Child protection systems too often expose children to continued abuse and neglect instead of keeping them safe. This article explains what that means and offers concrete “what I can do” options for any reader who wants to help at risk children in their community from sharing investigative reports with state reps, to raising awareness, inviting speakers, supporting nonprofits, and exploring direct volunteer roles in my community.
A federal judge recently told Texas child welfare officials that “children are dying on your watch” and accused them of protecting their bureaucracy instead of children. Minnesota’s own record of child fatalities from maltreatment including the catastrophic failure that led to four-year-old Eric Dean and five-year-old Kendrea Johnson and so many others: https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Safe-Passage-for-Children-Child-Fatality-Report_Year-2_2022-2023.pdf shows this is not just one state’s problem.
Child Protective Services operates with a level of secrecy that would never be accepted in schools or law enforcement. This post explains how CPS hides outcome data even as children suffer and die in state involved cases, how other nations criminalize violence against children that we routinely tolerate, and why real transparency and metrics are essential if we want to protect at risk kids instead of producing more trauma.
School principals and administrators are on the front lines of childhood trauma and healing. This chapter explains what they can do: create trauma informed school climates, implement early screening and embedded support services, reshape discipline away from zero tolerance, build robust mental health and wellness systems, engage families and community partners, and advocate for policies and funding that keep vulnerable students safe and help them heal.
Star Tribune investigations reveal how Minnesota’s Family Assessment track allowed severe child abuse to continue and sometimes end in child death. KARA unpacks what went wrong, why it matters, and how you can help protect children and support CASA guardians ad litem.
Kids At Risk Action presented a workshop at the fourth annual Youth Assembly at the United Nations in New York
Child Protective Services is one of the least understood and least transparent systems we fund, even though childhood trauma drives enormous costs in education, health care, crime, and prisons. This KARA article argues that taxpayers, children, and communities are all paying for our blind spots around CPS, shows how negative narratives and politics are pushing the system into crisis, and calls on readers to demand real data and trauma-informed reform.
What To Do For Foster and At Risk Children (a list of important things)
If you are concerned about at-risk children where you live, Check it Out!
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. Every other nation has agreed that children have basic rights to safety, health, education, voice, and protection from exploitation and extreme punishment. The U.S. has never ratified it.
Over 25 years ago the rest of the world (194 nations) decided that children have basic human rights and begin signing the International Rights of the Child Treaty. Under this document, children are to have the rights to education, safety and well being including not to be made soldiers, not to be enslaved).
America is the only nation that has not signed that agreement, largely because we still demand that southern states continue to militarize youth as young as eleven, through military schools.
After the COVID19 lockdowns are lifted, and children and teachers return to the the classroom after months of fear and isolation, wouldn’t it be wonderful if students and teachers do not have to replace the daily fear of a virus with the daily fear of violence?
What can the community do to make that happen?
How many teachers have combat training or signed up to pack a weapon when they entered the profession? Turnover in education is already a huge problem. Packing a gun is what police and soldiers do. Shooting someone takes training – shooting the right person takes extensive training. For decades now, guns have been more often used for suicide than self-defense in America. This is true also for domestic violence.
Childhood trauma and Post‑Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in war veterans look different on the surface—but biologically, they are strikingly similar. We accept that a soldier torn apart by bullets or standing next to a friend killed by a bomb will carry invisible brain injuries. Yet we still struggle to see how growing up in a violent, chaotic, or deeply neglectful home can damage a child’s brain in many of the same ways.
Kids at Risk Action, hosts Alex and Jordan explore the profound impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and how childhood trauma can affect individuals throughout their lives, much like PTSD in veterans.
This post addresses the healthcare burden children with high ACEs scores have on our communities and nation. What’s not obvious to many is that at risk children become at risk youth and at risk adults. 9-year 80% prison recidivism has been with us for over 20 years. This single statistic shines a light on the cascading and forever financial and social costs to our communities from one other American institution that is easily understood. The health care financial and social costs are more complex and harder to understand. The Cape Breton University study below brings clarity to this complex issue.
the harsh realities facing foster youth aging out of the system and the failures of Extended Foster Care (EFC) programs
Over 25 years ago the rest of the world (194 nations) decided that children have basic human rights and begin signing the International Rights of the Child Treaty. Under this document, children are to have the rights to education, safety and well being including not to be made soldiers, not to be enslaved).
America is the only nation that has not signed that agreement, largely because we still demand that southern states continue to militarize youth as young as eleven, through military schools.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are not just bad memories—they are powerful risk factors that change how a child’s brain and body develop. In this Kids at Risk Action podcast episode, hosts Alex and Jordan explore how ACEs like abuse, neglect, and domestic violence can lead to PTSD like symptoms, chronic stress, and higher risks of mental illness, addiction, and early death. They connect the dots between ACEs and the systems that are supposed to help: child protection, schools, health care, and juvenile justice. Too often, children only get attention after they are failing, acting out, or in crisis, rather than receiving trauma informed support early. This episode calls for ACEs screening, early intervention, and policies that fund prevention, resilience building, and compassionate care—so children are not punished for symptoms of trauma but helped to heal and thrive.
Most foster youth only discover years later that Social Security benefits meant for them were taken by counties to “reimburse” foster care costs, leaving them to age out with no savings, no housing deposit, and no money for school or a car. With up to one third experiencing homelessness by their mid 20s and earning far less than their peers, every dollar matters. This post explains how the so called “orphan tax” works, why the complexity argument is specious, and how existing Social Security and ABLE style accounts could be used to protect foster youths’ benefits instead of padding agency budgets.
