In The News
Lift your voice for kids!
IMAGINE a financially strapped father shaking his newborn baby causing serious brain injury or the death of the baby...
IMAGINE hearing the screams of a physically abused child from your neighbor’s house…
IMAGINE a fifteen-year-old girl with severe emotional problems taking her own life...
AND THEN IMAGINE that you could have prevented or minimized this suffering.
The good news is that services and support to vulnerable families and kids WORK. Adoption services help new families thrive. Intensive (therapeutic) Foster Care encourages recovery from physical abuse, rape, and other horrors that adults inflict upon children. Support and services for families in crisis make a difference in a family’s ability to protect their children.
State agencies serving children and youth are tightening eligibility, restricting access, and eliminating some services all together. Environmental stressors linked to increases in child abuse and neglect combined with new limitations on services due to budget shortfalls are threatening our capacity to protect vulnerable and at risk children.
Seventy-five percent of kids in care come into the system due to neglect. Neglect usually means a host of other resources are needed: food stamps, safe housing, mental health services, or substance abuse treatment for the parent(s). Where does the money come from to address all those needs when those state agencies providing these services in our state have been cut by half a billion dollars in the last year alone?
After a stable caseload at the Department of Children and Families for 20 years, there was a dramatic increase in demand for services over the last several years coinciding with the national and state economic recession. The Department is struggling to meet the need while in the midst of their biggest budget cutbacks in Department history. Over $93 million in resources have been cut at DCF since FY 2008.
The most effective way to deliver new services is to enhance what we already know works. Thanks to the Child Welfare Act of 2008 we will have clear data and results every year by which to measure the Department and the effectiveness or lack thereof of services and service delivery.
Now is the time for all of us who care about kids to come together at the table for problem solving and creative brainstorming on how we can make new mandates and limited funds work for our kids, so they all will have the futures and opportunities that every child deserves.
Please join with us to Lift Your Voice for Kids!
Contact Your Elected Officials
Who are my elected officials and where do I vote?
http://www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/search.php
http://www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/myelectioninfo.php
Visit this link to find your elected officials and send them an email:
http://www.mass.gov/legis/city_town.htm
Please communicate your support of our campaign to your local newspaper! Click on this link to email them directly: Link