PLN 11

Imagine reporting that your child was hurt, and not having anyone care. Picture watching your child be attacked by another person, and not have anyone come to their rescue. Visualize being a worried parent with a missing baby, and not having anyone notice and take action. Seem unlikely? In the Denver Post's Children lost in the system, the profiles of 13 children are recovered. Every single one of them was killed, and every single one of them was reported before the death. No one listened.

This article was long, and hard to read simply because of the sadness each story unfolded for me, and I think that my explanation would hardly do any good, so for more information on the article, follow the link above. However, in brief, Children lost in the system is about 13 children who's families reported a problem to social service departments and in every case, the report was ignored.

This article matters to the world because of the problems with the system. In all of the cases, earlier reports had been made about the children. Whether it had been suspected violence on the parents/guardians side, of whether the child simply had been acting out of character, social services had prior warnings, yet took no action. There was rarely a follow-up of the complaint, and most of the families were not regularly checked up on. If 13 children can die in one year, in one county because of failing social services, what is happening in the rest of the country? In the words of Deb in NoCo (a woman who posted a comment pertaining to the article), "We protect animals better than we do these children."

This article matters to me because all of this happened in my home state, to children my niece's age, and because (as sad as this is) many of my prior PLNs have been about child abuse. These children could have gotten help. There were people who were trained, who were suppose to help them, yet didn't. Reports weren't kept up to date, and parents/guardians weren't kept under close surveillance after reports of child abuse and neglect. I have discovered that child abuse is a recurring theme in my PLNs simply because just the thought of what children like these face makes tears spring to my eyes. Most of the children talked about in this article had been sent to hospitals with serious trauma, yet no legal action was taken. We talk about saving abused animals and people starving in Africa (which don't get me wrong, are both very good causes), but we don't pay attention to the abused and starving children in our own country. How can we be so focused on complete strangers on the other side of the world when we can't help the innocent babies crying out for help right down the street. I don't mean to say that it isn't important that we help Africa too, but all of these children could have been saved. Simply because no one figured "hmm, a three year-old is suffering from vaginal bleeding, and her step-dad is a sex offender, maybe we should check this out," or "gee, this lady has been reported for two years of parental neglect and abuse, and her son is suffering from bleeding in the brain; maybe somethings wrong," children 11 years and younger were forced to suffer. I don't see how we can talk of helping the poor and hungry children in Africa when we can't even wise up and help kids going through the same thing just a little closer to home.