tagged w/ foster children
-
CNN...
June 27th, 2011
06:09 PM ET
Michele Bachmann, evangelical feminist?
By Dan Gilgoff, CNN.com Religion Editor
(CNN) - If Hillary Clinton, the woman who came closest to becoming a major party presidential nominee, is a feminist icon, could something similar be said of Michele Bachmann, who officially launched her presidential campaign on Monday?
Bachmann is seldom described in those terms; the conservative Minnesota congresswoman and Tea Party darling might cringe at the feminist label.
But some religion and politics experts say that she exemplifies an evangelical feminism that is producing more female leaders in Christian nonprofits, businesses, and education and politics, even as more traditional gender roles prevail in evangelical homes and churches.
“It’s not that evangelical feminism is entirely new,” says R. Marie Griffith, director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. “But this lack of fear going into top positions of power is new and astonishing and exciting for this segment of the population.”
Though evangelical women have long been involved in political activism, including helping to lead the temperance movement and campaigning for and against women's right to vote, seeking the White House is a more recent and dramatic step.
“It’s a trend that was started by Sarah Palin,” Griffith said, referring to the former Alaska governor, who was the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008.
D. Michael Lindsay, a scholar who has studied evangelical leaders, says that evangelical feminism largely followed the trend in secular feminism, even if it was delayed by a decade or so.
“Evangelicals are not traditionally the innovators in gender roles, so they’re not going to be at the vanguard,” says Lindsay, who was recently appointed president at Gordon College and who wrote the book Faith in the Halls of Power. “But they also don’t trail too far behind.”
Lindsay says that evangelical feminism took off in the 1980s, pointing to Ronald Reagan tapping Elizabeth Dole, a Christian with strong connections in the evangelical world, to be his secretary of transportation as one example.
George W. Bush, meanwhile, appointed evangelical women to top roles in his presidential administration, including Karen Hughes as a top adviser and Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state.
At the same time, there are distinctions between evangelical and secular feminism. Many female evangelical leaders, for instance, talk of being called by God to pursue professional careers.
“This idea of women being out in the world when they’re doing God’s work – that’s the key,” says Griffith, who is author of God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission. “You have to be called.”
Bachmann, an evangelical Lutheran, has talked of being called to run for president.
“When I pray, I pray believing that God will speak to me and give me an answer to that prayer, and so that’s what a calling is,” she told CBS News on Sunday, explaining that she had prayed about her decision to seek the presidency. “If I pray, a calling means that I have a sense from God which direction I’m supposed to go.”
Another difference between some evangelical and secular feminists is a public emphasis on motherhood. Bachmann’s political identity is constructed largely around her role as a mother of five kids and her experience of taking in 23 foster children.
Palin, who was raised in the Pentecostal tradition, has also emphasized her role as mother, frequently discussing her children and famously using the term “mama grizzlies” to describe female political candidates for whom she campaigns.
Lindsay says that the motherhood angle could be refreshing to evangelical voters, who constitute a majority of the Republican electorate in early states like Iowa and South Carolina.
“A lot of male evangelical politicians have trumpeted family values, but we’ve seen time after time how many break their marriage vows and have tense relationships with their kids,” he says.
“When you’re the mother of four or five kids up there talking about how their commitment to politics stems from your commitment to kids, which is true for both Palin and Bachmann, that resonates with people who are skeptical of American politics.”
Though Bachmann is widely considered to be a long shot for the GOP nomination, a weekend poll from The Des Moines Register had her running second only to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney among likely Republican caucus-goers, with 22% support.
Even as more evangelical women pursue top jobs in politics, there is little sign that they will be invited into similar roles in evangelical churches, which continue to be led by men, with some exceptions. Some evangelical denominations, including Southern Baptists, have recently moved to put more restrictions on women serving as pastors.
“It seems to me that most evangelical congregations make a sharp divide between the sacred and secular realms,” says Lindsay, “so that church is the last context where you’ll see women in ordained roles.”CNN...
