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By A. Hosack, P. Berman, & K. Hecht Ms. Alexandra is coming because I will be 18 soon. We could be homeless! I hated living with my parents. I can’t go back there they are bad for Davy and me. I like living with the Carsons . I don’t want to leave. Will they let me stay? The doorbell rings; it must be Ms. Alexandra. Davy is sleeping so Claire comes down and opens the door. She smiles wanly at Ms. Alexandra. The Carsons come to the door and suggest everyone come into the living room. They...

New Report: Today’s shifting political sands have put kids at risk, and it’s urgent that policymakers put kids’ needs front and center. We all have the power to hold policymakers accountable for prioritizing the needs of children, and our friends at the child advocacy group Kids Impact have charted a course on how. In their new report, “Accelerating Policymaker Accountability for U.S. Kids’ Well-Being: Charting the Course & A Call to Action,” they help define a collective “True North”...

A bill to provide mental health care for Indiana students narrowly passed the Senate this week. The legislation was written in response to school safety. Bill author, Sen. Michael Crider (R-Greenfield), says the creation of an integrated mental health system is a key step in preventing school violence. "Every recent incident in Indiana that I’m aware of has not been a total surprise," says Crider. " Someone knew that student was having issues." [For more on this story by JILL SHERIDAN, go to...

JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi’s capital city is becoming a petri dish for an experiment designed to stop an epidemic of gun violence that claimed 84 lives in 2018 and took 16 less than two months into 2019. If successful, it could serve as a model throughout the South and perhaps the nation. Uproar over the Jan. 13 shooting death of a pastor as he was unlocking the doors to his sanctuary for Sunday services elicited the usual calls for gun control in a state that touts its open carry laws.

New York City’s Mayor Bill de Blasio is big on fairness . In an address last year, he laid out ambitious plans to make New York “the fairest big city in America.” The city’s jails , schools , hospitals and even its waste facilities have all adopted strategies during his tenure to reduce inequities for historically disadvantaged communities. Now, the foster care system is expanding its efforts to address longstanding disparities, especially for black children whose presence in the system is...

This month the Green New Deal was introduced in the U.S. Congress with much fanfare, and its opponents quickly mobilized. The resolution is more than a set of specific legislative proposals. It is a framework for an ambitious commitment to address climate change through eliminating fossil fuels and reducing agricultural emissions while also reducing inequality, creating well-paying green jobs, and providing people the skills to fill them. Given the threat the climate crisis poses to the...

From 1971 to 1983, former Hogg Foundation program officer Bert Kruger Smith hosted The Human Condition , a radio show that, across a span of 400 episodes, engaged a variety of notable guests in wide-ranging conversations on the things that make us human. In recognition of Black History Month, this episode of our Into the Fold podcast takes us back into The Human Condition’s archives with a 1974 broadcast featuring the late African American psychologist Dr. Kenneth Clark, whose innovative...

The federal bill reauthorizing and strengthening the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) set new standards for jurisdictions to treat youth in ways appropriate for their age, to reduce discrimination and disparate outcomes for youth of color and to provide a continuum of services, support and opportunities. Here are five changes in the new version of JJDPA practitioners should understand: 1. New standards for jurisdictions to treat youth in age-appropriate ways Each state...

There are more than a million and a half nonprofit organizations in the United States, and more are being born every day. But for all the writing about how nonprofits can be founded and scaled, almost no one publicly interrogates the other end of the life cycle: What happens when a nonprofit dies? The Nonprofit Quarterly reports that, although data on nonprofit closings are notoriously difficult to confirm through the Internal Revenue Service, the most likely age of organizational death is...

Foster parents, tasked with the 24-7 care of often-traumatized children, show up for parent-teacher meetings, ferry their charges to doctor’s appointments, supervise homework and serve up cuddles. Many work closely with struggling biological parents in hopes of an eventual reunion. These days, many foster parents are being asked to do even more, as an increasing number of children enter the foster care system with serious behavioral and mental health issues — issues that require a deft hand...

In the United States today approximately 12.8 million students—or 27 percent of all those in school—attend school in a district in which over 75 percent of students are non-white. In a new report , researchers at EdBuild , a non-profit that analyzes school-funding issues, calculate that these students are getting dramatically shortchanged on the school-funding front. The majority of racially concentrated, non-white districts are also low-income. Poor, non-white districts educate about 20...

What if far more women experience postpartum depression than we think? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 11 percent of women experience symptoms of depression after their baby is born. But that’s starting to look like a huge underestimate. [For more on this story by Adam Wolfberg, go to https://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/2019/02/21/are-we-hugely-underestimating-how-many-women-have-postpartum-depression? ]