Child Welfare
In partnership with the Hollywood Casino, Louisiana’s child welfare system captured its first casino winnings from a father who owed child support, reports KATC.com.
You don’t have to agree with the church about civil unions to think that Catholic agencies in Illinois should be able to license only married couples as foster and adoptive parents, writes columnist Bill McClellan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Education/Jobs
Federally-funded summer jobs programs and job training for young adults have not had a history of success, writes James Bovard of the Wall Street Journal. President Obama proposed billions of dollars for such programs in his American Jobs Act.
Basketball great Magic Johnson has decided his next entrepreneurial venture will be helping Los Angeles youth who have dropped out of high school get back into the classroom, reports Leo Stallworth of ABC News.
Writing for the Detroit Free-Press, former journalist and current CEO of Michigan’s Children Jack Kresnak suggests that high school dropouts needs alternative avenues into the working world.
Two New Orleans-area Boys and Girls Clubs, both of which serve about 100 children per day, will close at least temporarily due to a lack of funding, reports Helen Williams of Nola.com.
Juvenile Justice
Rape crisis groups in Ireland believe that the pervasiveness of hardcore pornography has significantly contributed to an increase in the number of juvenile sex crimes, reports Cormac O”Keeffe.
Texas Governor and presidential hopeful Rick Perry (R), who has been credited with helping to turn around the state’s juvenile justice system, should have acted faster to reform the way incarcerated juveniles were handled, says Tim Murphy of Mother Jones.