June 27th, 2011
06:09 PM ET
Michele Bachmann, evangelical feminist?... more
-
-
-
TALLAHASSEE — A new study from the Florida Department of Children and Families showed proper authorization was not obtained for 16 percent of Florida foster children who take anti-depressants and psychotropic drugs. The study was ordered after a 7-year-old boy committed suicide in Margate this year.
State records did not show the drugs he had been prescribed. The records also showed required consent had not been obtained from the boys parents or a judge.
The report showed that a total of 2,699, or 13.2 percent, of Florida children in out-of-home care have been prescribed at least one psychotropic medications. 59 percent of those children are between the ages of 13 and 17 years old.
73 children, or roughly 2.8 percent, who have been given psychotropic drugs are under the age of 5.
State records also showed that for 16.2 percent of the 2,669 children receiving psychotropic medicines, there was no authorization obtained.
DCF said it will be strengthening its reviewing of medications, conducting a weekly conference call about psychotropic meds, and other measures to better protect the children in foster care who receive psychotropic medications.TALLAHASSEE — A new study from the Florida Department of Children and Families... more
-
-
"I was in an abusive situation and was a kid who simply was expressing symptoms of abuse-and nobody was listening to me."
-------
6/15/2010, 12:11 a.m. PDT
MICHELLE COLE
The Associated Press
(AP) — PORTLAND, Ore. - Justin Snegirev mostly remembers feeling nauseous, tired and alone during the more than seven years he spent in state foster care.
Placed in a foster home when he was 8, Snegirev says it wasn't long before he was prescribed Ritalin, a drug used to treat attention deficit disorders. Next came an antidepressant and then a sleeping pill. Between ages 8 and 15, Snegirev says he was given at least seven different types of psychiatric drugs.
But he wasn't mentally ill, says Snegirev, now 20. "I was in an abusive situation and was a kid who simply was expressing symptoms of abuse-and nobody was listening to me."
As of July 1, Oregon will have a new law and new rules to ensure closer scrutiny of psychiatric drugs given to kids living in foster homes.
The change follows a November 2007 investigation by The Oregonian that found children in foster care were prescribed powerful psychiatric medications at four times the rate of other children covered by Medicaid. The investigation also noted that foster parents were paid more if children were on psychiatric medications.
A state audit the next year found one in five children in foster care was prescribed at least one psychiatric medication. The audit also found medication logs missing from child welfare files, poor communication between caseworkers and foster parents about medication and few children receiving timely mental health assessments as required by law.
New state data show those assessments still happen only half the time. Between October 2009 and January 2010, 55 percent of the children entering Oregon foster care had a mental health assessment within the first 60 days.
Officials say that will have to change under the new law. Children must have a mental health assessment before they are given any anti-psychotic drug or more than one of another type of psychiatric drug. There will also be mandatory medication reviews for children under age 6 who are taking psychiatric medications and for older kids with more than two psychiatric prescriptions.
In addition to the new law, the Department of Human Services has new rules on consent for psychiatric medications. In the past, the decision was left to the doctor and foster parents. Now, a child welfare manager must approve.
Changes made last year mean foster parents do not automatically get a higher rate simply because a child takes a psychiatric drug. Advocates for children support the shift of consent from the foster parent to child welfare manager.
We thought there should be more oversight and that foster parents should not be the ones making that decision ... the trick will be whether they can do that efficiently," says Mark McKechnie, executive director of the Juvenile Rights Project, serving children and parents in the child welfare system.
Steve McCrea, a supervisor with the CASA program in Multnomah and Washington counties, says the new policy marks a "significant improvement."
Kids were getting very inconsistent treatment," says McCrea, who supervises volunteers who advocate for children in foster care. "They'd be in one foster home with a whole bunch of medication and move to another foster home, where they didn't need it anymore. It was hard to determine why they were getting medication in one place and not in another.
It's too soon to know how the changes will affect doctors, said Dr. Nancy Winters, a child psychiatrist at Oregon Health & Science University, who consulted on the new rules.
But she notes that the new law simply asks for mental health assessments before certain drugs or multiple drugs are given: "I think most people would see that as pretty reasonable."
Foster parents are wary.
