Friday, June 08, 2007
They labor to leave no child in our state behind - by Seattle P-I columnist Susan Paynter
... Doreen Cato and her staff have performed transformations and salvations daily for a decade at the ... First Place School for Seattle's homeless, neediest children.
... Too many of the kids at First Place School witness violence, death and loss firsthand.
I think of a boy I met who watched his estranged father kill his mother. About his strength and his dream come true to go (with help from P-I readers) to camp where he could surf the ocean off Vancouver Island.
Too often, traumatized children like that don't get the help they should, Cato told me. They live in perpetual fear. They get suspended from school. And they rarely can articulate what is causing them to fail.
Cato knows because she was one of those kids.
She was hospitalized from age 3 to 5 with tuberculosis at the tender time when bonding either happens or does not. Then, at 9, her mother died, leaving her struggling single dad with four kids. And leaving the kids to the attentions of predators.
She and her two sisters were sexually abused. But, even that wasn't the worst of it. "Kids didn't have a voice back then. They weren't believed, especially if the abusers were leaders in the community," Cato said.
She refuses to let that happen to kids on her watch. It's why her energy never wanes. ...
... Doreen Cato and her staff have performed transformations and salvations daily for a decade at the ... First Place School for Seattle's homeless, neediest children.
... Too many of the kids at First Place School witness violence, death and loss firsthand.
I think of a boy I met who watched his estranged father kill his mother. About his strength and his dream come true to go (with help from P-I readers) to camp where he could surf the ocean off Vancouver Island.
Too often, traumatized children like that don't get the help they should, Cato told me. They live in perpetual fear. They get suspended from school. And they rarely can articulate what is causing them to fail.
Cato knows because she was one of those kids.
She was hospitalized from age 3 to 5 with tuberculosis at the tender time when bonding either happens or does not. Then, at 9, her mother died, leaving her struggling single dad with four kids. And leaving the kids to the attentions of predators.
She and her two sisters were sexually abused. But, even that wasn't the worst of it. "Kids didn't have a voice back then. They weren't believed, especially if the abusers were leaders in the community," Cato said.
She refuses to let that happen to kids on her watch. It's why her energy never wanes. ...
Labels: compassionate people
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