March 2019

The California Essentials for Childhood (EfC) Initiative launched a new set of child adversity and resilience data indicators on Kidsdata.org Furthermore, the initiative created state and local dashboards to bring together sources of data that represent a broader set of life experiences than originally reflected in the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study, such as living in poverty or dangerous neighborhoods. The goal was to make these data widely available and provide training on how...

Press Release — New Survey of California Community College Students Reveals More than Half Face Food Insecurity and Nearly 20 Percent Have Faced Homelessness March 7, 2019 Sacramento — More than half the students attending a California community college have trouble affording balanced meals or worry about running out of food, and nearly 1 in 5 are either homeless or do not have a stable place to live, according to a survey released today. Click HERE to read the press release and click HERE...

Most shelters for people experiencing homelessness still don’t accept pets. But a bill under consideration in the California Legislature aims to make such shelter partnerships more common. Authored by Democratic Sen. Bob Hertzberg of Van Nuys, it would create $5 million in state general fund grants for homeless shelters to offer shelter, care and veterinary services to the pets of people staying there. “If you want to get people off the street—and I see it as an emergency—we’ve just got to...

Accomplishments start with dreams, and dreams start with inspiration. When it comes to inspiring children to dream big, it all starts with parents. That was the message heard by more than 500 people who attended the sixth annual Merced County Parent Institute Conference, a turnout that helped make Saturday’s event the most successful yet in its six-year history. The free event, organized by the Merced County Office of Education, the Merced Union High School District and the state Child Care...

Imagine identifying a toxin so potent it could rewire a child’s brain and erode his immune system. A substance that, in high doses, tripled the risk of heart disease and lung cancer and reduced life expectancy by 20 years. And then realizing that tens of millions of American children had been exposed. Dr. @Nadine Burke Harris, California’s newly appointed surgeon general, will tell you this is not a hypothetical scenario. She is a leading voice in a movement trying to transform our...

Child and family demographic trends help project potential needs for education, child care, health care, and other services. Demographic projections point to an overall shortage of children relative to older populations, which will lead to workforce and taxpayer shortages in the coming decades (1, 2) . This means each child is more important to the future of California and the U.S. than ever before (1) . It also means that leaders need to invest in programs and policies that nurture children...

Hoping for a friendlier response from Gov. Gavin Newsom than she got from Jerry Brown, state Sen. Nancy Skinner is again proposing legislation that would ban out-of-school suspensions in all grades for student behavior deemed “defiant and disruptive” by school authorities. If Skinner’s bill, SB 419 , passes the Legislature, it will mark the third time this decade that a ban on these suspensions — which data show are disproportionately meted out to students of color, LGBT students and those...

In a report that treats Los Angeles’s homelessness crisis as a symptom of racism, city and county officials this week pointed to the high number of black people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles and the need to address the disparity in order to address the crisis. Black people have long been overrepresented among Los Angeles County’s homeless population. In a 2017 survey, black people made up one in 10 people in the county, but were 40 percent of the homeless population, according to...

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris has been on a mission to raise awareness about the impact toxic stress and trauma can have on children. About seven years ago, the UC Davis School of Medicine-trained pediatrician founded the Center for Youth Wellness, which advocates for screening and early intervention to head off adverse childhood experiences. She now has a much bigger megaphone, having been named California’s first surgeon general last month. Harris, the author of The Deepest Well: Healing the...

More than 85,000 of California’s most vulnerable low-income residents, including those who are homeless and have been recently incarcerated, are now enrolled in a pilot project designed to link health care to social services. Twenty-five counties and the city of Sacramento are participating in the Whole Person Care project, a $3 billion initiative funded by the state and the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The five-year project, which began in late 2016, is an...

Rosa Franco, a farm worker living in the rural community of Huron, suffers from many conditions, such as high blood pressure and diabetes. To Franco, one of her gloomiest moments was when her doctor told her she had cancerous cysts. Due to her immigration status and lack of health coverage, Rosa has not been able to undergo surgery. She is one of the 1.1 million undocumented immigrants who do not have Medi-Cal, not even for emergency care. According to data from UC Berkeley, there are...