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Category: #children

  • Education watchdog says nearly all children have fallen behind with education during pandemic

    Nearly all children in England have fallen behind in their education and suffered as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) has warned. The watchdog has called on schools to offer pupils sport and extra-curricular activities to ensure children “regain a sense of normality” in their lives.

    Chief inspector Amanda Spielman warned that many of the youngest children’s progress and development “faltered” amid the pandemic, with some regressing in basic language and social skills. Loneliness, boredom and misery became “endemic” among the young – and the loss of education, disrupted routine – and fewer activities led to physical and mental health problems for many children, she said.

    The younger generation should not be “denied” its chance to enjoy childhood and fulfil its potential in the year ahead, Spielman has urged.

    Disruption to education

    Her comments come after the latest Department for Education (DfE) figures show that the number of children and staff off school for Covid-related reasons in England has risen in recent weeks. Education unions have warned that disruption to schooling is likely to worsen following the emergence of the newly-identified Omicron coronavirus variant.

    In Ofsted’s annual report, Spielman said the message around the “harm” that lockdowns cause children – and the importance of in-person schooling – “needs repeating now”. She added:

    Although many children are necessarily out of school because of Covid or other illness, it is important that they attend every day that they possibly can,

    “Children struggled with a hokey-cokey education”

    The watchdog’s report assesses education and children’s social care over the 2020-21 academic year. During this period much of Ofsted’s routine inspection work was suspended – but the inspectorate undertook monitoring visits to see how schools, colleges, nurseries, and social care providers responded to the pandemic.

    Ofsted found that, despite the best efforts of many thousands of parents, teachers, social workers and carers, the challenges of the pandemic were so great that nearly all children fell behind in their education. The report said:

    In primary and secondary schools, children struggled with a hokey-cokey education: in the classroom, at home, separated in bubbles, isolating alone.

    Further education (FE) students and apprentices saw their classroom doors closed, their placements curtailed and their job prospects limited.

    And prisoners seeking a second chance through education were unable to leave their cells to learn.

    Children with special education needs or disabilities (SEND) were unable to access the local support services they rely on, while many vulnerable children “disappeared” from teachers’ line of sight, the report said.

    NAHT conference
    (Martin Rickett/PA)

    “Increased levels of anxiety led to self-harm or destructive behaviour”

    Spielman said:

    The education and social care sectors have been under tremendous strain since the pandemic began, and their staff have worked tirelessly in children’s interests.

    Their efforts deserve the highest praise. But the challenges of Covid-19 were so great that nearly every child has felt the impact of the resulting restrictions.

    Many young children’s progress and development faltered.

    She added:

    In order to protect older generations, we asked the youngest generation to put their lives and education on hold. As we look forward to the year ahead, we must strive to redress the balance.

    In its annual report, Ofsted also raised concerns about children in care feeling less safe due to lockdown restrictions and broken relationships with staff. It added:

    In the worst cases, increased levels of anxiety led to self-harm or destructive behaviour,

    Leaders told inspectors that some children in  alternative provision (AP) settings had become more involved in criminal exploitation, including gang violence, and child sexual exploitation amid the pandemic. The watchdog is calling for the support for the most vulnerable children and those with SEND to rapidly return to pre-Covid levels.

    In her commentary in the annual report, Spielman added:

    Where some children need a little extra help, they should get it. And children who need specialist care and support must not be left wanting.

    Every generation gets one chance to enjoy its childhood and fulfil its potential. We must do all we can to make sure this generation is not denied its opportunity.

    Featured image via – Unsplash – NeONBRAND

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Things that are and aren’t allowed in the Commons

    By Ralph Underhill

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Lebanon sentenced me to 10 years in prison for helping sick Palestinian children – I consider my work a badge of honour | Jamal Rifi

    As a doctor, I believe turning away from desperately ill kids – be they in Palestine or elsewhere – is a far greater crime

    I have never walked away from a fight involving the wellbeing of children. I have never abandoned the right for Palestinian health workers to train in Israel for the benefit of those same children.

    Why is this something I need to speak about publicly now?

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • It’s Not Just the Missionaries — There Were 782 Kidnappings in Haiti This Year

    A couple of people walk in the deserted street in Port-au-Prince on October 18, 2021.

    President Joe Biden has received daily briefings this week on the 17 North American missionaries and children who continue to be held hostage in Haiti, according to the White House, and the U.S. has reportedly deployed three FBI agents to Haiti as well.

    The involvement of U.S. citizens and one Canadian citizen in this particular hostage situation have caused the kidnapping to draw some attention to this incident within U.S. media, but the broader context of widespread kidnappings in Haiti continues largely to go unnoticed in the U.S.

    In the first half of October alone, at least 119 known kidnappings (that is the official number) have taken place in Haiti. And according to the Center for Analysis and Research in Human Rights, there have been at least 782 known kidnappings in Haiti since January 2021.

    The kidnapping that led to the hostage situation in which the U.S. has become politically involved occurred in Croix des Bouquets, a town located 11 miles from Port-au-Prince. According to the weekly New York-based Haitian Newspaper Haiti Observateur, on October 16, the notorious Haitian gang Katsan Mawozo (400 Mawozo) kidnapped more than 30 individuals, including 17 American and Canadian missionaries and children ranging in age from 8 months to 15 years who were in Haiti as part of the Ohio-based group Christian Aid Ministries. The gangs are asking for $17 million in U.S. dollars.

    A day later, on October 17, another armed gang, the G-9 Family and Allies, drove off the de facto prime minister, Ariel Henry, prohibiting him from commemorating the assassination of Emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first leader of independent Haiti, who was assassinated on October 17, 1806. That this gang could categorically prevent the prime minister himself from entering the area of Pont Rouge for the ceremony speaks to the fact that gangs are becoming stronger and expanding their control of the country. Misery and fear continue for thousands of people in Haiti. Emperor Dessalines must be turning in his grave.

    Because Americans are now being kidnapped in Haiti, we are hearing about an issue that has long plagued Haiti, which has the highest rate of kidnapping per capita of any country in the world. American and Canadian lives matter. Yet thousands of Haitians have been and continue to be tortured, killed, raped, extorted and kidnapped on a daily basis. Nearly 95 percent of kidnappings in Haiti since 2018 have targeted Haitian citizens. As a representative from the Christian Aid Ministries stated, “This time of difficulty reminds us of the ongoing suffering of millions of Haitians. While our workers chose to serve in Haiti, our Haitian friends endure crisis after crisis, continual violence, and economic hardship.”

    A popular Haitian film, Kidnappings (2008), depicts the complexity and nuance of the kidnapping economy in Haiti. The rise of kidnappings is believed to have started in the early 2000s under former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who armed people in the slums as a way to protect himself because he didn’t have enough police. The great majority of the people who align themselves with Aristide — known as chimè — lived in Cité Soleil, a commune of Port-au-Prince.

    Political parties, political authorities, the political elite and the business elite have been nurturing the gangs and fomenting the kidnapping crisis. The kidnapping business is in fact supported by the convergence of interests of the political and business elite and the international community, while the interests of the vast majority of Haitians are obviously not taken into account. Now the gangs cannot be tamed, and they are everywhere. The gangs need ammunition, weapons and ransom money in order to function. Clearly, all those resources flow through international channels.

    Yet the gangs are now managing the very people who originally commissioned and controlled them. If the powers that be — both in Haiti and in the international community, including the United States — really want the kidnappings to stop, they have the ability to leverage banks and arms experts to make it harder for the gangs to continue their kidnapping business.

    Some sources have stated that there are around 500,000 illegal guns in Haiti.

    Indeed, there are so many guns that there are swaps between Haitian gangs and Jamaican gangs. The large number of illegal guns in Haiti facilitates the kidnapping trade. But Haiti does not produce guns. Where are the guns coming from? Who allows them into the country? Who benefits from their presence? Although Haiti signed the International Arms Trade Treaty in 2014, it is unclear to what extent it is respected. In spite of the U.S. arms embargo requiring that any firearms that are supposed to go to Haiti go through the U.S. State Department, it is still easy to import guns to Haiti, in part because of the weak police force and corruption of political and business elite.

    Until there is real conversation about the deep inequality that marks Haitian society and sustainable change is enacted, the business of kidnapping will continue. We cannot and should not talk about the gang violence in Haiti without putting it in a larger historical, geopolitical and social context. Among the issues we should probe are the role of the police and criminal legal system in Haiti. The police are not respected or trusted by a majority of Haitians. It is estimated that over 70 percent of Haiti’s prison population is in pretrial detention.

    The business of kidnapping is not unique to Haiti, nor is it new. Kidnapping was spread through the Americas by the Europeans. Gangs and kidnapping have been imported to Haiti the same way cholera and guns were imported. Europeans went to the African continent and kidnapped people to enslave them for profit in the Americas. Prior to the arrival of the enslaved, Europeans kidnapped Native Americans (in the case of Haiti, the Taínos). For instance, in the early 16th century, Queen Anacaona, ruler of the kingdom of Xaragua, was abducted by the Spanish under false pretenses. In June 1802, Toussaint Louverture, a prominent leader of the Haitian Revolution, was kidnapped and taken to France on a ship called Le Héros and imprisoned in the Jura mountains, where he died in 1803.

    We could think of the U.S. occupation of Haiti (1915-1934) as a form of kidnapping — an abduction of Haitian freedom and the very notion of liberty. The U.S. Marines took $500,000 from the Haitian National Bank in 1914, supposedly for safekeeping, but really to protect U.S. assets and prevent a German invasion. Smedley Butler, a career Marine, described his role in the occupation in the following terms: “[I was] a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

    Kidnappings, power and greed are all connected.

    In 2004, former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide said the U.S. kidnapped him and forced him to leave Haiti.

    In 2010, Radio Prague International reported the release of a Czech humanitarian aid worker and a colleague after they were kidnapped. In October 2012, it made headlines in Haitian newspapers when Clifford Brandt, a member of a prominent Haitian family, was arrested because he had kidnapped the children of another bourgeois family.

    In February 2021, two Dominican filmmakers and their Haitian interpreters were kidnapped in Haiti. Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July, the number of kidnappings has increased. There have also been unconfirmed rumors circulating in Haiti that Moïse was supposed to be kidnapped and not assassinated by the mercenaries.

    Two Haitian proverbs can speak to the kidnapping issue in Haiti: “Grangou nan vant pa dous” (Hunger in the belly is not an easy thing), and “Jou mwen leve a se li mwen wè” (The day I get up, that is the only day I can count on). In order to understand the gang issues in Haiti and the attendant issue of kidnapping, we must analyze the context of social inequality and structural violence. Imagine a person who does not have a job and cannot eat. That person can easily be manipulated due to their desperate need to gain access to these basic necessities. There are barely any opportunities for the youth. The structural violence in terms of lack of education, access to health care, lack of food sovereignty (to name but a few) must be addressed. Many people are forced by necessity to participate in the economy of kidnapping. According to a 2020 report by the National Human Rights Defense Network, some gang members are providing services that the state should be providing, stepping in support some community members with food, health care and education costs.

    What are the solutions to this problem?

    Kidnapping must be understood and dealt with in terms of class relations and local power relations. There needs to be agreement among Haitians of all classes about the type of government they want. This should be a government that can hold elections democratically and fairly and create a sustainable infrastructure that puts education, health care and security as its main priorities.

    Haitians in Haiti and in the diaspora are channeling some of their collective efforts to build a better Haiti into a project called the Commission for Haitian Solution to the Crisis (Forum Société Civile Haïtienne). Formed by 13 commission members from different Haitian civil society groups, the group was founded in May 2021. The commission brings together over 300 locals and regional organizations based in Haiti, seeking local strategies to the ongoing political, social and economic crisis in Haiti.

    We must also view this issue in a geopolitical context, including colonial, post-colonial and neocolonial histories as well as neoliberal policies. It is clear that foreign interventions in Haiti have only worsened the situation. Foreign troops, organized crime, class inequalities, corruption, and the so-called Core Group (made up of the United States plus ambassadors from Brazil, Canada, France, Germany and the European Union, along with representatives from the United Nations and the Organization of American States) are a dire combination.

    The narratives of Haiti as a failed state do not take into account the ways in which the Haitian state in conjunction with the international community has continuously and actively failed Haiti. This failure has contributed to the neoliberal policies; structural violence and inequality; a lack of infrastructures; and political, social and economic instability leading to ongoing social disruptions.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Food Apartheid Threatens BIPOC Children’s Health. Food Sovereignty Is the Fix.

    Hands pass seedling plant to child

    Children in the United States are bombarded with food advertisements, fast food restaurants and brightly packaged food-like snacks intentionally displayed at their eye level. The U.S. food industry manufactures, markets and sells trillions of dollars a year in food products. Despite these robust manufacturing systems and the profits those systems generate, food insecurity menaces a significant proportion of children in this country.

    Food insecurity rates for African American, Latinx and Indigenous families are disproportionally high. Defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) as a “household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food,” food insecurity rates for African American and Latinx households from 2001 to 2016 were at double the rates of food insecurity in white and Asian American households. According to 2017 data published by Partnership with Native Americans, 35 percent of Native American children live in poverty, and Native American families are 400 percent more likely than other U.S. families to report not having enough to eat.

