| Greetings Marty,
A few years ago, before being elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, I was employed by Chester County Department of Children Youth and Families as an investigator of child abuse and neglect. When people would hear what I did the response was usually something like “I don’t know how you do that job” or “How can people do such awful things to children”.
The headline grabbing examples of child abuse get everybody’s attention. People are genuinely moved by these cases and there is an appropriate response by our systems.
However, though I did see horrific cases, what I saw much more of was stuff that never makes it to the media. Issues such as the family who is evicted for the umpteenth time, ending up in even more substandard housing; the parent who does not earn enough money to support their family in Chester County (the wealthiest county in Pennsylvania) or who does not have access to a job because of transportation issues; a family member with unaddressed mental health issues; substance abuse issues; health challenges and lack of access to adequate health care; children struggling in school; and violence in the neighborhood or at home.
The children in families that suffer from conditions like or similar to the ones outlined above do not come to school with visible bruises or other obvious telltale signs of child abuse. Their trauma is manifested more subtlty. Hunger, psychological and disciplinary issues, learning disabilities and mental health afflictions are less obvious. The causes, in part, are rooted in our culture, economy and attitudes toward social services and parental responsibilities.
Our failure to adequately address the needs of our children – all of our children – in some ways makes us collectively guilty of cultural complicity to child abuse.
According to the organization Schools on Wheels, 2.5 million American children are homeless annually and more than 440,000 are in foster care. The anti-hunger group Save the Children tells us 12 million American children struggle with hunger and black, Hispanic and rural children are disproportionately impacted. The United States Census Bureau reports in 2020 4.3 million children under the age of 19 were without health insurance. There is no excuse for the wealthiest country in the world to allow such indifference to literally millions of kids.
Burying our heads in the sand in the face of societal failures resulting in devastating consequences to children is complicity in child abuse. Guns are now the leading cause of death for children and teens. More than 7.5 million children in the United States suffer from chronic illness caused by asthma, an affliction aggravated by exposure to air pollution, second-hand smoke and allergens. 30 million American school children do not have access to the resources needed to provide them the education they deserve because our K-12 schools are underfunded by $150 billion. It doesn’t have to be this way in our land of wealth and opportunity.
We have excellent professionals working on the front lines of child abuse investigation, treatment and prevention although not enough of them and most of them are underpaid. They cannot do their jobs without us and the support of our institutions. We have the means to address child abuse and the underlying social problems that foster it. However, we seem to lack the political will to do what needs to be done.
We can do better.
Thanks for reading, Kristine |