Sept 16, 2018, Macon (GA) Telegraph: Iowa police, schools partner on safety https://www.macon.com/news/article218181690.html …School resource officers are nothing new, but with mounting concerns over school shootings, schools increasingly are working with police and sheriff's departments to bolster student safety…. The Hawk Eye reports that Burlington patrol officers have been required to make appearances in Burlington's public and private schools on a daily basis for the past six or seven years, but it wasn't until this year the department began assigning officers to specific schools. … "We're always looking at ways we can enhance our relationships with students, but at the same time, there was a lot of effort last (school) year by students and a lot of parents wanting to enhance access to mental health services, wanting to kind of strengthen or harden a little bit the abilities for people to access schools. … Officers visit their assigned schools periodically throughout their shifts, as their workload allows. They spend anywhere from between 10 to 30 minutes there, walking the hallways and talking with students and staff. There are no set times for these visits…. ... Like many schools throughout southeast Iowa and the rest of the U.S., concerns have arisen in the district about school safety since the Parkland, Florida, shooting in February…. ADDRESSING MENTAL HEALTH In addition to ALICE training the BPD helps to provide schools with each year, the department will provide mental health and crisis intervention technique training in October involving law enforcement, area mental health providers and school staff wherein they will learn how to recognize potential crisis issues in schools. The intent is to equip them to sooner recognize students in need of mental health services with which the schools can connect them. "Our first 40-hour mental health training and crisis intervention techniques is going to happen in southeast Iowa," Grimshaw said. "And we're going to make sure that obviously our school resource officers, any of our officers that have immediate contact, maybe on the front line with specific units, would attend that training." The department has been working on a subcommittee with regional mental health coalition Southeast Iowa Regional Link for the past year and a half to develop the crisis intervention training. …
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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