| |
Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court,
Century of Service Luncheon
"A Framework for Integrated Services:
Facing the Future, Learning from the Past"
Monday, June 2, 2003
1. Opening Remarks
Thank you, Ken. Greetings, everyone, and particular greetings to the juvenile court judges who are here today, including the Honorables Janet Burney, Patrick Corrigan, Alison Floyd, John Gallagher, and Peter Sikora.
It is a pleasure to be with you all for this ongoing centennial celebration. I want to congratulate everyone who has been a part of this system over the years on all the good that it has accomplished. According to Richard Gallitto's "Century of Service Highlights," Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court heard nearly one and a half million matters in its first 100 years, and has surely passed that mark by now. I can almost see a great crowd, reaching back a century and more, of all the young people whose lives have been redirected because the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court was here. This court is an instrument for timely intervention in troubled young lives, and that is truly something to be proud of.
As we look back with pride, we know that many young people have found something here that goes even beyond justice. They have found people who truly cared about them, and who were wise enough to know when to grant second and even third chances, and to know when to employ appropriate, graduated sanctions for the good of the young person and the community. Along with justice, this court and this community have often received amazing grace.
I want to congratulate you, before I go further, on the decision that Cuyahoga County voters recently made to pass a health and human services tax, in order to at least partially mend the gap created by a flagging economy and state and federal budget cuts. I hope that other counties around the nation will be inspired by this decision.
Ohio has been a bellwether in other respects throughout the years - creating one of the nation's first juvenile courts, which we celebrate today, but also home to one of the first public child welfare agencies ever to earn peer accreditation by the Council on Accreditation for Services to Children and Families. I know Summit County is weathering storms right now, and I'm sure positive change is indicated, but I also know that there's a tradition of excellence in this state, and that most children fare better here than in many other places.
We also know, however, that even with the juvenile court in place, not every young person has received justice in full measure. In some cases, I'm sure, the court has failed in its responsibilities to protect the community. There have been times when all our systems have fallen short of the inspiration that accompanied their founding. We cannot change the past. But as we celebrate our triumphs, we can learn from our successes and our failures … and that learning can equip us to face the next 100 years, with the confidence that we can do even better.
2. Two Personal Stories
The notion of learning from the past comes to me rather naturally in this particular spot on the map. As some of you know, I grew up here in Cleveland. I graduated from high school in Cleveland, and I was lucky enough, some years after graduation, to marry my high school sweetheart. Quite a few years before that, though, I was a shivering short kid taking swimming lessons at the Y. There is a memory from those days that has stayed with me, and that comes to me frequently when I face an audience of people who care about children.
Traveling around the country as I do, I often address a child welfare audience - the people who deal with the "sad" kids - on a Monday, and a juvenile justice audience - the people who deal with the "bad" kids - on a Tuesday. Tomorrow, as a matter of fact, I'll have an audience of behavioral health professionals -- the people who deal with the "mad" kids, if you will. Now and again, I'm invited to a community where people have come together across all of those lines to address the well-being of young people holistically, because they are at some stage of a community collaboration that's looking at sad, bad, and mad kids all together.
And of course, that makes me happy. Because in every community I've ever known they are the same kids. If we pay attention to their needs while they are young and sad, and they find loving, stable families, they may never go on to being mad or bad - at least not to an extent that attracts the attention of public systems. But in too many cases, their first cries for help go unheard.
So let me continue my flashback to the pool, to a powerful childhood memory.
When I was five or six, my loving parents signed me up for lessons at the Y, the kind that start out nice and easy with putting your face in the water and blowing bubbles. I was great with the bubbles, and I was willing to go with the rest of the program as long as I could put my feet down, at the end of the requisite stroking and kicking, and feel the solid bottom of the pool. The trouble came when it was time to jump into the deep end.
I just could not get the knack of swimming, and the time or two that I tried treading water, I knew I could never keep it up long enough to survive. It was a sensation of sheer, absolute panic. Our trained instructors had a nice, long catch stick for rescuing kids who got in trouble, but I knew I'd be a goner before they got to me. I would stand in the line as it moved forward to the water's edge, but every time I got to the front I'd slip sideways and make my way back to the end of the line.
That worked for quite a while. Then came the end of the session. For our graduation exercise, we were all supposed to walk out onto the diving board and jump into the deep end---with our parents watching. I thought I could make myself do it. I moved with the line. I walked right out on to the board. Then I froze, and I had to work my way back off the board and onto the pool deck.
The adults in my life continued to provide help and encouragement, and I did eventually learn to swim. But I've never forgotten that sense of sheer panic that I felt when I was in the water and couldn't reach the bottom. Remembering it, I can put myself inside the skins of the hundreds of thousands of abused, neglected, deprived, and misguided children who our programs exist to serve.
