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The Virginia school policing system needs an overhaul that emphasizes training, data collection and a clear role for officers in schools, says a new report from the Legal Aid Justice Center . Without a better system, the state will continue to criminalize students for behaviors that schools should deal with, not law enforcement, the center said. Virginia leads the country in referrals of students to law enforcement, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity . The state...

Semaj Clark is a determined young man. The Los Angeles teenager’s steadfastness helped him emerge from a childhood punctuated by a string of foster homes and arrests to become an ambassador to troubled youth. Now he’s determined to learn how to get around in his new wheelchair. [For more of this story, written by Matt Smith, go to http://jjie.org/wounded-teen-activist-returns-to-city-where-he-was-shot/171086/]

High school classes can be daunting. Our next generation of parents, voters, teachers, entrepreneurs, and scientists contend with quadratic equations, analytic essays, lessons on constitutional rights and more. When students are also burdened by the fear of losing a mother with cancer, the trauma of past sexual assault, the accumulated toxic stress of a chaotic childhood, or the weight of other mental health difficulties, those classes can quickly go from challenging to nearly impossible...

[Photo by Vancouver Coastal Health/Flickr] While a small number of people account for a disproportionately large portion of health services use, heavy users of mental health care have substantially different patterns of health care use than other heavy users of health care, according to new research by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). The study published in the January issue of Health Affairs is one of the first...

If your New Year’s Resolution was to find better financial balance in 2016, especially when it comes to how much of your paycheck goes into your rent, you may need to consider moving, buying a house, or both. Happy New Year! That’s the takeaway from a new report from RealtyTrac that predicts that buying will continue to be cheaper than renting in more than half of U.S. housing markets in 2016. New year, same deal: Census data released in December show that rental costs are...

Hillary Clinton’s got an autism plan , the only candidate so far to release one. Indeed, when I reached out to and checked into various campaigns earlier in the season , I found that few had any plans whatsoever related to mental and developmental conditions. At the time, Clinton had only a couple of briefings addressing alcohol and substance abuse. The reception of her autism plan has been mixed, eliciting polemics from some and praise from others. I fall somewhere in between. Her...

For decades, if people on Medicaid wanted to get treatment for drug or alcohol addiction, they almost always had to rely solely on money from state and local sources. Now, in a dramatic shift, the federal government is likely to chip in, too. The agency that governs Medicaid is proposing to cover 15 days of inpatient rehab per month for anyone enrolled in a Medicaid managed care plan . But in Pennsylvania, those who work in the addiction field aren't happy with that news. While it's a good...

The first day back from winter break can be restless. Many children are still coming down from the excitement of the holidays. Two unstructured weeks away from school — with strange food, rituals and relatives — can be overwhelming for many children, especially when it grinds to a halt after the new year and normality resumes. But for students whose families are struggling in poverty, time away from school isn't an exciting blip on an otherwise calm school year. For them, it can...

A time for healing, a call for community action # North Wasco County School District turns 13 years old in 2016. It may sometimes be difficult to realize how young it is because, in most cases, children are taught in schools that have educated generations of children before them. # This district was formed as an entirely new organization at the same time that the two earlier districts were dissolved. So, in many ways, the school district today is still in its childhood. # Over the past...

Adults who have witnessed domestic violence as children or were victims of abuse are often treated later in life for what are ultimately the effects of the abuse rather than for the underlying causes. When we encounter someone who is depressed or struggles with addiction, we too often pose our questions from the wrong angle. We ask, "What's wrong with you?" rather than "What happened to you?" Chronic distress, such as witnessing domestic violence, can actually cause structural changes in the...

The lowest of 31 grades issued in the  2016 California Children's Report Card released on Wednesday was for dealing with the effects of childhood trauma. In Children Now's biennial assessment of the status of California kids, researchers gave the state a "D-" for how it deals with childhood trauma. The report contends that children who experience traumatic problems such as abuse, neglect and witnessing violence at home can suffer serious long-term consequences, including health...

The calm and sometimes curt-sounding voices on the other end of 911 calls are often choking back tears. A little over a month ago, 911 call-taker Erin Falkenberg clicked on one of the nine computer screens in front of her at MedStar’s communications center and answered the hardest call she had ever taken. Through her headset, she heard a man in his 60s say that he was in his bedroom and was having difficulty breathing. The computer screen prompted Falkenberg to ask more questions, but...