All over the country, the financial crisis has forced states to make historic cuts to close what the National Conference of State Legislatures found was an overall budget gap of $174.1 billion this fiscal year and has lawmakers looking to trim an additional $89 billion next year. That means slashing services to the one population they've long protected: children.

And children in the Carolinas are among those suffering from the cuts.

The scope of the cuts is unprecedented, child advocates say. They affect programs that addressed everything from childhood obesity to child abuse, and from prenatal care to preschool inspections. Some can't serve as many kids, while others are forced to deal with months-long delays and many programs simply disappear.

"We were really taken aback at just the sheer magnitude of the cuts," said Linda Smith, executive director of the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies, which released a study in January that found more than 40 states cut or eliminated programs for children.

And now, advocates worry all the gains they've made in improving children's lives will be lost, and juvenile crime, child abuse, child neglect and other problems will climb.

"We will end up with a kid who is killed or will kill someone else," said Karen McLeod, president of Children and Family Services Association-N.C. "We are very, very worried about what is going to happen." North Carolina's mental health system was cut by $155 million last year.

Already, cutbacks to programs have led desperate parents to take increasingly desperate steps. They're leaving kids home alone or in households with a history of domestic violence. In Wake County, a mom camped out with her teenage son at a county facility for eight days, waiting for state officials to find him a bed in a state mental hospital.

Salima Mabry's son is autistic and mentally disabled. Fearing that taking him home even for a few hours would mean having to start the waiting process over, the two slept in chairs, took sponge baths in a public restroom sink and ate food that friends and family brought.

"You're in a sitting chair like you wait for the doctor," Mabry said, adding that the setup didn't suit her son. "He had a fit (and) they had to restrain him (because) he didn't like sitting in a room."

Officials eventually found him a hospital bed.