s/o tragic life - libs and cons come in please

The lib version may be this, but the Dem is not. ::Looking at you USDE::

I have worked in the child abuse/neglect field for the majority of my career and don't know the answer to this. Like we saw from those photos, so much of it is generational and the state can provide service after service to help with things like budgeting, housekeeping, a daily routine, and general parenting and quite often, it doesn't make a bit of difference.

All of this but privatized and charity-based rather than government-mandated, I would imagine.

By "education", what does that mean, though? If he can do division and find the US on a map, does that really help prevent his having unprotected sex at age 13?

The parents desperately need jobs and education and parent education and mentors. They have no guidance at all, how are they going to raise children? The kid needs some sort of security and stability. Everything in his life seems so transient and haphazard. His whole life is just thrown together. Whatever casework there is, it needs to be streamlined under one umbrella, with minimal workers who aren't always leaving because their own pay and hours are shitty. These do not seem to be young people who are going to have the ability to go to several different offices and places for services that aren't coordinated anyways.

in my world education includes how to prevent babies :-)

but I think if one member of this family had completed high school and maybe even an AA life would be a lot different for them.

change has to be possible. I have relatives that are probably 2 scale above the pictures on a 10 points scale and I'd like to think I'm doing okay despite probably growing up in a 5/6 point home.

Education, to me, involves a strong parent/caregiver involvement piece, much like you see in Title I. I think taht should expand out. I also think we should fund more areas like 21st Century Learning Communities for afterschool programs to continue the normal school day. Also, areas like health education, diet, fitness, etc.

we have more in common than you know.

Teachers don't need to be social workers. They need to be allowed to teach sex education and health to kids.

One photo mentioned that she went to an alternative high school for teen parents. Wouldn't that type of school teach you things like, well, parenting? In addition to life and career skills? I would hope, because god knows a 14 year old mother probably needs those types of classes.

My old Home Ec teacher had a "Life Prep" class that taught basic life skills like budgeting, cooking, basic sewing, etc. One of the sets she taught included birth control. She flat out told us "don't tell what I'm teaching because I'm only supposed to teach *this part* of the program. I don't believe that teaching one part without teaching the others will help you learn anything." So she taught us about the various birth control methods and abortion as well. This was back in the early 1980s and I wish every teacher had her courage and wisdom. And more parents did too.

I'm another "groups and organizations" advocate. My grands are under the supervision of CPS and I welcome their advocacy because my daughter refuses to listen to me because "I'm that bitch that stole her daughter and made her life hell" rather than "the person worried about the teenager who can't take care of herself let alone a child and trying to even out the equation and get everyone on a solid footing." CPS has been a godsend, as has the GAL. Big Brothers/Big Sisters helped coordinate a weeklong camp with the Salvation Army for lower income kids for a week in the mountains at a minimal fee (which I paid). The schools and GD2s doctors have been instrumental in keeping the girls properly supervised and healthy. I've been able to get them counseling through Catholic Charities, though other options were also provided. The state has provided health insurance to make certain the medical issues were taken care of... There has been a blanket of civil, medical, personal and religious individuals and groupos protecting these two children, mostly because people around my daughter have been making sure they were protected. Otherwise, I fear that their lives would been eerily close to that poor boy's because of her life choices.

In other words, this:

and everything else druidp said in some way, shape or form.

I don't know. Is there ever a answer? Maybe put the kids in some type of program that addresses their needs, emotionally, socially, and educationally. Childcare for when the parents are working. Put the parents in programs that teach job skills and helps get them a stable full-time job, drug and alcohol intervention, parenting, home skills, and the like. And, have a mentor to keep them on track for a few years to help them get it together. Is that all possible? Would it work? Who knows.

Clearly if they did teach them, they didn't get through to this mother.

Which is part of the problem too. You can teach as much as you want, but if people don't want to learn or listen to what you're teaching, it's pointless. You can tell her all day not to give her 2 year old Mountain Dew for breakfast, but if she doesn't care, what difference does it make?

major: I didn't realize they had jobs. What do they do? I guess it doesn't really matter - this doesn't seem to be about money nearly as much as it is about culture. These people probably see absolutely nothing wrong with the way they live, so why change it?

I'm right here with you. I'm so far down that I think someone who becomes a mother at 14 (likely having had sex at 13 or earlier) is already too late to win back. I think it's likely too late for Donny already. Suspension in kindergarten was already a failure to that kid.

I don't know the solution. I know that I think it's the government's role, not private or religious charities. But I just don't know how to address it.

When I used to work in teen programs, one of the worst aspects is that the facilitators would talk at the kids, not with them. So they would say, don't give your kids soda, but wouldn't say why. And that's the part that makes the lightbulb go off. The thousands of reasons why and educating what happens to the body and brain of a child when they drink that. We had a facilitator that finally did that and the teens were like, "ooohhh!" and you'd hear them telling their friends about what they learned.