Under the auspices of good news, I am good to go. For the past 3 ½ months, my mobility was impaired due to a rupture and subsequent repair of my (R) Achilles tendon. Yesterday, I walked a little over 8 miles in the Nation's Capital.…
Under the auspices of good news, I am good to go. For the past 3 ½ months, my mobility was impaired due to a rupture and subsequent repair of my (R) Achilles tendon. Yesterday, I walked a little over 8 miles in the Nation's Capital. It made me feel whole again.
Now for the bad news, not everything I learned on Capitol Hill squared with my sense that people in Washington have an interest in ensuring that children in harm's way be protected. I was told yesterday that most legislators are of the opinion that protection of children is a state issue and not an area requiring federal jurisdiction or oversight.
There seems to be total amnesia on their part that they are the very people that orchestrated removing children's home from the continuum of care for which IV-E dollars could be used. In so doing, they removed children's homes from the continuum of care. That was federal legislation; not state legislation.
Many children's homes would provide care without cost to the state or federal government, but because they are no longer listed as part of the continuum of care, they are not considered as an appropriate resource.
[Note: if this is too much information, skip down to the last paragraph]
The Child Care Licensing Act of 1973, requires state operated child care facilities and foster homes must meet the same licensing requirements that privately operated facilities have to meet. Obviously, that legislation is being ignored and disregarded in today's Child Welfare culture.
With fewer residential resources, the great state of Texas has irresponsibly placed children in unlicensed facilities. Unfortunately, in the wake of thousands of serious incidents in unlicensed facilities, the practice continues.
Earlier this week, Federal Judge Janis Jack highlighted that the evidence speaks for itself. Children in Texas falling into the category of CWOP (Children Without Placement), are being funneled by the child welfare agency charged with their protection into unlicensed placements that include hotels, offices, and other locations where they continue to suffer grievous harms, "including child on child assault, self-harm, sex trafficking and death amid 'shockingly poor physical conditions'." It reads like an egregious horror story, but the court report includes 100 pages of evidence in her 427 pages of evidence.
The $100,000.00 day fine that Judge Jack ordered on Monday was almost immediately set aside by an appeals court.
The absence of any ownership associated to the lack of residential resources across the nation in which many states find themselves by the federal government is disturbing.
Rather than focus on things that I found disturbing late afternoon, I decided to focus elsewhere. It helped significantly.
The pictures I took on my walk orchestrated a sense of calm. If there are circumstances in your life over which you have no control that leave you frustrated, I recommend you look for things that orchestrate a sense of calm. You might also do what I did. Take a walk.
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