Last week the U of M’s Center for the Advanced Study of Child Welfare presented a proposal for a Child Welfare Training Academy to the Legislative Child Protection Task Force.
Minnesota children deserve a safe childhood that requires social workers have manageable caseloads and sufficient resources. All Adults Are The Protectors of All Children
From Safe Passage For Children of MInnesota
Tracking the safety of Minnesota Children and caring about how child abuse is dealt with in our community is a big deal. Thank you Safe Passage for Children of MN for staying on top of the statistics of child abuse and watchful eye on the providers. Who’s Minding the Store for abused and neglected Minnesota children?
It’s easy for people working with abused and neglected children to become cynical when they discover that five and ten year old state ward children are forced onto Prozac like drugs instead of receiving mental health care that would make them whole. It’s painful to be in the moment with a child that has suffered…
Sad as it may be, lawsuits might be the most effective tool available for abused and neglected children to get the services they need from the state. Today’s message from Safe Passage for children of Minnesota about the AFSCME union lawsuit (below) is one of several game changing service provider suits that I have witnessed. The recent suit threatened by MN sheriffs worked to the advantage of at risk youth as it opened up the conversation around the lack of mental health services in this state (and most other states). The AFSCME suit points out how unfair it is to load up case after case on workers doing an almost impossible job and them blaming them when things go badly for a child (it always seems to be the social workers fault when a terrible child story hits the paper.
Legislators have all they can do to answer the people they have yelling at them (business interests, sports fans and transportation enthusiasts among them)
Abused children don’t have a say in the matter and things continue to degrade in in their young lives until some adult somewhere does something. Sue the pants off of em (my grandmother used to say and now I see why.
Safe Passage For Children of Minnesota article;
If you live and Minnesota and are willing to make time for one trip a year to the Capital in St Paul to speak for a child, there is nothing more meaningful that you could do for at risk children than volunteer with Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota. The appointment with your state legislator/s is arranged by Safe Passage for Children and you are provided a brief outline of the key issues facing abused children for you to share with your legislator.
Meeting time is seldom over 15 minutes but that will be enough time for you to show commitment to children and share the most critical information available with someone who can make a difference in the lives of the children you are advocating for.
Your state legislators actually do listen to you and they care what you have to say. Without your 15 minutes of child advocacy, legislators have little insights into the issues facing abused and neglected children. After all, children have no voice in the homes they are raised in, the media or government (they can’t vote).
Thank you Safe Passage for another powerful day on the hill
All Adults Are the Protectors of All Children
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 car with three wheels is not 75% as good as one with four. There is a minimum set of features without which a car won’t move at all.
This principle applies to child welfare because elected officials have frequently given this program much less than managers request, and assumed they somehow will make things work. But if the system has, for example, adequate staffing but poor training, or lacks a quality assurance program, it is like a 3-wheeled car. It simply won’t run.
Minnesota has an historic opportunity to rebuild its child welfare program. To accomplish this the legislature must step up to approve the $50 million that the Governor has put in his budget, so state and county managers have the tools they need to do the job.
Follow Governor Dayton’s Budget and Child Protection Task Force News at Safe Passage for Children of MN links below;
Performance Mode
Work Group Meetings Update
Governor Dayton’s Child Protection Budget
Report on Governor’s Task Force and Work Group Meetings (Jan 14)
While I’m optimistic that these concerned people are working on improving services and strategies for abused and neglected children of Minnesota, it is painful to read the continuing sad news being reported about overwhelmed social workers, class action lawsuits, inadequate safeguards, and growing caseloads. It frightens me to think about how much (or how little) can be changed by one task force in one year within a system that handles sixty thousand children annually on a limited budget and imperfect systems. What happens next year?
If we valued children or even just understood the economic impact of under-served abused and neglected children passing through our schools, communities, courts, and in the end, juvenile and criminal justice systems, things would be different. Basic math proves the extraordinary costs to communities of failed schools and children unable to graduate on a trajectory to dysfunctional lifestyles and another generation of troubled families with more abuse and neglect.
Early childhood programs are a great investment in our communities and our children. Both the kids and our communities deserve better. Support the CASA guardian ad-Litems in your community & give children a voice.