CHILD ADVOCACY: A FOUNDATION
With the advent of integrated data systems a more comprehensive sociological model is created to educate and empower citizens to integrate a more acceptable and humane society. An acceptable and humane society begins with the care of our infants and children. To that end, competent child advocacy is imperative. Integrated data systems show the correlations between poverty, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, public education, addiction, crime, incarceration and recidivism. The child abuse statistics in the United States clearly show that 21st century America is failing and the repercussions will be considerable.
According to a Children's Bureau 2015 report, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before their eighteenth birthday. 3% of girls were age ten or younger before their first rape or victimization. 80% of child fatalities involve at least one parent. The financial cost of child abuse and neglect in the United States is estimated at 585 billion dollars.
Children's advocacy centers such as National Children's Alliance (NCA) and Texas CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) are places created for the combined efforts of law enforcement, attorneys, child protective services, mental health, medical and victim advocacy professionals in investigating child abuse and promoting healing in children (the victims) and accountability in the adults who commit neglect and abuse. Such centers rely heavily on volunteers and donations.
Prevention makes the most fiscal sense. The problem of poverty in the United States and the crippling reliance on social services could be solved with quality public education more concerned with complex comprehension and integration than standardized test scores and a rote curriculum that does not inspire critical thinking. A school system that inspires critical thinking and assists in complex comprehension and integration results in rational citizens rather than aggressively emotional beings operating on auto pilot because they have no idea how to think for themselves and express themselves with integrity and clarity. The average American high school seems a kind of factory focused on spewing out barely literate graduates who can hold down basic entry level jobs at fast food chains and call centers. In the average American high school athletes are glorified and mindless mediocrity is rewarded. Conformity is enforced. This only creates cynicism and disenchantment. Whenever another American school shooting takes place people continue to express shock and outrage and the gun control debate goes on and on ad infinitum to no resolution. Gun control is an issue but the underlying issue would be more easily solved. That issue is a failing public school system. The solution is providing every American citizen regardless of zip code an exceptional public education. Birth control, sexual awareness and proactive family planning should be taught logically and without the taint of religious fervor in every American junior high. In the United States in 2015, 229,715 babies were born to women aged 15–19 years. Hyper maniacal religious conservatives in America are militant about keeping sex education out of the public schools and making abortion illegal yet they don't have an answer for child abuse and neglect and the vicious cycle that is created when teenagers or uneducated Americans living at the poverty level continue to procreate. Pro Life is really Pro Embryo, not Pro Human. There is nothing proactive or positive about uneducated, spiritually bankrupt human beings creating more human beings who have little to no chance of making decent lives for themselves because they are born into ignorance, poverty and abuse. The effects will have far reaching results, hence the need for child advocacy in 21st century America.
According to a Children's Bureau 2015 report, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before their eighteenth birthday. 3% of girls were age ten or younger before their first rape or victimization. 80% of child fatalities involve at least one parent. The financial cost of child abuse and neglect in the United States is estimated at 585 billion dollars.
Children's advocacy centers such as National Children's Alliance (NCA) and Texas CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) are places created for the combined efforts of law enforcement, attorneys, child protective services, mental health, medical and victim advocacy professionals in investigating child abuse and promoting healing in children (the victims) and accountability in the adults who commit neglect and abuse. Such centers rely heavily on volunteers and donations.
Prevention makes the most fiscal sense. The problem of poverty in the United States and the crippling reliance on social services could be solved with quality public education more concerned with complex comprehension and integration than standardized test scores and a rote curriculum that does not inspire critical thinking. A school system that inspires critical thinking and assists in complex comprehension and integration results in rational citizens rather than aggressively emotional beings operating on auto pilot because they have no idea how to think for themselves and express themselves with integrity and clarity. The average American high school seems a kind of factory focused on spewing out barely literate graduates who can hold down basic entry level jobs at fast food chains and call centers. In the average American high school athletes are glorified and mindless mediocrity is rewarded. Conformity is enforced. This only creates cynicism and disenchantment. Whenever another American school shooting takes place people continue to express shock and outrage and the gun control debate goes on and on ad infinitum to no resolution. Gun control is an issue but the underlying issue would be more easily solved. That issue is a failing public school system. The solution is providing every American citizen regardless of zip code an exceptional public education. Birth control, sexual awareness and proactive family planning should be taught logically and without the taint of religious fervor in every American junior high. In the United States in 2015, 229,715 babies were born to women aged 15–19 years. Hyper maniacal religious conservatives in America are militant about keeping sex education out of the public schools and making abortion illegal yet they don't have an answer for child abuse and neglect and the vicious cycle that is created when teenagers or uneducated Americans living at the poverty level continue to procreate. Pro Life is really Pro Embryo, not Pro Human. There is nothing proactive or positive about uneducated, spiritually bankrupt human beings creating more human beings who have little to no chance of making decent lives for themselves because they are born into ignorance, poverty and abuse. The effects will have far reaching results, hence the need for child advocacy in 21st century America.
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