    The problem of food insecurity has increased through the ongoing COVID crisis. According to the 2020 Census Household Pulse Survey (CHHPS), which collects data on food sufficiency for the Institute for Policy Research, “Across the eight weeks for which CHHPS microdata are available, covering April 23–June 23, 41.1% of Black respondents’ households have experienced food insecurity in the prior week, as have 36.9% of Hispanic respondents’ households and 23.2% of White respondents’ households.”

    Consistent with Native invisibility across other areas of U.S. life, data on food insecurity among Indigenous peoples through COVID is unavailable; however, the pandemic has definitely had a devastating impact on Indian Country, where the effects of systemic racism were acute prior to the additional pressures of COVID.

    One study found that, from 2000 to 2010, food insecurity among Indigenous people was around 25 percent. However, this number does not capture the experiences of particular communities, like the Yurok people, who live in the Klamath Basin in northern California and southern Oregon, and where 92 percent of the households suffered from food insecurity before COVID.

    Food Apartheid

    Food desert is the mainstream term for describing a community like the Klamath Basin, where people live with limited access to healthy, nutrient-dense foods. Food justice activist Dara Cooper says the more accurate term is “food apartheid” because it takes into account the structural racialized inequalities perpetuated through our current food system.

    A national organizer with the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, Cooper defines food apartheid as “the systematic destruction of Black self determination to control our food (including land, resource theft and discrimination), a hyper-saturation of destructive foods and predatory marketing, and a blatantly discriminatory corporate controlled food system that results in our communities suffering from some of the highest rates of heart disease and diabetes of all times.”

    The term “food apartheid” invites an interrogation of the policies, systems and laws that create hunger — instead of suggesting that, like an arid region colored tan on a map, hunger in this wealthy country is a naturally occurring event that system controllers simply document.

    Nearly 100 percent of people harmed by food apartheid report feeling that their food will run out, that they don’t have money to buy more, and that they can’t afford to eat balanced meals. In these communities, local schools are often the source of daily meals for children. Phiffany Deramus is school food service manager for the New York City Department of Education and identifies a “high level of homeless students in NYC public schools.”

    The official number of homeless students, over 111,000 in New York City in 2019-2020, counts young people in shelters or foster care. Many uncounted students are not technically homeless, but sleep in different homes and have no regular schedule for eating or sleeping because of external pressures that have dismantled the structure and routine of their home life.

    “The students look forward to the breakfast, lunch and after school programs we provide,” Deramus told Truthout.

    Through the Office of Food and Nutrition Services, the Department of Education in New York City provides free breakfast and lunch programming that complies with nutritional standards set forth by the USDA. Deramus is most excited about the fresh fruit and vegetable program because it “exposes the students to new fruits and vegetables they may not encounter at home.”

    Deramus says all New York City public school students receive the same meals, whether they live in an area of high food insecurity or high food access.

    However, Dr. Alicia Morgan-Cooper of Village Pediatrics in Baltimore, Maryland, says that, nationwide, lunches at schools with lower funding are often prepared with processed foods instead of from scratch. In fact, some of what passes as school lunch in the U.S. looks meager compared to food in schools elsewhere in the world. As recent images from Patterson, New Jersey, public schools made vividly apparent, some students in this country receive meals so grotesque, they are hard to look at, much less imagine eating.

    In countries like Japan, fresh meals are prepared from real food as part of an overall nutrition program. Here in the U.S., the costs of updating school kitchens for actual cooking is prohibitive, and policies meant to improve the healthiness of public school lunches, like President Barack Obama’s 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, have been negatively impacted by subsequent policy decisions. In too many schools, children who receive reduced-price meals but are unable to pay are often referred to debt collectors and shamed within a system ironically meant to nurture them.

    Food Justice

    Food justice liberates Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) from the systems, policies and norms that deny us affordable access to healthy food and, as Cooper defines food justice, would “provide indigenous, community based solutions to accessing and controlling food that are humanizing, fair, healthy, accessible, racially equitable, environmentally sound and just.” In the Klamath Basin, the Yurok community’s Food Justice Division has used CARES Act funding to purchase 40 acres of ancestral land and plans to build food villages and self-sustaining food systems.

    Food justice can produce positive impacts in children, who require nutrient-dense foods not only to grow in a physically healthy way, but also to perform well in school. “There is a correlation between a child’s poor nutrition and neurodevelopment and cognition,” according to Morgan-Cooper. “Poor nutrition causes a decrease in energy which, in turn, causes fatigue and tiredness leading to alterations in memory and in interest in learning.”

    Wellness programs that incorporate fresh food made from scratch could help improve multiple outcomes in schools where students are locked in food apartheid. “Consuming nutrient-dense foods provide better academic and behavior outcomes,” Morgan-Cooper says.

    Morgan-Cooper recognizes the value of meal delivery in schools where young people experience food insecurity, and she acknowledges the value of the USDA’s MyPlate Plan, which encourages students to fill half their plate with fruits and vegetables. In her home city of Baltimore, schools provide a snack and supper program to provide food to children enrolled in after-school care. “The challenge comes when schools in low-income areas have lesser funding, the school meals reflect such disparities,” Morgan-Cooper says. “Another challenge is to have students continue this behavior at home. If a child lives in a food desert and does not have access to healthy foods during the evenings, on the weekends, or during the summer, their health suffers.”

    Morgan-Cooper says government spending should increase to provide healthier food options to schoolchildren. To her, food justice is “that all children, no matter their race or socioeconomic background, need to have healthy foods provided in every school to in turn help maximize their educational potential.” She also recognizes that “this is, of course, dependent on the elected officials to ensure such increases.”

    Moving Toward Food Sovereignty

    Institutions within BIPOC and lower-income communities are rich with potential to deliver food access that exists in a space of autonomy and freedom from the whims of policymakers. Dara Cooper says this shift toward food sovereignty “entails a shift away from corporate agricultural system and towards our own governance of our own food systems. It is about our right to healthy food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, with the right to define and ultimately control our own food and agriculture systems. Shifting from an exclusively rights based framework to one of governance puts the needs of those who work and consume at all points of the food chain at the center rather than the demands of corporations and markets.”

    The Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation aims to achieve food sovereignty in Central Brooklyn, New York, consistent with its dedication to the overall wellness of the people who live there. The Restoration Corporation has delivered art and culture, financial empowerment, youth services, housing, small business support, and wellness to Central Brooklyn residents since 1967. At this community institution, Restoration Corporation Program Manager Alexis Harrison is focusing on food sovereignty.

    “We need a values-driven food supply chain, rooted in true community ownership, connected with BIPOC farmers, growers and distributors offering culturally reflective foods, supportive community based infrastructure that hyper-localizes supply chains, supportive of local economies and needs, and is intentional about community food access and affordability,” Harrison told Truthout.

    Restoration Corporation’s Farm to Early Care Program provides the scaffolding to support this vision of food sovereignty. Over the past 10 years, Farm to Early Care has partnered with 50 institutions to deliver locally sourced food to more than 50,000 Brooklyn residents. Community gardens provide food access, along with other local distributors like Common Market, Brooklyn Packers, and GrowNYC. Through these and other partnerships, according to Harrison, Restoration Corporation provides:

    on-site food access by making connections needed to bring a farmshare on site for their community and/or to make an official switch to local food procurement; local food education, providing sites the opportunity to host food demos, cooking classes, and cooking workshops to be attended by staff, participants, and the community at large; and connections to urban agriculture and community gardens to bridge the gap between community institutions and sites of food production.

    In August 2018, the City University of New York Urban Food Policy Institute published a policy brief meant to document Restoration Corporation’s work and offer the organization’s Farm to Early Care program as a template for other organizations to model. Going forward, Restoration Corporation seeks to build on Farm to Early Care and create a food hub, which would be, Harrison says, “a community-owned facility connected to neighborhood assets and small-scale farmers.”

    The inherent inadequacy of merely providing communities with food, instead of the autonomous community governance that Restoration Corporation seeks, became vivid during the height of COVID. Long lines of cars queued up for food bank donations through the early months of the pandemic. In urban areas like Brooklyn, people risked COVID exposure to walk or ride public transportation to get food for their families. Seventy-nine percent of New York’s food banks and pantries that saw a surge in visitors reported an increase in families with children. Meanwhile, 40 percent of New York City’s soup kitchens and food pantries closed during the height of the pandemic, with 73 percent of those agencies in high-need areas. The rate of first-time visitors to soup kitchens and food pantries increased to 91 percent.

    “The onset of the pandemic revealed the vulnerabilities of local food systems and supply chains that were not adequately serving our communities — low-income, BIPOC, working-class — to begin with,” Harrison says.

    In response to the dire need for free food during the height of the COVID crisis, Brooklyn resident Asmeret Berhe-Lumax simply placed a refrigerator on the street for neighbors to access. “One Love Community Fridge is a community-based response to the long lines at food banks that began when COVID-19 infected hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. We watched as folks of all ages in our community risked exposure by standing in long lines at overwhelmed food banks to be able to procure food for their families.”

    Berhe-Lumax’s One Love Community is part of a loose network of community refrigerators. These autonomous fridges share information and support, as well as food donations. Community fridge volunteers rescue food from restaurants and supermarkets, and neighbors can simply place food donations on shelves. Open 24 hours, the fridges provide neighbors this free food, which people simply take in the quantities that their families need. Indeed, children and adults shop the community fridge much like they shop supermarket aisles, looking at labels, thinking about meal plans and making choices based on their immediate needs.

    “One Love Community focuses on stocking the fridges with fresh and healthy food while inviting the community to engage and participate,” Berhe-Lumax says. “The fridges should feel like your dinner table at home. We work hard to take away any stigma around food insecurity by making sure the fridges and the food look great and that everyone is welcomed to participate. The impact is immense and immediate. Thousands of families rely on the fridges to be able to feed or supplement food for their families.”

    To broaden the path to food sovereignty, One Love Community is seeking partnerships with schools to create more community gardens. The organization intentionally positions sidewalk refrigerators near schools so that families have access. Berhe-Lumax says this food access exists at the intersection of all broader social issues, including social, economic and racial inequalities.

    Consistent with the food sovereignty vision, One Love Community wants to involve more local farmers, urban farmers and community gardens into the community fridge ecosystem. The traditional charity model does not provide sovereignty. Behre-Lumax says the community fridge model “disrupts the ‘us versus them’ because it invites community members on all ends to participate. It promotes sustainability, and empowers community members to be part of the solution. The work of One Love Community extends beyond food — it ties into safety, health, empowerment and education.”

    Failure to disrupt systems that lock our children in the multi-generational occupation of food apartheid has real consequences: Food apartheid is just one way that racism enters our babies’ bodies, erodes their innate potential and maintains the hegemony that oppresses them. Each effort to achieve food justice and, ultimately, food sovereignty, is an act of liberation from the structural inequalities that marginalize BIPOC people, especially children starting in the earliest years of life.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Child refugees were ‘dumped’ in unsafe hotel, claims Brighton council

    Law firm says attempts to evaluate a 15-year-old Afghan held in a hotel had been prevented, breaching the child’s rights

    Fresh concern over the plight of thousands of refugees living in UK hotels has emerged after a council requested that the Home Office shut down temporary accommodation housing child refugees over “safeguarding concerns” and a lawyer revealed how he had been blocked from assessing unaccompanied minors.

    Brighton and Hove city council has asked the Home Office to stop using a hotel holding scores of child refugees, claiming that no initial Covid-19 risk or safeguarding assessment had been carried out. Meanwhile, a law firm said that attempts to evaluate a 15-year-old Afghan held in a hotel had been prevented, breaching the child’s rights, with other unaccompanied minors subject to “unlawful forced imprisonment”.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Pollutionwatch: the fight to protect children from dirty air

    Rather than relying on court cases, is it time for the right to clean air to be enshrined in UK and US law?

    Last week the high court ruled that the UK Environment Agency must do more to protect a five-year-old boy from dangerous fumes leaking from a nearby landfill site. It was among recent legal cases focusing on air pollution.

    In 2020 the coroner’s court concluded that air pollution was a factor in the death of nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah, who lived alongside London’s South Circular road, and in 2021 French courts halted the deportation of a Bangladeshi man due to the risks posed by air pollution in his home country.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The Taliban are not the only threat to Afghanistan. Aid cuts could undo 20 years of progress

    The most vulnerable people will bear the cost of sanctions, as services and the economy collapse

    Watching Afghanistan’s unfolding trauma, I’ve thought a lot about Mumtaz Ahmed, a young teacher I met a few years ago. Her family fled Kabul during Taliban rule in the late 1990s.

    Raised as a refugee in Pakistan, Ahmed had defied the odds and made it to university. Now, she was back in Afghanistan teaching maths in a rural girls’ school. “I came back because I believe in education and I love my country,” she told me. “These girls have a right to learn – without education, Afghanistan has no future.”

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Protections for older children in care vanished overnight

    On 9 September, a new law came into force banning the use of unregulated settings for children in care aged 15 and younger in England. Given the lack of support and security children placed in unregulated accommodation receive, some regard the ban as a positive move towards protecting under-16s in care. But according to children’s rights charity Article 39, this change in the law will harm thousands of vulnerable 16 and 17-year-old children in care, leaving them to cope alone with minimal support.

