We live in an uncertain world. Acts of God, even when foreseen, like a cyclone striking where we live, cannot be stopped. Last month, it happened in Vanuatu. I felt for that poor Island country and decided to post some pictures on this blog. Climate change has exacerbated storms, floods, natural catastrophes that it could happen anywhere anytime.
Although there is nothing you can do about stopping their onslaught, you can do much for yourself by responding positively.
But, what if you are strong and someone is weaker? You can help yourself by giving them support. Support, helping others to get up when they are fallen, to see the good and the best in them, is good for the community as much as for the person.
That is the theme of this week’s cartoon: support.
Think of ways you can give support to someone close to you who is weak: your work colleague, your brother or sister, your neighbor, a stranger you met on the road…
You could end up giving yourself a needed boot indirectly.
On Friday, Dec. 14, 2012, the most horrific tragedy that could happen to children in American history was recorded. A gunman, name Adam Lanza, 20, who grew up in Newton, Connecticut, broke into the Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newton, Conn., and sprayed bullets on young children who were as little as 5, killing them “several times.” The end day casualty was 20 children dead, of which 12 were girls and 8 boys, and also 6 adults, including the school principal.
The news report on the Sandy Hook Elementary School Newton, Conn., shooting as it was broadcast by ABCNews channel.Emilie Parker Fund Support the Emilie Parker fund. Proceeds will go to all of the Sandy Hook Elementary School families affected in whatever ways each family deems necessary. Make a donation, else leave a caring comment. Emilie Parker Fund
The parents of Emilie Parker, 6, were among the first to make public statement about the deep loss. Robbie Parker, her father, fought back tears as he described the beautiful, blond, always-smiling girl who loved to try new things, except foods. He described her as a “bright, creative and very loving” girl.
"...as we move on from what happened here, what happened to so many people, let us not turn it into something that defines us" – Robbie Parker.
American president, Barack Obama, fights back tears as he spoke of the “broken hearts” of a nation and the families of the victims after the Newton, Conn., school shooting. He promises to provide resources, as a parent, for condoling the families, caring for the victims and counseling them.
Lauren Rousseau, 6/1982, female (full date of birth not specified)
Mary Sherlach, 2/11/56, female
Victoria Soto, 11/04/85, female
Benjamin Wheeler, 9/12/06, male
Allison N. Wyatt, 7/03/06, female
It will not be easy for the parents of our 20 dear hearts, especially for their friends who will see them no more. A child psychiatrist, Dr. Don Condle, advises that parents should look out for signs of trauma and sleeplessness as it will take time to heal the children’s emotional wounds. The children who are afraid of what happened will tend to respond with aggressive behavior. Parents should have a heart-to-heart with their children. They should reassure them of their safety. If they observe any abnormal or unusual behavior, they should immediately report to the child’s pediatrician.
Days after the killings, many persons do not understand the senselessness behind it. What happened was broadcast around the world, but not why it happened. Why a young man of 20 should first kill his mother before taking the lives of 25 others?
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The security and protection of children can be supported by donations from you. There are countless ways to do this. Credit:Official U.S Navy Imagery/Flickr.com
How can we ensure parents and social workers who provide care and ensure adequate care is given to children get the needed pat on the back? By encouraging them, both monetarily and otherwise, so that provision of care for children in need is carried out without a hitch. We all need these children; they are our future.
Here are some ways we can encourage our caregivers and care providers.
Ensuring they get needed degrees and certifications
Caregivers should get certified.
At heart, caregivers love children, but passion is not enough. By getting needed training and certification, whether as a nanny or daycare center operator, you are making sure you equip yourself with the tools and mindset for provision of sufficient care. Caregivers are usually given courses in child development, safety and first aid, child teaching, child nutrition as well child abuse recognition and reporting, which a self-training course will not. For training and schools, one useful resource is the education-portal website.
Organize state approved curriculum.
Institutions training caregivers need a well-structured and dynamic curriculum for concise and adequate training. The government should make sure it provides such to training institutions.
Establish child care rating systems, especially for daycares.
Many states rate daycare centers. One notable example is the Wisconsin Youngstar rating system. The youngstar rating system for daycare evaluates and rates day care providers on their quality of care, and supports them with tools and training for delivery of better care. This system of rating and evaluation should also be extended to caregivers in foster homes, orphanages and even in-home nurses who care for children with different forms of disabilities.
Adopt early learning standards.
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Daycare centers, foster homes and nannies or au-pairs, need to have a standard of care established for them. Standards make comparison possible and evaluation easier. It also enables social workers to understand the quality of care provided by caregivers.
Train the children to socialize, empathize and also care for one another.
It is very important that care givers take training on a regular basis so that they can improve on the quality of care they give. One skill from these trainings is to enable them understand child development and factors that stimulate a healthy development. Children need to be taught to socialize, empathize and care for other children. These can be done through training them in crafts, works of arts and going out for special events like excursions and children day parties.
While non-monetary contributions to caregiving is important, direct money contributions to improving the quality of provided care also is.
Communities should encourage opening of child care facilities.
