C4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 , 2022BY ZOILA ORTEGAI
approached my mom, as I had
a thousand times before, to
help her out of bed for her
breakfast. “Who are you?” she
asked, in what I remember as one
of the most difficult moments of
my life.
It was the first time she ever
asked me that question, but it
would not be the last. My mother
was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s
disease in 2010. As a nurse and
educator with two master’s de-
grees and a doctorate, I was well
equipped with clinical knowledge
about her diagnosis. But all the
books in the world could not have
prepared me for the personal toll
of seeing my mother slowly lose
her memory.
My mom and dad immigrated
to the United States from Cuba in
the 1950s to seek a better life for
our family. I was not quite 2 yearsold at the time. I grew up grateful
for the opportunities that they
gave me, and I wanted to give back
to the country that took us in.
That’s one of the reasons I became
a nurse and began training others
to be caregivers.
I thought I could easily assist
my mother through her illness. At
the time of her diagnosis, I had
been training nurses for more
than 45 years and had set up nurs-
ing programs at universities
across the United States. And for a
while, I did.
Eventually, my mom’s Alzheim-
er’s progressed, and she forgot
how to make meals and needed
help with bathing and other daily
tasks. My father had died years
before, and there was no other
family member available to help
consistently with her care. And
after three years of caring for her
by myself, I realized I needed the
help of a professional caregiver.Increasingly, my mother re-
gressed to her native Spanish, so I
set about finding a home care
worker who was fluent in her
mother tongue. In my small com-
munity in central Virginia, there’s
a shortage of caregivers, and the
Hispanic community, though vi-
brant and growing, is small.
I contacted the Virginia Board
of Nursing and designed a pro-
gram that would be more accessi-
ble to immigrant and minority
communities. At the time, entry
requirements for training pro-
grams in Virginia were an o bstacle
to applicants whose first language
is not English. People in lower-in-
come groups were often weeded
out by strict entry exams and ex-
pensive course fees. My curricu-
lum tried to reduce these barriers
to entry while adhering to the
standards that the state had set.
We opened Locust Grove’s Ca-
reer Nursing Academy in May- The academy’s certified
nursing assistant program, which
requires 145 hours of training and
clinical practice over six weeks,
has graduated more than 1,000
caregivers. Although we teach en-
tirely in English, the academy has
teachers who can translate and
field questions in Spanish, Ger-
man and Filipino/Tagalog, among
other languages.
One student recently cared for a
Spanish speaker in his 80s. When
she spoke to the man in his native
language, he wept. He had not
conversed in Spanish in 11 years.
I was another beneficiary of the
work of the academy I helped cre-
ate: I was finally able to get supple-
mental home care for my mom.
During the final years of her life,
she was cared for by several Span-
ish-speaking certified nursing as-
sistants who helped ensure that
she got the care that she needed.
Every year, more families seek
home care for their loved ones, but
our country’s care economy has
not kept up with the demand. As a
nation, we don’t invest in our care-
givers enough; many in our state
make just $12 an hour, and the
average home care worker nation-
wide earns just $17,200 a year.
We can fix the shortage of home
care workers by properly funding
the industry. President Biden’s
economic plan would invest $150
billion to address the growing
need for home care. Those funds
would ensure that caregivers na-
tionwide are able to get the train-
ing they need.
Paying caregivers better would
help attract more workers to the
industry. Last year, Virginia took
needed steps to improve condi-
tions for home care workers: The
General Assembly voted to pro-
vide workers with 40 hours of paid
sick leave per year, one-time bo-
nuses of $1,000 and temporarywage increases through Medicare
and Medicaid.
These policies, though helpful,
do not address the long-term
problem. Lawmakers must make
home care a national priority. In
doing so, our leaders have the
opportunity to make home care
accessible for millions of families.
My mom ended up living for
more than seven years after her
diagnosis — far longer than her
doctors expected, which I credit to
the great home care we provided
her. All families should be fortu-
nate enough to care for their loved
ones at home if they choose.
It was difficult to see my moth-
er’s memory progressively fade,
but I was comforted, as was she,
that she was able to get loving care
at home — and in a language she
understood.The writer is the founder of Career
Nursing Academy in Locust Grove, Va.My mother needed Spanish-speaking caregivers. I had to fi nd them.BY ANNIE KENNYT
here’s this place around the corner from you,
seemingly insignificant, but it hosts a house of
horrors. It’s a place where the same therapists,
medical providers and teachers who are legally
required to report suspected child abuse are not allowed to
save a child before more abuse occurs. Where truth is
obsolete, and right and wrong don’t matter. It’s family
court. And I’ve been trapped there for four years now.
