We Foster them with the Lack of Care 
 

Jan 13, 2006 New York...authorities missed 12 chances to save her life. 7-year-old girl found dead in a New York flat had been tied up, tortured, molested and starved for weeks before her stepfather killed her with a vicious blow to the head earlier this week. In what police are calling the worst child abuse case in a decade, Nixzmary Brown was whipped with a belt because her stepfather believed she was 'wild', reported the New York Daily News. Cesar Rodriguez, 27, a US army veteran with a past assault arrest, was charged with murder and sexual abuse, while her mother, Nixzaliz Santiago, 27, was charged with manslaughter and reckless endangerment, police said. Santiago has five other children, aged from 6 months to9 years, and Rodriguez is believed to be the father of at least two of them. A law enforcement official said the girl had been trapped in a room and bound by her ankles to a chair. Sources say that Rodriguez told police that Nixzmary was 'wild' and 'tormented' her siblings, pulling their hair and throwing food on the floor. Said a source: '(She) wasn't his kid, so he thought she was disrespectful, wild. So he'd beat her and wouldn't feed her, locked her up in a bedroom, but he left the other kids alone.' Nixzmary was kept in an empty bedroom and forced to use a cat's litter box as her bathroom. Investigators believe that her mother also took part in the beatings, said sources. When Nixzmary was found, she weighed only 16.3kg, the average weight of a 4-year-old girl. The average for a 7-year-old girl is 23kg. Santiago said that she had found her daughter unconscious on the floor at 4am on Wednesday and called for help. The girl was pronounced dead at the scene and medical officers found freash and old bruises, marks at her ankles and wrists where she had been bound and a fresh wound to her head. Investigators took away a small wooden and metal chair that had white twine, apparently used to bind the girl, dangling from it.

Brooklyn mother pleads not guilty in toddler's bathtub drowning only days before the story just above.  NEW YORK (AP) _ A mother accused of allowing her toddler to drown in a filthy bathtub while she listened to CDs in the next room pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges on Friday.   Dahquay Gillians, who was 16 months old, died in the bathtub at his family's Brooklyn apartment on Nov. 6, less than a year after he was returned to the care of his mother, Tracina Vaughn, 25. Dahquay and his 3-year-old brother, Tramel Vaughn, had been removed from the home in 2004 after Vaughn's boyfriend placed Tramel in a bathtub filled with scalding water. A child welfare report last month said an agency employee, who was suspended, may have falsified records to make it appear Vaughn was receiving services she needed to care for her children properly. Vaughn was ordered held without bail following her arraignment in state Supreme Court. A call to her attorney was not immediately returned. The drowning is part of a recent spate of deaths involving Brooklyn families known to the Administration for Children's Services. The deaths of four young children, since October, have sparked outrage, and prompted a citywide review of thousands of child welfare cases.

http://www.nccpr.org/

There are children in Florida for whom life has become marked by a daily forced march.  By day, they are confined

to an office of the state Department of Children and Families.  By night, they sleep on cots in a day care center.  The

next morning, they are herded over to a homeless shelter for a shower and a meal.[1]

            When they’re lucky, they can sleep in a foster home – but just for one night.  Then it’s back to the office the

next day.  Another night, it might be a bed in a hotel room, shared with other troubled children.[2]

            For Florida’s nomad children, there are none of the normal comforts of childhood.  There are no friends at

school because their lives are so chaotic that often they can’t go to school.  There are no foster parents to comfort

them, because Florida has too many foster children and therefore has run out of foster parents.

http://www.nccpr.org/reports/shadowsunshinestate.htm

            One year ago today, a little girl died an agonizing death and a big state agency hoped no one would pay much attention.

            In the name of “children’s rights” five-year-old Logan Marr was led down to an unfinished basement.  In the name of

putting “child protection” ahead of “family preservation” she was bound to a high chair with duct tape.  In the name of “erring

on the side of the child,” she died in that high chair.  Authorities allege that Logan’s foster mother covered the girl’s mouth with

duct tape.  The autopsy report said the cause of death was asphyxiation.

            The foster mother has been charged with manslaughter.

            The Maine Department of Human Services responded with indifference bordering on cruelty.  DHS Commissioner

Kevin Concannon would not even apologize to Logan’s mother until she pressured him to do so.  And even as evidence

mounted of systemic failures, Concannon insisted that the child welfare system “is not in crisis.”[1]
The Maine child welfare

system is in crisis.  Indeed, when it comes to holding children in foster care with strangers, there probably

 is no state with a worse record than Maine.
 
 
 

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida (CNN) -- Florida's child welfare system, still reeling from the unsolved disappearance

 of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson, faces new criticism after several underaged, foster children were found, unattended, at a

West Palm Beach motel.

The Department of Children and Families (DCF) rented two rooms last month for six girls, between the ages of 11 and 15.

