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This article was published by TalkPoverty.org . Officially, the United States ended debtors' prisons in 1833. Unofficially, as we saw in the Justice Department's report on racially biased policing in Ferguson, there is a system of fines and fees for minor crimes that often result in jail time for the poor, mostly black citizens who cannot afford to pay them. To provide more context on the issue, I talked with Peter Edelman, Georgetown University law professor and former staffer for Robert F.

The latest experiment in a universal basic income will be coming to Stockton, California, in the next year. With $1 million in funding from the tech industry–affiliated Economic-Security Project, the Stockton Economic-Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) will be the country’s first municipal pilot program. As currently envisioned, some number of people in Stockton will receive $500 per month. That’s not enough to cover all their expenses, but it could help people with rising housing costs,...

In the District, 47 percent of children and teens have experienced a traumatic event, such as the death or incarceration of a parent, witnessing or being a victim of violence, or living with someone who has been suicidal or who has a drug or alcohol problem, according to new federal data . In Maryland and in Virginia, the rate was 41 percent. The findings come from state-by-state survey data released Thursday from the 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health, which aims to take a first-ever...

Long-term mental health effects of extreme weather are a hidden public health epidemic, one that is expected to strain the U.S. health care system as the intensity and frequency of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, earthquakes and other natural disasters increase in coming decades because of global warming and other planetary shifts. http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2017/10/12/katrina-brain-the-invisible-long-term-toll-of-megastorms

An estimated one out of three California adults has an arrest or conviction record, according to the nonprofit National Employment Law Project. If employers weed out applicants who check "yes" for the Have you ever been convicted of a crime? question on a job application, they could be preventing millions of Golden State residents from getting a paycheck. These applicants also tend to be people of color, since African-Americans and Latinos are arrested at much higher rates , often for crimes...

In the days after his son was born, Rob Sandler found the thrill of becoming a new father replaced with dark feelings of dread and hopelessness. Those feelings, coupled with sleep deprivation and stress, culminated in a panic attack during his son’s bris. As a group of old friends was saying goodbye after the ceremony, “I had this feeling that they were leaving and I was stuck in this situation that would never get any better,” said Mr. Sandler, a marketing executive in Dallas. “I just felt...

When I was a kid, I'd always sink into myself just a bit whenever the issue of racism would come up among my white peers. Of course, I was used to talking about racism in other contexts, specifically with my family; growing up as a black kid in South Carolina, I would've found totally sidestepping the issue largely impossible. For instance, I remember talking with my family about racism when, in 2000, South Carolina lawmakers removed the Confederate flag from the state's capitol dome. I...

The three-year project includes creating and piloting a process for integrating trauma-informed approaches into primary care. The National Council for Behavioral Health is leading the three-year initiative, Trauma-Informed Primary Care: Fostering Resilience and Recovery , to educate health care providers on the importance of trauma-informed approaches in the primary care setting. In July 2017, the National Council convened a multidisciplinary group of 11 health care stakeholders, who serve...

https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2017/10/17/how-to-handle-anxiety-fueled-refusals-to-go-to-school/

Learn how two leading San Francisco-based provider organizations are Implementing Trauma-Informed Care in Pediatric and Adult Primary Care Settings . View a recent webinar featuring Dr. Nadine Burke-Harris, Center for Youth Wellness, and Dr. Edward Machtinger, Women's HIV Program at UCSF. The webinar is part of a series on Putting Trauma-Informed Care into Practice: Lessons from the Field hosted by the Center for Health Care Strategies and made possible by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

PHILADELPHIA—During the 15 months that Allen Woods has been held, awaiting trial, at a federal detention center downtown, he has only seen his six-year-old son once. This has been hard on them both, as they used to spend time together almost every day. Woods would pick his son up from school, take him to T-ball practice—all the things that an involved parent does. “A child that was raised with both parents and one is suddenly taken away—he is going to be confused,” the boy’s mother, Chamira...

The California Psychological Association has sent out an "urgent request" by email to a distribution list of about 13,000 licensed psychologists seeking volunteers to help wildfire evacuees cope with emotional trauma. Jo Linder-Crow, the association's chief executive, said Tuesday the email was sent out a day earlier to licensed mental health providers across California. The email warned of "a tremendous acute and long-term impact" caused by the deadly wildfires and called for volunteers to...