Before I stepped foot into a family courtroom, my now
ex-husband had b een convicted of sexually abusing a
minor. He was a Tier III registered sex offender for life. It
was determined that for the safety of society as a whole, his
photo, address and vehicle description needed to be post-
ed publicly for all to see for the rest of his life. None of that
outweighed his “parental rights.” He was granted access to
my children, under the presumption that although he had
admittedly sexually abused one child, he was not necessar-
ily a danger to all children. It was easier to get him
convicted of his crime than it was to keep him away from
my children afterward. His conviction happened quietly.
Behind closed doors. Just a few months after he was
indicted on felony child sex abuse charges. But the family
court battle? Years. Thousands of documents. Hours upon
hours of testimony. Tens of thousands of dollars. Our lives
picked apart. Privacy destroyed. Even though the Mary-
land State Police had identified me as being in such clear
and present danger that they granted me a completely
unrestricted concealed-carry gun permit. All the while, I’m
court-ordered to meet the convicted abuser every Friday
night for dinner so he can see his children.
The same judge who smiles at me sympathetically is the
same person who also keeps arguing that “these kids
deserve to have a relationship with their father.” The
lawyers taking every penny I’ve ever had and then some
encourage me to negotiate with the abuser. I’m given a list
of what to wear to court because the size of my earrings
could speak louder than my ex-husband’s crimes. I’m told
that I’m too traumatized to make appropriate decisions for
my own children. That it can’t be up to me to decide what
access to their father is appropriate.
There’s no guide to follow, no map on how to escape. I
sink deeper and deeper each day into the quicksand, my
body and mind aching more and more under the weight of
each step, without even knowing if I’m walking toward
anything. Do my daughters and I make it out of this?
My story isn’t extraordinary, as much as you’d like to
think it is. I’m not some mythical creature that exists
thousands of miles away. I am your neighbor. Your sister.
Your co-worker. I’m the mom handing out the orange slices
at the soccer game. I’m your daughter’s Girl Scout leader,
the person volunteering next to you at church. I am
everyone and no one at the same time. There are tens of
thousands of stories like mine out there, but no one wants
to look at them.
Advocacy groups such as Child Justice in Silver Spring
are taking on some of these cases and fighting for legisla-
tive change. Multiple family court reform bills are being
considered this year in Maryland. In fact, S.B. 17/H.B. 561
on Child Custody — Cases Involving Child Abuse or
Domestic Violence — Training for Judges was just i ntro-
duced. I testified at Senate and House hearings this month.
Judicial training sounds like an easy ask: relevant
training advised by folks in the fields of child abuse and
domestic violence and updated every two years. It is not
unreasonable that judges given the power to determine
what happens to children and protective parents in cases
involving violence be educated on what trauma looks like,
the process involved in reporting sexual abuse, and the
dynamics of domestic violence and child abuse. How can
they be given the enormous task of protecting children in
custody cases without training on the subject matter?
There’s too much at stake here. No one hires a nanny
without experience with children or takes a child to a
doctor without medical training.
I’m semi-free from my ex-husband right now, but not
because family court saved me. He was caught molesting
more children and is awaiting sentencing after pleading
guilty. It’s hard for him to demand access to me and my
children from prison. But I don’t know how long this
breathing room will last. And I am angry that it has taken
the physical and psychological harm of other innocent
children to get us here. Beautiful little souls destroyed,
their lives altered. And I think about the thousands of
parents ordered to hand their children over to proven
abusers again and again and being ordered to co-parent
with individuals who later harm or even kill their own
children. Even though my ex-husband is still legally my
children’s father and has parental rights and his name is
still on my babies’ birth certificates, I keep reminding
myself that I am one of the lucky ones.The writer is a child safety advocate who serves on her local
Family Violence Coordinating Council, as a panelist on the “Allen v
Farrow” panel series, and is a member of the National Safe
Parents Coalition. She has collaborated with Maryland state
officials and policymakers regarding legislation reform and has
provided written testimony to the U.S. Senate.Maryland judgesshould be trainedon child abusemined as myself. We do not care what
methods are needed to prevent a ca-
lamity which appears to be impending.
Whatever they are those methods will
be taken. To establish a negro colony at
Belmont, practically at our doors and
beyond the restraint of the District
police force, would mean the impair-
ment of our property values, a constant
menace to our peace and security and
the destruction of the happiness of our
homes.”
