Here we are, more than halfway through National Child Abuse Prevention Month, and the news isn’t exactly full of information on the topic. Yet every day in this country, 1,900 children become victims of abuse or neglect, and four of them will die. Every day. In fact, the United States has the highest rate of deaths by child abuse of any industrialized nation.

How do we get the word out about these staggering statistics? And more important, what are we going to do to stop child abuse and neglect in its tracks? Systems are set up to intervene after abuse is reported, but how do we prevent the abuse in the first place? The answer is that with everyone’s help, we can do something.

We need to start by treating child abuse and neglect like the preventable public health menace that it is. We can demand that politicians support programs aimed at reducing domestic violence and poverty. We can tell them we want funding for counseling, childcare and parenting training for struggling families. We can reach out to caregivers we know who are overwhelmed. We can advocate for child victims through organizations such as National CASA, or become foster or adoptive parents ourselves. And we can report suspected abuse and neglect with a confidential call to 866-363-4276.

The costs of allowing child abuse and neglect to continue in America are simply too high. In fact, one study indicates that the price tag on maltreatment over just one child’s lifetime in health care, social services and productivity losses is huge — $210,012 for non-fatal cases and $1,272,900 for fatal situations. Those numbers are comparable to the cost of raising a child to adulthood in a middle-class family.

The human cost is just as severe, including poorer physical and mental health — an impact that can last throughout the child’s life.

We should do all we can to prevent child abuse and support its victims. Every child, regardless of traumatic experiences, has the potential to grow up to be a happy, productive and responsible adult. Our CASA programs see statistics translated to success stories every day. Just last week, I was in the audience when Suamhirs Rivera, a young man who credits a CASA volunteer with turning his life around received an Immigrant Youth Achievement Award for his foster care advocacy work.

With your help, we can create more success stories like this one. The good you can do for a child in your community will last a lifetime — yours and the child’s.

Suamhirs (in blue) at 2012 National CASA Annual Conference

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month in the United States. But I was born in Honduras, and no one was there to prevent what I endured at the hands of my father.

He was a doctor with a good job. He also was often drunk and abusive. By the time I was 9, he had left 57 scars on my body. He came home drunk one night and began beating my mother. I jumped in to defend her, and he attacked me too.

After that he was gone. But as the oldest in the family, I had to work. By age 16, I had come to America to support my family. I went to live with my godmother, but she began selling me to whoever paid the most. It would be six months until the police rescued me.

I went into foster care at 16 and was promised that my life would be better in every way. But it wasn’t. In two years, I lived in 17 different foster and group homes. And I was put on more than a dozen medications because they were afraid I would abuse other children. Everything became just another trauma.

Finally I met someone who would show me the America I wanted to see: my CASA volunteer, Marcos. He introduced me to a world that was full of joy, free of pain, free of failure. He refined my English and helped me with my education. He also helped me get my green card before I turned 18, so I wouldn’t be deported. Marcos wasn’t just a mentor — he reformed my life and turned it around 180 degrees.

Unfortunately, funding is being cut for programs like CASA. I know that I would not be here today without CASA’s help. I work full time, and I’m a part-time student at UC San Diego, with a double major in political science and international studies.

I also teach people how to talk with abused kids in foster care. People need to understand childhood trauma so they can avoid stigmatizing, discriminating against and labeling abused kids. And maybe these kids will learn — like I did — that human beings have the ability to stand up, clean themselves off and become productive members of society. All we need is people who care, who understand and who can help.

People like CASA volunteers and donors. People like you.

Please help CASA for Children reach every child who needs one. Learn more about becoming a CASA volunteer.

Many programs that keep children safe, educated and healthy are supported at least in part through federal discretionary spending. An eight percent reduction in those funds may not sound like an overwhelming amount. But it comes on top of already large cutbacks for children. In recent years, 31 federal programs for children have
been entirely eliminated, and another 71 saw their funding reduced, affecting
everything from child safety to health and education.

It’s not as though these programs aren’t sorely needed. One of the programs, cut back by nearly 77%, was for violence prevention in schools. It’s too bad it takes an awful incident in an elementary school for people to realize how important this funding is. Do children have to die before we think about investing in their safety?

Recent funding cutbacks have already threatened to hamstring core commitments our nation made to children. Among the most vulnerable are children who cannot live safely at home due to abuse and neglect. They are under the care of state child welfare systems—which are already reeling from previous federal and state cutbacks. Yet funding for the four child abuse programs in the Victims of Child Abuse Act were targeted for elimination in the last two Administration budgets. Congress did step in and preserve funding, though at hugely reduced levels. These levels may be reduced even further through sequestration this Friday.

These federal funding trends would be of less concern if private charitable giving was helping to fill in at least part of the need. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened. Charitable giving for human service organizations declined last year. Over the last five years, the number of new donors giving to human services has gone down.

