By Benjamin Chambers, June 19 2009
Charging families for detained children? That's what San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing, along with a host of other fees, to balance the city budget. Although the fees would be waived for foster children and families making 30% or less of the local median income, the proposal has come under serious fire from the City Supervisor.- Three youth in the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice facility have swine flu, and 18 other youth and two staff members are showing flu symptoms as well. Does your facility have a plan for what it would do in a similar situation? June 21st UPDATE: six youth at a Louisiana juvenile justice facility have come down with the flu. It's not clear if they're suffering from swine flu, but officials took the precaution of suspending weekend visitation to prevent the flu from spreading.
- Fifty million dollars in stimulus funds are available to non-profits and government agencies that work with community and faith-based organizations from the Strengthening Communities Fund to build their capacity to assist with the nation's economic recovery. Deadline is July 7th, so hurry!
- Is alcohol good for you? Maybe not. Some researchers point out that without a randomized trial, the positive effects that have been noted from moderate drinking may be due to other factors.
- Louisiana's lawmakers rejected a proposed "children's bill of rights" aimed at kids in trouble with the law. It would've formally stated that children should not be subjected to verbal, sexual, or other abuse, and limited the use of restraints. Opponents worried that its provisions, if made into law rather than policy, would open up the state to unnecessary lawsuits.
- A new study from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) suggests that early, comprehensive school-based prevention programs cut violence and drug use among fifth graders. The prevention program studied, Positive Action, is a K-12 program, and researchers will next review its impact on teens.
- Curious about how the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) is doing? Youth Today has the update, including news about new sites.
- Meanwhile, it looks like the U.K. could use a JDAI initiative of its own, as it seems a high percentage of the kids it detains while awaiting trial turn out to be innocent. That surprised me, given that Britain has has long embraced evidence-based practice to intervene with juvenile delinquency, but perhaps details were lost in translation.
- The Sunlight Foundation recently used government data to map the distribution of America's incarcerated -- and suggest that states with high numbers of prisoners are unlikely to have Congressional legislators who support Jim Webb's prison reform bill.
- The Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative has created an "Opportunity Passport" program to match money saved by youth aging out of foster care and to educate them on fiscal topics. Early results indicate that the young people are better able to invest in things they need to remain employed and maintain stable lives, such as vehicles, housing, and education. Unsurprisingly, however, youth who had a stable permanent adult in their lives did better overall.
- Youth workers often work part-time and don't stay long in any given job. So employers often assume that youth workers need full-time work to be retained longer -- but that may not be the case, according to some recent surveys.
- A recent poll shows that most Americans know someone who's been addicted; 49% say they couldn't afford care for themsevles or family member; and 75% are worried that addicts' insurance won't cover treatment, or it will be unaffordable.
- Here's a nice portrait of the work of a juvenile probation officer from Yakima, Washington.
Updated: February 08 2018