Parks, community-run daycare centers and playgrounds are similar ways of encouraging children to develop caring qualities and be cared for. These facilities should be affordable, at least, kept at subsidized rates so that no child is left out.
Giving used clothing and toys.
There is no locality where the needy do not exist. These families always have children. Why not give out your used clothing and old toys your children do not need to the children of these families? A generous hand will always get fattened.
Community libraries and donation of books.
Nearly everyone does this nowadays, but it still has to be placed amongst one of the needed points for caregivers and care giving when children are concerned.
Encourage adoptions.
It is reported that many children in foster care need to be adopted by loving families. States should encourage families to keep these children forever in their loving homes by providing adoption tax credits as incentives so that more kindhearted loving families can embrace them. The uses of adoption tax credits is to ensure that many children as possible find families who can take them as legitimate children who need love and care, and also it helps to put those families in a more stable financial position to provide an environment where children can thrive.
Create trusts for children, especially those with special needs.
Children with special needs, who cannot care for themselves, due to mental or physical handicaps, need their future secured even to the point when the parents can run into unfortunate circumstances. It is also more important that parents provide trusts for these children since the rate of autism amongst children is on the increase. These trusts should not supplant state run care such as Medicaid and Social Security’s Security Income Program which the United States provides, but should act as supplementary financial care provision.
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Child care and child support starts from the home. Every child should have loving parents or legal guardians. There are families where there is only one parent and so, the role of child care may be taken on by members of the child’s extended family.
Caring after children at a daycare facility. Credit:Doviende/Flickr.comWhere the parents are employed and busy, caring could be provided at the home front through nannies, or outside the home using center-based care called daycare and preschools.
Whatever the choice taken by the family, the needs of the child must be paramount. The parents or legal guardians should do all within their means to make sure their children are provided with a loving and supportive environment. By law, when a child is being abused or neglected, outsiders can report the parents and the child will be taken away from them and entrusted to an orphanage, foster home or adopted. When they are very busy, some parents sometimes swap child care with other parents whom they trust.
Types of care available to children.
Every level of care, whether chosen by a parent, legal guardian or the authorities, has its pluses and weak points. Parents should realize that assessing the value of caregivers is important, even when they are employed within the home. The work of caregivers should be appreciated so the children can be best nurtured to prepare for their role as the leaders of tomorrow. Some common methods of care are outlined below:
Home based care
These are care provided to children by nannies or friends and family, and because they are based on trust, parents have to be careful. These caregivers require no licensing, neither are background checks usually done. Nevertheless, the children form a close bond with their caregiver, which is important and makes it radically different from other forms of caregiving. Exposure to illnesses is well reduced because the children are watched inside their homes and can be influenced by the caregiver. Parents have to be very careful when opting for this type of caregiving.
Daycare
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It is also called preschool when it involves primarily 3 and 4 year old children. This sort of caregiving is standardized and regulated by the authorities. Parents may employ the daycare facilities at their place of work, if one exists, or from commercial care centers. Daycare centers are regulated and licensed by the government and a license can be revoked if the center is found defaulting. Social workers who assess daycare centers often look out for signs that children are being sexually abused, whether the daycare center environment is conducive for raising up physically and mentally healthy children etcetera.
Foster care
Foster care is recommended by social workers when parents or the guardians of a child have lost the capacity to take care of the child, whether through neglect, abuse or because of other failings. These centers are state certified and sometimes funded by the government. Where they are privately operated, the foster parents are paid by the government or a social service agency. The essence is to provide care for the kids as if they were in the home of their natural parents, no matter the ethnic or cultural background of the children.
Adoption
In cases of adoption, the rights of the original parents to the child are lost when the adopting parents have satisfied every legal requirement or societal norms governing that practice. Foster care does not confer permanent change in the status of the child which adoption does. It is the act of enfolding needy children into the loving arms of kind parents; it is one of the best ways to show generosity to damaged, neglected or abused children. Adoption in the 20th century is governed by comprehensive statutes and regulations. Recently, due to the way rules have been applied when it concerns ethnicity, race and culture, neglected children are not rescued sufficiently early and placed in loving homes sufficiently quickly. There are many children needing adoption and the earlier for them the better but the above factors are real hogs in the wheel of successful adoption.
Abuse or neglect of children in family settings could require that alternative forms of care be recommended. Yet, even in state run care centers, much is left to be desired. There have been reports of starvation, humiliating physical punishment and forced labor used as disciplinary methods in state residential care facilities. Some adoptive parents are not discovered to be abusive or affiliated to terrorist organizations until after a social worker has approved them for adoption. Sometimes, the problem lies at the method of implementing the remuneration packages designed by the state itself. Whatever the problems that exist, it is encouraging when everyone puts the child’s welfare ahead of any political or social consideration. Finding a safe and peaceful home for the child is the reason why child care exists.
Parents who are faced with disabled children, or whose children face debilitating diseases, have had to depend on state help for care. These parents have to be encouraged. Providing care for such children, especially when they become technology-dependent, is a big burden on the finances of the family. Many states have provided nursing services, either in-home or outside the home, to help these families. If yours does not, ask that they do.