When I think about the constant state of emergency that too many of America's children live in every day, the image that comes to my mind is of thousands of kids in the deep end of a swimming pool and treading water with all their might. And I know exactly how every one of them feels.
Now, quickly, before you think that I don't know how bad the "bad kids" can be, I want to tell you another story, from another stage of my life. I was a prosecutor for many years, and I have seen a great deal. I do know that children and young people can do terrible things.
The child who stands out indelibly in my mind, from all those years, was a 13-year-old boy in Florida who murdered his mother and his younger brother. He had a plan, concocted with all the sophistication you would expect of a barely 13-year-old, that called for murdering the mother only, but the brother came back from school earlier than expected, and the plan went from bad to worse.
This is a hideous scenario, and you can imagine the outcry in the local media. They called him a monster. In truth, his actions were monstrous. But I knew there was more to the story, and I worked with the public defender, who had become my good friend, to understand what was behind the boy's actions. I talked to the father and to others in the community, and I visited the home.
This child had been adopted. Unlike most adoptive parents, this couple had taken him into their home, but never into their hearts. He was never accepted, and he was never allowed to be a child. When I went to the house I walked into his bedroom. There was nothing in his closet, and nothing in his drawers, but white shirts and long black trousers - not a t-shirt, not a pair of shorts, not anything a kid could wear to hang out and have fun, to just be a kid.
The younger brother was cast as the "good" child and this little boy as the "bad" one. So as most children will when cast in this role, he began to live up to it. At his first serious infraction - and it wasn't terribly serious; something along the lines of truancy - he was packed off to a military boarding school.
He was miserable there. He begged to come home, but there was no appeal. When he came home on a vacation, he pleaded with his parents not to send him back. But they sent him back, so he ran away from the school. When he was caught and returned, he hatched his plan.
He intended to make the scene look like a break-in, and himself like a hero who tried to save his mother. He imagined that the father, who was apparently the less censorious of the two parents, would welcome him home then and they would all live happily ever after. But of course, his plans went terribly awry.
He ran again after the murders, though he didn't run far before he was apprehended. As the prosecutor, I worked with the public defender, with professionals in the mental health system, with the juvenile justice system, and with the adult correctional system to develop a balanced treatment plan that we could present to the judge, and we were successful.
We knew that the depth of anger in this child, not to mention the anger and outrage in the community, would require a plan that didn't end at the age of 18. We had to transfer him into the adult system to get the length of treatment and supervision that he needed. I kept tabs on him as he grew, and the reports were good. He graduated from a youth program to probation in an adult program, where he was a star. He was adopted by a worker in one of the programs, and he was loved. The last I heard, he was out on his own, he had a healthy relationship with a young woman - not a small accomplishment for someone with his history! - and he was headed for a successful adult life.
I don't have to draw any of you a picture of what might have become of this young man, and what his career might still be costing society, if he had been placed in a purely punitive environment. Instead, professionals in various systems were able to put their various kinds of expertise together into a holistic picture of what he needed, and to make sure he received it. He got the treatment he needed, for as long as he needed it. Justice was served. And he was finally able to receive - and to return - the love that every human being requires.
We were able to secure this outcome because when I was a prosecutor in Miami, I began the practice of convening a staffing around every kid who came to our attention. I scheduled a time to sit down with the public defender and the social work team to discuss the background of the case, share an assessment, and be sure that everyone understood where this particular child was coming from. This was a way of making sure that every child had a face and a family; that no matter how busy and stressed we all were, no child was reduced to the numbers on a docket and a case file.
At the same time, this practice also made sure that the people in those systems saw each other as individuals, and not as "the adversary." We on the justice side could make sure that the social workers understood the public safety concerns, while they could be sure that we understood that children are not adults, and that we saw the potential for rehabilitation that existed in almost every case. It was a way of promoting that essential balance between our duty to society and our duty to the young person - what justice is all about.
Looking at the past, we know that there are children and families who have not been well served, by our courts and allied systems - who have been left to flounder in the deep end. And we know that there are those who have received the services they needed -- usually because someone cared to go the extra mile, and caring people worked together across systems. Let me move now from the past to the future.
3. The National Framework
Some of the most talented people at CWLA have spent the last several years developing a road map to the future that we want to see for all our children. It is a document that links together our separate actions for children at every level and across formal and informal systems. We call it Making Children a National Priority: A Framework for Community Action.
We begin by inviting people who use the Framework to imagine an America where every child can succeed. To imagine what this great nation could accomplish, if the well-being of ALL its children was truly a national priority. To imagine what could happen if parents, kin, professionals, citizens, and governments worked together to support and strengthen ALL our children and families.