A private company had been hired to supervise the girls, but a motel employee became concerned and called police afte

 seeing the girls in other people's rooms and drinking at the pool with some of the adult men staying at the motel.

Officer Nicole Maale, who responded to the call, said employees told her they smelled marijuana and suspected the girls

 might be having sex.

Maale said she contacted the DCF and learned that the children had been placed in the motel because there was a shortage

 of foster homes.

"This environment does not appear to be the safest place to house children that are waiting to be placed in foster care," she

 wrote in her report.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called the incident "outrageous" and said the state's contract with the company that was supposed to

be supervising the girls has been suspended.

Some of the girls have been placed in drug rehab centers, others are in a mental health facility and some are now in foster care.

In the two months since Rilya Wilson was discovered missing, almost 140 child welfare workers across the state have been

fired for various reasons, including failure to visit children in their care.

Wilson's grandmother said she turned the girl over to a woman she believed was a caseworker in January, 2001, and has not

seen her since.

Her case came before the courts at least six times after that, Miami-Dade District Court Judge Cindy Lederman said.

She said that Wilson's caseworker, Deborah Muskelly, filed a report in August, 2001, that said "the children (referring to

 Rilya and her sister) are being supported in a family-like setting."

TALLAHASSEE -- The NAACP and the Legislature's black caucus demanded the immediate closing of the remaining juvenile boot-camp facilities operated by the state and said Gov. Jeb Bush should launch an independent investigation into the death of a Panama City eighth-grader last month at one of the centers. A videotape of guards and the victim, 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson, has yet to be made public despite calls from lawmakers, citizens groups and the youngster's family.   "Obviously, there is something to hide," state Rep. Audrey Gibson of Jacksonville said Tuesday. "We expect some answers why our black young men are dying." The Miami Herald and CNN sued the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on Monday to obtain the release of a videotape that is said to show guards beating Anderson. Anderson died Jan. 6 at a Pensacola hospital.

Runaways say they feel left out, ignored
BY JACK KRESNAK ...FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

More than half of Michigan's runaway foster children are girls and the majority of the foster kids who run have been in

multiple homes for an average of two years -- way past the time the state should have found a permanent home for them.

Those are some of the findings of an internal study by the Michigan Family Independence Agency into the chronic problem

of missing foster children who the state calls absent without legal permission, or AWOLP.

"I think in the assessment process, an important step was to listen to the children," FIA Director Nannette Bowler said

Thursday. "That's so we're not acting on our perceptions and anecdotes, but to go right to the source and let the

children be heard."

FIA officials have met with more than 50 formerly missing foster children in four focus groups to identify problems that

led to the kids running away, the agency said.

The foster children told state officials that they often feel ignored by social service workers, lawyers and family court

 judges, and they say they are frustrated at being left out of the decision-making process about where they are to live.

Eight months after the Free Press brought the issue of hundreds of missing foster children to the public's attention, state

officials and local family courts are refining a process to locate AWOLP foster kids, assess their safety and, when called

for, place them into juvenile detention facilities because there is no other safe place for them.

Bowler said that within a few weeks, she would like to have all foster children moved out of detention.

Donna Mullins, FIA's deputy director of service delivery, said the agency reviewed 111 cases of AWOLP foster children

 and listened to dozens of formerly missing kids about why they ran.

"The kids are saying they don't feel understood, they don't feel listened to. At the focus groups, they all enjoyed talking

 about these things because someone was listening," Mullins said.

Although fewer than half of the state's 19,000 foster children are female, about 55 percent of the missing kids were girls --

in keeping with the national average, Mullins said.

Yet Michigan identifies far fewer missing foster kids as having a substance abuse problem than is shown in national averages,

leading Mullins to believe the agency is not adequately assessing foster children for substance abuse.

The not-yet-completed FIA review comes as Wayne County Family Court, which has the largest number of missing foster

children, changes the way it handles such cases.

Judge Michael Hathaway, who began a special docket on missing foster kids in October, returned this week to the Circuit

Court's criminal division. Cochief Judge Mary Bety Kelly began hearing cases on the county's missing children docket.

There are more than 100 open cases.

Kelly recently adjusted her court order to avoid automatically placing a found foster child in detention. The order says the

 FIA will decide whether the environment the child was found in is safe before considering the detention facility.

"The kids we want to detain are those kids who are found in crack houses, on the street, who have committed crimes and

 who are endangering themselves," Kelly said.

Attorney William Ladd, of the Legal Aid and Defender Association, cochairs a task force with Kelly to find alternatives to

detention for such kids. Ladd says he objects to detaining any foster child who has not been charged with a crime more

serious than a status offense such as running away.

Ladd says he blames the Free Press for provoking a reaction from the FIA and Michigan Supreme Court that led to locking

 up dozens of runaway foster kids.