    Leaving vulnerable children to fend for themselves

    Following a BBC Newsnight investigation which exposed stories of abuse and exploitation in unregulated accommodation, the Department for Education launched a consultation on these settings. Unregulated accommodation includes shared houses, bedsits, flats and hostels, which aren’t required to meet children’s homes standards. These settings aren’t registered as housing children in the care of the state, and aren’t subject to inspection. Children in unregulated settings are provided with little to no care or support from adults.

    Setting out the problems with some unregulated settings, then-CEO of youth justice charity Just for Kids Law Enver Solomon said:

    They include lack of oversight, minimal key worker contact time for young people, high numbers of out of area placements, frequent placement moves, children being housed alongside adults including those who engage in risk-taking behaviours, properties that are dirty, run-down or lack basic furnishings and at the worst end of the scale, leave children and young people at risk of violence or exploitation.

    In September 2020, the children’s commissioner published a report setting out why “no child under the age of 18 should be placed in an unregulated setting”. In spite of calls for the government to ban placing under-18s in unregulated settings, in February, education secretary Gavin Williamson announced plans to introduce a ban that only protects children under the age of 16.

    A change to the law

    On 9 September, the new law came into force banning the use of unregulated settings for children in care aged 15 and younger in England. A Department for Education spokesperson said:

    Councils can no longer place under-16s in unregulated accommodation. Looked after children under the age of 16 should either be in a foster placement or a registered children’s home, as will many 16 and 17-year-olds. However, it may be the right option for some 16 and 17-year-olds to move from a supported children’s home to unregulated settings as they are ready to become more independent.

    They added:

    These settings must be of high quality and provide appropriate support. We have consulted on national standards that each of these settings must meet, as well as taking views on Ofsted-led registration and inspection.

    Calling this “a dreadful day for children in care in England”, children’s rights charity Article 39 director Carolyne Willow told The Canary:

    Ministers have changed the law to make it mandatory that children in care are cared for where they live, but they have only applied this to those aged 15 and younger. What kind of parent decides to ration care to children on the basis of age? What kind of parent looks at their daughter or son approaching their 16th birthday and thinks they’ll soon be able to manage without care? What kind of parent would make it a family rule that only children under the age of 16 are guaranteed care? 

    In May, the charity found that only around 100 under-16s would benefit from the legal change, while around 6,000 16 and 17-year-olds in care are living in unregulated accommodation.

    Taking it to the courts

    On 17 August, the high court approved a judicial review launched by Article 39 on the grounds that “this change to the law is discriminatory and an injustice to older children in care”.

    Willow told The Canary:

    These are children who are in the care of the state, family courts have made care orders in respect of many of them. It beggars belief that we’re having to go to court to argue that this legal change discriminates against 16 and 17 year-olds. Boys and children from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities will be hardest hit by this change to the law. It’s simply intolerable.

    In November, the children’s rights charity launched another legal challenge. In this case, the court of appeal found that the education secretary acted unlawfully in removing safeguards for children in care at the beginning of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic without consulting children’s rights organisations.

    Article 39 is looking to raise £5k to fund the upcoming judicial review. And charity Together Trust is seeking 5,000 signatures, calling on the state to provide care for looked after children up to the age of 18.

    Featured image via Jesús Rodríguez/Unsplash

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • An officer assaulted an autistic boy. It’s time to get police out of schools.

    Content warning: the video below contains footage some readers may find distressing

    On 7 September, Channel 4 News shared distressing footage of a school-based police officer assaulting an autistic 10-year-old pupil. Merseyside Police has introduced further training for its officers based in schools. But campaigners argue that more training is not the answer, and that police in schools will always be a harmful problem rather than a solution.

    No police in schools

    Distressing CCTV footage shows Merseyside Police school-based officer PC Christopher Cruise threatening to kick an autistic 10-year-old boy who is lying on the ground. The officer proceeds to drag the boy across the floor and fling him through a door. Channel 4 News shared:

    School-based police officers carry out policing and surveillance on school grounds. We have seen an increasing presence of police in UK schools in recent years. Campaigners have raised concerns that the presence of police and state violence in educational settings will disproportionately impact children with special educational needs and disabilities, and working-class pupils from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds.

    Responding to the footage, campaign group Kids of Colour tweeted:

    The Northern Police Monitoring Project added:

    In July, No Police in Schools campaigners celebrated the success of their campaign calling on the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) to halt plans to place more police officers in local schools and to remove existing school-based officers. In response to the campaign, Manchester city council motioned to remove and re-deploy all existing officers in local schools. However, council leaders reiterated their commitment to stationing 20 more officers in Manchester schools. As demonstrated by Cruise’s abhorrent behaviour, the fight to protect children and young people from overpolicing is far from over.

    Expressing her dismay, one Twitter user shared:

    Dolores Lee added:

    The UK is not innocent

    Speaking out about the very real issue of police in UK schools, Kids of Colour founder Roxy Legane tweeted:

    Indicating what the UK’s education system could look like if we continue to see an increasing police presence in schools, US-based youth-led Alliance for Educational Justice shared:

    More training isn’t the answer

    Cruise has been fined and convicted of assault. According to Merseyside Police, it has provided their school-based officers with further training following the incident. But campaigners are arguing that training is not enough, and that the footage demonstrates exactly why police should never be stationed in schools.

    One Twitter user said:

    The Network for Police Monitoring added:

    National Education Union Manchester president and No Police in Schools campaigner Vik Chechi-Ribeiro shared:

    The campaign continues

    Reflecting on the struggles and triumphs of the ongoing campaign to remove police from UK schools and introduce measures that support young people, Kids of Colour’s Roxy Legane shared:

    The distressing footage reflects what No Police in Schools campaigners have been arguing: that policing is never a solution, especially when it comes to marginalised and vulnerable children and young people. As campaigners have highlighted, “young people need support, not suspicion”. This means investment in youth workers, counsellors, teachers, and other services which support pupils rather than policing which traumatises them. People looking to take action can get involved in the campaign via No Police in Schools’ website.

    Featured image via Channel 4 News/Twitter

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Some religious groups catastrophically failed children, says lawyer

    A report on child protection in religious organisations and settings shows that some groups have “catastrophically” failed to protect youngsters in their care, a lawyer has said.

    The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) examined evidence from 38 religious organisations with a presence in England and Wales.

    It found there have been “egregious failings by a number of religious organisations” and highlighted “significant diversity” between religious organisations as to whether they have adequate child protection policies in place and the extent to which they effectively follow them.

    “Catastrophically failed to protect children”

    Richard Scorern is a specialist abuse lawyer at Slater & Gordon who acts for seven victim and survivor groups in the IICSA, including those representing Jewish, South Asian and Jehovah’s Witnesses survivors.

    He said:

    Today’s report confirms that some religious groups have catastrophically failed to protect children in their care and that many have patchy or non-existent safeguarding policies and support for victims and survivors of abuse.

    This is simply unacceptable. It is clear from the report that too many religious organisations continue to prioritise the protection, reputation and authority of religious leaders above the rights of children.

    In the light of today’s report, the arguments for mandatory reporting and independent oversight of religious bodies are overwhelming, and it is imperative that IICSA recommends these changes when it delivers its final report next year.

    The Muslin Council of Britain (MCB) said the inquiry report “makes for difficult reading and underlines the importance of education centred around the wellbeing of children”.

    It added:

    The protection of children is rooted in our religious traditions and should be at the centre of all Muslim institutions.

    This includes child safeguarding policies and regular ongoing training.

    Crucially, children must feel confident in reporting any concerns they have.

    The MCB is committed to providing resources and support for our affiliated organisations, and to sharing good practice already out there, to foster safe and nurturing environments for children in religious settings.

    Still failing their members

    The secretary of the conference of the Methodist Church, the Revd Dr Jonathan Hustler, said while it will take time to fully study the report, early indications are that it includes:

    many areas where religious organisations are still failing their members, and we are truly sorry for where this happens in our churches

    He said the report’s first recommendation that all religious organisations should have a child protection policy and supporting procedures “largely reflects our existing policy and procedures”, and that the church will await Government advice on the second recommendation about amending the definition of full-time education.

    Hustler said:

    We note the report’s mention of a general lack of support for victims of abuse among religious organisations.

    We will continue to review and improve our support to victims and survivors and we apologise where this has not happened as it should have done.

    We are grateful to the panel for recognising positive child protection practice in the church, including our safer recruitment and internal auditing processes.

    He said the church is grateful to the victims and survivors of abuse for their “bravery” in taking part in the inquiry. He added:

    There can be never be any excuse for failings in safeguarding and it is the responsibility of everyone connected with the Methodist Church to uphold the highest standards in order to protect children and vulnerable people

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Two children die as fire guts PNG’s national broadcaster units

    By Lina Keapu in Port Moresby

    Two children have died and at least six staff of Papua New Guinea’s National Broadcasting Corporation lost their property worth thousands of kina in a blaze in Boroko.

    The fire yesterday gutted two units of a four-unit property of the public broadcaster in Tanatana Street, impacting on eight families who occupied the building.

    Staff and families who reside in the NBC compound said the fire started from one of the rooms on the ground level.

    Investigations have started into how the fire began.

    The fire started at about 2pm yesterday with two small children trapped inside.

    Firefighters tried hard to put out the fire and save the children.

    NBC staff who live there have blamed the management for negligence over the rundown building.

    The father of the dead children is a senior archivist with the PNG’s oldest radio station.

    The children were with a female tenant in a neighbouring room at the time of the fire while the mother was doing laundry.

    Firefighters from Boroko Fire Station rushed to the scene after seeing thick smoke from a distance and hastily put out the flames with assistance from tenants.

    Firefighters clean up at NBC blaze
    Firefighters clean up after the bodies of the two young children were taken to the Port Moresby General Hospital mortuary. Image: PNG Bulletin

    The mother of the dead children wept while the father, who had been at work, rushed home to search for the toddlers alongside firefighters, police and ambulance officers on site.

    The bodies were taken to the Port Moresby General Hospital morgue.

    The dead children were of mixed parentage from West Papua and Mailu in Central province.

    Lina Keapu is a PNG Bulletin reporter.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Campaigners and families demand action on police use of tasers

    On 25 August, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) published a review of the police’s use of taser in England and Wales. The report raises concerns about officers’ disproportionate and inappropriate use of the electronic weapon against Black people, people with mental ill health and learning disabilities, and children. Families of people killed by taser have spoken out, calling for a ban on the use of the electric weapon. And campaigners argue that the police watchdog’s recommendations seeking improvements should go further in order to prevent further harm.

    Excessive and disproportionate use of taser

    For its report, the IOPC reviewed 101 taser investigation cases. It found that between 2015 and 2020 police in England and Wales were more likely to taser Black people for prolonged periods than their white counterparts. The watchdog also found a pattern of inappropriate tasering against people experiencing mental health crises. It highlighted five cases of police allegedly firing the electrical weapon wrongfully. IOPC director general Michael Lockwood concluded by saying that “policing has to change and be more responsive to community concern or risk losing legitimacy in the eyes of the public”.

    Responding to the report’s findings, the IOPC highlighted concerns about the police’s use of the electronic weapon. It set out 17 recommendations to the College of Policing, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, and the Home Office. These include “improvements to national guidance and training; scrutiny and monitoring of taser use; and data and research”.

    The IOPC’s findings are in line with concerns raised by rights organisations including The Children’s Rights Alliance for England, Amnesty UK, and the Omega Research Foundation.

    In 2020, the coroner investigating the death of Marc Cole following repeated police tasering warned about the increasing use of the weapon. In spite of evidence of the harm they can cause, the Home Office announced in 2019 that it would spend £10m on arming more police officers with the electronic weapon.

    Bereaved families speak out

    The families of people who have died after being tasered by police spoke out following the IOPC’s report. Some are calling for a ban on the use of taser against people experiencing mental health crises. In 2017, Cornwall police tasered Marc Cole while he was experiencing a mental health crisis. His sister Lisa Cole told the Guardian:

    They should immediately ban the repeated and prolonged use of Taser against people clearly exhibiting the symptoms of mental ill health until and if they have robust medical data showing that it is safe.

    In 2017, police repeatedly tasered, beat, and sprayed Darren Cumberbatch while he was experiencing a mental health crisis. Although the police’s excessive use of force contributed to his premature death, none of the officers involved have faced disciplinary action. Cumberbatch’s sister said:

    We’ve already had numerous shoddy reports and unimplemented recommendations since the Macpherson review. Our families are ending up ruined from fighting for justice against a system built against us.

    Time for action and accountability

    Calling for accountability for the death of her brother – as well as the deaths of Cumberbatch, Adrian McDonald, and others who have died following police tasering – Lisa Cole said:

    Our families urge the IOPC to now look at the key finding patterns in all the cases listed in the deaths and injuries section of the report and to urgently review and robustly reinvestigate all these cases.

    In a statement responding to the IOPC’s review, INQUEST director Deborah Coles said:

    This review is welcome but the recommendations do not go far enough to create the systemic change needed. Tasers are highly dangerous weapons which have resulted in serious injuries, harm, and deaths. They are increasingly used as a first not last resort.

    She added:

    We don’t just need more scrutiny, community oversight, or training or guidance. We need the IOPC, police chiefs and oversight bodies to hold police officers to account when they abuse their powers and to confront the reality presented by this evidence. We need strong action: stop the further rollout of Tasers to more officers now.

