Comprehensive Approach to Safe Children and Thriving Families: Essentials of Childhood Campaign and Judicial Reform
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the Center for the Rights & Protection of Children (CRPC)! We appreciate your interest in our mission and invite you to join us in our effort to ensure the safety of children and the well-being of families.
Our Mission and the Importance of Our Work
This center was established in response to a troubling trend in our nation: the removal of children from the care of well-meaning parents who are trying to safeguard their children’s safety and well-being. We have observed situations where children are placed with individuals who are either abusing or neglecting them despite clear evidence of maltreatment. The stress experienced by young children in such situations—whether due to domestic abuse or repeated instances of neglect—can impede their development and prevent them from reaching their full potential. The pattern of separating children from their caregivers, often their mothers, by family courts can lead to adverse childhood experiences. These experiences may contribute to poor physical, mental, and behavioral health outcomes later in life.
The Essentials for Childhood framework, developed by the CDC and the Kaiser Family Foundation, highlights major stressors that can lead to significant life and health challenges. Among these stressors are abuse and the loss or separation from loved ones, often determined by state courts and child protective services. We believe that many of these children suffer from mental health issues, substance abuse, and decreased productivity in later years due to trauma influenced by family court and child protection systems.
Creating Safe, Stable, and Nurturing Relationships and Environments
Our Essentials for Childhood campaign aims to promote the creation of safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments for all children. This framework is essential in ensuring children’s healthy development and well-being. We believe that addressing the root causes of adverse childhood experiences through systemic changes can lead to better health and life outcomes for children and their families.
Key Components of Our Campaign
- Reforming State Child Protection Systems:
- We advocate for a graduated tier-based evaluative approach for handling reports of child maltreatment. This ensures that initial reports are triaged effectively, and repeat and duplicate reports are escalated to higher levels of evaluation by separate entities or levels of expertise.
- Developing a Holistic and Team-Based Approach:
- We propose that custody determinations involving child maltreatment and family abuse be managed by a panel of unbiased child-focused professionals, including marriage and family therapists, educators, clergy, social workers, mental health professionals, pediatricians, and child abuse specialists.
- Mandatory Training for State Judges:
- We call for broader mandatory training requirements for state judges who determine child and family abuse matters. Training should cover child and adolescent development, family systems, addiction and substance abuse disorders, personality disorders, and domestic violence education, with special consideration of ethnic and cultural variations.
- Appointing Free Legal Counsel for Parents:
- We advocate for the appointment of free legal counsel for parents when matters of child maltreatment are factors in family law cases.
- Federal Policy Changes:
- We seek to remove funding streams that might influence judicial and organizational misconduct, such as gender-based funding, and to modify the crime bill to end the expansion of supervised visitation centers that penalize parents for reporting child abuse in good faith.
Integrating Judicial Reform for Children's Welfare
Ensuring the People’s Vote on Election of Judges
We, the qualified voters of Virginia, request to modify the judicial selection process in Virginia to include a vote by the people. The people vote on the election of public officials is a fundamental principle of democracy, and yet, in Virginia and South Carolina, the people are not allowed to vote on the election and retention of judges. Instead, judges are appointed by state legislators and sometimes by the governor, an elite group.
Appointed judges may render rulings out of deference to political movements and accountability to the legislative body without objective oversight. Wrongful judicial determinations have widespread public health implications, including increases in bankruptcies, adverse childhood experiences, housing insecurity, job loss, wrongful convictions, and poor health and mental health conditions affecting not only the individuals involved but communities at large—impacting our nation’s health.
Why This Reform is Crucial
No branch of government in a democracy shall have unbridled or unlimited power nor act without accountability to the people. The decisions made by state court judges and CPS workers significantly impact the lives of countless children and families. As a nation, we must recognize the profound influence that judges and CPS caseworkers have on child and family well-being, which affects our overall national health.
Our Commitment to Collaboration and Advocacy
The Center for the Rights & Protection of Children understands that ensuring child safety is a crucial mission that requires the collaboration of various groups interacting with the courts and local and state governments. We are focusing on policy and legislative solutions by engaging health systems stakeholders, private organizations, and most importantly, you—the people. Mothers, fathers, grandparents, and all members of thriving communities are essential in driving the change we seek for children and families.
Join Us in Making a Difference
We urge you to support our cause and affirm the demand for a constitutional convention to ensure the people’s vote on the election and retention of judges—an important change to the Virginia State Constitution. Together, we can create a safer, healthier future for all children by ensuring accountability and integrity within our judicial system.
Thank you for your support and dedication to our mission. Together, we can make a difference.
Best regards,
Erica M. Allen Winslow, MD, MPH
Executive Director, Center for the Rights & Protection of Children