"There was some sort of assumption that foster parents were doping kids up so they had to change this. It was a knee-jerk reaction," says Don Darland, president of the Oregon Foster Parent Association.
Darland worries about the traumatized child who can't sleep. If it's a Friday night, he says, it could be Wednesday under the new rules before he can get medications.
The new rules include emergency language for such situations, counters Kevin George, state foster care manager.
These are weighty decisions," he says, "it's important for foster parents to understand that we're shouldering the responsibility with them."
Snegirev ran away from his foster home at 15, in part he says, because he didn't want to take the drugs any longer.
He thinks the new state law doesn't go far enough. He'd like to see a mandatory waiting period, allowing a child to get used to a new foster home before he is given psychiatric drugs. And Snegirev wishes that teens coming out of foster care had more state support.
Living on his own and without the medications for five years, Snegirev wants to earn his GED, go to college and maybe become a lawyer. Recently he became president of the Oregon Foster Youth Connection, a group of young people between 14 and 25, who have personal experience with the Oregon foster care system.
His agenda includes raising awareness about the drugs prescribed to children in foster care.
"I feel my job as president is to advocate for other youths," he says. "I want to support them in meeting their goals."
http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/national-130/1276591511306640.xml&storylist=orlocal&thispage=1"I was in an abusive situation and was a kid who simply was expressing symptoms... more
-
-
A federal lawsuit is seeking to bar New York City from allowing troubled foster-care children to be kept in psychiatric hospitals after doctors have recommended their release, a practice that routinely adds months to a hospitalization despite laws that require such children to be placed in the least restrictive environment possible.
The suit, filed on Wednesday in United States District Court in Brooklyn, claims that the practice means that children who no longer require hospitalization are being kept in locked quarters where they have limited access to schooling, family visits and even walks outside.
The suit also claims that the Administration for Children’s Services, which oversees the care of about 16,000 foster children in New York City, and its subcontractors have been “using certain psychiatric hospitals as if they are detention centers,” sending some children to hospitals for disciplinary reasons, like breaking curfew, running away or getting in fights, rather than for mental health reasons.
A spokeswoman for the city’s Corporation Counsel declined to comment on the suit, saying the city had not yet had a chance to review it.
The suit was filed by the Legal Aid Society on behalf of three unnamed foster-care children who are currently hospitalized despite doctors’ recommendations that they be released.
“Every day that it continues, plaintiffs’ extended, wrongful confinement in these institutions is causing them irreparable damage,” the lawsuit says.
One of the children, a 6-year-old boy identified as S. M. who was placed into foster care last year, was hospitalized in Westchester in January, after “misbehavior” in his foster home, according to the complaint. The boy, who was in kindergarten, has been ready for discharge since April 2.
Another child, a 13-year-old boy identified as M. M., remains hospitalized on Long Island, though he was recommended for discharge on Jan. 26.
Legal Aid, a nonprofit group that represents foster-care children in New York, is seeking a preliminary injunction ordering the release of the three children, as well as a court order prohibiting the city from continuing to place foster-care children in hospitals unless doing so is medically necessary, and requiring that less-restrictive placements are made available for any child ready for release within 24 hours. The lawsuit also seeks financial damages.
Legal Aid requested class-action status for the lawsuit and identified two dozen more cases in which it claimed that children were held inappropriately, Nancy Rosenbloom, one of the Legal Aid lawyers handling the case, said. There is a high incidence of mental illness among foster-care children, who have been separated from their families, many after suffering physical or sexual abuse, said Marcia Lowry, executive director of the advocacy group Children’s Rights.
The suit cited a study by the group that estimated that about 14 percent of the foster care children in New York had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital in the course of a single year. Under both state and federal law, the city is required to place the children in the “most homelike” environment.
But foster homes, group homes and residential treatment centers can be unable or unwilling to accept children with mental illness or severe behavioral problems. The city has a policy against transferring children discharged from psychiatric hospitals to its Children’s Center, which temporarily houses other children during transition periods, according to Legal Aid.