    Police reject the findings

    While campaigners say the IOPC’s recommendations should go further, police chiefs have condemned the report. Responding to the watchdog’s findings, National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for Less Lethal Weapons and chief constable Lucy D’Orsi said:

    Unfortunately, this report by the IOPC is vague, lacks detail, does not have a substantive evidence base and regrettably ignores extensive pieces of work that are already well underway and, indeed, other areas where improvement could be made.

    She added:

    Only 101 Taser uses over a five year period were reviewed and these were all ones that had been investigated by the IOPC. It is concerning that this only represents 0.1 per cent of all Taser uses in the same period, which totals 94,045.

    National vice chair of the Police Federation Ché Donald called the IOPC’s findings “statistically insignificant”, adding:

    We are naturally disappointed our 130,000 members were not consulted and this study is based on 0.1 per cent of Taser uses over a five-year period.

    But action is needed

    Campaigners and families remain steadfast in their calls for institutional change and accountability. Many are urging the state to halt the rollout of more tasers, and instead invest in communities, health and mental health services, and welfare and education to reduce harm at the hands of police.

    Featured image via Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona/Unsplash 

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Charity warns of ‘deeply distressing’ fall in children’s wellbeing over a decade

    More than 300,000 UK children were estimated to be unhappy with their lives before the pandemic, according to research warning of a “deeply distressing” downward trend in wellbeing.

    The decline of British happiness

    The tenth annual review from The Children’s Society found 6.7% of children aged 10 to 15 were not happy with their lives overall in 2018-19 – up from 3.8% in 2009-10. The charity analysed data collected as part of the Office for National Statistics’ Understanding Society survey for its Good Childhood Report.

    Extrapolating this to population level, this suggests 306,000 children are unhappy – up from an estimated 173,000 children a decade ago. Worries about school and appearance were key factors thought to be behind the decline in happiness, the report found.

    4% of children aged 10 to 17 were found not to be coping with the pandemic and to have low wellbeing, according to the society’s own survey of more than 2,000 young people between April and June in the UK. The research found those who were unhappy with their lives aged 14 were much more likely to develop symptoms of mental health conditions, including self-harm, within the next three years.

    This is based on analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study, which follows the lives of 18,000 people born across the UK in 2000-02.

    Measure wellbeing like we measure the economy

    The charity says the government must start measuring the wellbeing of children, as well as adults, and produce an action plan to tackle the causes of low wellbeing.

    Writers Amit Kapoor and Bibek Debroy have previously argued:

    Economic growth has raised living standards around the world. However, modern economies have lost sight of the fact that the standard metric of economic growth, gross domestic product (GDP), merely measures the size of a nation’s economy and doesn’t reflect a nation’s welfare. Yet policymakers and economists often treat GDP, or GDP per capita in some cases, as an all-encompassing unit to signify a nation’s development, combining its economic prosperity and societal well-being. As a result, policies that result in economic growth are seen to be beneficial for society.

    We know now that the story is not so simple – that focusing exclusively on GDP and economic gain to measure development ignores the negative effects of economic growth on society, such as climate change and income inequality. It’s time to acknowledge the limitations of GDP and expand our measure development so that it takes into account a society’s quality of life.

    According to the analysis of the Understanding Society data, more boys are becoming unhappy with the way they look, with the proportion rising from 7.8% to 13.0% over the past decade. The proportion of girls unhappy with their appearance remained at a similar level (15.7% up from 14.9% ten years ago). One in eight (11.9%) children are now unhappy with their school lives, up from 8.9% a decade ago.

    Mark Russell, the Children’s Society chief executive, said these “worrying trends” must not be allowed to worsen. He added:

    It’s deeply distressing to see that children’s wellbeing is on a 10-year downward trend and on top of this a number of young people have not coped well with the pandemic.

    Children’s happiness with their lives has the potential to have far reaching consequences, and has been linked to their attainment and mental health as well as their safety and hopes for the future. It’s vital we protect children in early adolescence, as our report has shown their unhappiness at this stage can be a warning sign of potential issues in later teenage years.

    It’s so important we listen and help children in this crucial stage of their development, providing early well-being and mental health support whenever they need it.

    More support needed

    A Conservative government spokesperson said:

    We know the past year has been incredibly difficult and so we are prioritising the wellbeing of children and young people, backed by more than £17 million to build on the mental health support currently available in schools, including our wellbeing for education recovery and return programmes to support students experiencing trauma, anxiety, or grief.

    We are also investing £3 billion to boost learning, including £950 million in additional funding for schools which they can use to support pupils’ mental health and wellbeing and our expanded holiday activities and food programme can also be beneficial for children and young people’s physical and mental wellbeing.

    Various Conservative governments have been in power for almost all of the period researched in which children’s wellbeing diminished.

    Tom Madders, director of campaigns at YoungMinds, urged the government to invest in a national network of early support hubs so that young people can get mental health and wellbeing support as soon as they start struggling.

    He said:

    The last year has been incredibly difficult for lots of young people with many struggling to cope with social isolation, loneliness and worries about the future.

    It’s clear that the pandemic is just one part of the picture however, with young people facing multiple pressures that are impacting their overall wellbeing.

    Peter Wanless, chief executive of the NSPCC, said:

    We need to see more mental health support for young people in both the classroom and the community, together with early intervention services that can step in to support children and families before problems escalate to crisis point.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Generation of children ‘could be failed’ without mental health support

    A generation of children could be “failed” because of a lack of adequate mental health support, experts have said.

    The Mental Health Network warned that many children could be left without vital support due to shortages which could allow their problems to worsen over time.

    Its latest report states that the mental health system for children and young people is reaching a “tipping point” as it faces significant demand.

    The pandemic has led to extra pressures which could lead to mental health problems for youngsters including uncertainty and anxiety caused by the lockdowns, school closures, isolation from friends and peers, bereavement and loss, and extra stresses and pressures on families, it said.

    The coronavirus crisis has also worsened existing problems of mental health inequalities.

    As many as 1.5 million children and young people may need new or additional mental health support as a result of the pandemic, previous analysis suggests.

    The authors raised particular concern for those in need of eating disorder services after a huge spike in demand.

    In March 2020, there were 237,088 children and young people in contact with mental health services in England, compared to 305,802 in February 2021, the Mental Health Network said.

    The network, which is part of the NHS Confederation, called on the government to fully invest in services ahead of the autumn spending review.

    It said that while there is pressure on hospital beds in the short term, ministers must consider the longer term and plough funds into early intervention and preventative measures to help children.

    And more must done to help plug staffing gaps, it added.

    Sean Duggan, chief executive of the Mental Health Network, said: “A generation of children and young people requiring support for their mental health risk being failed because the NHS is not being adequately resourced to support them.

    “While health leaders are grateful that investment from the Government has begun, as well as for the prioritisation children and young people’s mental health has been given, the continued toll of the pandemic has shown that it may not be enough to respond to the rising demand for their services. Funding must be both long-term and sustainable.

    “We have seen outstanding examples from our members working together to support the mental wellbeing of their younger patients, through both preventative services and inpatient care, but nationally, it is clear we are now at a tipping point.

    “Many young people are developing mental health problems as a direct result of the pandemic and with Covid-19 cases expected to rise in the autumn, this is a worrying position to be in.

    “Additional and targeted investment is essential, as is a real commitment from the Government to continue expanding and improving services so that we can avoid failing children and young people when they may need help the most.”

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Parenting Amid Delta Is the Heartbreak That Didn’t Need to Happen

    A line of children and their families wait to enter a school building

    My back feels like it is made of old winter ice, rotted and black, still hard and so cold. I want to lie on my stomach and have someone take a rolling pin to it, up and down, side to side, so I can hear it crack and shatter, so I can take in breaths that don’t shudder in the exhale, so my shoulders will come down from beneath my ears, if only for a few minutes, before everything freezes again.

    An unbroken night’s sleep is a dim memory of a paradise I failed to fully appreciate when last I was there, a priceless gift taken for granted by a spoiled child. All my dreams are frustration dreams, lost in a maze, lost in a vast building without beginning or end, lost in a strange and menacing cityscape, lost in the dark. I snap awake and sit on the edge of my bed with the blanket wrapped over me like my own personal oxygen tent and try to shake the dream off, but it is always waiting for me beneath my pillow when I return, coiled like an asp sent to do murder in the night. Perhaps you can relate.

    I have it easy; at least I had a childhood, replete and complete. My 8-year-old daughter is not so fortunate. Someone will coin a glib nickname for her generation — Generation Rona, or something — that will comprehensively fail to encompass the damage she and her peers are absorbing as we speak. Hemingway said the world breaks everyone, and some grow strong at the broken places. I hope to Christ this is true for my daughter, even as I writhe upon bearing witness to the breaking. So begins another COVID school year.

    The pandemic exploded the last four months of my daughter’s first-grade year, routed and ravaged the entire term of her second grade, and now waits like some infinitely patient vampire to suck the life out of her third grade. Indifference to the spread of the virus opened the door for the emergence of variants, one of which is proving to be far more menacing to our children. No vaccine is available for those younger than 12.

    It is so rotten, so foul, so unfathomably unfair.

    It was better for a while. Late spring and early summer actually hedged toward normal. She was back in the school building, masked and distanced but there, and not trying to navigate at-home education via Zoom. She stopped being alone all the time, and her mother and I could see the strain lines lift from her face like a magic trick after the first day she was back.

    The beginning of summer camp at the close of June should have been glory, but was instead another false dawn. Just as my daughter was reuniting with camp friends, running through sprinklers and doing crafts with beads after the long gloom, I found myself required to write this:

    The inescapable truth emerging from this ongoing crisis is that very little of it is, in fact, under control. Half the U.S. population remains unvaccinated, including children under 12, and a certain segment of that unvaccinated population disdains even the most unobtrusive protections as an affront to freedom, because Trump. Many areas of the world beyond our borders are struggling to contend with the pandemic, allowing the virus to replicate variants that will continue to test our progress, if not subsume it altogether.

    I hate that paragraph. I hated it when I wrote it, and I hate it now, because it did not have to be this way. That “certain segment, because Trump” cohort has directly caused an absolutely horrific infection spike in several of the states Trump carried in 2020, a spike that has spread its shadow over the whole country, just in time for school. Governors like DeSantis in Florida, Abbott in Texas and Lee in Tennessee are pitchforking their constituents into the pandemic’s maw because each seeks Trump’s mantle, full in the knowledge that even attempting to do so is a boon to their fundraising efforts.

    I find that I am able to function only if I shove the feral scream of rage in my head into a vault with a heavy lock, and even then, my hands shake. It is one thing to say, “A portion of the country no longer believes in the common good.” It is another to watch that un-belief devour my daughter’s happiness like a glutton at the cafeteria.

    More than once over the last few weeks, she has asked me, “Daddy, why are you holding your breath?” I realized I was, exhaled slowly, and told her I was thinking of something to write about. This was not a lie: I was thinking of the people who conflate masks and vaccines with fascism, and my fury rose, and I forgot to breathe, again. I am so worried about my daughter that she has begun to worry about me. My calm, soothing, don’t-worry-be-happy façade — held now for 19 months entirely for her sake — has begun to crack.

    I had a run-in some days ago at the playground with a member of the Trump brigades. Our daughters played happily on the monkey bars while she and I chatted about nothing in particular. Like a cloud passing over the sun, a portion of our conversation touched upon something that had been touched by the pandemic, and her entire demeanor changed before my eyes.

    “I don’t mean to talk politics, but,” she began, and I immediately prepared myself, because I knew full well that whatever came after “but” was going to boil me if I didn’t lock it all down like a ship confronting a gale. I was not disappointed, which is to say I got exactly what I expected. Everything after “but” was a strangled retinue of fiction, false patriotism, un-science and paranoia. She may as well have had a “Q” seared into the middle of her forehead like a Medieval monk emerged from some crumbling splinter abbey on the bleak side of the river.

    When my turn to speak came — it turns out she did need to breathe, and so had to stop the ramble for a tick — I kept it as simple as I could: “My grandmother stole sugar packets from restaurants to her dying day because of what she experienced during the Great Depression. I can’t imagine what she went through. To equate wearing a mask for the common good to tyranny and real hardship makes me want to climb a tree and live with the squirrels.”

    Verbatim. You can guess I’d been honing that line for such a confrontation, and it did not let me down. She became very still, eyes wide, looking at me like I was a spider she’d found hiding between the pages of her favorite book. “My daughter needs a bottled water,” she muttered, almost to herself. She collected her daughter — dear God, that poor kid — and was gone, leaving me there on the bench to wonder if I’d done any good at all.

    Maybe? Doubtful. The poison has been injected deep, as I suspect will be evidenced by Monday’s FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine. Many vax-hesitant people claimed they were waiting for that approval before getting the shot, and now that it’s here, I imagine the next verse will be, “But that approval was too fast.” You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it give a shit about its community.

    Remember that great Staples commercial with the dad exuberantly picking out school supplies in front of his two sullen children to the tune of, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”? That was a quarter century ago, and the role reversal now is unsettlingly stark.

    Today, most of the kids are champing at the bit to get back to school because it’s normal, Normal, NORMAL! to be in a classroom with children their own age, and not hotboxed at home with doom spilling out of the television like a bilge tide and a tablet standing in for a friend if the kid’s family is able to afford one. The parents, on the other hand, are sullen with worry that the Delta variant will plow through the coming year like a bulldozer with blade down and engine bellowing. Today is the Bizarro World version of that ad.

