Is Cincinnati near The Tipping Point?

I'm reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell right now. My brother-in-law, the eternal entrepreneur who is forever giving me ideas on how to boost book sales, passed it along and suggested I read it. The back cover reads, "The Tipping Point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire." One more drop in the bucket and the floodgates open.

One more drop hit the bucket this week in Cincinnati, Ohio. Actually, three more drops.

The three drops are a nineteen-year-old mother, her nine-month-old son and a three-year-old toddler she was babysitting. All were found shot dead inside her home, apparently the victims of a domestic violence altercation between the mom and her boyfriend. Just in case you are thinking, "Come again? Really?", I'll repeat it. Someone shot a baby in the head. A baby. And his mother. And the three-year-old she was babysitting.

Certainly nothing magic about that. But stay with me here, I'm going somewhere with this.

Watching the news tonight, (I have to stop doing that before going to bed!) something was very different than in many homicide cases in Downtown Cincinnati's Over-The-Rhine. Most times residents and others look the other way. When the police knock on doors and search out information, they are met with silence. Many crimes go unreported and even more remain unsolved. Not this time.

People are speaking out. They are pushing past their fear or whatever held them back before. They seem to be saying, Enough is enough. We will no longer look the other way. We will stand together and stare down this evil. We want a better life for our children and our families.

Maybe this is the social behavior that can spread like wildfire and result in a coming together of our communities. Maybe the rest of us can find that courage and passion and do the same for the foster children who live in every area of our city and the struggling families who need our help and support.

Dare I say, I think Cincinnati is on the verge of a Tipping Point. And not a moment too soon.

A Rare Gift

Life handed me one of those rare gifts a couple of weeks ago when I was reunited with a young man I had known 15 years ago.


He was five years old when I removed him from his drug-addicted, neglectful mother. I was his Children's Services worker at the time. I vividly recall finding him home alone in the middle of the day, with no food and clutter strewn throughout the apartment. The police were called and his mother was arrested as I received an emergency order of custody from a magistrate, allowing me to place him in foster care. I strapped him in the back of my white Ford Taraus and delivered him to an emergency foster home in Cincinnati.


I had often wondered what had happened to that sweet little guy, particularly when my own little boy turned five. I got my answer when he and I came face to face at an unexpected meeting.


He stood before me two weeks ago, a meeting orchestrated by another child welfare professional. He was all grown up now. Even so, I could see a hint of the little boy with chubby cheeks. He wrapped me in a bear hug and thanked me for saving his life. Tears swimming in his eyes and mine, we talked for an hour while I answered his questions about his early life and he filled me in on his subsequent childhood spent in "the system," bounced from one foster home to the next until he was 17.


The system didn't provide a magic answer for him. It usually offered a bed and some food and nothing more. Out of all the thirty-plus foster homes he lived in, only one he referred to as loving. But still, he thanked a caseworker from long ago for saving his life. And that spoke volumes about how horrendous it would have been for him to remain with his mother.


Surely we can do better. We can put our heads together and figure out better ways to raise our children who have no one to protect, love and nurture them. Find a way to get involved. The kids are waiting for you to help.

Good News on the Way!

I'm watching the nightly news as I write this post. I'm two minutes in and have so far heard about a death from Swine Flu in New York, a shooting in Cincinnati's Northside and a church burglarized. I don't know about you, but I've been trying to focus more on good things than bad. Note to self: chronic news watching makes it hard to focus on good.


So to keep my promise about giving you good news with the bad news on foster care, I'd like you to know about something called Every Child's Hope. I even like the name. You don't hear the word 'hope' associated with foster care very often.


Following the death of murdered foster child Marcus Fiesel nearly three years ago, a group of churches came together to begin discussing how the church could respond to the needs of children in foster care. To date, over two dozen churches have joined Every Child's Hope Coalition of Care for Foster Children. The goal: to build community around foster children and families. An upcoming weekend event sponsored by Every Child's Hope features keynote speakers and information sessions all aimed at educating the community on the needs of foster kids and engaging people by offering a number of volunteer opportunities to assist them.


I have long believed that the answers to problems facing these kids will be found in the larger community around them, not necessarily the government system charged with their oversight. The Coalition of Care has so many resources to offer the government system in caring for vulnerable children. As a "system" person, spending most of my time working with government agencies and the court, I know better than anyone about separation of church and state and how careful we must be to honor that. But there is something to be said for community, faith-based or not. And my feeling is, if you have something to offer our children, by all means, step up. The Coalition is doing just that.


And that really is Good News.

Welcome to my Invisible Kids Blog

It took me six months to finally launch myself into the Blogsphere. For some reason, I find it a little scary to start blogging, which is really funny, because I wrote an entire book. When I was writing my book, Invisible Kids, I imagined myself sitting down with a reader and having a conversation with them about kids in foster care and how we can all do something to help them. My imaginary reader was a nice and interested person.

While blogging, I feel like I’m standing in front of a classroom full of people waiting for me to say something meaningful, if not brilliant. I’ll plow ahead though, assuming you are all as nice and interested as my imaginary readers (who became real, by the way, when my book hit bookshelves in January 2009).

My name is Holly Schlaack. I am a child advocate, author and mother of three. I have spent fifteen years on the front lines of child abuse and neglect, first as a caseworker for Children’s Services and later as a Guardian Ad Litem (GAL), representing the best interests of abused and neglected infants and toddlers in juvenile court.

I’ve learned a lot about children and families over the years, as well as the laws that govern the lives of foster children and the system responsible for overseeing their care when parents fail to protect them. Sometimes the foster care system works. Sometimes it fails. Sometimes it destroys the very children it is designed to save. And when this happens, there are grave consequences not only to the people involved, but also to our entire communities.

I have a passion for these children that is matched by a passionate belief that the time has come for all of us to stand together and fix this broken foster care system. It is the only way we will save children and families. There is something we can all do to help, and the responsibility to do so rests directly on our shoulders. If we are willing to reach out, we can change the course of thousands of lives and directly impact our communities and a future generation.

Child abuse and neglect is a heavy topic and many people don’t want to discuss it because it is sad. Trust me, I know. It is sad. However, there are happy endings too, though they seldom make headlines. And there is little else that brings the kind of satisfaction and joy that comes from playing a small part in a happy ending. You can play that part.

Look for me to post an entry once a week, telling you a little about some of the foster children in our communities and most importantly, how you can get involved and help them. I welcome your comments and look forward to our discussions about abused and neglected children and making the world a safer, more loving place for each one of them.

To learn more about me, my work experience and the book I was drawn to write, please visit www.hollyschlaack.com.