"When will the press accept responsibility for creating problems, making them worse?" Ladd said Thursday.

The numbers of missing foster kids vary daily as children are found and others run away or disappear.

As of last week, according to the FIA, 318 children have been located and taken off the missing foster kids Web site that

was started in September. The state now lists 163 missing foster kids, saying 308 kids had been added to the Web site

since September.

The child rescue task force of the Wayne County Sheriff's Department's Warrant Enforcement Bureau says it had found 59

AWOLP foster kids since September, including a few not listed on the Web site. Several runaway foster girls were found

pregnant, and at least one runaway delivered a child while avoiding the FIA and the police.

One missing foster child -- 15-year-old Heather Kish of Lincoln Park -- was found killed in Monroe County on Oct. 5.

Children’s Mental Health, Substance Abuse Issues Not Identified
States Underutilize Screening Tools, Says New Study

Washington, DC May 1, 2003—States are failing to adopt the most effective policies under their Medicaid programs to

 identify mental health or substance abuse problems in children, according to a new national study published in the latest issue

of Psychiatric Services journal. The study, conducted by the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, is the first to assess

behavioral health screening tool policies in the Medicaid programs of all 50 states.

“We found that nearly half of the states do not have Medicaid policies in place to identify children with mental health and

substance abuse issues,” said Rafael Semansky, senior policy analyst at the Bazelon Center and one of the study’s authors.

“States need to do more to promote the use of effective tools if their Medicaid systems are going to identify and provide

 treatment for children who need services.”

Almost 21 percent of children and adolescents have a diagnosable behavioral disorder. Under Medicaid’s Early Periodic

Screening Detection and Treatment (EPSDT) mandate, states are required to screen all children on Medicaid for physical

and behavioral health disorders—an estimated 20 million children each year. A 1999 Surgeon General’s report recognized

that identifying disorders is the critical first step in providing mental health treatment.

In Orange County, California, an impoverished single mother can't find someone to watch her children while she works at night,

 tending a ride at a theme park. So she leaves her eight-, six-, and four-year-old children alone in the motel room that is the

 only housing they can afford. Someone calls child protective services. Instead of helping her with babysitting or daycare, they

take away the children on the spot.[4]

· In Akron, Ohio, a grandmother raises her 11-year-old granddaughter despite being confined to a wheelchair with a lung disease.

Federal budget cuts cause her to lose housekeeping help. The house becomes filthy. Instead of helping with the housekeeping,

child protective services takes the granddaughter away and throws her in foster care for a month. The child still talks about how

 lonely and terrified she was - and about the time her foster parent took her picture and put it in a photo album under the heading:

"filthy conditions."[5]

· In Los Angeles, the pipes in a grandmother's rented house burst, flooding the basement and making the home a health hazard.

Instead of helping the family find another place to live, child protective workers take away the granddaughter and place her in

 foster care. She dies there, allegedly killed by her foster mother. The child welfare agency that would spend nothing to move

the family offers $5,000 for the funeral.[6]

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National Runaway Swithchboard

Every day, between 1.3 and 2.8 million runaway and homeless youth live on the streets of America.

One out of every seven children will run away before the age of 18.
It's not easy being a kid today. The decisions and concerns confronting kids today are tougher than ever: peer pressure,

 drug/alcohol abuse, divorce/remarriage/blended families. Some face pregnancy or AIDS. Many more are experiencing

violence in the streets, at home, and in the classroom.

These dilemmas may be especially difficult when faced alone with no one to talk to. For the estimated 1.3 million kids

 living on the street, there is all too often, no one to talk to. These youth thought they could escape their problems by

running away, only to encounter even more, potentially dangerous problems.

Statistics show that:

1 in 7 kids between the ages of 10 and 18 will run away.
Some will return within a few days, others remain on the streets never to return.
1.3 million youth are on the streets each day.
The National Runaway Switchboard handles more than 100,000 phone calls each year.
For the specific statistics about who calls us, why they feel the need to run, what are their circumstances, check

out the National Runaway Switchboard Statistics page.

Bruises or welts in various stages of healing
Bruises or welts reflecting the shape of objects
Cigar or cigarette burns
Immersion burns that are sock like or glove like
Patterns burns
Rope burns
Fractures
Lacerations

SOME RAN EAST...SOME RAN WEST

CHAPTERS

by Benford E. Standley

Read I Ran West for more on the Saga that Benford Standley

has been on riding on  in the name of children and youth

"TRUTH IS LIKE A TORCH...
FROM IT WE SHIELD OUR EYES
FOR FEAR OF BEING BURNED"
in the sand

Infanticide 333

Infanticide before WW 3

In Their Own Words
Poems and words from the streets

Sins of the Fathers
 

The Throwaway Child

Dear God

What happened in Houston?

 
Down and out in L.A.
an ongoing saga of the homeless

Foster Lack of Care