Out of home placements remain at about 600,000 children on any given day. With a typical pediatric office visit lasting only13 minutes, a prescription for stimulants or antidepressants has become the predominant response, despite the absence of evidence for long term efficacy. Children whose parents have attempted to find mental health services, are too often are turned away and receive attention media attention when it is already too late. Health care, child welfare and legal systems designed to protect our children too often fail to respect children's rights to participation and voice. Children who are subjects of child protective proceedings are unrepresented in a large percentage of cases.
Case loads for children's attorneys are crushing.
The average child protective hearing lasts ten minutes. Children are not entitled to be consulted about medical decisions, even when they involve chronic illnesses or experimental therapies. Children are the least powerful of persons and as such are most in need of high quality advocacy, research and policy initiatives. Our knowledge of the underlying issues remains insufficient. Few individuals have the breadth of training and access to interdisciplinary perspectives necessary to make recommendations for substantive change.