Empowering families, most especially vulnerable families, is important for quality care to be provided to children. Quoting the SOS USA children’s village, “every child, whether living within a family or in alternative care, has the right to experience the positive, stable and loving relationships that he or she needs for healthy personal development.”
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Children were supposed to be safely raised up in a loving family. For many children today, precariousness is the situation. Some societies have structures for protecting children; some have them only on legal paper. Whatever the situation, we can try our best to give them that security, safety and warm, enabling homes and environments.
The children are our future. Caring for them is the best investment any home can make. Credit: Save the children/Flickr.com. They are supposed to have our support and protection, our trust and love. If the above needs are at risk, their lives become destroyed, their development stunted. They become endangered, feeding the circle of addiction, poverty, violence and gangsters.
Some societies have provided child support agencies to protect and support these children when the home environment becomes insecure. They receive, investigate and respond to reports of child abuse and neglect. These societies are willing and able to give them the right to an environment that should make them flourish, develop, be educated and taken care of. Some provide for child support in cases of family neglect. These are privately-supported communal initiatives, especially where the structures of state are deficient. Whatever the case may be, our children deserve the utmost care, love, support and protection.
Situations for child support
In 2005, Phoenix Sinclair, 5, was taken from her caregivers by her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, beaten and then slain. At the time of writing, there is an ongoing public inquiry into her murder. Social workers attached to her family had written reports several times before that she was living in a “high risk” family environment. Many children, like Phoenix, are unfortunate to be living in such a family.
Government child protection agencies and sometimes, communal child support services, are required when children are found living in unstable homes. Children that require child support and protection are:
children from abusive or neglectful homes.
children living in homes with domestic violence.
children with biological deficiencies.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department for Children And Families in several states in the U.S, define child mistreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or other caregiver that results in harm, potential for harm, or threat of harm to a child. AdvertIt is also a physical, sexual or emotional mistreatment or neglect of a child or children. Neglect is a passive form of abuse where a perpetrator is responsible to provide care for a victim who is unable to care for himself or herself, like a child, but fails to provide adequate care. Includes non-provision of sufficient supervision, nourishment or medical care, or the failure to fulfill other needs for which the victim is helpless to provide for him- or herself.
Domestic violence against children is usually classed as abuse. But where children live in homes where there is constant negativity, fights and threats to involve the children in the fights are common, then those children are also exposed to domestic violence. Social workers usually recommend that where there is a history of substance abuse in a home on the part of any of the parents, especially in single parent homes, the child should be given institutional care.
Children with iodine deficiencies, immune deficiency disorder and vitamin deficiencies might need special care that would involve a skilled nursing service at the home which program is run by the state because the high cost of sustaining their lives using technology is beyond the reach of their families. In such cases, families have had to make sacrifices. In the United States, a state-run program for technology-dependent children exists and provides in-home skilled nursing services paid for by Medicaid, a health program for families with low income.
Legal framework for supporting and protecting children
Nearly every country in the world has a legislation supporting child protection and support. This is because, according to a Canadian legislative text, “the safety, security and well-being of children and their best interests are fundamental responsibilities of society.”
In the United Kingdom, (UK), the current UK child protection system is based on the Children Act 1989 which are based on principles for child protection and support, including the paramountcy principle that states that a child’s welfare is paramount when making any decisions about a child’s upbringing.
Canada’s Child and Family Services Act 1990 makes the child the focus of care and provides for their fundamental rights and basic freedom.
In the United States, The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), originally enacted in 1974, provides federal funding to states in support of prevention, assessment, investigation, prosecution and treatment activities and also provides grants to public agencies and nonprofit organizations for demonstration programs and projects. This Act was amended several times and was most recently amended and reauthorized on June 25, 2003, by the Keeping Children and Families Safe Act of 2003.
As we live in an increasingly digital world, kids also need digital protection. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), 1998, makes it mandatory for companies to collection personal information on persons or entities under U.S jurisdiction from children under 13 years of age. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces COPPA and wants to prohibit websites and mobile apps that target kids under 13 from setting up tracking cookies or using GPS location tracking for marketing without parental consent. These apps make kids vulnerable.
Principle for care: Children are the future of mankind
Where children find it difficult to live with their families (or extended families), they need safe, supportive homes. Sometimes, the best thing is to place them under foster care, that is, a family or person who can accept, support and care for them as their own. Foster care services are amongst many child protection and welfare initiatives governments and caring communities have used to ensure the welfare and survival of many children and their families. While foster care is institutionalized child caring service, child adoption can also be recommended where institutional care might not be adequate. The principle is to protect children from unfit parents. This is a source of great help to parents, especially when they do not realize how unfit they are usually because of poverty, mental problems, or are passively abusing their children (aka neglect) in ignorance.
Whatever the source of protection and support, be it in the home or under foster or adoptive care, the essence is that the future of the society, of a nation and of mankind as a whole depends on children and without governmental or community support for protecting and supporting children, the future of the world will be under attack.
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