We know it can happen, because it's already happening in pockets of excellence around the U.S. But this is an enormous country, and many children, young people, and families still struggle alone. The core of the Framework, the foundation on which it rests, is a statement of the five universal needs of children. They are:
- The basics, such as food, clothing, shelter, and education
- Nurturing relationships,
- Opportunities to succeed,
- Safety from harm, and
- Healing, when harm has already occurred.
Obviously, no one family or one system can meet all these needs. It takes wide, deep, and coordinated collaboration at many levels. But again, we know it's happening in some communities. In MacAlester, Oklahoma, the cross-systems planning group that had originally convened to build a mental health facility took the CWLA Framework as its starting point, and changed their plan to a multi-purpose community mental health center.
4. Collaboration Examples
CWLA's Framework monograph contains many examples of such collaboration, and our Community Implementation Guides, the first of which is due for release this summer, will feature still others. Let me tell you about just a few that have come to our attention.
- In rural Maryland, the Caroline County Family Support Center serves high school dropouts, pregnant and parenting adolescents, low-birthweight babies and their parents, preschoolers, and unemployed or underemployed adults at one comprehensive location and in their own homes. Child care, adult education, and health education and referral are among its services. Parents are equal partners, sharing in policy and program development and comprising more than half of the active governing board. The children and families who use the center all have health care coverage and regular care; many have obtained good jobs or gone on to college; and not one is known to have been involved with the child welfare system.
This family support center is one of a network of such centers in 19 Maryland counties maintained by a CWLA member organization called Friends of the Family. Funding comes from the Maryland Department of Human Resources, the US Department of Health and Human Services, foundations, corporations, and individuals. In Caroline County, the Board of Education is a primary sponsor of the center.
- In California, the San Diego Children's Hospital Family Violence Program is a solidly established partnership among health care providers, mental health, domestic violence services, and legal services. The program serves 120 battered women and 350 children every year by pairing each family unit with a two-person team consisting of an advocate and a therapist. The children are treated for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and receive preventive and therapeutic services. Their mothers receive free counseling, mental health services, and legal representation. Just six months after intake, the level of physical violence the women reported had dropped by 78%.
- One more example, not from the Framework, but predating it. You are all aware of the difficulties states are having right now in balancing their budgets. The Alaska Youth Initiative began in 1985 because of another budget crunch. The state could no longer afford to keep young people in out-of-state placements to meet their social services, mental health, or educational needs, so professionals began looking around for a way to bring them home.
They learned about a new model called "wraparound," which had begun by moving children from large residential settings to small ones, but quickly evolved to a network of coordinated, intensive services that allowed them to remain home. With funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and a team approach that brought all the systems together, the state developed individualized plans that allowed almost all of the young people----most of them with very complex needs---to return home and remain home. Vermont, Washington State, Idaho, and other states were inspired to develop their own variations.
In many states, and quite probably here in Ohio, wraparound programs have provided a safe alternative to more restrictive juvenile justice placements for many young people, saving money and safeguarding their potential.
You can read an Executive Summary of the National Framework document on line, at www.cwla.org/newsevents/framework.htm. You can also find installments of our Community Implementation Guide, with examples of successful programs and practical help for building and connecting them. Both are intended to help you with the two equally important parts of your job: making life better for the young people and families who are in your own orbit, through the work you do hands-on, and making life better for those you will never see, through local, state, and national advocacy. Advocacy is a key part of the job description for everybody who cares about kids, especially now when the going is rough.
5. CWLA's JJ Advocacy Agenda
CWLA is proud to play a role in lifting up models of excellence. Cuyahoga County will be a model we continue to lift up. But the federal government should also be providing strong leadership. One of the reasons we felt impelled to put major efforts into creating the National Framework is that the United States as a whole has no coherent youth policy. And that's a tragedy on the national scale.
Right now, we're being told that our nation has other priorities, and that we shouldn't expect new investments this year or next. And we're telling everyone who will listen that we DO expect new investments, and that we cannot carry out our public charge without them. Please join us. You are highly respected members of your communities, so your voices will be heard.
CWLA is asking the Administration and our representatives to make a strong commitment, in the budget for 2004 and the years ahead, to keeping children and young people safe from harm, and to helping them realize their full potential. They can do that by increasing investment in six specific areas of critical importance for child well-being, juvenile justice, and public safety.
- We are asking them to expand 21st Century Community Learning Center funds to a total of $1.75 billion to help schools and community-based organizations start, operate, and grow programs for children and youth.
- We are asking them to expand Title V Incentive Grants for Local Delinquency Prevention Programs from $94.3 million to at least $250 million in FY2004. Despite the success of Title V in nearly 1,000 communities nationwide, it was cut back in FY2003.
