one provider to another, many foster children them have multiple foster homes because of unaddressed (under-addressed) mental health and behavior problems.
Foster Child Sites That Give & Need Help
National Adoption Month
One out of 25 U.S. families have an adopted child. Half of the 135,000 adoptions are from the foster care system. There are over 100,000 eligible children waiting to be adopted.
Does medicating Foster Children without therapy cause more problems than it solves?
Foster Child Sites That Give & Need Help
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?
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.
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.
Youth who ‘aged out’ of foster care urged to return
New funding will provide $964 or more per month to eligible youth
No states have enough qualified foster homes to care for the children that need a loving family.
This website gives the most insightful description of foster care in America that I have come upon.
There’s so much to know about foster care and adoption and we really should be much more aware, kind and generous to the dedicated families that step up to help heal our nation’s abused and neglected children.
Ethan was 17 years old when I met him. Again, what I know of his story is limited, but the ugliest truths of it seemed to jump off the page and into my brain as I read his file to prepare for our interview. At his first foster care placement, he was sexually and physically abused by his foster father who had an alcohol problem. His foster mother was aware of the abuse going on, but because she was a victim of the domestic violence herself, was unable to stand up for the children in her home. Whether Ethan was removed from this placement (I refuse to refer to it as a “home” given the state of things) before or after this information came to light, is unbeknownst to me.
The first article in this series is a CASEY Foundation Q&A
about recruiting American Indian Foster Parents in Oklahoma
and fixing the State’s struggling child welfare system.
All states are struggling to find safe homes for State Ward children
This conversation is important to all communities everywhere
There are a lot of injuries, a lot of abuse. The most significant thing is the psychological death of so many of these kids. Kids are being destroyed every day, destroyed by a government-funded system set out to help them.
Decades of CASA guardian ad Litem work for the County have made clear the screaming need State Ward children have for loving families and the lack we have of them. Especially older State Wards. This article is about LGBT adoptions and critical issues facing foster children and the families seeking to adopt them.
It really is front page news that children at this institution were allowed to bang their heads against walls until they had concussions, facial injuries and head trauma. These young troubled children had sex on the facility grounds, forced sex and …
After a 9 day trial, foster mom Melissa Sondrol was convicted of of assaulting her infant state ward child, breaking multiple bones and withholding medical information from providers. The court was not allowed to hear her prior histories of abuse. This infant has suffered for years in MN and will live a life very different from other children due to the traumas visited upon him as a foster child – and the things that happened to him prior to entering child protection.
Stories about the shortage of foster care providers, lack of training and resources and transparency within the system are not uncommon – remember, we only read about the very worst cases – the sadness in foster care goes much deeper.
These recent stories, statistics & videos represent the state of foster care in America today and what it is like for a child to be a Ward of the State in your State;
The State of Minnesota forcibly closed the privatized group home at St Cloud for repeated violations including head banging that caused concussions & sex in front of staff.
May had her first child while living as a state ward in a group home when she was 16 and her second child when she was 18 before aging out of foster care.
Her mother was 17 when May was born.
Her grandmother was even younger when May’s mother was born. How old will her daughter be when she has her first baby?
Abused children suffer traumas that last forever and leave a child feeling devoid of love with an emotional void that cannot be filled by social workers, teachers or kind foster parents.
All girls want love in their life. A baby is love. The difference between that poor child and a preteen mom with no parenting skills, a drug problem and a violent boyfriend is about 8 years.
Not just anyone can manage adoption or fostering of children that have been tortured by their caregivers*.
Years of child protection work have proven to me that gay couples are not only wonderful parent choices for abandoned children, but that they may be the very best choice.
As outcasts themselves, the GLBT community knows what frightened and alone means to a child and can relate to fear and anxiety of being different in a harsh environment.
Abused children carry their traumas with them and have mental health issues and behaviors that are often uncontrollable, violent and dangerous to themselves and others.
It takes special people to raise traumatized children.
So when the Church or the State refuse gay couples the right to adopt it eliminates an already inadequate pool of foster/adoption families and leaves abandoned children even more alone and frightened at a time they most need a loving home and family. This is a special kind of cruelty and deserves to be outed. Share this widely.
Group home caters to LGBT foster children
Cronkite News
Redmond said she wanted to provide a real home for LGBT foster children and her group home was immediately at capacity. They usually go on …
Flag as irrelevant
Adopted children ‘barely surviving’ in high-pressure schools
The Guardian
Adopted children who have suffered traumatic early experiences are “barely surviving” in the current high-pressure school environment and need …
Flag as irrelevant
Every state is struggling to find forever homes for traumatized state ward children.