It is downright expensive not to make investments in good programs that help children. For example, a foster youth who is connected to a trusted advocate and mentor is more likely to carry with her a varied set of protective factors. Research shows that this will lead to more positive outcomes. And the consequence of not doing right by a foster youth? Tens of thousands age out of that system every year and are at high risk for homelessness, unemployment and criminal behavior.

The median cost of a single incarceration was $31,000 in 2010. We would all save money, and feel safer, if we invested that money in young people rather than wasting it on prison cells.

Politicians are fond of referring to every parent’s dream of a better life for their children. If we believe in our children’s safety and well-being, then budget decisions need to be based on a real understanding of the connection between funding and those dreams for our children.

Lately we are hearing a lot about the power—and necessity—of collective action.  President Obama said it loud and clear in his January inaugural speech.

When I heard the president say that “No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores…” I knew exactly what he meant.

As a juvenile court judge and as a long-standing supporter of the CASA cause, no one needs to convince me that positive outcomes are made possible by collective action. Every day I make decisions that change the lives of the children and families seated before me. I tell mothers that their love for their children is not equaled by their ability to care for them; I congratulate fathers for taking the first steps necessary to regain custody of their children. I make decisions and recommendations with the stroke of a pen or the pounding of a gavel that forever change people’s lives, hopefully for the better.

Making such life-changing decisions weighs heavily on every juvenile court judge’s heart. The only reason I can feel confident that I am making the best decision I can for the children looking up at me is because a community of compassionate adults—including CASA volunteers empowered by my court—has provided the critical information I need.

The saying may be well worn but I know it to be true: It takes a village to raise a child. In the case of a juvenile court judge, the village includes CASA volunteers and others to ensure that we do the right thing by the children whose care and whose futures have been placed in the hands of our public child welfare systems. In the courtroom, the juvenile court judges are the gatekeepers of that system. But as I hear President Obama say, no one succeeds alone. Only by working together do we stand a real chance at fulfilling society’s obligations to all of its children.

We thank guest blogger Alan Abramowitz for sharing this news about the “normalcy bill” currently being debated in his state of Florida. Abramowitz is the executive director of the Florida Statewide Guardian ad Litem Program. In Florida and a few other states, CASA programs are referred to as guardian ad litem programs.

Florida Senate Bill 164 is the “Quality Parenting for Children in Foster Care Act,” also known as the “normalcy bill” or “permission to parent bill.” It is an important law that needs to be passed so children in foster care can be like every other kid. Children in a group called Youth Shine and the volunteer guardian ad litems around the state have led the way in pursuing this new law. Many of the children have turned 18 in foster care and want to make sure that those children still in foster care don’t have to experience what they went through. Many of the volunteer guardian ad litems are fed up with their kids being treated differently from other kids.

As the executive director of the Statewide Guardian ad Litem Program, I talk to many children and teenagers who live in foster and group homes. It is not unusual for these conversations to center around their complaints about a lack of a normal life. Moving from school to school, not being allowed to play school sports, not being able to use the phone or participate in school trips are just of the few comments I regularly hear. For years, Florida child advocates have fought to correct these problems by promoting the concept of “normalcy.” It is something we have all been striving to provide for children who, through no fault of their own, end up in foster care.

The legal standard in Florida is for decision makers to balance “safety” and “normalcy.” The problem with this requirement is that many providers equate “safety” with “liability.” Talk about the issue with any lawyer who represents an organization providing residential care, and the word liability will be the central theme. It’s not difficult to see why something as “normal” as a teenager going to the beach would become a bureaucratic nightmare.

Recently, many of these youth met with the sponsors of the bill. Representative Ben Albritton and Senator Nancy Detert listened as each youth told their story of how they experienced not having a normal childhood because their foster parent or their group home had rules contrary to normalcy. One young adult described not being allowed to join the high school band travel team because they couldn’t background check everyone they might encounter on a trip. Another talked about being pulled out of a picture with the legislature last year because she was under 18 and “couldn’t be associated with foster care” on Facebook. Another story was from a youth who was not allowed to go out on a boat with the foster family because of the fear of drowning.

One important lesson from these youth was that each of them remembered a situation in which foster parents and group homes broke the rules and exposed themselves to losing their license so these kids could be like all the other kids. These were courageous foster parents and group homes, and hearing of their bravery was inspiring.

There is no reason foster parents and group homes should have to break the rules in order to give youth a normal life in foster care. This is really a call to action for all of us to state unequivocally that caregivers of children in foster care must have “permission to parent” so that children can participate in age-appropriate extracurricular, enrichment and social activities.

I don’t know if the bill will be passed, but I anticipate that many children in foster care — as well as children previously in foster care, guardians ad litem, parents and caregivers — will understand why this legislative proposal is critical.

