richest nation on earth, 35.3 percent of Black children, 28.0 percent of Latino children and 10.8 percent of White, non- Latino children live in poverty. Almost half of Louisiana’s and Mississippi’s Black children are poor.
Child poverty is costly. Every year that 13 million children live in poverty costs the nation $500 billion in lost produc- tivity. Child poverty could be eliminated for $55 billion a year and could be paid for by the tax cuts currently received by the top one percent of taxpayers. The $100 billion a year we are spending on the Iraq war could lift every child in America from poverty twice over.
Race
Racial disparity runs through every major system impacting children’s life chances: limited access to health care; lack of early Head Start and quality preschool experiences; children waiting in foster care for permanent families; and failing schools with harsh discipline policies that suspend, expel and discourage children who drop out and don’t graduate and push more children into juvenile detention and adult prison. We must identify key decision points where dispa- rate treatment of poor children of color can and must be systematically addressed and monitored.
A black boy born in 2001 has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime; a Latino boy a 1 in 6 chance; and a White boy a 1 in 17 chance. Black juveniles are about four times as likely as their White peers to be incarcerated. Black youths are almost five times and Latino youths are more than twice as likely to be incarcerated as White youths for drug offenses. Today, 580,000 Black males are serving sen- tences in state or federal prison, while fewer than 40,000 Black males earn a bachelor’s degree each year.
Single Parents
Black babies are almost twice as likely as White babies to be born to teen parents and grow up in single parent house- holds. Single mother households are almost six times as likely to be poor as two parent households. Latino children are 40 percent more likely than White children to grow up in single parent homes; 56 percent of Black children, 29 per- cent of Latino children, and 21 percent of White children live in single parent households.
Each year over 400,000 babies are born to teen mothers. Teen birth rates dropped significantly between 1991 and 2004 although out of wedlock rates have increased. Today, 35.8 percent of all babies, 68.8 percent of Black babies, 46.4 percent of Latino babies, 62.3 percent of American Indian babies, and 30.5 percent of White babies are born to un- married mothers.
Grandparents raising grandchildren need support
There are 2.5 million grandparents raising their grandchil- dren; 963,000 of these children have no parent in the house- hold. They need support. Strengthening kinship networks is crucial to keeping children out of the child welfare system and the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
Unmet health and Mental health needs
If your family has money, you get psychiatric interven- tion….If they don’t, you get the prison psychologist. --Ed Latessa, University of Cincinnati criminologist
The future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast does not depend on structures. Our future depends on our children. If we do not provide the safe, nurturing, predictable and enriched experiences these children need, and if we do not arm our caregivers, educators and mental health providers with the tools they need to understand, engage, educate and heal traumatized children, all these new buildings will be filled with struggling children growing into adulthood ex- pressing only a fraction of their true potential. -- Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D., Senior Fellow, The Child Trauma Academy, Houston, Texas
A Congressional study found 15,000 children in juvenile detention facilities, some as young as 7 years old, solely be- cause community mental health services were unavailable. Many parents are forced to declare themselves neglectful and abusive to get their children admitted to institutions in hopes of getting treatment. Too often, once in care, their children experience neglect and sometimes abuse. Youth in a Mississippi detention center were found by the Justice Department and courts to suffer sexual abuse by guards, cruel shackling, harassment and inhumane demands to eat their own vomit. Human rights abuses pervade too many child and youth detention facilities and group homes across America.
Our nation refuses to provide children and youths or adults access to crucial mental health coverage and services to detect and treat early on their problems before they drop out of school or become a threat to others. Lack of access to mental health services for parents and children pushes thousands of poor children into the Cradle to Prison Pipe- line every year. Studies have reported that as many as three- fourths of incarcerated youths have mental health disorders and about 1 in 5 has a severe disorder. Latino children have the highest percentage of unmet mental health needs.
For more information, please contact the Children’s Defense Fund - 25 E Street,
NW - Washington, DC 20001 - (202) 628-8787
www.childrensdefense.org
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