Due to the President's speech today and all the flak the wingnuts raised about it - we find ourselves talking more about children in this political environment. One of the things I notice during these times is that our reference point is often our own children. That's only natural because its what/who we know best.
But due to the fact that I've been working with troubled children and youth for over 30 years now, I often think of other people's children - those I sometimes refer to as "living in the shadows." I say that because their stories don't generally make it into the headlines (mostly for reasons of privacy). But when we think about public policy that affects children, its these who are the most vulnerable.
I was glad that in his speech today, Obama talked about three young people who had faced some of these challenges.
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.
I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.
And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.
Shantell's story reminded me of many of the young people I've worked with over the years. As an example, here's the story of one of them I'll call "Drew."
Drew lives with his maternal grandmother, mother, and three sisters. He and his three sisters have three different fathers - none of whom is involved. His mother is extremely ill, having only one kidney and that one is in failure. She has dialysis three times a week.
Drew came to the attention of authorities when he was 8 years old and his mother took the children to an emergency room because it was mid-November and they had been homeless for 3 months. Prior to that time, they had moved at least 10 times in Drew's 8 years - many times across state lines. This started a process of the children being placed in and out of temporary shelter programs over the next few years as mom continued to go in and out of various forms of housing.
There are also many reports in the system of domestic violence by various men with whom the family was housed. Sometimes this was men mom was involved with and other times, friends they were staying with. But, even more serious, over the years, all four children were sexually abused, and its still unclear who the various perpetrators were. What we know is that Drew, by the time he was 10, was regularly acting out sexually.
But we got involved with Drew because, by the time he was 10, he had already been written up by the police 4 times for assualt. One was against a teacher, two against staff in the shelter where he lived, and one against another boy. Anyone want to wonder where Drew was headed with all of this??
Due to some funding for broad-based case management in the Medicaid program, we were able to work with Drew over the course of almost 7 years. It meant working to help the family find stable housing, facilitating therapy for mom and all the kids about the sexual abuse, getting Drew a psychiatric assessment and medication management, connecting Drew with an adult mentor, facilitating conferences and planning with his school to make sure his needs were met, and just generally being there when Drew and/or his family needed someone. But most of all, it meant seeing Drew and his family as people worthy of our caring and support. And occasionally letting them know when they were out of line.
I'm happy to say that, while Drew has continued to have some ups and downs, he has never been arrested again since those early encounters that led him to our services. I can say with a clear level of certainty that, had we not intervened, Drew would have likely become one of those 7% of young people that commit 80% of our juvenile crime...costing us approximately $2 million in correctional costs alone.
But the program that served Drew and his family is very unique - most communities don't have anything of the sort. And I'm not real confident this one will survive the funding cuts that are going to hit in the next few months.
So, what can you do?
Look beyond the children you love and care for every day and find out what's happening to the "children in the shadows" in your community. Talk to the professionals involved with them and ask them what you can do to help.
And when people propose public policies that will affect children - ask yourself not only how it will affect your own kids, think about these children as well. Speak up for them too. After all, they're ALL our children.