“Some of these kids do have serious mental-health needs that may require hospitalization,” Ms. Rosenbloom said. “But the point of this case is once they’re ready to get out, they should get out.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/nyregion/13acs.html?src=meA federal lawsuit is seeking to bar New York City from allowing troubled foster-care... more
-
-
State let danger linger after foster kid’s drug death
By FRED GRIMM
Apr 21, 2010
Note the date — July 17, 2006. Denis Maltez, a 67-pound wisp confined to a state-licensed group home, suffered the debilitating effects of his startling drug cocktail.
He was ferried over to Miami Children’s Hospital for emergency services.
Aug. 4, 2006. This time, the severely autistic boy was taken to Baptist Hospital, vomiting, dehydrated, bleeding from his gums. Baptist doctors cite his regime of powerful prescription drugs.
Oct. 26, 2006. A teacher reports sleeping, shaking, trembling. Suspects overmedication.
Jan. 9, 2007. According to the Florida Agency for Persons with Disabilities, the agency received an abuse hot-line report warning that Denis was neglected and overmedicated.
“Overmedicated” became an understatement of fatal dimensions.
The child’s medical records indicate he had been addled with maximum adult dosages of Zyprexa and Seroquel. “Adult dosages” should have been an irrelevant term. Neither antipsychotic was approved for children.
Add a tranquilizer and a mood stabilizer to the concoction, and it’s little wonder that young Denis descended into such a dangerous zombie state during his stay at Miami’s Rainbow Ranch Group Home that he twice had to go to an ER.
None of the warnings mattered. Some caregivers may have been worried, but the psychotropics kept coming. On May 23, 2007, the kid quit breathing. He was 12.
LAYING THE BLAME
State officials, perhaps shamed by their complicity, moved quickly. A dossier was compiled against the three licensed Rainbow Ranch group homes, listing grotesque incidents in which disabled children in the homes were haphazardly fed, neglected, overmedicated and so under-supervised that the kids physically abused one another.
Just seven days after 12-year-old Denis’ death, the state convinced a judge to suspend Rainbow Ranch’s license.
The criminal record of the group home’s manager and co-owner, David J. Glatt, might not have been legally pertinent to this case, but a 2000 arrest and subsequent conviction for practicing medicine and dispensing drugs without a license probably added to the sense of urgency. Note the date of the suspension: June 1, 2007.
But physical abuse, a paucity of food or staff neglect didn’t kill Denis. The medical examiner’s findings indicated the kid likely died from the effects of psychotropic drugs, prescribed and prescribed again, despite the warnings and the mounting evidence that the child was descending into oblivion.
Yet the drug-happy doctor who authorized these fatal cocktails was able to continue to treat some 800 disabled and impoverished children, nominally under state care. Nor were state officials able to dissuade him from a propensity to load these kids up on dangerous psychotropics.
A MATTER OF TIME
The very state regulators who snuffed out Rainbow Ranch in just seven days handled Dr. Steven L. Kaplan with such deference, it was as if his patients mattered far less than the doctor’s reputation.
State regulators only decided to jettison Kaplan from the state Medicaid insurance program this week, the day after their inaction was publicized in a story by The Miami Herald’s Carol Marbin Miller.
Note the date. Kaplan’s termination becomes effective May 17, 2010.
For a wisp of a child, the regulators were three years too late.State let danger linger after foster kid’s drug death
By FRED GRIMM
Apr 21,... more
-
-
Gabriel Myers, the 7-year-old Broward boy who hanged himself in the shower of his foster home.
Florida lawmakers are scheduled to discuss a measure Tuesday designed to curb the prescription of mental-health drugs to children in state care. Senate Bill 2718, also known as the Gabriel Myers Bill, would allow officials to more closely monitor the powerful psychiatric drugs dispensed to Florida foster care children.
The proposal is largely based on the findings of a task force formed after Gabriel locked himself in a bathroom and hung himself with a shower cord last April in his Margate foster home. Gabriel was on Seroquel, used to treat bipolar disorder, and other psychiatric drugs linked by federal regulators to potentially dangerous side effects, including suicide, but the risks may not have been adequately communicated to his foster parents. The drugs are not approved for use by young children. But doctors often prescribe them 'off-label,' for purposes for which the drugs have not been approved.