    This is not the aftermath of a meteor strike or a massive earthquake. Actual people are responsible for this slow slide toward another harrowing COVID winter, because they refuse to be responsible for the rest of us, as we have chosen to be responsible for them by masking up, getting the shot and following basic scientific guidance.

    Meanwhile, for many parents of young children, autumn threatens to be a season of holding our collective breath. Again.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Exploitative Viral PR Photos Of Military Invaders With Afghan Kids

    Mainstream news and social media cannot get enough photos of imperial invaders posing for photographs with small children in Afghanistan. 

    Mass media narrative managers and military agencies alike have been spamming these images everywhere, as quickly and enthusiastically as possible. 

    That’s right. Invade a nation, kill hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants, stay for decades, accomplish nothing besides making war profiteers wealthy, drop everything and leave, then have your armed goon squad take PR photos with local infants so everyone thinks your military is awesome.

    Ooh everyone look at this picture of a sweet kindly US stormtrooper cuddling one of the Afghan infants his coworkers happen to have not murdered yet.

    The UN found that at least 26,025 children were killed or maimed in the fighting in Afghanistan just between the years 2005 and 2019.

    And what exactly is going on in this video here? Why is he bottle feeding those kids like koalas after an Australian bushfire? Those are people. If they’ve been out there for two days you’ve had time to get water bottles. Hand the people water bottles.

    Also how crazy is it that they spent trillions of dollars supposedly “nation building” in Afghanistan and basic water and plumbing needs are still an issue. It’s like, hey, stop doing photo ops with babies and go dig some wells or something.

    Just imagine if all this media firepower had gone into criticizing all the lies and devastation that went into creating this mess in the first place.

    Not everyone is impressed by these photos.

    Not impressed at all.

    I mean I get it. The military and the mass media are two arms of the same empire, and creating a positive image for the imperial war machine is essential to its continued operation. If people began awakening to just how horrific the US-centralized empire’s mass murder operations really are, they would lose trust in the giant propaganda engine which manipulates the way they think, act and vote. You can’t stop the killing, since killing is the glue which holds the unipolar world order in place, so you have your grunts take pictures with the babies of the nations you invaded instead.

    It’s just gross is all. Really, really gross.

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    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • ‘Harrowing’ rise in child harm drives pleas for more funding

    Council-reported incidents of child harm increased by nearly a fifth over the last year, prompting calls for more funding for children’s services.

    The Local Government Association (LGA) found there were 536 notifications of child-related serious incidents during 2020/2021. This is a 19% increase from 2019/2020

    Child death related notices also increased by 19%.

    The LGA is now calling for more funding for children’s social care in the next spending review to help protect children.

    “Extra pressure on families”

    The LGA is worried that abuse and neglect were more likely to go unnoticed during the year’s lockdowns, and expressed concern pressure from the pandemic could increase the risk to children’s safety.

    Youngest children are the most at risk, with 36% of the incidents reported in 2020/21 relating to children under the age of one.

    Cllr Anntoinette Bramble, chair of the LGA’s Children and Young People Board, said:

    Supporting and protecting vulnerable children is one of the most important roles played by councils who want to ensure all children are safe, loved and thrive, so this rise in serious incident notifications is particularly harrowing and a huge cause for concern.

    The pandemic has put extra pressure on families, particularly those living in difficult circumstances, which can fuel harmful acts of abuse or neglect on children.

    Councils have been working hard with their partners to identify this and provide the help children need, but it is vital that children’s social care services are funded to meet this need.

    Funding need

    In 2019/2020, the demand for safeguarding services saw councils across the UK overspend on children’s social care budgets by £832m. This is despite councils diverting £1.1bn to children’s services over the last two years.

    The LGA now wants central government to invest in children’s social care so councils can provide early and preventative services to families.

    Early intervention funding has been cut over the last decade. The LGA report that the Early Intervention Grant to councils has been slashed by £1.7bn since 2010.

    North-South divide

    According to Action for Children, many councils cannot afford to pay for early intervention services.

    The group further found that spending on children’s services dropped by 9% in the north of England from 2010/11 to 2018/19, compared to 3% in the south. This has led to a north-south divide in funding children’s services.

    Action for Children estimated in 2020 that failing to give children’s services extra funding could lead to a £3bn funding gap by 2025.

    At the end of 2020, Action for Children and Barnardo’s warned that children’s services were at “breaking point”.

    Barnardo’s chief executive Javed Khan said at the time:

    We have long warned about the ‘perfect storm’ in children’s social care. In every community children face growing challenges, from knife crime and gangs, to cyber-bullying and online grooming, to a crisis in mental health.

    It’s even harder for families struggling to make ends meet. And in many areas the services they once relied on just aren’t there anymore.

    As a result, far too often families are reaching crisis point – with rising numbers of children being taken into local authority care. At Barnardo’s we see the impact of this failure to step in early. Children are suffering from trauma, affecting their education, health and happiness, with lifelong impact.

    Featured image via pixabay/jatocreate

     

    By Jasmine Norden

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Including Youth Voices in Our Democracy

    By Co-Editor Jonathan Todres & Adrianna Zhang With the number of COVID-19 cases rising again, children in the US are facing the potential of a third straight school year being disrupted by the pandemic. Yet as policymakers and school administrators…

    This post was originally published on Human Rights at Home Blog.

  • TX Governor Gets Rare COVID Treatment While Banning Mask and Vaccine Mandates

    Greg Abbott pumps his arms at a rally

    When the definitive history of the COVID-19 pandemic is written, August 17, 2021, may be remembered as one of the great forks in this terrible road. One path leads to ever-deepening calamity, and the other returns basic common sense to the fight against the virus. We cannot know the outcome today, but I strongly suspect the wrong road will be taken, and another lethal winter will once again put us, and our children, at the mercy of that which did not have to happen.

    It was announced yesterday, August 17, that Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas and a vocal opponent of mask mandates, has contracted COVID. He is the 11th governor to do so to date. The announcement brought back vivid memories of the October 2020 day when we found out that Donald Trump had become infected.

    As was common during the Trump administration, the general reaction was the paradox of being shocked and thoroughly unsurprised simultaneously. Trump had spent the year essentially daring the virus to catch him, flouting and mocking even the most basic protective measures. In this, he planted the seeds of our current crisis, as millions of his still-devout voters continue to follow his self-destructive lead.

    Abbott is cut from the same bolt of hidebound cloth. The Texas governor has gone to war against several municipalities in his state because they want children to wear masks when they return to school. Given the growing body of terrifying evidence that the Delta variant of COVID is going after kids far more than we have seen before, this seems like a reasonable precaution for all to take. Not so, according to Abbott, whose disdain for local government flies in the face of, well, everything conservatives often pretend to stand for.

    The arm-flapping hypocrisy does not end there. Abbott is by all reports asymptomatic, which should come as little surprise: He has been vaccinated three times. The vaccines have been highly effective at minimizing the damage of infection so far, but those numbers have recently grown distressingly blurry.

    As part of his treatment, Abbott is also getting the Regeneron monoclonal antibody treatment, which is usually only used for patients in dire condition. He is not, but he’s getting it anyway.

    With three shots, Abbot is among a favored few; only half the country has been fully vaccinated, and those who have their shots look now to the necessity of booster shots. The COVID Delta variant has caused an explosion of infections, even among inoculated people like Abbott. There were almost 140,000 new infections yesterday alone, a solid portion coming from Abbott’s state.

    To recap: The governor of Texas has caught COVID after striving to thwart minimal safety measures for children. His state’s medical infrastructure is trembling on the verge of collapse. Yet he himself has been vaccinated three times, making him rare in the populace and assumedly safer than most. From this bubble, which still did not completely protect him, Abbott has made it his business to keep others in far more peril of infection from minimal precautions like masks.

    The icing on the cake is this astonishing video, taken the night before Abbott’s infection announcement. There he was, in a packed room filled with elderly donors, and nary a mask in sight. Was he spraying virus around the room like a one-man superspreader? These were his people, but one wonders if they have all gotten three inoculations like their mask-flouting governor. It’s possible, which in many ways makes the visual all the worse.

    How bad is it getting in Abbott’s state? “Texas health officials have requested five mortuary trailers from the federal government in anticipation of a possible spike in deaths brought about by surging coronavirus numbers in the state,” reports The Washington Post. “Mobile and refrigerated mortuary trucks were seen as a grim symbol during earlier waves of the pandemic. Trailers were delivered to cities to keep pace with mounting deaths, and in some places they reportedly remained in place as makeshift morgues months into the pandemic.”

    School has begun in a number of places, and many more will open soon. In Texas, they will throw their doors wide to a maskless tide of unvaccinated children who are at greater peril of infection than at any time in the pandemic. The actions of Abbott, and of ideological, conniving pals like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, may come to be seen as nothing short of criminally negligent homicide on a mass scale if the worst does come.

    This is COVID. If we have learned anything, it is that the worst often does come, sooner or later, through whatever gaps we negligently provide it. Governors like Abbott and DeSantis are deliberately providing those gaps because they want to inherit Trump’s tarnished (yet lucrative) throne, and need to play to their base in order to do so. It is as ruthlessly cynical as anything that has ever been seen in this land — Let them eat virus! — and threatens to get a lot more people killed.

    This is that fork in the road — is a mask-hating governor catching COVID after three shots enough to turn heads and slow down this thundering herd of deadly foolishness? Don’t expect Abbott to get religion after his infection; Trump didn’t, and in fact doubled down hard on his ongoing war on science. That got us this. What will Abbott and his friends get us, but more of the same or worse?

    At some point very soon, a greater power than Abbott and DeSantis is going to have to take these matters in hand. Until President Biden takes decisive action, the rest of us will witness the numbers climb every day, as the infection spreads to more and more of our children.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • I’m a Pediatric Surgeon in Louisiana Watching Kids Suffer From COVID. It’s Real.

    A medical worker administers a covid test on a child

    I am a simple country surgeon. I take care of children in Louisiana from birth until the hospital tells me they’re too old for our colorful walls and stickers. You will see these children when you stroll along New Orleans’s French Quarter, playing makeshift drums with their bands in Jackson Square or reaching out for beads along the St. Charles Mardi Gras parade route. You may forget about them after each hurricane fades from the news, but they are here, living, thriving and yearning for a normal that seems to fade deeper into their short memories. These children still come in waves through our doors at Children’s Hospital New Orleans after being shot; getting in a car accident; or experiencing a sickle cell crisis, cancer, premature birth, appendicitis or asthma exacerbations … and the pandemic has not spared them.

    This has been a hard year and a half for everyone, and it seems like with every wave it gets worse. Five days ago, after a particularly hard weekend on call, I pleaded with friends to reconsider their stances against masking, vaccinations and distancing. I have read the anti-masking and anti-vaccination posts and memes, and I desperately want to convince those with hesitation that COVID is real — and that this Delta wave is different, especially as it pertains to children. I want to emphasize that the vaccine has been tested and is safe for us, and can protect against severe sickness. Masking and distancing can minimize the risks of contracting or transmitting the virus. Catherine O’Neal, chief medical officer at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, the largest hospital in Louisiana, has been pleading for a month that she and her colleagues are having to make decisions that should be unfathomable in the greatest nation in the world.

    It’s true that the vaccine is not 100 percent guaranteed against COVID — but what in life is guaranteed, except death? We say, “United we stand, divided we fall,” and yet, I can’t help thinking that we have already fallen.

    I wish I could invite those who are resisting anti-COVID measures to spend a day with us at the hospital. The majority of my day seems normal — operations, clinics, rounds — except that none of the operations are for children who require an overnight admission for a problem that is not time-sensitive, because our hospital is back to full capacity. Then I see a car full of kids who’ve been in an accident, and some test positive for COVID. They’re intubated due to other injuries, and I have to tell mom that her youngest child’s respiratory status may decline because of the virus, on top of the bruising to his lungs. Mom also tests positive, and now can only visit her children in the hospital while balancing the need to effectively isolate herself. Meanwhile, the room next door holds an immunocompromised child who does not have the defenses to fight a viral infection.

    I walk to the intensivist’s office to discuss our other COVID patients. Is the toddler on a ventilator getting better? How about the baby who has been on the most intense form of life support, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO)? How do we balance the increased risk of blood clotting due to COVID with the fact that he has developed a brain bleed secondary to this life-sustaining therapy? This little guy only weighs a few pounds. He has required so many blood transfusions that it’s putting a strain on our already depleted blood bank. There is another baby who got COVID from a visiting family member because they didn’t want to miss out on snuggling even though they felt sick, and now is further isolated from his family. We have 15 to 20 other COVID-positive children who are currently admitted to the hospital.

    I know how to deal with stress. I completed five years of general surgery residency, two years in a research lab, and two years of pediatric surgery fellowship. I have seen death. I have learned from my complications. But this is different than stress. As doctors, we talk about wellness and resilience, moral distress and second victim injury. These are all real – the majority of us entered medicine because it was a calling, because we wanted to be healers. But it turns out we can’t save everyone by ourselves. We need all of your help to prevent the spread of COVID, so these beds, nurses, and resources remain available. Because each ECMO circuit, every ventilator, every bed that is taken up by COVID is going to be away from a baby with heart disease, a cancer patient, a child who needs surgery but can’t get it right now because we have no more staff. If you saw what these nurses saw and how hard they worked for the last year, you would understand why so many are leaving their calling. Morally, how am I supposed to choose between your child and someone else’s baby when we only have one ICU bed left?

