I know someone who lives near that town. The older cop "retired" and the younger cop is still on administrative leave. The child has a long history of mental health problems. The local Department of Child Services has had custody of him for several years. They never should have placed him in that daycare. He should be in a special needs facility. If anyone's at fault, it's the case manager who's clueless.
I have a sister ten years younger than me whom I describe to most people as "autistic" because it most closely defines her affect (her actual diagnosis is somewhat murkier and less clear-cut). Back in the 70s the entire infrastructure for special-needs individuals was much simpler where it even existed at all, even in eastern Massachusetts where we were living. My mother simply couldn't cope with her: she was violent, self-destructive and would sometimes scream at ear-splitting volumes for extended periods of time. The meds were, by today's standards, primitive and not especially effective, and seem to have been no services available to teach my mother how to cope better.
So she farmed her off to a local woman with several special needs children of her own and who had her own (terrible) ideas about how to treat such kids: with equal and occasionally greater violence. This went on for far too long (at least two, maybe three years), until my sister became eligible for schooling at the age of six (no pre-school or kindergarten were required at that time, so they were all private and none specialized in the care of special needs kids of that age-range). To this day, my sister will occasionally mention the name of the sadist my mother left in control of her (though it's been 35 years now), always in an upset and remorseful way that is heart-breaking to hear and endure: she's forgotten nothing.
Massachusetts was the first state in the country to mandate access to education to all children, regardless of special needs, with
Chapter 766, which passed in 1972, so once she was of school age (six), she was placed in a variety of special schools all paid for on the town level with some state assistance (but not much). The staff at these schools were all highly trained and motivated, though the burn-out rate was astronomical, and for the first time in her little life, my sister was introduced to the concept of positive reinforcement rather than corporal punishment. My mother, who was very much of the "spare the rod, spoil the child" school, never quite got how to deliver positive reinforcement skills effectively and consistently, but both my other sister (2.5 years younger than me) and I did, so we, in effect, were our sister's caregivers beginning in our early teens.
The various "schools" my sister attended were varying degrees of warehousing, but at least she learned some essential social skills and a limited number of sight-words (actual reading is out of the question). She has shown a limited comprehension of numerals, though the precise nature of a specific numeral referring to a specific quantity of things is either not important to her or else she just enjoys confounding people with blatant exaggerations and distortions (she does that in other ways, so it wouldn't surprise me). At no time and under no circumstances were the use of corporal punishment or police intervention even considered.
For reasons only she could properly explain but never has, my mother eventually resettled in Lynn, MA in the early 80s: a rough place with a well-deserved reputation for crime and abject poverty. Though the school budgets of Weymouth, where she'd lived previously, were small, in Lynn they were bleak generally, and the funding for special-needs kids was essentially non-existent (except for special transport). They attempted to integrate my sister into the local public Junior High school environment with predictably disastrous results until she was 16, at which point she was removed from my mother's house and placed in a group home where she's lived ever since, to her vast benefit.
My point here, much like my series of posts in the
HIV Treatment thread, is to illustrate my knowledge of how dramatically social services vary from location to location, even in "enlightened" Massachusetts. The fault lies squarely on a lack of two things: empathy and money. Empathy comes through direct contact with people with special needs and will not be found on most school boards, who have resisted Chapter 766 since the day it was enacted; money is in short supply everywhere, even in "good times". During our current recessionary fiscal difficulties, it's dried up to a trickle for the general population of school-aged kids. For all too many kids with special needs, it's disappeared completely.
The lack of money means that there will be fewer special classes with specially-trained professionals, more integration of special needs kids into regular classes where their needs are poorly understood and are addressed by teachers and teachers' aids with little or no special training or support even available, let alone mandated. Special needs students are seen as "disruptive", not valued for who they are as people, are the subject of ridicule and are taught the harsh realities of life in one of the harshest of all American environments, public Junior High (Middle) Schools and High Schools.
I'm sure that there are success stories and wonderful programs here and there, but this topic points out the need for so many more.