- We are asking them to fund the Delinquency Prevention Block Grant at $127 million in FY2004. The new Part C Delinquency Prevention Block Grant is part of the newly reauthorized Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. It will fund activities designed to prevent and reduce juvenile crime in communities that have a comprehensive juvenile crime prevention plan.
- We are asking them to provide full funding for Runaway and Homeless Youth Act programs, including $130 million for the runaway and homeless youth consolidated account (which includes Basic Centers, the Transitional Living Program, the National Runaway Switchboard, and important training, technical assistance, and informational resources), and $20 million for the Street Outreach Program.
- We are strongly urging the Administration to increase funding for the Part B State Formula Grants, and for Parts D and E, and asking that no more than 25% of these discretionary funds be earmarked for other purposes.
- Finally, we are asking them to fully fund the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant, or JABG, at $350 million.
On March 13 of this year, the day that I was elected Chair of the National Collaboration for Children and Youth, I led a delegation to Capitol Hill for a series of meetings to discuss the funding levels for delinquency prevention and youth development programs. Along with the CEOs of other organizations that belong to the Collaboration, I urged Congress to reject cuts in funding for these vital programs. But our legislators need to hear from you too. They need to hear the real stories of the young people who you serve. You can equip yourself with more information, and even send letters with very little effort, by visiting CWLA's web site, www.cwla.org, and going to Kids Advocate Online. These people in Congress work for you, and they serve at your pleasure. They need to hear from you.
They heard from us, for many months, as they heard from the governors, that the states needed fiscal relief. Last month, as part of the tax cut package, Congress passed significant measures to assist the states, and last week the President signed the legislation with state fiscal relief intact. Ohio will receive $770 million, all told, about half of that for Medicaid.
6. Community outcomes
That is a victory, but it is not enough. America can afford to grow all her children strong and stable! If we can build enough support for our spending priorities, communities can plan coordinated programs across systems that produce the kind of outcomes money alone can't buy:
- Young fathers who learn how to be dads, by taking part in a program where other men from their own neighborhood share the joy they are finding in being pillars of strength for their kids.
- Young mothers who learn ways to discipline their children without screaming or hitting, and who learn job skills, get jobs, and stay away from drugs.
- Children who learn to trust their parents so they can learn to trust the world.
- Citizens and employees who are prepared for their roles and know the satisfaction of working with others.
- And child welfare workers, foster parents, youth workers, and probation workers who are confident and competent, even joyful, because they get the training and support they need to change lives for the better.
- I might even add, judges, agency administrators, and other civic leaders who have the time and the freedom from stress to get to know each other, to understand each other's systems better, and to work together to build political support for top-quality child, youth, and family services.
All of these things are happening, somewhere in America. But they are not happening for everyone. These things cost money. And they deliver quality of life -- for families, for communities, and for our nation. If we can get our priorities straight, and our partnering right, individual services can link up into a continuum of care that provides the right intervention for the right child at the right time ---for every child, every time.]
7. Closing
One thing I know for sure, and I hope you'll tell this to your legislators. Investments in children always grow.
I know you're already accomplishing the impossible day after day, and I applaud you for it. Most of the children and families whose lives you change will never come back to thank you, so I thank you for them. I thank you for the sadness you endure, and for the hope you maintain in spite of the sadness. You've done great things, and you have many more accomplishments ahead.
You know what can happen when you extend yourself to give a kid a hand. You know what kind of precious human potential you may be protecting and encouraging. It's like cupping your hands around a candle to keep the flame from going out. Think how many more candles that candle can light!
Have any of you seen the Ken Burns show on Mark Twain that runs on PBS now and again? It tells a story that began when Twain (or Samuel Clemens, to use his everyday name) visited Yale to give a speech and receive an honorary degree. He heard about a law student there named Warner T. McGuinn. McGuinn was the first African American the school had ever admitted. He was clearly brilliant, but he was struggling to make ends meet -- working three jobs in addition to his studies and boarding with the school's carpenter. The administration had apparently thought that admitting him was beneficence enough, and neglected to provide a penny of financial aid.
Twain quietly arranged to help pay the young man's tuition and other expenses. McGuinn graduated at the top of his class, then went to work for a Baltimore law firm, headed the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP, and did some groundbreaking work in civil rights. Along the way, he noticed another promising, struggling young man and felt an obligation to pass on the kindness, so he took him under his wing. That young man was Thurgood Marshall.
As Leland Brendsel, Chairman and CEO of Freddie Mac, has said,
"No one knows what the future holds. But we do know who holds the future." Custodians of the future, I salute you. And I thank you. You are champions for children.
 Back to Top  Printer-friendly Page  Contact Us
|
|
