The good news is that we have effective & inexpensive ways of making things right, subsidized daycare, crisis nurseries, & great methods of teaching coping skills & growing mental health services to make children well.Īs a citizen of a first world nation I am horrified at just how little my community knows or want to know about the 3 million children called in to child protection services each year, the pain they suffer & the damage they do.
#Bill4time david brooks full#
Until this conversation becomes common to us, the beatings, crime, and failing schools will continue (God help teachers trying to manage inner city classrooms now full of Prozac & Ritalin or the social workers of Chicago, Arizona, or LA). When a 7 year old hangs himself and leaves a note, we rail about the system but change nothing (Prozac forced on 4 & 7 year olds, who’s crazy?). When a 12 year old shoots his father we try him as an adult and throw away the key (25% of American youth are tried in adult court).
Instead, a baby is found in a dumpster and we blame the overworked social worker and ignore the third or fourth generation abused child that birthed this unfortunate baby and wait for the next horrific thing to plague our community. It is far less expensive than 40 years of institutionalization and the billions we are spending on crime & insurance trying to protect ourselves from tortured children. The Federal reserve study of a few years ago (Art Rolnick/Rob Grunewold) determined that investing in children is the best return on the dollar available for government spending. The lack of services and mental health resources have driven our institutions to where they are producing exactly that which they were designed to stop (violent, drug using criminals & preteen moms with no parenting skills). We are providing services to about half the number we were helping five years ago (due to anti-tax people and no money). Impossible Questions & Painful StatisticsĪs a long-time volunteer child protection worker, I am sensitive to just how little America talks about what is arguably the single defining reason for the decline of our schools, cities, & quality of life.ģ million children a year are reported to child protection systems.
Brooks, please continue your research & writing on this issue because very few other big time news people are & this is why our prisons are full, schools are troubled, & so many communities are becoming unlivable (Flint Michigan no longer has a police presence after 5pm – and they really need one). This explains why children in child protection suffer from PTSD at twice the rate soldiers returning from Iraq & Afghanistan do, why 2/3 of the youth in juvenile justice have mental health diagnosis (and why half of them have multiple, serious, & chronic diagnosis) & why 80% of youth aging out of foster care lead dysfunctional lives. Every child in my CASA guardian ad-Litem caseload suffered from being tortured (half of them had been sexually abused). The World Health Organization defines torture as “extended exposure to violence & deprivation”.
Thank you David for clearly articulating the core mental health issue of childhood trauma suffered by the millions of American children reported to child protection each year.
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