The homeless high school dropout now in juvenile detention started out as someone’s baby. That truth, obvious though it may be, has become a virtual mantra to leaders in Washington State these days. And for good reason.
The combined costs of foster care and juvenile incarceration are rising, and low graduation rates are leaving too many youngsters unemployable. To contain expenditures for these downstream consequences, many public and private funders are asking agencies and organizations that serve at-risk kids to improve upstream strategies. Two notable efforts are drawing on science-based ideas about how to promote the well-being of children in Washington State.
First, legislators now require state-supported programs to employ practices that research has shown to have a superior track record for turning young lives around. These reforms won’t necessarily require new funding. Resources are already in the state budget to implement proven best practices, according to at-risk youth expert Eric Trupin, Vice Chairman of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington and Director of the Division of Public Behavioral Health and Justice Policy. We just need “the courage to move money from one place to the other.”
[For more of this story, written by Judy Lightfoot, go to http://crosscut.com/2015/06/ca...-kids-and-money-too/]
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