he report points out that in 2010, California’s per-student spending was $3,500 below the national average. And between 1995 and 2014, per-student spending increased 19 percent, from $6,971 to $8,304, while spending per prisoner ballooned 82 percent, from $32,933 to $60,032.
DetailsJoin Brenda Benning, MSW, LGSW, for Part II of the popular Beyond Consequences Training and Support developed by Heather T. Forbes, the founder of the Beyond Consequences model. This second session is for parents who have previously attended the full 10 session Beyond Consequences Training & Support series, because it builds on the skills and techniques taught from Part I. This special series explores Volume 2 of Heather Forbes’ book and offers parents a “love-based” approach to helping children with severe behavior and trauma/attachment histories. Part II presents new scenarios and behaviors seen in the home and encourages parent’s participation. The price of the training includes the book, Volume II, “Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control” by Heather T. Forbes. Books are available at the door to walk ins. Class is only open to adoptive, kinship, and foster parents.
DetailsJane McGonigal’s TED talk takes an approach to life and trauma that is very different, uplifitng, and perhaps the most remarkable insights I have experienced on this topic in years. When game designer Jane McGonigal found herself bedridden and suicidal following a severe concussion, she had a fascinating idea for how to get better.…
Detailshttp://www.voicesempowered.org/ This organization is drawing attention to gaps in the social services system and collaborating with other advocates to support and empower children and families. Anyone with experience with them is encouraged to comment.
DetailsJEFFERSONTOWN, Ky. – In Kentucky, a lot of children are being raised by extended family members: at 6 percent of all kids, it’s one of the highest kinship-care rates in the nation. A new report from Kentucky Youth Advocates outlines what the group says needs to be done to increase support for grandparents and others raising kids who cannot safely live with their parents.
According to Jeanne Miller-Jacobs, who with her husband is raising their three grandkids, more assistance is badly needed.
“The biggest hurdle that we’ve had is misinformation,” she said. When we first got the kids, the financial part of kinship care never came up.”
She said her grandchildren, ages five, three and one, came to live with them because their parents struggle with drug addiction.
Kinship care has doubled in Kentucky in the last decade, and earlier this year, the state stopped taking new applications for its Kinship Care Program, which provides caregivers $10 a day to help meet a child’s basic needs.
DetailsClass action lawsuits get results where legislators don’t (Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia, D.C., New Jersey, Mississippi) Proving that it’s not who is your senator, but who is your attorney. Whatever it Takes.
From Oklahoma News on 6 12,27.13,
Oklahoma is one of 14 states sued by child advocacy group Children’s Rights. The federal class action lawsuit was filed back in 2008, claiming children in state custody were in danger, because the system wasn’t doing enough to protect them.
The state has spent millions fighting it. With the trial just two months away and a judge denying the state’s last two efforts to get the case thrown out, DHS is now considering settling the suit.
According to Children’s Right’s website, their lawsuits have led to $2 billion in additional funding for child welfare systems.
DetailsFriends of KARA, if you emailed us yesterday, it did not get to us as we changed web hosts and had a 12 hour problem with emails (all correspondence was lost). Please resend your notes today as all is working now (and you will find that the pages load much faster than ever before).
DetailsThe United States is one of two nations that has not signed the International Rights Of the Child Treaty. The other is Somalia (and it doesn’t have a functioning government). It is KARA’s position that the primary reason we refuse to sign the treaty is that it includes a prohibition against recruiting child soldiers (and…
DetailsToday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune article supports a position I’ve held for years. By ignoring or under-serving people with mental health problems we are manufacturing state wards, preteen moms, and felons and this is making our cities dangerous and unsafe.
Our current policies of dumping the mentally ill in detention, jail, and prison places a huge burden on educators & juvenile, criminal justice workers, and especially the families (often grandparents, and foster and adoptive parents) that live with them.
Not much teaching gets done in a classroom populated with disturbed youth on Prozac. Safety and behavior management becomes the teachers primary concern at the expense of educating all the other youth. Our nations miserable graduation and drop out rates, STD rates (we lead the world), and crime rates (we also lead the world) are all tied to how we ignore and under-serve people with mental health issues.
Forcing foster/adoptive parents and service providers (educators, social workers, juvenile & criminal justice workers) to be the front line in managing mental health issues of the children and youth in their charge is an overwhelming task that rarely ends well for the children and youth. These children need professional guidance to overcome the serious issues that have triggered dangerous behaviors and the explosive increase in psychotropic medicating of five and ten year old children in our society.
DetailsZ: Senate president rejects request for more CPS funding
Your West Valley – December 02, 2013
The president of the state Senate is blasting a request for more money for Child Protective Services, saying the agency may have wasted the funds restored to it in the last two years.