The Belmont Syndicate’s visionary
effort was ultimately foiled, and the
area remained, as it was intended to be
by Francis Newlands and his Chevy
Chase Land Company, segregated and
affluent. Newlands, who tried to strip
African Americans of the vote and
casually referred to African Americans
as a “race of children,” opined:
“History teaches that it is impossible
to make homogenous people by the
juxtaposition upon the same soil of
races differing in color. Race tolerance,
under such conditions, means, ulti-
mately, race war and mutual destruc-
tion or the reduction of one race to
servitude.”
Sadly, in the first half of the 20th
century, Newlands’s segregated, eco-
nomically exclusive vision became a
reality. Even today, few African Ameri-
cans make their home in Friendship
Heights (or many of the neighbor-
hoods of upper Northwest). Today’sresidents of Friendship Heights do not
hold the views of their predecessors
100 years ago, but the die of racial and
economic segregation cast in the first
half of the 20th century remains.
We come from different faith tradi-
tions, but we share an obligation to
revisit the past to understand more
fully our present and seed a different
future. A future that, though recogniz-
ing our differences, transparently hon-
ors our shared humanity. For the moral
fiber of any community is not necessar-
ily determined by what its members
believe in private (though that’s impor-
tant), but by who and what its policies
promote in public. Where there is a
wrong, we are obligated to fix it. Where
there is an opportunity to do right, we
want to seize it.
And, happily, in Friendship Heights
we have such an opportunity. The up-
coming planning process offers a mo-
ment for repair. Friendship Heights
became what it is today through con-
certed action. And concerted action is
required now to create opportunities
for African Americans as the Belmont
Syndicate sought to do more than 100
years ago.
Over the years, there has been signif-
icant opposition to change in Friend-
ship Heights. In the coming planning
process, we hope neighbors and land-
owners will embrace change and to-
gether bend the arc. It is imperativethat any resulting plan significantly
move off the status quo.
Our planners must call for using
public lands to build affordable hous-
ing and maximizing affordable hous-
ing on private land. We must provide
affordable housing for teachers, fire-
fighters, police and other hard-work-
ing Washingtonians who want to live in
Friendship Heights and enjoy its plen-
tiful amenities, as well as deeply afford-
able homes for those who labor in the
upper Northwest’s retail and service
sectors. We also need to create oppor-
tunities for homeownership for Afri-
can Americans as part of redressing
decades of purposeful exclusion.
Failure to dramatically break from
the status quo is to tacitly endorse it. To
us, that’s unacceptable. What we need
is to embrace friendship not only in our
hearts but with our hands as well.Aaron L. Alexander is a rabbi at Adas Israel
Congregation. Ledlie Laughlin is a pastor at
St. Columba’s Episcopal Church. Hannah
Goldstein is a rabbi at Temple Sinai. Doug
Robinson-Johnson is a pastor at National
United Methodist Church. Molly Blythe
Teichert is a pastor at Chevy Chase
Presbyterian Church. The writers lead
congregations that are members of the
Washington Interfaith Network and the
Washington Interfaith Network Ward 3
Congregations Affordable Housing Work
Group.BY KISHA CLARKWhat does the world look
like to a child struggling
with mental health chal-
lenges?
Confusing. Scary. Lonely. Mean.
Cold.
The pandemic has compounded
mental health challenges in young
children. A recent report from U.S.
Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy
noted massive increases in self-harm
hospitalizations as well as incidents of
depression and anxiety because of the
pandemic, telling The Post children
are now enduring a “perfect storm of a
stressor.”
Fortunately, D.C. has made invest-
ing in school-based mental health a
major priority. Over the past several
years, we have gone from a fraction of
our schools being served by mental
health professionals to all of our
schools. We now spend upward of $30
million annually on our school-based
mental health system. Promisingly,
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) re-
cently announced i ncreases in educa-
tion spending in next year’s budget
and a multi-year investment in school-
based mental health services. These
are welcome and needed resources.
However, given the growing mental
health needs of students, teachers and
staff because of the pandemic, and thealready substantial mental health
needs of our students, we will need to
do more to provide the kinds of ser-
vices all students should be able to
access at every public school.
The experience of my daughter has
opened my eyes to the complex and
difficult circumstances children with
mental health needs face in our public
schools — even when they are staffed
with qualified and caring mental
health professionals.
Attending one of the largest middle
schools in upper Northwest D.C., she
was one of more than 1,400 students.
Even with a full-time psychologist and
a handful of counselors and social
workers, she couldn’t get the daily
supports her depression, anxiety and
ADHD diagnoses required. The result,
as with the experience of so many
children, was that her behavior chal-
lenges were too often met with puni-
tive responses. Instead of additional
counseling, she got in trouble. Instead
of having a chance to calm down and
regroup in school, she was sent home
and missed class.
