Youth Today
Guest Opinion Essay
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The Impact of Food Insecurity on Child Well-Being
The implications of food insecurity on child development and school performance are striking. Innovative efforts like backpack programs, in collaboration with large-scale...
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I Choose Foster Care
I have been in foster care before, but this is the first time I chose to be. Before, I was ashamed to...
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1.2KLearning What Family Is at Age 16
It’s no Disney show, but after more than 16 placements, Selena reflects on how stability and safety in a foster home help...
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1.5KCommunity United: Breaking the Cycle of Violence and Poverty
With open communication and a consistent, unified goal, we need to tell the streets that have victimized so many innocent kids and...
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13.2KThe Importance of Youth Leaders in Substance Abuse Prevention
For many young people today, the word prevention is complicated. Some might think that prevention doesn’t affect them, and some might not...
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3.6KThe Jig Is Up, Child Savers: Molly McGrath Tierney Is on to You
Molly McGrath Tierney is not some bomb-throwing outsider who wouldn’t say terrible things about the child welfare system if she understood what...
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1.9KWe Need to Talk with Youth About Substance Use and SBIRT Is the Way to Do It
We know that almost everyone who struggles with addiction began using substances before the age of 18. So, we need to talk...
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2.3KAnxiety, Substance Abuse and the Cycle of Diminishing Returns
One of the main reasons I ended up addicted to drugs and alcohol was anxiety. Now make no mistake, I suffer from...
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2.1KReframing the Opioid Epidemic: Lawmakers Must Put Children First
Opioid use in the U.S. is a crisis. For 30 percent of kids removed from their parents’ care, substance use in the...
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1.5KFoster Caretaker Must Be Ready to Be Thoroughly Supportive of LGBT Youth
For many youth, foster care can be a safe place for care and support when the biological family does not provide appropriate...
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3.0KAddiction Doesn’t Discriminate, So Why Should We?
As prescription pain medication abuse grows in prevalence among youth, we can expect the rates of accidental overdose deaths among 12- to...
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10.5KFoster Parents Should Grieve When a Child Leaves Their Family
The comment made to me the most by those who are not foster parents is: “I could not do what you do....
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1.0KYouth Workers Need to Be Advocates for Greater Intervention
For too long, adult intervention has been society’s knee-jerk reaction instead of youth intervention. It is a failed approach, and a fundamental...
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1.0KAddressing the Gun Violence Epidemic: America Has the Will, Philanthropy Can Help Show the Way
From outbreaks of polio to the embrace of automobile seatbelts, the United States has a long record of rising to the challenge...
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3.3KThe American Dream Delayed by Addiction
A young writer reflects on how his father’s addiction impacted his family, his growing up and his own substance use. “After everything,...
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1.8KSubstance Abuse Prevention Must Move Beyond Health Care Settings
To turn the tide on opiate addiction and right the course of many young lives before intensive and costly treatment is needed,...
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1.3KPilot Program Giving Dual Status Youth the Trauma-Informed Care, Connections They Need
Cook County now has a pilot program for dual status youth. It’s an intensive wraparound program with up to 30 hours a...
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1.1KSlum Living: When Access as Proxy for Quality Is Life-Threatening
The summer after my second year teaching, I traveled to Malawi — one of the poorest nations in east Africa — with...
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2.0KHaving the Right Stuff: Hiring High-Quality Summer Camp Staff
Organizations should take a planful approach to the recruitment and hiring process for summer program staff to improve program quality overall, quality...
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Because I’m Free
A young writer’s story indicates many places where youth workers and systems could have intervened — healing child sexual abuse, treating drug...
