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It’s a warm spring afternoon and Arturo Soriano is in his old stomping grounds—at Teralta Park, a small urban park atop a sunken freeway in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood. As a teenage gang member in the 1980s, Soriano roamed the park and the surrounding streets before spending the better part of two decades in prison. Now 40, he has returned with a different mission.

In every city, in every community and on every block, an American family struggles with adversity. That’s the thing about a dverse c hildhood e xperiences (ACEs)—they have no boundaries. ACEs transcend race, class, religion, and economic status. They include experiences ranging from extreme poverty or family problems, to experiencing violence, abuse, and discrimination. While the prevalence of ACEs across all demographics are a fact, using hard data to demonstrate the impact in your...

Hello, I'm a writer for a website that features a monthly series of stories that profile individuals who have overcome a variety of childhood and young adults challenges. They vary from bullying to mental health challenges to anything that might make you feel isolated from the rest of the world. What I'm looking for are people who would be willing to be interviewed for this series about their experiences, and how they overcame them. The site is targeted towards a younger audience, and I'm...

Screaming and banging. Shouting and crying. Cussing and fighting. Gang signs and threats. Suicide watches and solitary. Broken hearts and smashed souls. Lost and betrayed childhoods. The burden of these broken lives compel our commitment for reform. Many of the prescribed practices within a facility further the fractures that children bring to custody. Staff shouting, demeaning words, the absence of empathy and guidance delay and disallow the renewal and redemption that we seek for children.

How can it be that a seemingly depressed person, one who shows clinical symptoms, doesn’t respond to antidepressants or psychotherapy? Perhaps because the root of his anguish is something else.

Child Parent Institute is offering FREE parenting workshops during the month of April as part of their Prevent Child Abuse campaign! Workshops are available in Spanish & English Parenting Workshops at CPI During the month of April CPI offers FREE workshops to parents - our workshops are developed on a strong child development foundation, supporting the belief that each child and parent brings unique needs and temperament to family life. Although many classes are held at the Parent...

California’s high school graduation rate increased to 83.2 percent for the class of 2016, with gains for nearly all ethnic groups though gaps persist, according to statistics released Tuesday. The overall rise of 0.9 percent above the previous year marked the 7th consecutive annual increase in graduation tallies and is significant progress from the 74.7 percent in 2010 when this form of measurement began, the California Department of Education reported. In what officials described as another...

The Issue In 2014, 26 states (including the District of Columbia) expanded Medicaid eligibility to 138 percent of the federal poverty level—or a yearly income of about $16,000/$22,000 for a family of one/two. Researchers estimated the impact of the ACA Medicaid expansion on uninsured rates of poor, childless adult citizens, by age, gender, race, income, education, and health. Key Findings The uninsured rate of poor, childless adults decreased by 47.1 percent between 2013 and 2015 under the...

Hard childhoods seem to not only rob children of material joys, but also of brain power. Children who grow up poor tend to score worse on tests of memory, processing speed, language, and attention. And they are 40 percent more likely to have a learning disability than their better-off peers. Busier and less-educated parents utter millions fewer words to their babies, creating a gap in verbal ability by the time the children are 3. Factors like hunger, unsafe housing, and parental instability...

When Yoselin Ocasio was hired two years ago as the climate manager at Lewis Elkin Elementary School in Kensington, she says, “I felt that with 15 years in social work, I was ready.” But once on the job, Ocasio said, she realized that she wasn’t. “It’s been very, very challenging. The walkie-talkie doesn’t stop.” The neighborhood is plagued with substance abuse, neglect, and violence, she says, “and the kids come to school with that.” [For more of this story, written by Paul Jablow, go to ...

Over the past several months, data has shown rising mortality rates among a surprising population - middle-age, largely rural white people. But many who study public health say focusing solely on that data ignores the historic disparities in other areas, such as the extraordinarily high maternal mortality rate among African-American women. That particular area is of interest to journalist Rita Henley Jensen . Jensen is the founder of The Jane Crow Project , which is exploring the causes for...

One year of healthcare spending can buy 15 iPhones. Or, it can buy over 3,000 gallons of milk. Or, if you want to look at it in relative terms, U.S. healthcare spending, which in 2015 hit nearly $10,000 for every person in the country, was 29% higher than the next most expensive country, Luxembourg. No matter how you size it up, what the U.S. spends each year on healthcare is a lot of money. That’s why there’s near-universal agreement that, no matter what happens in Washington over the next...