Tagged With "Addiction Isn't the Problem"
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‘We are just destroying these kids’: The foster children growing up inside detention centers [Washington Post]
Photo credit and caption: Heard leaves the courtroom at the Boone County Courthouse in Madison. He hopes to train to be a tattoo artist. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) Dec. 30, 2019 Though he's never been convicted of a crime, Geard Mitchell spent part of his childhood in a juvenile detention center, at times sleeping on cement floors under harsh fluorescent lights left on through the night during lockdowns. He attended high school by clicking through online courses and had “no one to...
Blog Post
‘We are just destroying these kids’: The foster children growing up inside detention centers [Washington Post]
Photo credit and caption: Heard leaves the courtroom at the Boone County Courthouse in Madison. He hopes to train to be a tattoo artist. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post) Dec. 30, 2019 Though he's never been convicted of a crime, Geard Mitchell spent part of his childhood in a juvenile detention center, at times sleeping on cement floors under harsh fluorescent lights left on through the night during lockdowns. He attended high school by clicking through online courses and had “no one to...
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WEBINAR: Fostering Equity: Creating Shared Understanding for Building Community Resilience
Struggling with how to Foster Equity Conversations in Community? Join the national partners of the Building Community Resilience Networks as we share our lessons learned in fostering equity as a strategy to prevent childhood adversity and build community resilience. Wednesday, February 26th 12pm-1:15pm Eastern More info at go.gwu.edu/EquityWebinar As a nation we have agonized over how to approach conversations on race, racism, inequity and racial justice. Too often we have opted to attempt...
Blog Post
Why Do Child Welfare Agencies Keep Demanding Poor People Raise Their Kids ‘Independently’ When No One Else Does? [youthtoday.org]
I’ve just caught up with an excellent 2014 story from ProPublica on how child welfare systems deal with parents who have mental illnesses. The story looked at two cases in which parents really did have some sort of mental illness (putting them in the same company as an estimated 43.8 million Americans in any given year). That sets the point of the story apart from another major problem in child welfare — quick-and-dirty “psych evals” that mislabel parents mentally ill largely because they...
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Re: Are Foster Care Children Excessively Medicated?
This really has been an ongoing issue for several years. I see the biggest problem here being time for appropriate assessments, time with the right people involved with the child(ren) to get adequate history, and then payment for the services of the professionals who conduct the evaluations. The current modus operandi is that anyone (even a driver) can deposit a child at a clinic for an evaluation by a psychiatrist who is given very little time. Yes, I had a 3 y.o. brought in by a driver for...
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Re: Are Foster Care Children Excessively Medicated?
Thanks to everyone who has commented so far. These posts are really helpful in understanding the dynamic of the problem when it comes to foster care youth and mental health. Are there any resources you might recommend for a social worker or clinician or even adoptive parent who is trying to deal with these issues? I know that trauma-informed training requires a lot of time and practice, but if there's a primer or background material that others might benefit from, maybe we can share it here.
Comment
Re: Senate Report Slams Public Management of Private Foster Care Industry [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
The problem of foster care programs becomes a blaming game. Who is at fault? This article explores a possible solution that speaks to the legislature's bottom line. Thank you for the post!
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Re: ACE's Informed Child Protective Services?
This is a problem area for sure. I did my residency at Riley and worked as a pedi in several places in Indiana. The child welfare system is incredibly broken because the resources alloted in Indiana are poor (and MI too). And all over the country. The case workers are not well trained or paid and all I have met are almost totally unaware of the importance of ACEs science, but getting better. I’ve talked to a few of my fellow peds classmates still in Indiana and it hasn’t changed much I am...
Comment
Re: When should a child be taken from his parents? [newyorker.com]
Thank you Alissa for sharing this gut wrenching article! My heart and soul ache reading through Mercedes life experiences as a child, daughter and mother., in addition to her heartbreaking experiences with the foster care system. We have much work to do... "The reckless destruction of American families in pursuit of the goal of protecting children is as serious a problem as the failure to protect children,” Martin Guggenheim, Sherman’s former colleague, says. “We need to understand that...
