May 2018

“Casserian engeri?” (“And how are the children?”) — Traditional Masai greeting The most serious, non-infectious disease in childhood, and the most common, is poverty. Despite economic gains in the last few years, children remain the poorest age group in America with nearly one in five living in poverty. That’s 13.2 million children. A recent study by the Children’s Defense Fund illustrated an even bleaker picture, with three million children living in families surviving on $2 a day per...

The woman used a thick extension cord on her foster children. Welts rose. Bruises formed. Fear became the norm inside the Watts neighborhood home in Los Angeles where LaToya Cooper and six other children were sent to live. But no one believed the then-fifth grader. Not Cooper’s teachers. Not the police. [For more on this story by Susan Abram, go to https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/child-welfare-2/california-considers-a-bat-signal-for-foster-youth-in-distress/30903 ]

CityLab’s series on metro Atlanta’s cityhood movement follows how new cities have been forming across that region, mostly from unincorporated areas—land that falls under county governance, but doesn’t belong to any particular city. In most other regions of the U.S., unincorporated domains are usually found in rural or exurban areas. But in metro Atlanta, these unincorporated parts are often heavily urbanized communities that barely differ from the cities they neighbor. One of the newest and...

I watched a few of the intro webinars to this course and it looks like a great training from the Center for Adolescent Studies. https://centerforadolescentstudies.com/bars/ 4-Weeks: May 29th - June 26th, 2018 (and a 2-week grace period to finish all lessons to get your certificate of completion) Online: Completely online; login whenever you want each week to access the course material (mostly video presentations, approx. 2 hours per week) Learn: Critical skills for building relationships...

ACEs studies usually focus on the bigger, more tangible adverse experiences in a child’s life. However, there are a number of minor stressors that may not be really traumatic for kids not going through significant ACEs, are nevertheless devastating to a child already going through trauma. 

In most district attorney elections, the campaign playbook is clear: Win over the local cops and talk tough on crime. But in California this year, the strategy is being turned on its head. Wealthy donors are spending millions of dollars to back would-be prosecutors who want to reduce incarceration, crack down on police misconduct and revamp a bail system they contend unfairly imprisons poor people before trial. [For more on this story by PAIGE ST. JOHN and ABBIE VANSICKLE, go to...

Many Democrats believed that a years-long bipartisan push to overhaul the federal criminal-justice system died with the election of Donald Trump. The president had proudly anointed himself the “law-and-order candidate” in 2016 and appointed as his attorney general Jeff Sessions, the Senate’s leading conservative critic of reducing mandatory-minimum sentences, improving federal prison conditions, and easing the transition back into society for those incarcerated. But Trump is now backing a...

Sometimes 11-year-old B. comes home from school in tears. Maybe she was taunted about her weight that day, called "ugly." Or her so-called friends blocked her on their phones. Some nights she is too anxious to sleep alone and climbs into her mother's bed. It's just the two of them at home, ever since her father was deported back to West Africa when she was a toddler. B.'s mood has improved lately, though, thanks to a new set of skills she is learning at school. (We're using only first...

Many proposals for addressing school segregation seem pretty small, especially when compared to the scale and severity of the problem. Without the power of a court-ordered desegregation mandate, progress can feel extremely far off, if not altogether impossible. Some even believe—understandably though mistakenly —that no meaningful steps can be taken to integrate schools unless housing segregation is resolved. But a new theory from Thomas Scott-Railton, a recent graduate of Yale Law School,...

Every year, Gallup ranks U.S. cities for well-being, based on how residents feel about living in their communities, and their health, finances, social ties and sense of purpose. Perhaps unsurprisingly, places like Naples, Fla., and Boulder, Col., tend to top the list, while Southern and Midwestern towns including Canton, Ohio, and Fort Smith, Ark., often come in last. But what hard data underpin the differences between these communities? A study published Wednesday takes a step toward...

Dr. Bruce Perry uses humor to punctuate and bring relief to what is otherwise the most serious subject matter: how trauma interrupts human development. “I don’t mean to sound ungracious, but I hate the term ‘trauma-informed care,” Perry said, in his opening remarks for the Southern Texas Trauma-Informed Care Conference, which was held this month in downtown San Antonio. The audience tittered, briefly thrown off balance by his candor. They laughed harder later on as the man who was recently...

As in many post-industrial cities, Newark has experienced dramatic challenges since the second half of the 20 th century. A confluence of factors has resulted in the current landscape in which one third of the city lives in poverty, 72 percent of children are born into single female-headed households, and high rates of community and interpersonal violence burden residents. In 2008, Newark faced a health crisis created by the abrupt closures of two of its five hospitals. In response, the New...