Blog

When the clouds darken and rain starts pouring down, many Houston-area elementary school students get nervous and start to sob — a sign of the long-lasting effects of watching the water levels rise during and after Hurricane Harvey. For Donna Wotkyns, a licensed social worker in Houston, that reaction shows exactly why ramping up resources for long-term mental health services for Texas students is necessary. “I’m a big believer in … support groups, getting together multiple children or youth...

Educators are beginning to get answers to questions they have always asked: Am I doing something wrong? Why does a student react violently to a simple request? Why does another student retreat and sleep in class? And why, even after repeated disciplinary consequences, do some students continue with inappropriate behavior? The answer is that it is not “why” but rather “what” that is causing the actions of some students. And, the “what” can be identified through the research known as ACEs,...

The schools in Puerto Rico are facing massive challenges. All the public schools are without electricity, and more than half don't have water. More than 100 are still functioning as shelters. But Puerto Rico's secretary of education, Julia Keleher, tells us that the schools that are open are serving as connection points for communities. They've become a place where children and their families can eat a hot meal and get some emotional support, too. [For more on this story by MERRIT KENNEDY,...

Urban planners, governments and developers are increasingly interested in making cities “liveable”. But what features contribute to liveability? Which areas in cities are the least and most liveable? The various liveability rankings – where Australia tends to do quite well – don’t provide much useful guidance. In a recently released report, Creating Liveable Cities in Australia , our team defined and produced the first baseline measure of liveability in Australia’s capital cities. We broke...

Hurricanes Irma and Harvey delivered a devastating one-two punch to Texas and Florida, forcing millions to evacuate and leaving thousands displaced . Now, as emergency responders try to help hurricane victims cope with the aftermath of the storm, previously homeless residents are taking a particularly hard hit. In Florida, as officials rushed to open emergency shelters for those forced from their homes by Irma, some residents who had been homeless before the hurricane were forced to wear...

Gov. Jerry Brown of California signed into law on Wednesday a sweeping package of criminal justice reform bills including a ban on the practice of billing parents for their children’s incarceration, which had been prevalent statewide for decades and was the subject of a Marshall Project investigation earlier this year. The new law — introduced by two Democratic state senators from the Los Angeles area, Holly Mitchell and Ricardo Lara, and approved by the legislature on Sept. 6 — prohibits...

Karen Teitelbaum has been president and CEO of Chicago-based Sinai Health System since 2014, and under her leadership the system became home to the city's first ever crisis stabilization unit. The psychiatric observation CSU at Sinai's Holy Cross Hospital opened in 2016 and started off accommodating up to 12 patients at a time. The unit plays a unique role in Chicago's healthcare and criminal justice ecosystem, as it diverts patients with behavioral health problems from the emergency...

The MacArthur Foundation recently announced its list of 2017 fellows—24 people from all walks of life who will receive $625,000 “genius” grants, as they’re often called. CityLab is running a series of short conversations with several of the winners. The work of the acclaimed New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones lays bare the institutional and individual decisions that continue to keep urban spaces separate and unequal. We caught up with her yesterday to talk about why that work is...

October 11th [was] National Coming Out Day. Here, a contributor discusses her work on Resilience, a trans fiction anthology, and examines how transgender literature helped her come out as a trans woman . I remember my first few months living as a woman. It was summer 2016. I’d started coming out to friends the summer prior, but that was when I really took steps forward. I began hormone replacement therapy, I changed my wardrobe, and I started presenting as a woman. And believe me, it wasn’t...

Sometimes, we feel anxious, intrusive, or afraid when changing or bathing or own babies. Sometimes, we feel sick to our stomachs and worried while potty training, nurturing, or disciplining our toddlers. Sometimes we feel victorious, awe-inspired, and grateful to be able to provide security, safety and unconditional love to our children. P arenting can be hard for everyone, at times, but it's not the same kind of hard for everyone. Sometimes, we feel shame-filled and ill-equipped when...

Most people would agree that the criminal justice system needs to change in some way. The restorative justice (RJ) movement offers an approach to justice reform for both youth and adults that values repair and relationship over punishment and isolation when dealing with the aftermath of crime. Research is showing its positive effects, and support for this approach is growing. Of course, the modern expression of restorative justice owes more than a debt of gratitude to indigenous justice...

New research explores our tendency to label mass shooters as either mentally ill or as terrorists, based on whether they are Muslim or not. [To listen to a story from NPR's Hidden Brain Podcast, go to http://www.npr.org/2017/10/05/555796306/classifying-attacks-mental-illness-or-terrorism ]