We made the decision to move her
to her neighborhood school on Capitol
Hill. There, thanks to a social worker
and vice principal who had the band-
width to focus on creative solutions
for students with behavioral health
needs, students had access to a “calm-
down” space. It was a comfortableroom, scented with lavender and
chamomile, where my daughter and
other students could relax and reset so
they could return to class and contin-
ue to learn. Working with the vice
principal and her teachers, we were
able to develop a process to have her
academic and mental health needs
met, the opposite of what took place at
her previous school.
She’s now enrolled at our neighbor-
hood high school. The counselors, so-
cial workers and coordinators there
have developed plans that help her
complete her schoolwork. Initially, we
faced some of the old challenges; how-
ever, the school leadership is open to
creating a climate and space that my
daughter and her peers need — one
they can use to stay engaged in school
while living with mental health chal-
lenges.
My daughter’s experience illus-
trates a broader point: Even with a
“comprehensive” school-based men-
tal health system, the actual support
students can access can vary greatly.
This is why the mayor and D.C. Coun-
cil’s 2023 budget should deepen D.C.'s
commitment to the behavioral health
support system in our public schools
through two key steps.
First, we should conduct a compre-
hensive assessment of every school
community’s needs. Because of the
diversity of our schools and neighbor-hoods, assessments of this kind are
essential to understand and address
the challenges faced by public school
students, staff and educators in D.C.
Such assessments would also help us
understand broader trends and com-
plex contributors to the mental health
issues young people face, giving us
new tools and insights to address
them.
Second, because a system is only as
good as the accountability baked into
it, we need to establish strong moni-
toring features in our school-based
mental health system. That means
ensuring that the services students
need are delivered to families with
clarity. It also means that when the
system does not work correctly, fail-
ures are acknowledged and addressed
quickly and leaders are transparent
about efforts to improve policies and
programs.
These solutions and others can take
us to the next step in building the
school-based mental health system
that gives all our public school stu-
dents a chance to thrive, through the
pandemic and beyond. And as we do
that, the world will look a little less
confusing, a lot kinder, more support-
ive and a bit warmer for students
across D.C.The writer is a parent advocate with
Parents Amplifying Voices in Education.D.C. schools must step up amid mental health challengesBY AARON L. ALEXANDER,
LEDLIE LAUGHLIN,
HANNAH GOLDSTEIN,
DOUG ROBINSON-JOHNSON
AND MOLLY BLYTHE TEICHERTThis year, city planners, resi-
dents and landowners will
consider the future of Friend-
ship Heights — the area
around Wisconsin Avenue NW and the
Maryland border. That effort, led by the
Office of Planning as part of an exten-
sive planning exercise for commercial
corridors in Rock Creek West, should
be driven by the need to repair past
wrongs and to move toward a more
equitable and dynamic future.
The area draws its name from a
3,124-acre parcel — Friendship —
granted by Charles Calvert to James
Stoddert and Thomas Addison in 1713.
The name reflected the friendship of
the families. Much of Friendship re-
mained sleepy until the early 1900s
and the arrival of the streetcar.
Infrastructure investments always
shape residential development, and
the early D.C. streetcars were no excep-
tion. They launched an era of “subur-
ban” development in upper Northwest,
including Friendship Heights, in the
first half of the 20th century.
Housing opportunities in upper
Northwest in that era were reserved for
White people; African Americans were
actively excluded and, where present,
were effectively expelled at places such
as Reno between Woodrow Wilson
High School and Alice Deal Middle
School and the area around Lafayette
Elementary School.
Meanwhile, the Friendship Heights
area, as outlined in the extraordinary
scholarship of Neil Flanagan and Kim-
berly Bender, offered a tantalizing
glimpse of what might have been and
now must be. In 1906, four bold African
American men — Alexander Satter-
white, Michel Dumas, James Neill and
Charles Cuney — formed the Belmont
Syndicate and purchased a parcel of
land on the Maryland side of Friend-
ship Heights. They marketed lots to
both White and African American pur-
chasers.
In the area known as Friendship, the
response was anything but friendly.
One White resident explained:
“No Negro shall ever build a house at
Belmont. I speak for 500 men as deter-Friendship Heights can break from its pastRICKY CARIOTI/THE WASHINGTON POST
People walk along the exterior of Mazza Gallerie in the Friendship Heights neighborhood of D.C.Local OpinionsWASHINGTONPOST.COM/LOCALOPINIONS. [email protected]