INVISIBLE CHILDREN

Children Are Failing In CPS: This is Why and How To Fix It

Mike Tikkanen — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:57:30 +0000

America’s child protection system is failing the very children it was built to save. Instead of preventing abuse, neglect, and family destruction, CPS has become part of the machinery that fills prisons, shatters families, destabilizes classrooms, and overwhelms our health‑care system with preventable trauma, mental illness, violence and addiction. Wrapped in layers of conflicting privacy rules and starved of honest data, child protection agencies hide more than they reveal—leaving lawmakers to make life‑and‑death decisions in the dark, social workers crushed under impossible caseloads, and at‑risk children returned to dangerous homes or lost in a foster care maze that rarely heals the damage already done.

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KARA Digital Toolkit: Free and Low Cost Tech for Traumatized Children and Teens

Mike Tikkanen — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 11:25:38 +0000

KARA’s Digital Toolkit brings together free and low cost apps, trainings, and tech tools that help abused and neglected children cope with trauma and behavior problems. These resources are designed to support—not replace—professional care and can be shared with youth, caregivers, schools, and advocates.

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How Foster Care and Group Homes Fail America’s Most Troubled Children

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 21:23:42 +0000

Foster care and group homes are supposed to protect our most troubled children, but for many they become another source of trauma. Youth in care face unstable placements, high rates of mental illness, overrepresentation in group homes, and far greater odds of homelessness, exploitation, and incarceration when they age out.

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How Alcohol, Drugs, and Poverty Drive Child Abuse: From Fetal Alcohol Syndrome to Criminal Neglect

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 19:11:34 +0000

Parental alcohol and drug abuse, especially in the context of poverty, is one of the strongest drivers of child abuse and neglect. From fetal alcohol spectrum disorders that injure children before birth to criminalized meth labs and chronic neglect, substance use reshapes a child’s brain, home, and future. This post explains how addiction, poverty, and policy collide to harm children — and why real solutions must treat substance use as both a child protection and public health crisis.

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“Safety” at Home, Rape in Secret: The Long Shadow of Caregiver Sexual Abuse

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 18:35:06 +0000

Sexual abuse of a child is rarely a single “incident” or the act of a stranger in the dark; for many children, it is years of rape by the caregivers who are supposed to protect them. Most child sex abuse occurs in the home. This CASA Guardian ad Litem has experience two four-year-olds coming into…

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America’s Child Abuse Emergency: 546,000 Victims, 2,000 Deaths, and a System That Chooses This

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 17:07:21 +0000

Child abuse in the United States is not rare or random — it is the predictable outcome of policy choices. In 2023, about 546,000 children were confirmed victims of abuse or neglect and an estimated 2,000 were killed, roughly five children every day. Most are hurt by their own parents, often after prior contact with Child Protective Services. These numbers vary wildly by state, proving that our systems can choose to protect children — or not.

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Alex Miller’s Leadership Is Rebuilding Minnesota’s CASA Program

Mike Tikkanen — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 11:22:04 +0000

Minnesota’s Guardian ad Litem and CASA program has been under real strain—lost volunteers, rising caseloads, and stressed systems have put vulnerable children at risk. Alex Miller’s Minnesota CASA leadership as Chief Information Officer and Interim Program Administrator is helping move the program from crisis toward recovery. By modernizing technology, strengthening data security, and working transparently with the State Guardian ad Litem Board, he has helped stabilize turnover and rebuild trust. The result is a system that is slowly regaining its footing and putting more trained, supported advocates in the lives of abused and neglected children.

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Child Endangerment (Star Tribune “IN HARM’S WAY”)

Mike Tikkanen — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 12:19:54 +0000

Minnesota’s child protection system is repeatedly returning severely abused children to unsafe homes — and some are dying as a result. Drawing on the Star Tribune’s “In Harm’s Way” investigation, Safe Passage’s child fatality data, and my experience as a CASA guardian ad litem, this post exposes how opaque CPS practices, ignored warning signs, and a lack of accountability keep kids in danger. Learn what’s going wrong, why it matters for every Minnesotan, and how you can help push lawmakers to finally put children’s safety first.

