As I write this, I’m reminded of the enduring and universal message of hope this time of year brings.
With the holiday season, the closing of one year and the start of another, the message of hope seems
to be everywhere, and yet nowhere for many of our nation’s vulnerable children and families.
For them, hope may seem illusive. These are youth and families who are surrounded by everyday
occurrences that weigh heavy against any sense of hopefulness.
In America every 24 hours, on average:
• Approximately 2,000 children are confirmed as victims of child abuse and neglect.
• Nearly 700 children are removed from their families and placed in foster care.
• More than seven million children wake up in a household where they and their family survive on approximately $2 a day for each
family member.
• About four children die as a result of child abuse and neglect; most of them before they reach their fifth birthday.
• Approximately 14 young men between the ages of 10 and 24 are murdered.
• Nearly 12 youth under the age of 25 take their own life.
There is no greater statement of hopelessness than when a young person takes their own life because to them death seems to be a better choice than
to experience one more day of life as they know it.
Those of us in America who are in a position to influence change must do something to stop the senseless loss of our children at a rate nearly 30
every 24 hours. These are the children, youth and families for whom America must find a way to restore hope.
True hope is more than just wishing something would happen, hope is having the tangible demonstrated reasons to believe that what we desire is
absolutely possible. Hope lets us know that there are those in our lives who will not let us fall. Hope gives us the reason to believe that there is a light
at the end of this long dark tunnel and that we will see it if we keep making steps.
Hope is not feel-good, sound-good rhetoric, or empty optimism, or positive spin. Hope is built on a foundation to real strategies for improving the
lives of children and families. It’s the fuel behind the action that drives us to achieve a new and different reality for our nation’s vulnerable children
and youth.
Some readers may have heard the story of the man driving along a road that skirts a river. He notices crowds of people standing on the river bank
working frantically to recover something from the water. He pulls over and gets out of his car to see what the commotion is about. As he draws
nearer to the scene, to his horror, he notices the river is filled with babies floating along in baskets. It seems the entire town has gathered to pull the
babies out of the water.
As he runs back to his car to drive away, a bewildered townsman, who is working feverishly to pull as many babies as he can out of the water,
asks, where he’s going. “We need all the help we can get!” To which the man turns and replies, “I’m going upstream to see why so many babies
are being put in this river and try to put a stop to it.”
This story illustrates that the problems confronting American families require nothing less than a comprehensive, multi-dimensional approach to
identify effective solutions – downstream after lives have been impacted or put in jeopardy and upstream at the root cause.
As we seek to restore hope to children and families, we must recognize that to do so, we must look upstream and restore hope to the communities
where vulnerable children and their families live.
Historically, our social welfare response paradigm has allowed us to believe that we could address the needs of vulnerable children as if they were
disconnected and isolated from the issues their families were facing and to believe that the family’s needs could be viewed as being disconnected
from the conditions in their communities.
The issues impacting children are not isolated to children, but are directly linked to the issues and challenges faced by their peers, families and
communities. This includes poverty, stress, social isolation, drug use, domestic violence, poor mental health, poor education, high crime, citizen-to-
citizen violence, and a host of other issues that are present in the lives of vulnerable children and families.
If communities are isolated, under-resourced and challenged, the families living in those communities most likely are not doing well, or only
marginally so, and the children in those families suffer the consequences.
To effectively address the needs of children, we must also address the needs of their families, and in positioning families to succeed and thrive, we
have to strengthen the communities where those children and families live. Strong, healthy, vibrant communities are necessary to secure the well-
being of families and children.
Owner/Editor - Chris Chmielewski