Youth Today
Guest Opinion Essay
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5.5KA Plan for Real Reform of Child Welfare Finance – From an Unlikely Source
The so-called Family First Prevention Services Act has been hailed as a radical change in how child welfare is paid for by...
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1.9KYouth Who Help Reformers Must Be Treated As Partners, Not Tokens
Policymakers, practitioners and advocates seeking to improve the juvenile justice system have increasingly acted on calls from youth and their families to...
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2.8KFlorida Shootings Another Sign We Don’t Value Children Nor Their Lives
Before the slaughter at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, The New York Times produced a powerful graphic showing the...
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4.4KHow to Improve Mission-Related Outcomes (With Performance Dashboard)
By now you’ve surely heard time and again that, as a nonprofit, it’s critical that you measure your organization’s “impact” so that...
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7.7KUse People First Language to Discourage Deficit Thinking About Our Youth
When I was in graduate school at Brooklyn College back in the late 1990s, I took a class in special education where...
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5.1KDo Spikes in Foster Care Contribute to More Child Abuse Deaths?
More than 30 years ago, when I was a reporter for a daily newspaper, I was assigned a story about what looked...
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1.9KCarefully Designed Internships Create Benefits for Everyone
While we often hear about the challenges in every area of juvenile justice, how often do we hear about the rewards? Perhaps...
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3.6KWe Must Stop the Rampant Criminalization of Youth with Disabilities
Minority youth are more likely to become incarcerated than white youth. This fact is so prevalent that even people outside the juvenile...
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2.5K#MeToo Needs to Include #GirlsToo
I recently read an Associated Press interview with singer and actress Mary J. Blige in which she shared her personal account of...
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2.0KHow to Teach the Most Challenging Youth to Problem Solve & Reduce Staff Injuries
Restrictive therapeutic facilities — inpatient psychiatry units, residential facilities, group homes and juvenile detention facilities — serve the most challenging youth in...
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1.8KIs Serving on a Board Right for You?
Let's start by saying that it’s clear that all professionals who work with youth have full schedules, are always busy with weekend...
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1.6KHow People Affected by Justice System Handled Living Near Drug Activity, Sex Workers
Several years ago I was running a reentry project in south Brooklyn supporting formerly incarcerated people returning to their communities. We were...
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3.5KDon’t Turn California Child Torture Case Into Discrimination Against Home-schoolers
To the cliché “hard cases make bad law” allow me to add a corollary: Horror-story cases make horrible law.
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2.3KHow Incarceration and Placements Affect Youths’ Mental Health
There’s been a lot of news about women abused by men in power lately, and I've been thinking about the girls I...
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9.3KCaseworkers, Stand Up Against Racism in Child Welfare Or Be Part of Problem
What really changed my life was coming to understand the deep problem of structural and institutional racism that exists within child protective...
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4.5KInspire Youth-driven Change Through Motivational Interviewing
Do something today your future self will thank you for. There are books — in fact, volumes — of literature devoted to...
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3.9KNot a Foster Child, I Nearly Fell Through the Cracks Between Government and Family
When I turned 18, I thought the only thing that I needed to be happy and successful was to leave the home...
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2.6KTransitioning Back to School and After-school Programs After a Mental Health Crisis
It happens frequently. A kid returns to school or other activities after a two-week absence because of a psychiatric hospital stay.
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5.6KEnd the Money Grab That Makes Up Youth Soccer in U.S.
When the U.S. Men’s National Team was eliminated from the World Cup in October, it brought to light the youth pay-to-play structure...
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4.9KWhy Do Child Welfare Agencies Keep Demanding Poor People Raise Their Kids ‘Independently’ When No One Else Does?
I’ve just caught up with an excellent 2014 story from ProPublica on how child welfare systems deal with parents who have mental...
