June 2016

This is from Holly Kernan, executive director of KQED News: KQED will be part of a remarkable media collaboration highlighting the issue of homelessness in the Bay Area. More than 70 news organizations have come together to ask some crucial questions: Why do we seem to be seeing so many more individuals living in tents on our streets? What is being done to address the growing housing affordability and availability crisis? You can read the SF Homeless Project's letter of intent here . KQED...

There's a hot pink suitcase on the floor of Shariah Vroman-Nagy's bedroom. The 18-year-old is packing for a trip to Disneyland, one of several she takes with her family every year. "Let's see, I need a hairbrush," she says, moving past the collection of Mickey Mouse ears on her dresser and glancing at the inspirational quotes from Marilyn Monroe on the wall. The lyrics to a song called " Smile " hang in a frame over her bed. "My mom made me that when I was struggling," says Vroman-Nagy,...

Don Meade doesn’t like hospitals, but he uses them. In just one year, he made 62 trips to the emergency room. He rattles off the names of local hospitals in Orange and Los Angeles counties like they’re a handful of pills. “St. Joseph’s in Orange, [Saddleback Memorial in] Laguna Hills,” he says. “The best one for me around here is PIH in Whittier.” At 52, Meade has chronic heart disease and other serious ailments, and he is recovering from a longtime addiction to crack cocaine. Today, he...

U.S. Army veteran Thomas Turner started to hear voices in his head four years ago, and ever since then he's struggled with homelessness. "It put me in the hospital, and I lost everything and had to start over," said Turner, who noted mental illness runs in his family. "When you start hearing voices and they start answering you, but there's nobody there, it really can change your life." The 54-year-old slept in front of Pep Boys at one point, but living on the streets was exhausting. He was...

With balmy weather and low unemployment, Orange County may be a fine place for those with well-compensated jobs, paid-down mortgages or decent retirement income. But before we boast about our quality of life, consider the grim statistics in the county’s annual Community Indicators Report, released last week. • Nearly 1 in 4 residents lives in poverty. • Nearly two-thirds of local jobs don’t pay enough for a worker to rent a one-bedroom apartment. • Orange County’s cost of living is 85...

http://blitzweekly.com/lawrence-phillips-the-broken-kid/ http://www.thenation.com/article/who-killed-lawrence-phillips/ Today NFL athlete Lawrence Phillips' death was ruled a suicide by the coroner. His ACEs score (Adverse Childhood Experiences) was by all accounts extremely high. By all accounts, he did not receive treatment for this unrelenting childhood trauma and attachment disruption. Abandoned by his father, abused by his stepfather, removed from his mother, placed in group homes, and...

The lives of children improved by some measures during recent years, but their opportunities still are constrained by persistent family and neighborhood poverty, says the 2016 Kids Count Data Book . The annual report by The Annie E. Casey Foundation looks at measures of child well-being at the state and national level in four categories. Broadly, this year’s findings show gains in education and health — but some setbacks in measures of economic well-being and family and community, according...

In the past several decades, advances in brain science have suggested that the learning that occurs in the first few years of a child’s life lays the groundwork for a productive adulthood. The expansion of preschool is one of the few topics where both Republicans and Democrats in Congress find common ground; while lawmakers don’t always agree on how programs should be funded or structured, the belief that good early-childhood education can help prevent later gaps in test scores and...

Efforts in California and other states to raise the quality of child care and preschool programs are being undermined by the low wages that workers earn in jobs that now require more skills and education, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Education released Tuesday. In California, preschool teachers were paid an average salary of $31,720 in 2015, about half of what California kindergarten teachers earned that year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the report said.

When Yazmin Ortiz came inside from cross-country practice last fall, she saw an open locker. Inside was a pricey designer backpack that one of her classmates owned. “There was nobody [around] and I saw her bag,” says the Reedley High School senior. “I don’t know what I was thinking that made me turn around to grab her backpack.” Yazmin kept it at home for months. Then, at the beginning of January, she wore it to school. The owner called her out. Soon they were both in the office. Yazmin knew...

Yesterday I mistakenly posted an event that has passed; I quickly deleted it, but the post lives on in your email inbox. Please delete/ignore the post titled "Coming in September: Alliance for Boys and Men of Color In-Person Health Policy Workgroup Meeting". This event occurred in the past; you can't get there without a time machine! My apologies for the confusion.

Latest research from a national sample of almost 10,000 U.S. adolescents found psychological trauma, especially abuse and domestic violence before age 11, can increase the likelihood of experimentation with drugs in adolescence, independent of a history of mental illness. Results of the study conducted at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health are published online in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. This is the first study to document...