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Silent Crisis – Child Protection & Systemic Reform KARA Podcast

Mike Tikkanen — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:14:14 +0000

systemic issues within Child Protective Services (CPS) that have led to the tragic deaths of children, even after CPS involvement

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Part 3: Scaling the “Minnesota Model” for Maximum ROI Impact

Mike Tikkanen — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 13:00:15 +0000

Market-based scholarship programs like Minnesota’s Early Learning Scholarships (MELS) prove these returns are scalable. MELS provides vouchers to low-income parents, empowering them to choose high-quality programs. Result: an 18% inflation-adjusted public ROI—higher than the S&P 500’s historical average111210. The keys to replicating this success are: Targeting at-risk children: Returns exceed $17 per dollar in high-poverty neighborhoods7. Parent empowerment:…

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All About Adverse Childhood Experiences: Trauma, Testing, And Resilience (podcast)

Mike Tikkanen — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 11:39:48 +0000

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.

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Part 4 of 5: Why Early Childhood Investment Outperforms Remedial Spending

Mike Tikkanen — Sun, 31 May 2026 12:59:46 +0000

Compared to other government expenditures, early childhood programs are uniquely cost-effective. K–12 education spends ~$15,000/student annually with diminishing returns; prison systems cost $40,000/inmate yearly with high recidivism. Meanwhile, early childhood interventions like Head Start save $4.8B–$16.1B per

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Tip of the Mental Health Iceberg (podcast)

Mike Tikkanen — Sat, 30 May 2026 12:04:35 +0000

Kids at Risk Action, the hosts address the growing mental health crisis in child welfare, particularly in emergency rooms and foster care systems. They reveal alarming statistics, such as the significant rise in ER visits for children's mental health crises and the systemic failures that leave many without proper care.

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Northeastern University Study on the Child Welfare Crisis With Projections

Mike Tikkanen — Thu, 28 May 2026 11:01:01 +0000

Official child welfare numbers may capture only part of the crisis. This analysis explains how poverty, Family Assessment practices, underreporting, misreporting, and weak transparency can hide the true scale of harm to children—and why future projections must account for what the system fails to record.

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Foster Child Self-Harm & Suicide June 2025

Mike Tikkanen — Wed, 27 May 2026 12:15:55 +0000

Childhood trauma, suicide and self-harm among American youth are at historic highs, with alarming increases among fosters, preteens, girls, LGBTQ+ youth, and children of color. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for ages 10–24, and nearly one in five high school students has seriously considered suicide in the past year. Rates of self-harm, especially among young girls and LGBTQ+ youth, have surged, with emergency room visits for self-injury rising dramatically since 2020

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What Teachers Can Do: Trauma‑Informed Classrooms and Child Protection

Mike Tikkanen — Tue, 26 May 2026 12:11:13 +0000

TRAUMA INFORMED TEACHING, TRAUMA INFORMED CLASSROOMS Teachers as Mandated Reporters and Frontline Defenders - Teachers are uniquely positioned—they often spend more awake hours with children than any other adult, especially for those from troubled homes. They are confidants, first responders, and witnesses to the silent suffering of abused, neglected, or traumatized students.

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Very Young Children, Suicide, and Abuse: What We, CPS, and Lawmakers Must Do

Mike Tikkanen — Mon, 25 May 2026 13:52:22 +0000

Very young children are showing up in emergency rooms after suicide attempts and self‑harm, often with histories of abuse, neglect, and other trauma. When CPS and lawmakers lack transparent, child‑outcome data and trauma‑focused resources, these children slip through the cracks until it is too late.

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In Custody, In Crisis (podcast episode #1)

Mike Tikkanen — Mon, 25 May 2026 12:34:57 +0000

dive into the "ground truth" of the foster care system — exposing the often-unseen hardships children face even after being placed in protective care. Through heartbreaking stories like Alex’s and alarming statistics on abuse

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