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The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a set of recommendations aimed at helping older adults keep their homes, deal with health problems and find ways to engage with other community members, as part of a broad initiative to improve their lives. The county’s Age-Friendly Action Plan offers ideas ranging from assistance with rent and repairs to mobile technology labs to train seniors. It suggests turning parks and libraries into age-and dementia-friendly centers where...

JUSTICE THROUGH UNITY-The people of the County of Los Angeles and beyond need to understand that spending $3.5 billion on new jails instead of focusing on local services that could prevent mostly black and brown people from ending up behind bars in the first place is in the best interest of all of us—and not just black and brown people. According to historian and UCLA Professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez, LA County isn’t just the biggest jailer in the United States—it is the biggest jailer in the...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — In a different time, at another place, and under other circumstances, you might have run away from Latisha Valenzuela and Glenda Alvarenga. But at Homegirl Cafe, a Los Angeles breakfast and lunch spot with a Latino twist, the two waitresses welcome you with smiles and friendship. “You alone?” Valenzuela asked when I recently visited. “Don’t worry. We’ll keep you company.” After seating me, she tells me, “you’ll want our cinnamon coffee. We make it ourselves.” She says it...

We encourage all parents to come and be part of our community at the Saturday parenting classes in Echo Park. For those who live too far away or have other barriers to attending the 10-week series, we are offering our trauma-informed, nonviolent parenting class series over one weekend. In the 12-hour intensive you’ll experience an approach to raising children that is based on the latest research about brain and child development, as well as the effects of childhood toxic stress. Discover how...

A new musical about healing from trauma, LOOK FOR ME, will be performed in a reading/lab in Los Angeles on the evening of Thursday, August 9 at 8 p.m. Location: New Musicals Inc., 5628 Vineland, North Hollywood. Admission is free. Please RSVP to ptsdmusical@gmail.com. Space is limited. LOOK FOR ME challenges the conventional wisdom about trauma and PTSD. The show invites audiences to recognize the commonalities between their own lives and the diverse characters' experiences, and to care...

LA. County Launches First-of-its-Kind Online Portal to Address Street Homelessness The Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative and Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority have launched the Los Angeles Homeless Outreach Portal, dubbed LA-HOP, the new Countywide Web-based portal that channels outreach support to people experiencing homelessness. Funded by Measure H, the mobile-friendly platform empowers members of the general public, first responders and service providers to provide information...

Want to get certified in Echo's new trauma-informed nonviolent parenting curriculum? For the last 18 years, Echo has been providing sliding-scale parenting classes in Los Angeles. The 10-class series includes the latest science on the brain and childhood trauma and gives parents many tools for creating the kind of safe, stable nurturing relationship we all want with our children and underpins healthy development. Classes are available in English and Spanish. This fall, Echo will be offering...

Gregory Andrews, 60, sleeps in his Chevy Malibu just outside a health clinic on the west side of Los Angeles. In the morning, he lines up there for a free shower. “Besides trying to find something healthy to eat, the next most important thing is to take a shower,” Andrews said. “It keeps your self-esteem up.” Not many health clinics offer showers, but Saban Community Clinic, where Andrews goes, has been doing it for about three decades. The clinic serves an urgent need, given L.A. County’s...

In a quiet nook in the small city of La Verne, small cottages topped with Spanish tile are spread across a sprawling green campus. Long ago, it was an orphanage; now it’s a group home for foster kids. Recently, it also became one of several shelters in the Los Angeles area that quietly began to house kids who have been split from their parents at the border. It is now home to some of the children who were forcibly taken from their parents under President Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration...

According to a recent series of research briefs on youth and young adult homelessness by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, in the U.S., 1 in 10 young adults, or 3.5 million young people ages 18-25, experience homelessness in a year. Of that 3.5 million (73%) are homeless for one month or more. For those young adults, homelessness means a variety of experiences, ranging from sleeping outdoors, or in abandoned buildings, or in emergency shelters, to sleeping in cars, or “couch...

Garry Powers stands on Alameda Street near the North Vignes Street overpass, across from a smoke shop and a Vietnamese restaurant. He’s on the edge of Chinatown and a couple of miles north of Boyle Heights, a neighborhood once rife with gangs. The wall behind him is a glowing yellow-gold. Painted on it are outspread blue wings that nearly match the faded tattoo on his neck. He looks swathed in wings. A halo on the wall seems to hover above his head. Powers grew up in Baldwin Park outside Los...

As the Los Angeles County Probation Department dismantles a controversial shadow probation program in schools, some county education officials worry that they will be left with fewer resources to work with young people who misbehave at school. The county is now looking at importing Becoming A Man, an intervention model developed in Chicago that targets high school boys for small-group sessions and comes with impressive credentials. Some advocates say they would prefer a local replacement.