Missouri lawmakers urged to strengthen child care laws
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. If so, click the link and take a look at twenty babies who died in day care in Missouri.
Forty-five (45) deaths in four years. An average of elven (11) baby deaths a year.
Heartbreaking for those who loved those forty-five (45) babies.
Missouri keeps, at least, some kind of data on the deaths of little ones. Many states don't.
The people who populate our various state governments stay numbed out to the actual deaths of children. They don't go to the funerals or memorial services of these little ones. They don't send a card.
In my state of Washington they wouldn't sign a card that I brought to one of our regional meetings for two year old little sweet Hailee Rhodes who had been slammed down in a playpen by her licensed day care provider.
A simple card that said we, individual human beings in state government charged with licensing day care providers per the laws passed by our citizen legislature, cared about Hailee, that we prayed that Hailee's brain damage would not be permanent. A simple card. A loving human action. A simple act of caring, my co-workers and managers would not do.
Hailee's brain damage I was told last year is permanent.
For all the babies that died, all the children that died and those who were maimed, permanently damaged how do we describe to them our community that created and then set the conditions in which they lived then died?
How do we bring down the veil of denial?
Can we look at each of those smiley baby pictures and weep? Then speak the truth of what we know, what we see and then make a better community?
No comments:
Post a Comment