Blog

Nearly 20 percent of Los Angeles County's children have experienced at least two traumatic events, including abuse, neglect, or poverty. And that number spikes when you're talking about kids in foster care. Nine out of ten children served by the nation's welfare system have been exposed to violence . When trauma happens to very young children, it can impact their social, emotional, and cognitive development. Early intervention can help, and childcare providers can be an important factor in...

State law recognizes that schools primarily serving expelled students, dropouts and students who had trouble coping in traditional schools should be held accountable for academic performance – but by different measurements. This month, the California State Board of Education began a more than year-long process to determine what those metrics should be, which schools should be measured by them and how the schools should fit into the larger system of accountability and school improvement the...

First 5 Marin Children and Families Commission featured Jane Stevens in a Marin Communications Forum event on Monday, May 15. Thanks to the hard work of host Michelle Fadelli of First 5 Marin, a full Embassy Suites ballroom of up to 180 Marin County service providers, from a variety of agencies, gathered.

The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health is seeking a Senior Manager of Communications & External Relations.

For 72 years, Hanna Boys Center has been a place of refuge for disadvantaged boys – boys who, largely by circumstance, were in trouble. Dysfunctional homes, neighborhood violence, feral upbringings, drug abuse: Hanna Boys Center has sheltered all kinds. Over those decades Hanna Boys Center has established itself as a leader in transformational protocols, a vanguard on the fractious front advocating for at-risk youth. ..... ..... Trauma-informed care argues that children who’ve experienced...

Evan Cardona, a 1st-grader at Mountain View Elementary in Los Angeles, arrived at the Regional Spelling Bee excited to take on a new challenge. Despite placing first in his school spelling bee, Evan’s success had not come easily. In kindergarten, Evan fell behind and finished the year without knowing many of his first-level words. Doctors had told his mother that, because of complications at birth, Evan would likely experience many developmental delays throughout his life. [For more of this...

Imagine a California without youth prisons because we don’t need them anymore. Young people would still make mistakes, some of them tragic. But instead of being taken from their families and schools, they would receive community-based counseling, mentoring, job training and opportunities that build on their strengths, enabling them to become productive adults. The limited number of youth at risk of harming others would go to small, secure therapeutic residential treatment centers near their...

Join 4CA in Sacramento on July 11 for Policymaker Education Day on Childhood Adversity! Our lawmakers need to hear from you about how childhood adversity affects your community and what they can do to help. Join with allies from across California to engage your elected officials on this important issue. (Bonus! lunchtime pep talk by Senator Holly Mitchell!) Who: 4CA Policymaker Education Day is designed for California residents who care about preventing and mitigating the effects of...

A bill working its way through the state legislature would create a state-funded program to help new mothers in the first few months and years after the birth of their children. The CalWORKs Baby Wellness and Family Support Home Visiting Program would spend $100 million to offer home visits from nurses or social workers to new mothers who are living in poverty. Support for home visiting programs is grounded in research that has found regular postpartum home visits can improve the health of...

A new report from Young Minds Advocacy makes the case that the publicly funded mental health system for children in California needs a shake up. Released last week to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Month, the report argues that California needs to adopt a comprehensive vision of children’s mental health. Responsibility for the mental health needs of California’s most vulnerable children is spread out among a Byzantine system of federal and state funding streams and child-serving...

Parents, teachers and students streamed into the library of Palo Alto’s Gunn High School on a warm evening this spring to hear about a new plan , coming this fall, to help high school students develop empathy and coping skills through “social and emotional learning.” For starters, the audience wanted the answer to a question that has dogged the jargon phrase for years: What is social and emotional learning and why should schools get involved in it? The term is bedeviled by abstractions, but...

Luz felt relieved and grateful when she learned that her 16-year-old son qualified for full coverage under Medi-Cal. Now, she worries that the information she provided to the government health program could put her family at risk of deportation. Luz’s son is one of nearly 190,000 children who have enrolled in Medi-Cal since California opened it to undocumented children last year. Luz, her husband and her son came to Merced, Calif., from Mexico without papers about 10 years ago. Luz asked...