On April 16th the Denver Post published a front page article addressing the tragic stories of 13 children who suffered and died from abuse and neglect.
Their cases were outlined in detail with the Department of Human Services. The report brings up critical issues in the child welfare system, but it encourages the Denver community to point fingers at individuals rather than to see the systemic problem in our state.
I found myself overcome with a sense of sadness and anger for the lives of these victims and the preventable nature of these tragedies.
If we as a community were committed to creating and funding a child protection system that was capable of carrying out the critical services needed by vulnerable children, it may not have cost these children their lives.
The day following the release of the 3rd party review of the Colorado Department of Human Services, Governor Ritter stated he was ‘outraged” and signed orders to evaluate the current human services system.
Why do children always have to die before other innocent victims receive the protection they deserve? Child abuse and neglect statistics in Colorado are staggering.
According to Colorado Association of Family and Children’s Agencies (CAFCA), approximately 30,000 children are reported abused or neglected and referred for investigation in Colorado annually. The Centers for Disease Control reported nearly six million cases in 2006 nationwide.
Even more frightening, nearly 80 percent of child abuse is perpetrated by a parent or caregiver. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 33 percent of Colorado’s children live in low-income homes (income below $42,400 for a family of four) and 13 percent live in absolute poverty ($21,200 for a family of four). Poverty is one of the leading causes of child abuse and neglect.
Those of us who work with so many of these abused and neglected children know that they-and their families-can be helped. If only we could extend that help before abuse occurred or in time to prevent it from re-occurring.
Funding cuts have been dramatic over the course of the past decade and the money to pay for the services these children so desperately need has dwindled. Caseworkers are stretched past breaking point: with increasing paperwork, growing caseload sizes, and lack of adequate training, they are unable to focus the time and attention on the critical needs of fragile families and their at-risk children.
And every day they are constantly aware that a child might be hurt and the finger of blame will be pointing at one of them. So it isn’t surprising that outcomes are the same in stressed families with little to no resources for survival, as they are when those hired to help our children are given insufficient resources to do an adequate job.
These children’s deaths are only the tip of the iceberg of the social problem to which we all contribute and if not addressed, can only get worse. As long as we continue to dedicate more of our dollars toward the symptoms of the problems instead of the problems themselves many more individuals in our community will be victims of a failed system.
Furthermore, if we continue to value tax refunds more than paying to protect our children, we can only look at ourselves as the perpetrator of these failures.
Karen Beye, Executive Director of the State Department of Human Services, stated it perfectly, ‘we have to work together,” as a state, as a county, and as a community or we will all fail. The government does have a role but it is only in partnership with the community that we will ever make true progress.
I recommend:
The Governor’s Child Care Task Force develop a long-term strategic plan for the child welfare system.
The system must then be funded according to those strategic objectives.
Decisions regarding child care in this state must always uphold the strategic vision for the welfare of Colorado’s children.
We must communicate to our representatives that children’s safety, health, education, and overall well being must be a priority. We can then read in the paper about our children’s successes instead of their deaths.
Dr. Jerry Yager has been fighting for the rights of children for 25 years and is the Executive Director of the Colorado’s first nonprofit, Denver Children’s Home. You can email him at jyager@denverchildrenshome.org.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
