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As researchers have come to understand how poverty and its stresses influence children's brain development, they've begun untangling how that can lead to increased behavior problems and learning difficulties for disadvantaged kids. Rather than trying to treat those problems, NYU child development specialists Adriana Weisleder and Alan Mendelsohn want to head them off. They say they've found a way: Working with low-income parents when they bring babies and young children to the pediatrician.

It's a challenge making sure that low-income children who get free- and reduced-priced meals during the school year continue to get fed during the summer. Government meal programs served 3.8 million children on an average summer day last year — far fewer than the 22 million children who got subsidized meals during the school year. Now, the Obama administration wants to change that. The president will propose in his 2017 budget next month that families who qualify for subsidized school...

   In northern New Hampshire, where Heather Larkin practiced as a social worker after getting her MSW, the community mental health center was a one-stop shop: In addition to mental health treatment, it served people with developmental disabilities and those with addictions; it contracted with hospitals and schools.    Some individual clients and families needed all those services, all at once. Larkin realized that it was impossible to untangle those co-occurring problems...

Women should be screened for depression during pregnancy and after giving birth, an influential government-appointed health panel said Tuesday, the first time it has recommended screening for maternal mental illness. The recommendation, expected to galvanize many more health providers to provide screening, comes in the wake of new evidence that maternal mental illness is more common than previously thought; that many cases of what has been called postpartum depression actually start during...

President Obama on Monday banned the practice of holding juveniles in solitary confinement in federal prisons, saying it could lead to “devastating, lasting psychological consequences.” The move, which Mr. Obama outlined in an op-ed article published by The Washington Post on Monday night, adds the weight of the federal government to a growing movement among state prison administrators, who have begun sharply limiting or ending the use of solitary confinement. [For more of this...

Suppose you're a 45-year-old woman living in the U.S. You have no history of breast cancer, nor worrisome symptoms. Should you have a mammogram? If you follow the American Cancer Society's recommendation , the answer is "yes": You should begin routine mammography screening for breast cancer at age 45. But if you follow the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation , the answer is "no": You should probably wait another 5 years. Which recommendation is right? Answering this question...

A new ban on solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prison could bring momentum to reform efforts on the state level. President Obama announced the ban and other prison reforms Monday, saying in an op-ed that he hoped the policies would be a model for state and local corrections systems. “How can we subject prisoners to unnecessary solitary confinement, knowing its effects, and then expect them to return to our communities as whole people? It doesn’t make us safer.

DECEMBER 31, 2015 - BY YTFG   “For these are all our children. We will all profit by, or pay for, whatever they become. ” - James Baldwin, Writer The Blueprint for Youth Justice Reform is a call to action to funders, policymakers, community leaders, system stakeholders, advocates, youth and families. We seek your bold leadership, your commitment and your voices as we work in partnership for youth justice reform.   Together, we can transform the way we respond to...

Privilege can be a hard thing to talk about. Oftentimes, when it's implied or stated that someone is "privileged," they can feel defensive or upset. They may have worked very hard for what they have accomplished and they may have overcome many obstacles to accomplish it. And the word "privilege" can make a person feel as though that work is being diminished. The key point about privilege, though, is that it doesn't mean that a person was raised by wealthy parents, had everything handed to...

A teacher asks her students to take out a pencil for a pop quiz, but one child won’t pick up his pencil. The teacher repeats her request. The child refuses. What happens next—what sort of discipline is meted out, how long it lasts, and whether administrators or parents are notified—may differ drastically from one state to the next. While all educators struggle with how to cope with defiant or disruptive kids, there is no federal legislation and only a patchwork of state...

In 2008, in El Cajon, California, 30-year-old John Nicholas Gunther bludgeoned his mother to death with a metal pipe, and then stole $1378 in cash, her credit cards, a DVD/VCR player, and some prescription painkillers. At trial, Gunther admitted to the killing, but argued that his conviction should be reduced to second-degree murder because he had not acted with premeditation. A clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist testified that two previous head traumas—one the result of an...

T here are only two parts of the American criminal justice system that haven’t succumbed to privatization, according to research released on Thursday by In the Public Interest: the police and the courts. Everything else – including transportation, probation, food, electronic monitoring, psychiatric and drug treatment and fine collection – has been privatized somewhere in the country. We’ve farmed out so many correctional services to private corporations that criminal...