First Star's leadership firmly believes in the primacy of children's basic interests and rights. An emphasis on best practices and better outcomes benefits children in child protective services, dependency courts and foster care systems across the U.S. and plants the seeds for long-term change in the way our society treats its children.
First Star balances education, policy and research with public awareness to heighten awareness and to deepen knowledge about the plight of society's most vulnerable children - the abused and neglected. First Star's collaborative and multidisciplinary approach encourages interaction among various child-related constituencies, institutional and professional disciplines, and decision makers. The objective: To bring together theory and practice in making children's welfare a first priority for Americans.
Conventional wisdom acknowledges that the nation's child protective services system is far from ideal. Pessimists may even declare the system beyond repair, but such thinking does not help the millions of children who rely upon its services.
First Star believes it is much more valuable to recognize what has gone wrong, determine how the mistakes were made, and take concrete steps to prevent the same thing from happening in the future. To this end, www.firststar.org will occasionally feature newspaper, magazine and journal articles that highlight system failure. However, we would be remiss if we did not also list the stories that point to system achievement. Armed with this evidence, First Star rightly challenges the notion that nothing can be done, especially when children's lives are at stake.
Citizen action is also critical, so please consider the following ideas as a way to help America's children:
- Become a CASA (www.nationalcasa.org)
- Talk to a trial judge about dependency courts.
- Visit a dependency court in your home state.
- Meet with a foster child group in your state.
- Hold a local Youth Summit for Children in Foster Care to learn more about their needs.