    What haunts me most are the children I never get to meet. The other night, I had to say no to a transfer because area hospitals are full for ECMO capability, and we were also reaching capacity. It reminded me of the time, as a fellow, I received a frantic call from a nearby hospital of a toddler who had been shot in the abdomen. The desperation from the other ER physician as he described the distended abdomen, most certainly full of blood, in a small body that he was doing his best to pump blood back into. “What can I do?” he asked. I attempted to talk him through a resuscitative thoracotomy. “Cut his chest open. Open the pericardium. Cross clamp the aorta and keep doing compressions. If you get a heartbeat back, send him here as fast as you can.” I never met that child, but I will never forget his parents, frantically looking for their baby boy in our hospital hallways because they were told he was coming to us. They were covered in blood, pleading for any information anyone may have, unsure of where to go to find their baby — and their eyes emptying as I had to tell them that he never made it to us.

    If you know me, you know I’m arrogant enough to think I can fix almost anything. However, I can’t fix someone that I never get to meet. Many hospitals are at the point where we have to say “no.” North Texas is out of pediatric ICU beds. University of Mississippi is setting up patient care areas in the parking garage. Patients are getting ICU level care in the ER hallways. In Baton Rouge, Dr. O’Neal has been unable to accept transfers for a month — 20 to 25 “nos” a day. My vascular surgeon colleague at the same hospital in Baton Rouge could not accept a transfer of a patient with a clot in the leg because the hospital was full. I can only imagine that without the time-sensitive intervention required, this person has lost their leg. They never got to meet the doctor who could fix their problem.

    I am a simple country surgeon. I am not an expert in public health or infectious disease, but I am pretty good at fixing kids with a scalpel. Help us to keep helping these kids, your kids, by allowing me to do my job to the full capacity I can. Please, vaccinate if you qualify. Continue to wear a mask and wash your hands. Stay home if you’re sick. These are clear ways to save children’s lives — and prevent their lives from being endangered in the first place.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Show Children The Green Fields And Let The Sunshine Into Their Minds

    Exactly two years ago, I walked with my colleagues from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research through the Camp Marielle Vive (‘Marielle Lives’) outside of Valinhos in the state of São Paulo, Brazil with a great sense of déjà vu. The camp resembles so many other communities of the desperately poor on our planet. The United Nations calculates that one in eight people on our planet – one billion human beings – live in such precariousness. The homes are made of a jumble of materials: blue tarpaulin sheets and bits of wood, corrugated iron sheets and old bricks. A thousand families live in Camp Marielle Vive, named after the Brazilian socialist Marielle Franco, who was assassinated in March 2018.

    The post Show Children The Green Fields And Let The Sunshine Into Their Minds appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Texas Governor’s Ban on School Mask Mandates Is a “Direct Threat” to Kids

    As the highly contagious Delta variant continues to spread, many hospitals are reporting record numbers of children being hospitalized, especially in areas with low vaccination rates, including Arkansas, Florida, Missouri and Texas. Dr. Christina Propst, a pediatrician in Houston, says children under 12 who are still ineligible for COVID-19 vaccines are at risk. “They are currently our most vulnerable population, just as this highly transmissible variant is surging across the country,” Propst says. She says Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s order banning mask mandates in schools is a purely political decision that ignores science. ​​“What he is doing is a direct threat to the health and well-being of the children of Texas,” says Propst.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: Many schools are reopening this week. We begin today’s show looking at the rise of COVID-19 infections in children as the highly contagious Delta variant continues to spread. Many hospitals across the country are reporting record numbers of children hospitalized especially in areas with low vaccination rates. The New York Times reports, in a single day last week, Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock had 19 hospitalized children; Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida, had 15; and Children’s Mercy Kansas City in Missouri had 12. Some of the children were in the intensive care unit. This is Dr. Mark Kline, physician-in-chief at Children’s Hospital New Orleans.

    DR. MARK KLINE: I have to tell you that I am as worried about our children today as I have ever been. This virus, the Delta variant of COVID, is every infectious disease specialist’s and epidemiologist’s worst nightmare. … As the governor mentioned, there was a myth that circulated during the first year of the epidemic that children somehow were immune. I think there was — there were people who said children don’t get the disease, they can’t transmit the disease. We know that those were fallacies all along, but particularly now that the Delta variant has emerged, it has become very clear that children are being heavily impacted by this organism and by this pandemic at this point, perhaps more than ever before.

    AMY GOODMAN: In Florida, where many schools reopen today, the sharpest spike in COVID cases has recently been in children under the age of 12. As of Sunday, Florida had 172 children being treated in hospitals for COVID — the highest number in the country. This comes as Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is threatening to defund the salaries of school officials who mandate mask wearing in schools. Several counties have announced mask mandates in schools in defiance of DeSantis.

    A similar battle is brewing in Texas, where school authorities in Dallas and Austin are requiring masks in defiance of Republican Governor’s Greg Abbott’s order. This comes as pediatric wards in Houston are nearing or at capacity. One 11-month-old baby in Houston was recently airlifted to a hospital 170 miles away because there was not enough space to get treated in a Houston hospital.

    So that’s where we’re going, to Houston, where we’re joined by Dr. Christina Propst. She is a physician, a pediatrician at a private practice and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Children and Disasters. She is also a member of the Texas Pediatric Society Committee on Infectious Diseases and Immunizations.

    Dr. Propst, thanks so much for being with us. Can you start off by explaining what the Delta variant has to do with this increased number of children being hospitalized? Why are they so particularly vulnerable right now?

    DR. CHRISTINA PROPST: Right now we are in an unfortunate situation where the Delta virus is prevalent. The Delta variant of COVID-19 is the prevalent circulating variant in this country. It is more easily transmissible, and, notably, more easily transmissible to those who are unvaccinated. And as I’m sure you and your listeners know, children under age 12 are currently still ineligible to be vaccinated against COVID-19. They are currently our most vulnerable population, just as this highly transmissible variant is surging across the country, notably in Texas, in Florida, in Louisiana, in Arkansas, Missouri and many other states.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Doctor, could you talk about also the issue of long COVID in children? There have been reports that many children are suffering from lingering physical, mental and neurological symptoms as result of sometimes an infection that is very mild or asymptomatic.

    DR. CHRISTINA PROPST: Absolutely. That is one of the greatest concerns, I would say, for pediatricians, and, frankly, should be one of the greatest concerns for parents across the country right now. There is a condition, as many people have heard, called long COVID. It was originally identified in adults, mostly because adults were getting tested. From day one, children have been undertested in this country. So, long COVID, now also known as post-acute sequelae of COVID-19, is a condition that can arise weeks to months later and generally involves a constellation of symptoms, including the brain fog many people have heard of, aches, low-grade fevers, a malaise that just won’t go away, a lack of energy.

    And unfortunately, we are seeing more and more long COVID, which can be truly debilitating, in young children. We are seeing that as the incidence among the pediatric population increases, we are starting to see those long COVID cases, so the malaise and fatigue that just does not go away, six, eight, 10 weeks after an acute COVID infection, which might even have been a mild infection. The vast majority of children do not require hospitalization for COVID-19. However, that does not mean they are safe or somehow immune from long COVID or from multisystem inflammatory conditions that can occur post-COVID infection.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you respond to Texas Governor Abbott’s having issued a ban on school masking mandates?

    DR. CHRISTINA PROPST: It’s so frustrating, as a pediatrician and as a parent. I feel for parents who are making these difficult decisions right now, whether to homeschool. Many school districts do not offer a virtual option this year. Many have done away with the plexiglass and some of the other COVID-mitigating modes and modalities in their classrooms. Our governor, unfortunately, has taken our children’s lives and is using it in a political game of chicken. That’s really the best way to describe it right now.

    I’m thrilled to see Houston Independent School District, our new superintendent, Millard House, last week announced intention to issue a mask mandate in our huge public school system here in Houston. Dallas has followed. Austin has followed. Other districts are now starting to try to come up with a virtual option. Masks are the last best hope of defense for children who are vulnerable, and that includes every single child under age 12 right now.

    Unfortunately, it also includes a huge proportion of our population of school-age children who are eligible, who are between ages 12 and 17. Currently only 30% of tweens and adolescents in that age group are fully vaccinated. And so, pediatricians across the country and the American Academy of Pediatrics are begging parents to get their children vaccinated before the start of school.

    AMY GOODMAN: Would you say, Dr. Christina Propst, that the governor is threatening the health of the children of Texas?

    DR. CHRISTINA PROPST: I would say what he is doing is a direct threat to the health and well-being of the children of Texas. Unfortunately, also we need to keep in mind that for some Texans who can afford to send their children to private school, this might not be a problem. Private schools have issued mask mandates. Private schools are doing pooled testing and screening for symptoms. This will disproportionately affect, in every way, health, mental well-being, education, the most vulnerable students among the most vulnerable of our population. And so, that includes our unvaccinated children under age 12 who are in perhaps the poorest performing, oldest schools, with the most overcrowding, with the oldest school buildings, with the poorest ventilation. Those children have a disproportionately high incidence of some comorbidities that even put them at higher risk — asthma, a high BMI or obesity. So, those children absolutely will be disproportionately affected by this purely political and unfortunate decision by our governor.

    AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Christina Propst, we’re going to break, then come back to this critical discussion about children and COVID, why it’s not only surging — COVID is not only surging in the United States among children, and also among the unvaccinated population overall, but around the world, as well. Dr. Christina Propst is a pediatrician at a private practice in Houston, member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Children and Disasters, member of the Texas Pediatric Society Committee on Infectious Diseases and Immunizations. We’ll be back with her in a moment.

    [break]

    AMY GOODMAN: “Sea of Tranquility” by Kool & the Gang. Co-founder Dennis “D.T.” Thomas died this week at the age of 70.

    This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. As we talk about children and COVID, we turn to top White House adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press about the rise of COVID infection in kids and what can be done to protect them from the virus.

    DR. ANTHONY FAUCI: There is a problem with children. You’ve got to separate and make sure you get the facts. The likelihood of a child getting serious disease compared to an elderly person or someone with an underlying condition is absolutely less. But less doesn’t mean zero. And there are a lot of children now — all you need to do is do a survey of the pediatric hospitals throughout the country, and you’re seeing a considerable number of young people who are not only infected, but who are seriously ill. Again, the numbers compared to the elderly are less, but that’s a false comparison. These kids are getting sick. We’ve really got to make sure we protect them. …

    There are two things you do with children who are not vaccinated, and that’s the recommendation. You surround them with those who can be vaccinated, whoever they are — teachers, personnel in the school, anyone. Get them vaccinated. So, protect the kids with a shield of vaccinated people. For the kids who can’t get vaccinated, that’s the reason why we’re having a strong recommendation that, in the schools, everybody should wear a mask, whether or not you’re vaccinated.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Dr. Anthony Fauci. We’re talking to Dr. Christina Propst. She is a Houston pediatrician, member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Children and Disasters, member of the Texas Pediatric Society Committee on Infectious Diseases and Immunizations. You have, in Houston, hospitals filling, in Austin, in Dallas. An 11-month-old is taken on a plane 150 miles away because there wasn’t room for them in the Houston hospital. Can you talk about what parents have to look for? If you can’t — what are the symptoms? Are they different in infants, in young children? And also, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, huge unvaccinated populations, but in places like New York, the vaccination rate is very high. How concerned should parents be here?

    DR. CHRISTINA PROPST: So, to address your first question, the presenting signs for COVID in children can really vary. I have treated children as young as 5 weeks old, and I have treated teenagers, 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds. Obviously there is a huge range of how those individuals can respond, even can articulate how they are feeling. So, for some children, it can be abdominal pain. And I have seen children, school-age children, for whom significant or even severe abdominal pain was really the presenting sign. Then they developed fever. Some have not developed fever at all. Many develop upper respiratory symptoms. So, I would say the majority of patients that I have seen have had cold-like symptoms — congestion, cough, sore throat, low-grade fever, sometimes then elevating fever a few days in. Some pediatric patients, of course, do lose their sense of smell and their sense of taste, as well. So, it’s really a variety of symptoms.

    And parents and pediatricians, of course, need to have a very low threshold right now for testing and for getting a quality test. There are still tests out, that are widely circulating, that have a very high false negative rate. That’s not helpful to anyone. So, getting tested frequently, certainly as soon as symptoms are setting in — if we know there’s been an exposure, getting tested several days out, if you are asymptomatic — and getting a quality test truly is important.

    There certainly are parts of the country where the vaccination rate is significantly higher. Now, we need to remember, cohorting among a group of adults, let’s say, in New York City, where the adults have a very high vaccination rate, and possibly even the teens and tweens, although it is significantly lower than the adult population, is not enough to protect our young children under age 12 from the Delta variant of COVID-19. It’s simply not going to do it. There is enough travel. There is clear data showing vaccinated individuals can transmit the virus to the unvaccinated. So, if you have an adult in a household who is vaccinated in New York City who’s hopped on a plane where someone with the Delta variant took their mask off to eat or drink, that person could be harboring the virus, could be asymptomatic or have a very mild infection, where they think it’s allergies, and pass it on to their child. And even a mild infection in children — we need to remember this — even a, quote, “mild” or moderate infection with COVID-19 still puts that child at risk for long-haul COVID and for multisystem inflammatory conditions. So, that is a key takeaway right now, that even areas with a high vaccination rate among adults, children there are still incredibly vulnerable.

    JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dr. Propst, I’d like to ask you about a surge in another virus called RSV. Could you tell us what you’ve seen of that virus? Is there a connection between it and COVID? And why has there been a sudden surge in RSV?

    DR. CHRISTINA PROPST: So, RSV is a virus that many parents are not familiar with, and it is — it stands for respiratory syncytial virus. In the pediatric community, it is notorious. It tends to run in tandem with flu season. It tends to be a wintertime virus that predominantly affects young children, babies, particularly premature babies. They can have respiratory distress and even respiratory failure. Here in the state of Texas, typically, the state stops monitoring, stops even counting, cases of RSV in late May or June. This year, they didn’t stop. In fact, our surge occurred afterwards. Our surge really has been June, July and August, which is unprecedented for this viral infection, at least in the 20 years that I’ve been in practice here in Houston. So, it is highly unusual.

    There doesn’t appear to be a direct relation between COVID-19 and RSV per se. The respiratory syncytial virus by far predates SARS-CoV-2, which is a novel or new coronavirus. So, it is unclear why RSV is surging right now. It’s also notable that in an area such as Houston and in Texas, where RSV right now is surging and rampant, flu really is not — and I knock on wood as I say that. Certainly people are vaccinated against influenza; however, the vaccine efficacy from last season would have waned significantly by now. And so, with those viruses generally running in tandem, one would have expected flu also to be at least increased, if not surging.

    So we are really in a perfect storm down here. And other states are facing this, as well, certainly. RSV hospitalizations are at a level I’ve never seen at this time of year. I have personally had to hospitalize more babies with RSV respiratory distress, and some who developed respiratory failure and had to be intubated and in the intensive care unit for over a week due to RSV, more in the past two months than I have in the previous three to four years.

    AMY GOODMAN: Finally, would you send — do you have school-age kids or younger?

    DR. CHRISTINA PROPST: I have college-age kids.

    AMY GOODMAN: If you had younger kids, whether you’re in Texas or New York, would you send them to school?

    DR. CHRISTINA PROPST: If my children were under age 12 and in a schooling situation such as public schools right now in Texas, where our governor has banned mask mandates in a school setting against the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics and Centers for Disease Control, I would be seriously looking at other options, whether that is homeschooling, virtual option — for those who can’t afford it, let’s say, a private option. Unfortunately, that is not reality for the vast majority of students.

    AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you for being with us, Dr. Christina Propst, pediatrician —

    DR. CHRISTINA PROPST: Thank you.

    AMY GOODMAN: — private practice in Houston, member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Children and Disasters, as we continue on the issue of schools, but now we’re going to talk about teachers.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • We Reopened Too Soon, and Children Are Paying the Price

    Children walk in a line to cross the street with adult supervision

    Cold War kids like me grew up with the Emergency Broadcast System as this thing that would periodically break into a TV or radio broadcast to scare the shit out of you. The first sign of trouble was a grinding noise collision, like the AOL dial-up sound of yore, but amped up to stadium concert decibels. A test screen would appear, and everything stopped, because we all knew this was what we’d hear when the missiles were finally flying and nuclear Armageddon was at hand.

    In the center of the country, the system was and is used to warn about tornadoes, but the effect came with the same jarring resonance … until the voice said, “This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an actual emergency…” and the world would start spinning again. No missiles, no funnel clouds, deep breath and pass the butter. The system has been upgraded to meet the modern age — it sends text messages to smartphones now instead of merely screeching at you from the TV or radio — but the drama remains the same when the bad noise comes: This means nothing, or this means everything. This past weekend, it meant everything in Austin.

    “Austin, Texas, issued an emergency alert this weekend over the ‘severely worsening COVID-19 situation,’ which has reached a ‘critical’ point,” reports Yahoo! News. “The Warn Central Texas alert system was designed to be activated during a disaster. ‘Our hospitals are severely stressed and there is little we can do to alleviate their burden with the surging cases,’ Austin-Travis County Health Authority’s Desmar Walkes said in a statement. ‘The public has to act now and help our we will face a catastrophe in our community that could have been avoided.’”

    It is time to sound the emergency alert for our children, before they are exposed to a COVID fate that — to repeat the refrain of the age — could have been avoided. This menace exists not just in the virus-raddled South and West, but everywhere kids might become exposed to the Delta variant, which at this juncture is basically everywhere. There were more than 110,000 new cases of COVID-19 diagnosed yesterday in the U.S., a two-week increase of 112 percent. Delta is the culprit. “By the end of July,” reports The New York Times, “it accounted for 93.4 percent of new infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

    For the first time since the pandemic began, significant numbers of children are falling victim to the virus. “Children with COVID-19 used to make up 1 percent of patients hospitalized at Children’s Hospital New Orleans,” reports ABC News. “Now they account for about 20 percent, Dr. Mark Kline, physician-in-chief at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, told Good Morning America Monday. He said about half of the children hospitalized are under 2 years old. Most of the others are between 5 and 10 years old, so too young to be vaccinated. ‘This is not your grandfather’s COVID,’ Kline said. ‘This Delta variant is an entirely new and unexpected challenge.’”

    Pediatric hospitals in Louisiana, Florida and Tennessee have been overwhelmed with new patients, with the sharpest increase taking place in patients under 12 years old. “Alan Levine, CEO of Ballad Health hospitals in Northeast Tennessee, replied on Twitter to news of Piercey’s projection to affirm that conditions are expected to become critical for some children,” reports the Nashville Tennessean. “‘And children have already died, and others are on ventilators, and ALL OF IT is preventable,’ Levine said. ‘So is what’s coming.’” Children are also becoming more impacted by long COVID, a version of the disease that can linger for months and involves a grim slate of deleterious effects.

    Science has yet to comprehensively answer why Delta appears to affect young people more than the other strains have, but the steadily filling hospital beds stand as testament to the truth of it. “There are a lot of children now — all you need to do is do a survey of the pediatric hospitals throughout the country, and you’re seeing a considerable number of young people who are not only infected but who are seriously ill,” COVID expert Anthony Fauci told NBC News this weekend. “Again, the numbers compared to the elderly are less, but that’s a false comparison. These kids are getting sick. We’ve really got to make sure we protect them.”

    Vaccinations — the one certain thing we can do to mitigate the virus — have begun to creep up after lagging for many weeks. Simultaneously, a push for government and the private sector to begin mandating vaccines is also on the rise. Facing the imminent return of millions of children to classrooms, the American Federation of Teachers is strongly advising a vaccine mandate for teachers before the school year begins. This represents a sea change for the union, which only last October advocated that teacher vaccinations remain voluntary.

    Of course, young children cannot yet receive the vaccine themselves, leaving the responsibility for protecting them entirely in the hands of those adults who are able to safely receive vaccination. The more people who are vaccinated, the safer our children will be.

    Due to the ongoing gap in vaccinations, however, it may already be too late to vaccinate our way out of this. The New York Times reports:

    Epidemiologists had hoped getting 70 or 80 percent of the population vaccinated, in combination with immunity from natural infections, would bring the virus under control. But a more contagious virus means the vaccination target has to be much higher, perhaps in the range of 90 percent.

    Globally, that could take years. In the United States, the target may be impossible to reach anytime soon given the hardened vaccine resistance in a sizable fraction of the country, the fact that children under 12 remain ineligible and the persistent circulation of disinformation about vaccines and the pandemic.

    With so many people unvaccinated, in the United States and around the world, the virus has abundant opportunity not only to spread and sicken large numbers of people, but to mutate further. Some scientists have expressed hope that the virus has reached peak “fitness,” but there is no evidence this is so.

    It was a nice summer there, for a while, but that’s over now. All of the fears we endured last year have returned with new, sharp teeth of the Delta variety, and many of the same seemingly settled questions need to be asked and answered once again. Are schools safe with the new variants on the loose? Are parents prepared for another round of home-bound education? What effect will all of this have on children themselves, who have endured so much already?

    We reopened the country too much and too soon. Now we wait and see how much the jarring whiplash of that error in judgment will cost us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Pro-China UK Behaviorist Endorses Injecting Children With Experimental, Unlicensed Gene-Modified Drugs

    Pro-China UK Behaviorist Endorses Injecting Children With Experimental, Unlicensed Gene-Modified Drugs

    Image: Courtesy of @AnonymousTibet

    Our Twitter team received a report today from @AnonymousTibet that an English psychologist, Susan Mitchie; a key advisor to the British Government on manipulating and influencing public behavior, has jointly authored a paper (published by the University College London) which advocates children being injected, with what in truth is an unlicensed and experimental genetically modified product. The mid and long term health impacts of these drugs are unknown, while the worrying numbers of adverse health damage, and fatalities following current injections is being ignored and unexamined by governments, public health bodies and media.

    None of this seems to bother Ms Mitchie, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party and admirer of the Chinese Regime.

    The paper may be read here: https://www.docdroid.net/pyIMKdR/vaccines-children-18211-pdf

    This post was originally published on TIBET, ACTIVISM AND INFORMATION.

  • First austerity and now the pandemic: the Tories have devastated disabled children’s services

    The Disabled Children’s Partnership (DCP) has launched a campaign calling on chancellor Rishi Sunak to properly fund disabled children’s social care in the wake of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. Maureen Muteesa has shared an open letter in collaboration with DCP detailing her son’s experience of the pandemic.

    Muteesa claims that services denied her son treatment, and he didn’t have access to education for a year. Research by DCP suggests that this was the case for hundreds of disabled children and their families during lockdown. The coalition is asking members of the public to sign the open letter urging the government to support disabled children and their families.

    ‘We feel forgotten’

    In a campaign video, Muteesa states:

    The pandemic has left my family and myself isolated, depressed, and we feel forgotten.

    In her open letter to the chancellor, Muteesa details her 15-year-old son’s experience of lockdown. She states that because Calvin’s school lacked the resources needed to provide remote learning, he missed an entire year of the education he’s entitled to. Reflecting on his year of social isolation, Calvin stated: “I missed all my friends”.

    According to his mother, Calvin has complex medical needs and requires 24-hour support. She adds that because he couldn’t attend school, he also didn’t have access to physiotherapy. As a result, his muscles have deteriorated. He can no longer walk safely, and now needs an operation. She states that the limited access to support services throughout the pandemic “has left a massive mental toll”.

    Highlighting that even before the pandemic, she had to fight to get minimal and insufficient support for her son, Muteesa concludes:

    The government has to do better for families like mine. It needs to invest so that children and families can recover from the missed services during the pandemic.

    Hundreds of families without support

    The DCP is a coalition of organisations working to improve health and social care for disabled children, young people, and their families. Research by the DCP suggests that the Muteesa’s are not alone in their experience of lockdown. 48% of respondents to the survey of 1,200 families stated that they could no longer access support at their child’s school as a result of the pandemic. Nearly three quarters of respondents stated that the management of their children’s conditions worsened due to the pandemic. And disabled children and their families reported high levels of social isolation.

    This experience of isolation and inadequate support is nothing new for disabled children and their families. In 2017, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities urged the UK government to implement a number of major changes to ensure the rights of disabled children and young people are respected. This came after a 2016 report stating that Tory austerity, cuts and reforms had resulted in “grave and systematic” violations of the rights of disabled people. For years, families have been calling out for adequate resources and support, but they were met with further cuts to disabled children’s social care services.

    Ahead of the autumn spending review, the DCP coalition is calling on chancellor Rishi Sunak to properly fund disabled children’s social care. This includes a top-up to “fill the £434 million pre-pandemic funding gap in disabled children’s social care services”. The coalition is also urging the government to establish a fund to resource research and innovation in disabled children’s social care services.

    The coalition is calling on members of the public to join the campaign to support disabled children and their families in the wake of the pandemic. People looking to get involved can start by signing and sharing Muteesa’s open letter to the chancellor.

    Featured image via @DCPcampaign/Twitter 

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • I Want to Start School So I Can Learn to Write Letters to My Dad in Prison

    Kids write letters to their parents on colorful paper

    My name is Little Coconut. My birthday is May 18. My favorite color is pink, no I mean glittery red. I like learning about dinosaurs. I watch Totally Spies and Loud House. Sometimes I watch Charmed with my grandma and SpongeBob with my great grandpa. Sssssshhhhhhhh that’s a secret.

    My dad is in Connecticut. He is in jail but he is not a bandit. He does not know all these things about me unless I tell him. When I finally get to visit I will pretend to make him meals. I like cooking.

    The police told my mommy she can’t bring me to visit him. Not all police are bad but I saw them step on a man’ s neck on TV. They kill us because we are Black and beautiful, they are afraid of us. My mommy told me I am Black and beautiful.

    I miss my karate class and therapy session when I go visit him, but I get to see my cousins if they are home. When I go to school this year, I will learn to write him letters.

    I cannot wait for Daddy to come home so we can be a family with Mommy, Grandma, and Mrs. Little Violet, my cat.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • More Than 46,000 US Children Have Lost at Least One Parent to COVID

    Single parents and guardians have struggled to access basic services for bereaved kids amid the pandemic.