Fifty years ago this April, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. penned his now famous letter from a Birmingham jail.  It included the memorable line that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  [read the full text of the letter at http://abacus.bates.edu/admin/offices/dos/mlk/letter.html.]  Perhaps equally important, but less known, is that he was writing to justify his involvement in the momentous events in Birmingham, known as “the children’s crusade.” The Children’s Crusade was the name bestowed upon a march by hundreds of school students in Birmingham, Alabama, in early May 1963. The purpose of the march was to walk downtown to talk to the mayor about segregation in their city. http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963bham. Several clergy members had questioned the involvement of “outsiders” like Dr. King, but he explained “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.”

It’s an inspiring theme.  No one is an outsider when it comes to righting wrongs, pursuing justice, and serving those in need.  Fifty years after Dr. King’s letter, a hidden human rights crisis continues in the lives of American children.

FACT: 58 percent of all African American fourth-graders are functionally illiterate. [http://www.caresmentoring.org/].

FACT: Among the average 25,000 young people who “age out” of foster care each year, only half will have a high school diploma, and one in five will be homeless at some point.[http://nc.casaforchildren.org/apps/annualreport/fostering-futures.html]

FACT: American Indian/Alaska Natives have the highest rate of poverty of any other racial group in the nation.  [U.S. Department of Commerce, 2009].

This crisis comes with staggering costs in taxpayer dollars and human potential.  Yet so-called “ordinary citizens” still work to right such wrongs. You can join them.  As we remember and celebrate Dr. King’s life of service, find a way to leave home and serve America’s children.  You can find opportunities at www.iamforthechild.org,  www.caresmentoring.org, www.bbbs.org, www.voluntermatch.org.

Much will be said today about service.  People of goodwill in this country provide this type of service day after day after day to children.  I am proud to reflect on the 77,000 CASA and guardian ad litem volunteers who leave their homes, often going well beyond their comfort zones, without pay and too often without praise.  They are consistently present for abused and neglected children.  We are a better country because of these volunteers – and the children who inspire these acts of service.

Today, I give special thanks to all the African American adults who have stepped forward  as mentors, as court appointed special advocates, and in other capacities to reclaim the futures of children in their communities.  We can take inspiration from Susan Taylor, former editor of Essence magazine, who continues working to recruit one million African American mentors for children and youth.  After years of successful leadership at Essence, she travels across the country to rally people to what she calls “a state of emergency.” She has taken on a mission of huge importance.  We stand with her.

When any of us leave home to serve, we also serve a larger mission – Dr. King’s mission – and we serve our country in lifting of hundreds of thousands of American children.  Because injustice to any child is injustice to all, and none of us should be outsiders to the cause of lifting up those lives.

The question remains: What will be done?

In 2011, roughly 681,000 children across America were victims of abuse or neglect, and 1,570 children’s deaths were attributed to maltreatment.  In 2008 alone, 2,298 children were homicide victims.  They didn’t die in a classroom.  Many died at home.  In 2007, 665 committed suicide.

Despite the events in Newtown, despite facts that reveal how vulnerable our children are, federal funding for some child safety services has been curtailed sharply. The Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative had its funding cut by 70% this year.  Safe Routes to Schools funding—down 25%.  Safe Schools and citizenship education—down 55%.  Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program—down 94%. Juvenile justice funding for at-risk youth—down 58%.

The Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities State Grant Program was entirely eliminated in 2010.

In 2012, the Administration proposed to eliminate funding altogether for four crucial programs.  These programs strengthen the prosecution of child abuse, increase advocacy for victims of child abuse and neglect, improve the courts’ handling of child abuse and neglect cases, and ensure the use of innovative techniques for investigating and  prosecuting child abuse cases.  All proposed for elimination. While congress did not go along, there were large reductions for these programs.

Cutting funding for programs like these raises immediate risks to children while building in much higher costs when the horrifying results come home to roost.  The cost of losing a high-risk 18-year-old to adult criminality has been estimated at somewhere between $2.6M and $5.3M.

Federal funding to keep kids safe is not causing the budget deficit.  Less than 8% of the federal budget is devoted to children, and that funding has declined for the last two consecutive years.  Failing to “walk the talk” of child safety will send government expenses soaring in the future.  What needs to be soaring are the hopes and aspirations of America’s children.

When it comes time to decide how to use money wisely, the president and Congress need to maintain federal funding that helps keep our children safe—at home, in school and in their communities.

Thank you to Florida attorney Elizabeth Masters for sharing her adoption story in this guest blog.

As a very busy practicing attorney, member of the Florida Bar for 27 years, and a foster parent for less than two years, I recently had the unique experience of seeing dependency court as a foster mom.