Research across foster care, ACEs, and maltreatment shows that abused and systems‑involved children face dramatically higher risks of self‑harm and suicide. This post walks through key studies and calls for concrete changes in child welfare policy and practice to prevent avoidable deaths.
Child protection in America behaves like a complex system engineered for surveillance, not support. Poverty, racism, and weak safety nets keep generating the same tragedies. What would happen if we rebuilt it around children’s rights, prevention, and healing?
the harsh realities facing foster youth aging out of the system and the failures of Extended Foster Care (EFC) programs
free and discounted resources for foster and adopted children and families
Can a working relationship survive a fundamental disagreement about child safety? On our CASA board, a Black single mother and a white older man wrestle with whether CPS protects children or destroys families. This post explores that conflict and what it tells us about fixing a child protection system that is both racist and, at times, fatally timid.
Children and youth in foster care often have needs that are not available to be filled by the County or their caregivers. Christmas and the holiday season can be hard on families with limited resources. If you know of a foster child or foster family who would benefit from the resources on this page, send this link to them and share this page widely.
Do you have examples of resources not shown here? Send them to info@invisiblechildren.org with FOSTER RESOURCES in the subject line
Texas child neglect fatalities 2024: The Most Common Cause of Child Death in Texas Isn’t defined as Abuse. The Center for disease control defines child abuse with clarity as any act of physical, sexual, or emotional harm including neglect, done towards a minor under the age of 18 by an adult that holds a custodial or parental role (About Child Abuse and Neglect | Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention, 2024).
Help KARA Grow Awareness of Foster Advocates and Imprint News efforts to inform Minnesota Fosters Of Resources Available To Them (share this widely
The head of the Federal Administration for Children and Families (Adam Alex), is attacking LGBTQ+ Foster Families over youth gender identity. Life is hard enough for foster families and the struggling LGBTQ+ children trying to rebuild lives filled with abuse and neglect in their birth homes and a growing sense of unwelcome in our communities. Federal policies demonizing queer children gins up hatred and legitimizes fear and violence against almost ten percent of Americans.
October is Foster Youth Voice Month! This article supports Foster Advocates efforts to inform Minnesotans to grow awareness of foster specific resources and elevate Fosters in community conversations.
This article is derived from Hana Ikramuddin’s excellent Imprint News Article about Fosters not being notified of their rights – Read the Imprint article here.
Hana tells us the story of AIayna Ghost’s years in Foster Care from ages 7 to 18 and how she ran away almost every year looking for her family. From the article: In foster care, she did not learn she had an older sister until a social worker told her at age 13.
free and discounted resources for foster and adopted children and families
how foster youth are systematically failed within America’s education system. They expose how constant school changes, untreated trauma, and misdiagnoses isolate these children, often pushing them into special education, overmedication, or even the juvenile justice system
Many reading this post may not be in the job you are doing this time next year. DOGE and other Federal policy changes have determined that the work being done for at-risk children and families is either wasteful or like DEI the wrong approach to public policy. Attorney General Pam Bondi recently stated that significantly less than 20% of funding cuts will be reversed
For emergency room doctors, they are a sad and familiar sight: Children returning again and again in the grip of mental health crises
http://invisiblechildren.org/2013/07/04/mandated-reporting-or-basic-responsibility-its-absence-is-killing-wisconsin-pennsylvania-children/ Facebook Replacing Mandated Reporters for Child Abuse? Don’t Blame The Mandated Reporter (why child abuse reporting is sporadic) Fear and Firing of Mandated Reporters of Child Abuse Being A Mandated Reporter (and what it means) Reporting Maltreatment Of Children; How Minnesota Does It (State Statute – 626.556) Tolerating Child Death in Minnesota (thank you…
KARA’s
Google Ad Grants
fully funded Initiative for
CASA’s & Service Providers
To At-Risk Children
Teachers feel undervalued and overwhelmed.
Turnover his high and a number of states are using
unqualified people to fill positions.
Google Fully Funded Initiative For
CASA’s & Service Providers
Professionalism In Child Protection “professionalize” the Guardian ad Litem role vs leveraging a both paid staff and trained volunteers
A COVID WAVE? (the double whammy of 2 years of ACEs on children and community)
Thank you, Former MN Supreme Court Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz, for your comments and questions at this board meeting. Your words enlightened board members of the need for an open and objective investigation into the CASA volunteer program in the effort to provide safety and stability to Minnesota’s abused and neglected children.
CASA MN Newsletter (Guardian ad Litem News & Updates)
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 –…
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…
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!
a cruel but accurate point. Our community has a passion for safeguarding adult rights of guns and abortion.
Safe Passage for Children investigation of child death in Minnesota
Most lawmakers know what a big percentage of their budgets is going to social programs like child welfare and child protection.
Not as many understand how tax dollars they appropriate are working to solve the problems they are meant to solve.
LA & New Jersey ending prison and jails for juveniles and Colorado’s super successful juvenile restorative justice
“Mental Health Crisis + Emergency Rooms” is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s a strong piece demonstrating the huge increase in chemical restraints and ER mental health visits by children, but it misses the heart of the story.
COVID is punishing AT RISK CHILDREN at a rate and severity never seen before. How can we help them? Tracking and reporting issues of violence, trauma, neglect and abuse of children is not transparent or robust – it never has been. Few people are aware of the terrific impact trauma has on children and how…
Human Rights and the Psychotropic Medicating of Children is common in foster care and juvenile justice in the U.S. Self-harm and suicidal ideation play a roll in the early death and physical harm these children suffer.