Aging out of foster care is painful (Misha’s video)
Here are 300 recent stories and articles about the fate of America’s state ward children;
All Adults Are The Protectors of All Children
Abused and neglected State Ward children have already suffered enough when they enter foster care.
To be removed from a birth home by a judge means that the child’s life has been in imminent danger of serious harm. Most of the children I’ve worked with as a volunteer CASA guardian ad Litem have stories that still make me shudder (some) from twenty years ago.
Brandon Stahl’s article in today’s Star Tribune is one of those stories.
the impossible dilemma faced by child protection workers, judges and parents when a child abuse claim is made. What shouldn’t happen and what should happen for the safety of a child and the integrity of the institution of child protection.
Repercussions of a child abuse report last forever (what’s it like for the child to hear the specific abuse charges brought against you), parents sometimes not allowed to say goodbye, what is imminent danger and how long before you get a hearing (in some communities a year is common).
Yesterday at the State Capital in St Paul, Black Lives matter rallied outside for fair treatment by the police and inside (where I was) at the rotunda for fair treatment in child protection for black families and children.
Child protection is viewed by many in the community as a finance driven machine making life miserable for families and ruining the lives of their children.
Far too many group homes and foster care givers fall far short of providing a safe haven for traumatized children and state ward children are often;
* forced to take psychotropic medications without adequate mental health services
* abused while in child protective services
From reporting to discharge, the over representation of Black children in the child protection system cannot be overstated.
Nationally,
37% of children are reported to child protection by the time they are 18 unless they are black, when the number jumps to 54%.
Black families are 4 times more likely to be subjects of a child protection investigation & 5 time more likely to experience a child protection report than white families.
Black children are 5.3 times more likely to be placed in foster homes than white children.
After 20+ years as a white volunteer CASA guardian ad litem, I know that the system leaves few people involved with it satisfied and I very much see why black families think the system is a money driven machine.
Not having a child protection system would be unethical and deadly for children. Our best hope is to make the changes that are critical to building a fair and effective system that breaks the cycle of generational child abuse.
Communities that fail to support young mothers and their children will not have schools performing at acceptable reading, math or graduation rates and they will continue to suffer high crime and incarceration rates. The U.S. criminal justice system has approached a near 80% recidivism rate within the prison system.
To this end, Kids At Risk Action strongly supports the efforts of Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota
www.safepassagemn.com and the CASA guardian ad litem volunteer program www.casamn.org
A recent conversation with a metro police chief opened my eyes to how failing to provide resources to officers dealing with troubled youth makes policing much harder— the results much less positive.
The chief was clear about his commitment to (and understanding of) best practices in dealing with at-risk youth. He has participated in multiple community programs that work for seriously troubled kids. He radiates his genuine desire to make policing a solution for kids and not another link in the path to prison. He has helped launch youth skill-building options and other positive approaches law enforcement can employ to meet the ever-growing need of solutions for at-risk kids.
Without these tools, many of these children become longtime state wards while making our city streets uncomfortable and unsafe, filling jails and prisons instead of classrooms and jobs.
Here’s the reality: politics and a public’s desire to punish can exceed its desire to understand and to heal.
This is a bitter pill for a concerned police chief always hoping for better outcomes. Without quality alternatives available, officers are forced to be just one more link in the chain, dragging juveniles into the criminal justice system and a dysfunctional life.
This article by Safe Passage for Children about the need to re-engineer child protection reporting so that social workers can concentrate on the child and not data entry could be an important first step in modernizing a very troubled institution.
As a longtime volunteer CASA guardian ad litem, it hurts me that social workers with extraordinary caseloads are expected to work miracles with traumatized children and abusive families without the right resources or training in a system that can’t (or won’t) track results and make them public.
If the public knew how well or poorly children and families were responding to the institutional efforts of child protection workers, they could tell their legislators who then could support the people, programs and policies necessary for improving the lives of millions of American children.
This short TED talk hits the nail on the head
All Adults are the Protectors of All Children
This article by Safe Passage for Children explains how 5 of the the 18 MN children killed by their caregivers in the last 18 months were known to local law enforcement but apparently not to child protection services (and what needs to change to fix that).
In my own experience, a seven year old girl was prostituted for years during which the police had been to the house 49 times and only removed the child on the last call because the little girl tried to kill her sister in the presence of the police.