Hurting Children: A National Shame

The death of a child, particularly when that death occurs at the hands of that child's caretakers, shocks and offends all of us. How can this happen?

Recent disclosures regarding the death of six year old Elisa Izquierdo, tortured and abused, thrown against a concrete wall, cause us to question many things about our country's value systems, and about our system of child protection.

How can a country, which fights to protect the lives and rights of people all over the world, fail to protect its own children?

And what of the children who survive this terrible abuse? It is not just our system which has failed. All of us have failed when we have more than 650,000 children in the United States living in out-of-home care and who are not receiving the help they need to develop normally.

As a nation, too many of us rely upon our "systems" to protect these children. "Out of sight, out of mind" represents our belief that removing a child from an abusive situation and placing them with a loving secure foster family solves the problem.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to erase the devastating consequences of years of abuse that easily. The rise in juvenile crime proves that fact.

The children we serve at The Attachment Center at Evergreen represent this group of children. Damaged at all levels, they live a chaotic existence. They do not think normally, they do not behave normally, they do not feel or express feelings normally, they do not relate normally, they do not perceive the world or themselves normally.

Helping these children overcome such destructive early experiences involves beginning at the beginning, trying to "redo" the childhoods they have lost - by learning to trust, then to attach, then to build healthy relationships, then to express needs and feelings appropriately, then to perceive themselves and their world more realistically, to think rationally, and to behave in accordance with reasonable expectations.

Unfortunately, the majority of these children will not receive the help they need. Brief therapy, managed care and capitated costs are not consistent with the needs of children who have been so severely hurt. Block grants which do not protect adoption subsidies and specialized services, or which do not specify child protection as being separate from child welfare, are preventing children and families from succeeding in breaking the cycle of abuse.

If we hope to help these children heal, we need resources for specialized services by highly skilled and competent therapists and therapeutic families who specialize in attachment, abandonment, grief/loss/trauma, adoption and foster care issues, and who are willing to hang in there with the child for as long as it takes.

Adoption subsidies and post adoption services are essential for these children who are adopted. And yet, we have heard many anguished parents tell us that they can only access funding for services if they relinquish the child back to the foster care system. Committed parents seeking help for hurting children are told to give up -- there is no help.

We, as a nation, individually and collectively need to do our part to help these children. It is a national shame that so many children are so damaged.

The death of Elisa should be a wake-up call to all of us. We should not only ask ourselves how to keep this from happening to our children, but we should also ask ourselves what is required to help those who survive the same type of abuse suffered by this little girl. The numbers of such children are staggering.

Our nation can only hope to be as strong as we help our children to be!

Credits: Paula Pickle