Step Up For Kids Day

“The Need for the Nation to Make Investments in Children and Youth”
Speech by St. Louis County Attorney Melanie Ford

On September 16th, 2008 children, youth, families, and concerned citizens throughout the nation came together as part of the Every Child Matters organization’s Step Up For Kids Day. This national event was designed to bring attention to the very real needs of children in this country as the 2008 presidential election approached. St. Louis County Attorney Melanie Ford was invited to speak at the event. These are the thoughts she shared that day.

Every Child Matters in Minnesota is a non-partisan, non-profit organization working to make children and youth a political priority. It works in partnership with the Minnesota Children’s Platform Coalition, a group representing over fifty organizations throughout Minnesota that are working to improve the lives of children and youth. For more information, see www.everychildmatters.org.

Good Morning. It is a pleasure and an honor to be here giving voice to the needs of our children and joining others in urging our legislators to invest in children.

Kahlil Gibran has said, “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”  

Our children are with us for a very short time. What we as adults do in those short years of their childhood will influence their lives forever. Early childhood experiences help to determine a child’s brain structure, shaping the way children learn, think, and behave for the rest of their lives.

Let me give you some statistics uncovered by the Kaiser Permanente study conducted last year. This health insurer in California surveyed 17,421 of its adult plan members, pretty much a middle class group of people, average age of 57, predominantly white, predominantly with some college education. The study’s goal was to try to determine the cause of some of the more pervasive health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity, alcoholism, and chemical dependency. These health problems account for many of the dollars spent in health care. The study, which is ongoing, provides compelling evidence that adverse childhood experiences happen in the best of families and have long-term damaging consequences.

This study showed that adverse childhood experiences are surprisingly common. Eleven percent of the participants had recurrent and severe psychological abuse as children; 28% had recurrent physical abuse; 13% of the mothers of the participants were victims of domestic violence; 27% lived with substance abuse; 19% lived with mentally ill or suicidal parents; and 23% lived with only one parent because of divorce, death, or separation.

More than one of these adverse childhood experiences was common, and their effects were found to be cumulative. The higher the number of adverse experiences, the greater the risk of behavior problems and negative outcomes.

These experiences produce neuro-developmental and emotional damage and impair social and school performance. The adolescents seek relief through alcohol, tobacco, sexual promiscuity, overeating or other eating disorders, and delinquent behavior. Decades later, organic diseases are more likely, smoking continues, and the adult suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and depression. Diabetes, obesity, and alcoholism are more prevalent, job performance and occupational health suffer, and incarceration is more common.

Kaiser Permanente concludes that adverse childhood experiences are common, destructive, have effects that last a lifetime, and are the most important determinant of the health and well-being of our nation. St. Louis County Human Services can step in to assist families only if the abuse is reported. We need to educate mandatory reporters and provide resources to social workers and prosecutors to adequately train them to carry out their jobs.

Other studies have found that children who are poor, lack access to good health care, or who don’t participate in school are at a much higher risk of ending up in the juvenile justice system. The Children’s Defense Fund found that 12% of high school dropouts in this county end up incarcerated—that number is 17% in Minnesota. We need to change the culture of the community so that everyone steps up to ensure our kids go to school and want to stay there.

Now let’s look at our own population, right here in St. Louis County. My office filed 269 cases of children in need of protective services last year and filed to terminate the rights of parents in 28 cases. We got almost 2,500 referrals for juvenile delinquency. Twenty-five percent of 10th grade students in the Proctor, Hermantown, and Duluth schools reported they skip school on any given day each month—some more than 10 times! It would not be a stretch to assume that those children who came to the attention of my office or those who skipped school suffered from one or more of these adverse childhood experiences.

I will list for you some statistics about the cost of not investing in our children:

• Nationally, three quarters of state prison inmates are dropouts.
  
  
• We know that a child who does not graduate from high school will contribute through taxes to support our community at only about one-half the rate of high school graduates.
  
  
• Minnesota spends 3.7 times as much per prisoner as per public school pupil.

This is why we must urge our legislators to invest in prevention. Prevention of child abuse and other adverse child experiences is the only realistic solution to reducing crime and chronic health disease and to improving our economy because those citizens will be in the work force. We must educate our children, nurture them, and provide support to parents so they don’t harm their kids.

Our measure as a nation and a community will be reflected in how we help families provide their children with educational experiences.

Education costs far less than ignorance. It is well recognized that the road to a lifetime of troubles begins with a child not going to school and becoming truant.

The average annual per-child cost of a mentoring program is $1,000.*

The annual per-child cost of a high-quality afterschool program is $2,700.*

Children who do not participate in high-quality early education have higher rates of juvenile delinquency, arrests and juvenile court petitions.

We must change the culture in our community to a culture of providing mentoring, afterschool programs, and high-quality early education, and to a culture in which it is expected that a child goes to school—each day, every day, all day.

(*Cradle to Prison Pipeline – MN, 2007)

Our measure as a nation and a community will be reflected in how we take care of our children’s basic needs: food, clothing, and shelter.

The child poverty rate in St. Louis County is far above the state’s average of 11.6 percent: In St. Louis County, 20.1 percent now live below the poverty level. That means one in five of our children live in poverty. (This figure assumes approximately $21,000 in annual income for a family of four.*)

Across the state, the number of homeless children has more than tripled since 1991, making them the fastest growing group of homeless persons. In St. Louis County, 40% of the homeless are children, with an average age of 7 years.

We need to lift parents out of poverty and end the cycle for each of our children.

*(Children’s Defense Fund, Minnesota)

Our measure as a nation and a community will be reflected in how we take care of our children’s health.

In the state of Minnesota, 8.3% of our children are not insured—that’s 104,000 children. Health problems left unattended contribute to truancy and future chronic problems.

Our measure as a nation and a community will also be reflected in the environment we leave our children.

This includes not only in our physical environment but in our social environment as well, our network of nurturing and caring providers, educators, and community members.

Marion Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund says it so well:

“We are living in a time of unbearable dissonance between promise and performance; between good politics and good policy; between professed and practiced family values; between racial creed and racial deed; between calls for community and rampant individualism and greed; and between our capacity to prevent and alleviate human deprivation and disease and our political and spiritual will to do so.”

As does Mary McLeod Bethune:

“We have a powerful potential in our youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends.”

So I would ask all of you to become voices for children—those children who are at the dawn of their lives, for their own sakes, for our sakes, and for the sake of a better and just world. It is all one in the same. Step up for kids today and everyday, for we do not want our children to look back at us and say we failed our moral test.

Thank you.
Melanie Ford, St. Louis County Attorney