Speech given on 12/16/2004 at Ramsey County Citizen's Advisory Council Legislative Breakfast.
Testimony for Children's Services Review Panel - Legislative Breakfast, 12/04 I'm Cindy Toppin, the co-chair of the Children's Services Review Panel, along with Antonia Wilcoxon. Thank you for coming to this breakfast this morning. The group that I represent today is concerned with child welfare, particularly children either in the child protection system or at risk for entering the child protection system. 2003 was a hard year for the children, particularly for children at risk. RCHS, Child Protection had to cut back on most of the early intervention and prevention programs for families at risk of entering child protection. With most of the funds taken up for mandated services, there was little left for prevention. One more casualty of reduced governmental aids to counties and cities. But children at risk can move to being children with protective factors, with strengths if they can participate in certain activities in the community. Too bad that most of these activities and programs also got cut Programs like: Head Start After school programs ECFE School Readiness Child care subsidies (over 2200 in Ramsey Co alone) There are also programs to help parents deal with the stress of poverty, or mental illness, or lack of education. Programs like: Crisis nurseries Shelters (all state funding for battered women's shelters was cut) MFIP support and training services Too bad these programs also were cut. You see, when adults are affected, so are the children. Let me tell you about one child in a RC funded program. This child was having an unusually terrible day in his therapeutic preschool. His behavior was crazy, he was hitting at the other children and the teachers. You know what he was worried about? There had been domestic violence at his house the night before. Who was he going to live with if his mom's boyfriend had killed everyone in his family and he found this out when he got home from preschool? Where would he live? The children in Child Protection have big worries. This child was 3. Thank goodness that all 3 year olds do not worry about such big issues. We know the answer to reducing the number of children in Child Protection lies in prevention, but that is what we cut first. This is what we see -a downward spiral - a woman experiences domestic violence, but can't leave because the shelters are full. So she and the kids live in the car (by the way, living in a car is not necessarily a child protection issue if the children are not being neglected), so it is more difficult for the children to get to school, or they change schools multiple times. So now the children are having trouble in school, which leads to poor third grade reading scores, and now the schools have the problem. Trouble in school can lead to increased truancy and problems with the criminal justice system, and so now the criminal justice system has a problem, and so it goes on and on and on. How many children are we willing to throw away? We know from the research that prevention at an early age is the best crime control strategy as well as the key to ensuring school success. Art Rolnick, a Federal Reserve economist, is speaking all over Minnesota, sharing the research that for every $1 we invest in early childhood services, we get a return on investment of $12.90! This is far better than any other economic investment we can make! (and far better than funding stadiums in term of return on investment) He also shares the research about brain development. Do you know that 85% of brain development is set by the age of 5? Do you also know that abuse actually changes the brain of young children? Do you know that 25% of the children in out of home placement in Ramsey County are under the age of 5? This is over 800 children! We can't afford NOT to invest in these children! The state of Minnesota is not poor. We lack the political will to do the public good. We in this room urge you to have the will to support the public good. Please we ask you - as you consider new legislation this year, please ask yourself the question? - how will this affect the children? Thank you. **************************** Ren�e Jenson Como _____________________________________________ To Join: St. Paul Issues Forum Rules Discussion Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [email protected] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