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Reports Are Down, But Schools Are Making False and Malicious Educational Neglect Reports (www.risemagazine.org)
This is from the Rise Magazine website and newsletter: Read more:
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America's child care problem is an economic problem [vox.com]
By Anna North, Vox, July 16, 2020 The nation’s largest school district, New York City, said last week that students will be physically in classrooms only part time at the most in the fall. The nation’s second-largest, Los Angeles, announced Monday that it will be remote only. Meanwhile, day care centers around the country are closing their doors, unable to balance the higher operating costs and reduced enrollment that came with the coronavirus pandemic. Experts have been warning for months...
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Rebecca Lewis Pankratz: Breaking Generational Poverty, Poverty Circles, & Poverty Programs
"A CEs Connection is the curator of incredible hope, healing and possibility. Parents are not the bad guys. Most of us are just kids with ACEs who grew up..." Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz Last Friday, @Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz joined our A Better Normal series to discuss poverty circles and programs. Rebecca is the Director of Learning Centers as Essdack, as well as a poverty consultant, and we met online, via Twitter (her handle is @pOVERty’s Edge. Rebecca is a brilliant speaker, gifted writer, and...
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A Listening Curriculum: School Radically Re-imagined in the Time of COVID-19
Symbolic of our quick-fix culture, I was recently asked to do a five-minute radio interview addressing the challenge of remote learning without the peer group dynamics of a regular classroom. The time constraint motivated me to get to the core of the education crisis precipitated by the coronavirus pandemic. Decades of developmental science research reveal that our physical and emotional health- our very sense of self- emerges in moment-to-moment interactions in our social world. The...
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Caring and Capable Kids: 51 songs playlist by Linda K. Williams
CARING AND CAPABLE KIDS 51 Songs with Resources for Social Emotional Learning Music Therapy and Developing Resilience Empathy Trauma-Informed Lens Caring and Capable Kids book INNERCHOICE Publishing https://www.innerchoicepublishing.com/book/caring-and-capable-kids/ A two-pager is attached with links, too.
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Virtual Learning Anxiety: How To Help Your Kids
Virtual work, virtual groceries; everything has turned virtual since the pandemic of 2020. People can get all their work done without having to leave the comfort of their homes. It also means that our children have to adapt to a whole new educational system; virtual learning. While virtual learning offers the feasibility of learning at home, it comes with numerous issues too. One of the commonly-experienced issues is virtual learning anxiety. Not turning off the camera, constantly staying on...
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New Report: A Vision for Creating Networks of Parent Peer Care [risemagazine.org]
Someone to Turn To: A Vision for Creating Networks of Parent Peer Care This Insights paper presents Rise’s vision for a peer network of collective care by and for parents. This fall, Rise created a parent Peer Vision Team to explore building a peer care model that can strengthen families while reducing contact with the family policing system . Nationwide and in New York City, where Rise is based, it’s crucial to broadly reorganize supports for families so that accessing resources and...
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MICHELLE DANIELS, CHARLES D. ELDRIDGE, RYAN E. JONES and the Office of Public and Indian Housing Foster Youth to Independence team [servicetoamericamedals.org]
By Samuel J. Heyman, Service to America Medals, May 2021 Each year, more than 20,000 foster children in the U.S. are sent into the world on their own when they turn 18. Within four years, nearly a quarter of them experience homelessness, often setting the stage for a lifetime of personal and financial struggle. Ryan Jones of the Department of Housing and Urban Development was struck by the urgency and depth of the problem in 2019 as he listened to former foster care youth from Ohio describe...
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Major Child Welfare Bills Pass in New York, Texas, Oregon [fosteringmediaconnections.org]
The early summer has seen a slew of high-impact state legislation on child welfare and youth justice. Last week, New York lawmakers moved several landmark bills while punting a few to next year’s legislative session. Among the biggest moves: The state will now give parents whose rights have been terminated a path to court-ordered contact with their children, even those who have been adopted from foster care. Children below the age of 12 can no longer be arrested and processed in New York’s...
Calendar Event
"Ending Violence Against Children" Workshop
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The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) Reauthorization (PCAA)
This resource from Prevent Child Abuse America (PCAA) highlights the status of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) reauthorization by Congress. PCA America supports a strong and comprehensive reauthorization bill that includes significantly higher funding levels, increases transparency and accountability in the program, increases the focus on primary prevention and family support services, and promotes race equity. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) is...
