Child Welfare
Florida child welfare director David Wilkins, who plans to ask his legislature for more money to retool the system, took some hard questions from lawmakers at a hearing on Tuesday, reports Margie Menzel of The News Service of Florida.
Education/Jobs
The federal financing structure for the educational opportunities offered to veterans gives for-profit colleges “an incentive to see service members as nothing more than dollar signs in uniform,” opines Hollister Petraeus in the New York Times. Petraeus is the assistant director for service member affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and wife of C.I.A. Director David Petraeus.
As Congress meanders toward funding agreements for fiscal 2012, justice advocate and Harvard professor Charles Ogletree writes in defense of YouthBuild on the website of the Washington Informer. “Without YouthBuild, and programs like it,” writes Ogletree, “we have more crime, more joblessness, more welfare, more fractured families, more substance abuse, more violence, more despair, more hopelessness, and more alienation.”
Goodwill has been an employment lifeline in to young adults in Nebraska during the economic downturn, reports Erin Golden of the Omaha World-Herald.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott pulled a power move and placed workforce development center in the middle of the state on probation until it removes its executive leadership, reports Kenrick Ward of Sunshine State News. The governor’s move is based on his belief that the center has misused millions under its current leadership.
LeBron James took a lot of “heat” last year for announcing his decision to leave Cleveland during primetime on ESPN, but advertising for the show did benefit a number of Boys & Girls Clubs around the country. This week, the national office recognized him as this year’s Champion of Youth, reports the Associated Press.
Juvenile Justice
Sara Burnett of the Denver Post reports on a Justice Department audit that found absurd expenditures at various conferences, including $5 sodas and $47 lunches at an Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention conference in Denver in 2007.
Clay Duda of the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange spends a day on the street with Clayton County (Ga.) juvenile probation officer Ronaldi Rollins.