    Five months after her husband died of covid-19, Valerie Villegas can see how grief has wounded her children.

    Nicholas, the baby, who was 1 and almost weaned when his father died, now wants to nurse at all hours and calls every tall, dark-haired man “Dada,” the only word he knows. Robert, 3, regularly collapses into furious tantrums, stopped using the big-boy potty and frets about sick people giving him germs. Ayden, 5, recently announced it’s his job to “be strong” and protect his mom and brothers.

    Her older kids — Kai Flores, 13, Andrew Vaiz, 16, and Alexis Vaiz, 18 — are often quiet and sad or angry and sad, depending on the day. The two eldest, gripped by anxiety that makes it difficult to concentrate or sleep, were prescribed antidepressants soon after losing their stepfather.

    “I spend half the nights crying,” said Villegas, 41, a hospice nurse from Portland, Texas. She became a widow on Jan. 25, just three weeks after Robert Villegas, 45, a strong, healthy truck driver and jiujitsu expert, tested positive for the virus.

    “My kids, they’re my primary concern,” she said. “And there’s help that we need.”

    But in a nation where researchers calculate that more than 46,000 children have lost one or both parents to covid since February 2020, Villegas and other survivors say finding basic services for their bereaved kids — counseling, peer support groups, financial assistance — has been difficult, if not impossible.

    “They say it’s out there,” Villegas said. “But trying to get it has been a nightmare.”

    Interviews with nearly two dozen researchers, therapists and other experts on loss and grief, as well as families whose loved ones died of covid, reveal the extent to which access to grief groups and therapists grew scarce during the pandemic. Providers scrambled to switch from in-person to virtual visits and waiting lists swelled, often leaving bereft children and their surviving parents to cope on their own.

    “Losing a parent is devastating to a child,” said Alyssa Label, a San Diego therapist and program manager with SmartCare Behavioral Health Consultation Services. “Losing a parent during a pandemic is a special form of torture.”

    Children can receive survivor benefits when a parent dies if that parent worked long enough in a job that required payment of Social Security taxes. During the pandemic, the number of minor children of deceased workers who received new benefits has surged, reaching nearly 200,000 in 2020, up from an average of 180,000 in the previous three years. Social Security Administration officials don’t track cause of death, but the latest figures marked the most awards granted since 1994. Covid deaths “undoubtedly” fueled that spike, according to the SSA’s Office of the Chief Actuary.

    And the number of children eligible for those benefits is surely higher. Only about half of the 2 million children in the U.S. who have lost a parent as of 2014 received the Social Security benefits to which they were entitled, according to a 2019 analysis by David Weaver of the Congressional Budget Office.

    Counselors said they find many families have no idea that children qualify for benefits when a working parent dies, or don’t know how to sign up.

    In a country that showered philanthropic and government aid on the 3,000 children who lost parents to the 9/11 terror attacks, there’s been no organized effort to identify, track or support the tens of thousands of kids left bereaved by covid.

    “I’m not aware of any group working on this,” said Joyal Mulheron, the founder of Evermore, a nonprofit foundation that focuses on public policy related to bereavement. “Because the scale of the problem is so huge, the scale of the solution needs to match it.”

    Covid has claimed more than 600,000 lives in the U.S., and researchers writing in the journal JAMA Pediatrics calculated that for every 13 deaths caused by the virus, one child under 18 has lost a parent. As of June 15, that would translate into more than 46,000 kids, researchers estimated. Three-quarters of the children are adolescents; the others are under age 10. About 20% of the children who’ve lost parents are Black, though they make up 14% of the population.

    “There’s this shadow pandemic,” said Rachel Kidman, an associate professor at Stony Brook University in New York, who was part of the team that found a way to calculate the impact of covid deaths. “There’s a huge amount of children who have been bereaved.”

    The Biden administration, which launched a program to help pay funeral costs for covid victims, did not respond to questions about offering targeted services for families with children.

    Failing to address the growing cohort of bereaved children, whether in a single family or in the U.S. at large, could have long-lasting effects, researchers said. The loss of a parent in childhood has been linked to higher risks of substance use, mental health problems, poor performance in school, lower college attendance, lower employment and early death.

    “Bereavement is the most common stress and the most stressful thing people go through in their lives,” said clinical psychologist Christopher Layne of the UCLA/Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress. “It merits our care and concern.”

    Perhaps 10% to 15% of children and others bereaved by covid might meet the criteria of a new diagnosis, prolonged grief disorder, which can occur when people have specific, long-lasting responses to the death of a loved one. That could mean thousands of children with symptoms that warrant clinical care. “This is literally a national, very public health emergency,” Layne said.

    Still, Villegas and others say they have been left largely on their own to navigate a confusing patchwork of community services for their children even as they struggle with their own grief.

    “I called the counselor at school. She gave me a few little resources on books and stuff,” Villegas said. “I called some crisis hotline. I called counseling places, but they couldn’t help because they had waiting lists and needed insurance. My kids lost their insurance when their dad died.”

    The social disruption and isolation caused by the pandemic overwhelmed grief care providers, too. Across the U.S., nonprofit agencies that specialize in childhood grief said they have scrambled to meet the need and to switch from in-person to virtual engagement.

    “It was a huge challenge; it was very foreign to the way we work,” said Vicki Jay, CEO of the National Alliance for Grieving Children. “Grief work is based on relationships, and it’s very hard to get a relationship with a piece of machinery.”

    At Experience Camps, which each year offers free weeklong camps to about 1,000 bereaved kids across the country, the waiting list has grown more than 100% since 2020, said Talya Bosch, an Experience Camps associate. “It is something that we are concerned about — a lot of kids are not getting the support they need,” she said.

    Private counselors, too, have been swamped. Jill Johnson-Young, co-owner of Central Counseling Services in Riverside, California, said her nearly three dozen therapists have been booked solid for months. “I don’t know a therapist in the area who isn’t full right now,” she said.

    Dr. Sandra McGowan-Watts, 47, a family practice doctor in Chicago, lost her husband, Steven, to covid in May 2020. She feels fortunate to have found an online therapist for her daughter, Justise, who helped explain why the 12-year-old was suddenly so sad in the mornings: “My husband was the one who woke her up for school. He helped her get ready for school.”

    Justise was also able to get a spot at an Experience Camps session this summer. “I am nervous about going to camp, but I am excited about meeting new kids who have also lost someone close in their life,” she said.

    Jamie Stacy, 42, of San Jose, California, was connected with an online counselor for her daughter, Grace, 8, and twin sons, Liam and Colm, 6, after their father, Ed Stacy, died of covid in March 2020 at age 52. Only then did she learn that children can grieve differently than adults. They tend to focus on concrete concerns, such as where they’ll live and whether their favorite toys or pets will be there. They often alternate periods of play with sadness, cycling rapidly between confronting and avoiding their feelings of loss.

    “The boys will be playing Legos, having a great time, and all of a sudden drop a bomb on you: ‘I know how I can see Daddy again. I just have to die, and I’ll see Daddy again,’” she said. “And then they’re back to playing Legos.”

    Stacy said counseling has been crucial in helping her family navigate a world where many people are marking the end of the pandemic. “We can’t escape the topic of covid-19 even for one day,” she said. “It’s always in our face, wherever we go, a reminder of our painful loss.”

    Villegas, in Texas, has returned to her work in hospice care and is starting to reassemble her life. But she thinks there should be formal aid and grief support for families like hers whose lives have been indelibly scarred by the deadly virus.

    “Now everybody’s lives are going back to normal,” she said. “They can get back to their lives. And I’m thinking my life will never be normal again.”

    Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Facebook’s ‘watered-down’ protection for young Australians

    Facebook has tightened how advertisers can target its youngest users ahead of international regulation and after scrutiny from digital rights groups, including a cohort calling for regulator-led protections in Australia.

    Overnight, Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram said it would stop letting advertisers target under 18 users based on anything except their age, gender and location. The social media giant said the changes were global and would apply to Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.

    Users will be made available for unrestricted targeting by Facebook when they turn 18.

    Facebook will also default under-16 users’ profiles to private and use AI to make it harder for potentially suspicious accounts to find young people.

    The changes come just a month ahead of the enforcement of the UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code which require Facebook to design its services “in the best interests of the child” and prohibits tracking them by default. A similar code is to be rolled out in Ireland.

    Facebook
    Facebook has tightened its protections for young users.  Credit: Twin Design / Shutterstock.com

    The tightening also follows a study by rights group Reset Australia in April found Facebook was tracking Australian teenagers online and selling them as audiences to alcohol, gambling and smoking advertisers.

    Reset Australia’s Dr Rys Farthing said the changes were welcome but represent a “token” version for Australia  compared to the regulator led protections in the UK and Ireland.

    “They announced this watered-down version for the rest of the world because our regulations aren’t strong enough,” Dr Farthing told InnovationAus.

    Under the regulator led initiative in Ireland, Facebook is prohibited from profiling under 18 users for commercial advertising purposes. While in both the UK and Ireland Facebook must default under 18 users’ profiles to private.

    But the global changes announced by Facebook lower that private account default to only 16.

    “[The global changes] still suggests that regulation is needed,” Dr Farthing said.

    “Because where regulators lead tech giants seem to follow, and where regulation doesn’t leave children and young people are getting these watered down versions.”

    Reset Australia is leading a campaign for similar protections for young Australians from digital services, and is eyeing the upcoming Privacy Act review as a way to establish a regulator led scheme.

    “The best way to do it would have a code that was written and overseen by the regulator,” Dr farthing said. “An industry led code would not be strong enough.”

    The post Facebook’s ‘watered-down’ protection for young Australians appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.

  • Children in custody held in conditions resembling solitary confinement during the pandemic

    The Alliance for Youth Justice (AYJ) has published a damning report revealing the “devastating” impacts of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic on children in the youth justice system. The AYJ’s wide-ranging findings include safeguarding concerns, youth offending institutions depriving children of education and contact with their families – “amounting to solitary confinement”  – and delays in court proceedings. The report argues that marginalised and disadvantaged children and young people continue to bear the brunt of worsening conditions in England and Wales’ youth justice system.

    Children’s rights issues

    The AYJ highlights “safeguarding concerns” for all children as a result of lockdown measures, suggesting that the state and its institutions have failed to prioritise children’s rights in their response to the pandemic. It adds that children in the youth justice system – particularly those from marginalised and disadvantaged backgrounds – have felt the consequences of this most sharply.

    The report shows “a consistent theme about the lack of information, understanding and focus on children during the pandemic”.  It adds that the government “has often failed to distinguish between its approach to adults and children” in the justice system.

    Highlighting that disadvantaged and marginalised children and young people have ‘suffered most’, AYJ director Pippa Goodfellow said that as a result of the pandemic:

    Children’s exposure to abuse, exploitation and violence have continued or increased, while the capacity of services has been severely impeded. 

    A system ‘struggling to cope’

    In particular, the AYJ draws attention to the entire youth justice system’s inadequate response to the pandemic. Highlighting the urgent need for measures to reduce the number of children entering the youth carceral state, it sets out that:

    From decisions to arrest, divert or prosecute children in the community, to remand and sentencing, there was a clear need identified to work to reduce the number of children passing through a system that is struggling to cope.

    It also points out that although the overall number of children in custody has reduced, the proportion of children on remand has risen. The report adds that organisations have criticised “unambitious custody release schemes… for being completely ineffective”.

    The AYJ further raises concerns that delays in courts are making it difficult for children to receive timely charging decisions, leaving many in limbo. Indeed, as of November 2020, backlogs in the youth courts had almost doubled as a result of lockdown closures. It adds that although the pandemic has exacerbated delays, this “should be seen in the context of a system already under severe strain”. This comes after a report by the Youth Justice Legal Centre (YJLC) explaining that delays in charging and court hearings due to coronavirus are leading to more children being tried in adult courts upon turning 18.

    The AYJ sets out that most children in custody have experienced “awful conditions for months on end”. It explains that institutions have deprived many children of the “education, visits and contact” they are entitled to, “amounting to solitary confinement”. The AYJ is calling on institutions to ‘assess and support’ children’s physical, mental and emotional health as a result of this limited social contact.

    Towards a collaborative approach

    Calling for urgent action across children’s services to prevent a further increase in the negative impacts on the pandemic on the most vulnerable children, Goodfellow concluded:

    Concerted, coordinated action, with significant investment will be required to mitigate the negative consequences for children in the youth justice system, and to prevent criminalising vulnerable children who have experienced the most devastating harms of the pandemic.

    The AYJ’s damning report reflects the numerous calls from youth justice and children’s rights organisations urging the government to prioritise children’s rights and transform all youth systems and services in England and Wales. Campaigners have warned that factors in the education system, such as the increasing presence of police in schools and continued excessive and disproportionate school exclusions, will work to further streamline the UK’s school-to-prison pipeline.

    Others have highlighted that new Knife Crime Prevention Orders will support further expansion of the youth carceral state. And that plans set out in the government’s proposed draconian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will likely further expand the UK’s youth prison population. Proposed measures include ‘secure schools’ and harsher sentences for children and young people who are in trouble with the law. Many anticipate that – once more – marginalised and disadvantaged children and young people will bear the brunt of these punitive measures.

    Featured image via Kat J/Unsplash

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.