The GAL program was the one constant for my two foster sons. When the well-meaning, but jaded, court system thought 21 or even more months to terminate parental rights was acceptable, and when lengthy continuances and sloppy service of process merited only a yawn, the GAL program was always there to intervene. By that time, my two foster sons had endured not only profound neglect but six out-of-home placements in 15 months and as many school disruptions. Twenty-one months after removal from birth parents who flouted every substantive court order requirement, our foster sons were belatedly freed for adoption.

Our GAL team – attorney Cathy Altman, and zealous volunteer Anna Shea – were there every step of the way to advocate for these two very confused little boys who had no voice. As a foster mom dealing daily with the effects of profound neglect and abuse, living with children experiencing violent night terrors and profound behavioral issues, and on speed-dial with school personnel, I was lost for words in court. Though an experienced trial attorney, I was all mom and all heart. In court I could hardly breathe, much less speak, and the GAL volunteer was my voice.

Every request I made on behalf of the boys received serious GAL attention, and they were the sole passionate advocate for our foster sons in court. At the end of the roller-coaster journey in June, my husband and I, and our biological children, stood proudly in court with the GAL team beaming, and with a few tears shed, adopted two amazing children of promise, Steven (9) and Kaleb (8).

Our sons are now excelling in third grade. One is in the gifted/blended program; the other is getting ready for a limousine ride he earned for his summer reading accomplishments. They are both kind and loving, curious and inquisitive, and I am so proud to be their mom. No one who knew them before can believe they are the same troubled children, and I owe it all to our committed team. They did not see two case files, but instead saw two amazing children of incredible promise.

Please note: In some states, including Florida, CASA programs are known as guardian ad litem programs. Our thanks to the Florida Statewide Guardian ad Litem Program for sharing Elizabeth’s story with us.

Last week, I had the pleasure and honor of joining the staff, board, volunteers and supporters of CASA of Northwest Arkansas at their two Light of Hope breakfasts. Donnie Smith, the CEO of Tyson Foods, spoke at one event and Mike Duke, CEO of Walmart, spoke at the other. By all accounts, the events succeeded beyond expectations.

Business leaders like these are doing more than raising funds for our cause. They are inspiring others to say “I am for the child.” And when they do, to feel the satisfaction of lifting up the life of an abused or neglected child.

These were obviously not scripted emotions. Both men were clear about the value of our work. Both spoke with passion about the urgent need to provide a volunteer for every child who needs one. I have never heard a better telling of the starfish story than Donnie’s, or a more motivating personal story than Mike’s description of his and his wife’s service as foster parents, and her exemplary service as a CASA volunteer.

Leadership like this is inspiring and infectious. Staff members from these companies and many others in attendance spoke to me excitedly about their commitment to “the children’s cause.” They were extraordinarily happy to be an active part of the movement, sharing their business skills as well as their charitable dollars so that the children can have the volunteer advocates they need.

Our children should know that thousands of people they may never meet are there for them and care about their future, including the leaders of some of our nation’s largest and most successful corporations.

But you don’t have to be a corporate CEO to provide this inspiration to our kids. Anyone who takes the time to support the CASA/GAL network—through time, talent or treasure—is sending the most important message that matter to our children: that we honor them and believe in them as valuable human beings.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  I appreciate its inclusiveness, its relatively non-commercial character, and its focus on being with the people who matter most to you.

In addition to family, this is a holiday tradition that can include thanks and caring for others.  This year, as every year, my thanks go to an often invisible group of young people; those who are under the protection of courts and child welfare systems because they cannot live safely at home. The 400,000 children living in foster care right now.  Whose lives are so full of potential, but whose needs are too easily forgotten during our holiday celebrations.

I thank the tens of thousands of child protection workers who helped move these children from instability and uncertainty to permanent homes.  In 2011, they helped over 200,000 children move into safe, permanent homes.

I thank the nation’s juvenile and family court judges, who have the difficult and often thankless task of deciding when and whether it is safe for a child to return home, live with relatives, or be adopted.  To find out more about this work, visit the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges at www.ncjfcj.org.

November is National Adoption Month, and so I thank the adoptive parents who provided new homes for nearly 50,000 foster youth last year.  You can find more information about adopting a child by visiting the North American Council on Adoptable children at www.nacac.org.

I thank the parents and caretakers of foster youth.  Through perseverance and commitment, 126,000 children were able to return home in 2011.  Helping to make this possible were the nation’s foster parents, who provide temporary care for children when they cannot live safely at home.  To find out how you can become a foster parent, contact the National Foster Parent Association to http://www.nfpainc.org/

And finally, I thank the 77,000 CASA and guardian ad litem volunteers whose advocacy helped lift up the voices of 234,000 of these children in 2011.  You help courts make better decisions.  You help social workers and lawyers understand what the child is going through.  And you are the constant, caring adult presences that will make their lives better.  To become an advocate or to support advocates in your community, go to www.iamforthechild.org