CNN Commentary: Why Our Kids need our help (n Edelman)

[Guest guest]

Commentary: Why our kids need our help

By n Edelman

Special to CNN

Editor's note: n Edelman is president of the Children's

Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization that advocates for policies to

help children escape poverty, abuse and neglect and gain access to

health care and education. A graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law

School, Edelman was the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi

bar and was a leader in the civil rights movement. She has received

the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, a MacArthur

Foundation Prize Fellowship and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

(CNN) -- The recent experience with Nebraska's safe-haven law gives

us a glimpse into the enormous challenges children, youths and their

families are facing today all across our country.

Nebraska's law allowed parents or guardians to hand over children of

any age to state custody without prosecution.

Although it may have been passed with good intentions, it resulted in

35 children, mostly teenagers, being dropped off at Nebraska health

centers or other safe places in the last few months alone.

Five of the children came from other states. Last month, Nebraska

changed the law to exclude children older than 30 days.

The response dramatically illustrates how many families struggle

unsuccessfully to get help and support for their children. It should

serve as a call to action to create a movement in our communities to

protect our nation's vulnerable children and overwhelmed families,

especially those trying to cope with mental health problems.

Parents and other caregivers of children with special needs, like

many of those in Nebraska, often feel very much alone. Even when help

exists, they may not know how to find it and to get through

bureaucracies that can defeat the most determined parents.

Protecting children is a parental responsibility, but it also is our

collective responsibility as no parent raises a child alone. All

parents need support from extended family, friends, colleagues and

their congregations, and communities. Some parents need professional

support to get the treatment their children require.

Each of us can reach out to relatives and neighbors struggling to

care for children -- even when familial tension makes that

uncomfortable.

When the needs of children go unmet, risks -- like poverty,

inadequate health care, lack of quality education and abuse and

neglect -- accumulate. Research shows that children facing multiple

risks are much more likely than other children to end up in the

criminal justice system.

For children struggling to grow up at the dangerous intersection of

poverty and race, the problem has reached crisis proportions. Each

year, tens of thousands of children are sucked into this pipeline

from birth and never escape.

A black boy born in 2001 has a one in three chance of going to prison

in his lifetime, and a Latino boy has a one in six chance of the same

fate. For a white boy or a black girl it is a one in 17 chance.

We must replace the pipeline to prison with a pipeline to success for

all of our children. This will require a major paradigm shift in

America -- away from punishment and rehabilitation after a child's

problems have become severe -- to prevention and early intervention.

The Children's Defense Fund has sounded an alarm through our " Cradle

to Prison Pipeline " Campaign about the pipeline to prison in America

and how we must act immediately to dismantle it.

As a first step, we must demand that as health reform moves forward

in the Congress in 2009, it includes quality health coverage for all -

- not one-third or one-half -- of the 9 million uninsured children --

a number that will grow during an economic downturn.

Real child health reform must ensure that every child and pregnant

woman can receive all of the medical services they need and that they

do not have to overcome barriers to get covered and stay covered.

In this rich nation, it is immoral for any parent to feel they have

no choice but to relinquish custody of their child to the state as a

last resort to get mental health care for their child when they

cannot find or afford treatment.

Parents should not face the trauma of adjudging themselves neglectful

or abusive to get mental health care for their children or have to

suffer public humiliation from teachers when the parents are

desperate to get care for their uncontrollable mentally ill children.

A study by the Special Investigations Division of the U.S. House of

Representatives Government Reform Committee reported in 2003 that

there were more than 15,000 children in costly juvenile detention

facilities solely because of the unavailability of community mental

health services.

We are already seeing evidence of the devastating impact of the

current downturn on families. Demand for foods stamps is surging, and

the number of people on unemployment benefits is at a historic high.

Child poverty and extreme child poverty -- defined as children who

live in families with incomes below half of the federal poverty

level -- rose last year, and we expect to see them increase

dramatically again.

More children will be uninsured, since many parents will be unable to

pay for health insurance or will lose family coverage when they lose

their jobs. Since stresses on families increase as the downturn

worsens, we must make children a priority during these difficult

economic times.

The wisest investment our nation can make is in our children. We must

not permit the economic crisis to increase the number of children who

will be less educated, less healthy and less able to move up the

economic ladder.

Providing a safe haven for all our children requires: working to

create an economy that works for everyone -- with jobs at decent

wages and tax help for working middle class and poor people;

providing high quality early childhood development programs for all

children; making sure every child can read at grade level by fourth

grade and guarantee quality education through high school graduation

and college; protecting children from abuse and neglect; and stopping

the criminalization of children at increasingly younger ages.

Each step we take to improve the lives of children improves the lives

of all of us. Frederick s correctly stated that it is easier

to build healthy children than repair broken men. Now is our

opportunity to do this.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of n

Edelman.

Find this article at:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/15/edelman.children/index.html