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How can child protection agencies identify and support youth involved in or at risk of commercial child sexual exploitation? (casey.org)
The second largest criminal industry worldwide (second only to drug dealing and tied with the illegal arms industry), human trafficking is the fastest growing of all criminal enterprises. The commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is one form of human trafficking, affecting thousands of children and youth in the United States every year. (Exact numbers are difficult to estimate, given the clandestine nature of the crime.) Although CSEC historically has been under the purview of...
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The Carceral Logic of the Family Policing System (upendmovement.org)
By Emma Peyton Williams, upEND Contributor, November 17, 2021 By including the family policing system in their book Prison by Any Other Name , Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law link the punitive nature of the prison system to “the current punitive model for social services.” The similarities that Schenwar and Law note, such as each system’s focus on coercing compliance as opposed to changing material realities and the disproportionate impact of each system on people of color, particularly Black...
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In child welfare, if the solution is money, the problem is poverty [youthtoday.org]
By Richard Wexler, Youth Today, March 3, 2022 In the beginning, the builders of what would become a system of massive intrusion into families , and, ultimately, the separation of millions of children from their parents, all in the name of “child welfare,” insisted that poverty had nothing at all to do with what they labeled “child abuse” and “child neglect.” “Child abuse crosses class lines” was the mantra in the 1970s and 1980s. In the effort to pass the federal Child Abuse Prevention and...
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The new 988 crisis number is about to launch. Here's what to know. [NPR.org]
Jenny Kane/AP By Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR.org Starting July 16, people in mental health crisis will have a new way to reach out for help. Instead of dialing the current 10-digit National Suicide Prevention Lifeline , they can simply call or text the numbers 9-8-8. Modeled after 911, the new 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is designed to be a memorable and quick number that connects people who are suicidal or in any other mental health crisis to a trained mental health professional. "If you...
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Jeoff Gordon sees PACEs science, PACEs Connection playing a vital role in ‘relieving some of the most anguishing pain in our society.’
Note: PACEs Connection is in dire financial straits. We are asking for support, from you, our 57,586 members, to help cover the loss of foundation funding that was promised and did not come through. Pay and hours have been cut for our staff—most of us will be laid off for the month of December. Another grant will pick up in January, but we will still be underfunded. Since sounding the alarm this summer, we’ve raised about $26,000 . Thankfully, about 25% of new donors are making monthly...
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Civil Rights Advocates Call U.S. Child Welfare System a ‘National Problem’ [theimprint.org]
By Jeremy Loudenback, The Imprint, November 17, 2022 A sprawling report released today by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union describes civil rights issues within the child welfare system as a “national family separation crisis” that needs “immediate attention and action.” The analysis of federal and state data and dozens of interviews with parents draw attention to the harms of child welfare investigations and the disproportionate involvement of Black and Indigenous...
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Psychologist Enrique Echeburúa: ‘People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living’ (msn.com)
Enrique Echeburúa at his office, in San Sebastián, Spain. © Javier Hernandez Juantegui (EL PAÍS) To read more of Daniel Mediavilla's article, please click here. Enrique Echeburúa (San Sebastian, Spain, 72 years old), Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), says that when a suicide occurs, there are other victims beyond the deceased, and they do not receive adequate support. “The first thing [we need to do] is make it easier for the family...
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“Going Way Upstream” - Panelists at Resilient Pender County Conference report on current trauma prevention and healing efforts; look to future
Amy Read of Coastal Horizons introduces the panel following a viewing of "Resilience: The Biology of Stress, The Science of Hope", at the Pender Resiliency Task Force Mini Conference Thursday, June 8 ,at Heide Trask High School in Rocky Point. A "dream team" of subject-matter expert panelists (L-R) were Ryan Estes of Coastal Horizons, Ben David, district attorney for Pender and New Hanover counties, Judge J. H. Corpening, district court judge for New Hanover and Pender counties, Taylor...
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A Balanced View on Mandated Reporting versus Family Supporting
Viewpoint July 31, 2023 Seeking a Balanced View of Child Protective Services Howard Dubowitz, MD, MS 1 ; Richard P. Barth, PhD, MSW 1 Author Affiliations Article Information JAMA Pediatr. 2023;177(10):991-992. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.2578 A s professionals working closely with child protective services (CPS) for many years, we are well aware of its shortcomings, particularly undertrained and overwhelmed staff who may inadequately protect children and serve families as mandated by...