Sen. Ronda Storms (R)-Brandon, who filed the bill, said prescribed drugs have replaced talk therapy and are over-prescribed to subdue unruly children.
The proposed law would require the state Department of Children and Families to assign volunteer guardians to oversee each child's mental health care. It prohibits foster children from being the subject of clinical drug trials and raises the age at which children are allowed to take these drugs from 6 to 11 in many cases.
It would also give children some say in the drugs they take because it would require foster children to agree to the use of the psychiatric drugs and would require caseworkers to explain to children, in a manner they can understand, why the drugs are necessary and what risks they carry.
The measure would also require an independent review before psychiatric drugs can be administered to children 10 or younger. The bill also requires children to have a mental health treatment plan that includes counseling for children prescribed such drugs.
The state's growing use of adult medication on emotionally and mentally troubled children has sparked debate for years. Florida has approximately 19,000 children in state care and of those about 3,200 are in Miami-Dade County, according to DCF spokeswoman Flora Beal.
Gabriel's death prompted a statewide investigation that found 13 percent, or 2,699, of all foster children are on such drugs, according to a DCF study. That compares with only an estimated 4 percent to 5 percent of children in the general population.
A state appointed panel recently reviewed all cases and released a report that found that the policies requiring parental consent or a second opinion were not uniformly followed. Gabriel Myers was on psychotropic medications without the required consent, the panel concluded.
http://cbs4.com/local/florida.legislators.legislation.2.1629212.htmlGabriel Myers, the 7-year-old Broward boy who hanged himself in the shower of his... more
-
-
Brandy Sanders of the Kierrah Foundation is amazing.
The first annual Spotlight on Sisters Awards
and fashion show took place at the Taglyan cultrual Center in Hollywood.
It was hosted by actress Kyla Pratt.
The fashion show was coordinated by the dashing Parris Harris.
There were wonderful performances all around including: Ming Freeman,
Arnold G, Sean & John. The
event was graced by various cool guests including
Diana Shaw of LA Focus, Esteban Escobar,
Shawn Carter Petersen, Tionne Williams,
Dr. Maheesha
(a brief glimpse in pictures)
The Kierrah Foundation was started by Brandy & Stan Sanders
to help foster girls after they come of age.
http://www.kierrahfoundation.org
Award recipients were: Rickie Byars Beck, Brenda Lee Eager, Treaz’ure Lee, Luenell, Parker McKenna Posey, DJ Spark, Barbara Walden, Tamica Washington-Miller, Sandy Wee, and Cassius Vernon Weathersby.
http://www.spotlightonsisters.org
see news coverage at:
http://diversitynewspublications.com/2009/11/the-kierrah-foundation-celebrates-the-first-annual-spotlight-on-sisters-awards-and-fashion-show-explosion/Brandy Sanders of the Kierrah Foundation is amazing.
The first annual Spotlight on... more
-
-
"LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Three months before his death, Michael Jackson committed to co-directing and financing a movie -- a poignant drama about foster children -- and planned to get started as soon as he completed his London concerts...""LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Three months before his death, Michael... more
-
-
Chris is 17 and has lived in foster care since his mother's boyfriend beat her to death when Chris was 12. Growing up in the heart of South LA, Chris struggles like many teenagers but knows that on his 18th birthday the Department of Children and Family Services will terminate his file and he will be on his own. Of the 20,000 similarly released teenagers nationwide, one quarter will experience homelessness, one in five will be in
jail and half will be unemployed by their 24th birthday. In this pod, Chris shares his fears of his pending emancipation and we hear what the DCFS is doing to keep him from becoming another statistic.Chris is 17 and has lived in foster care since his mother's boyfriend beat her to... more
-
-
Half a million youth are currently in foster care. If you don't do something by the year 2020 9 million youth will experience foster care. Change a lifetime at www.FosterCareMonth.org
Half a million youth are currently in foster care. If you don't do something by... more
-
-
Inspire is a program that helps foster children get exposure to the arts.
-
