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What should you do if child-protective services comes to your house? You will hear a knock on the door, often late at night. You don’t have to open it, but if you don’t the caseworker outside may come back with the police. The caseworker will tell you you’re being investigated for abusing or neglecting your children. She will tell you to wake them up and tell them to take clothes off so she can check their bodies for bruises and marks. She will interview you and your kids separately, so you...

This past May, over 800 attendees and hundreds more online viewers joined us for the livestream event Complementary or in Conflict? Community Organizing and Collective Impact , a keynote and panel discussion at the 2017 Collective Impact Convening in Boston. The Collective Impact Forum is excited to share with you the video from this livestream event, as well as a transcript of the keynote remarks by Marshall Ganz (Harvard Kennedy School), with introductory remarks by Monique Miles (Aspen...

An initiative that aims to expand the use of population health strategies has received funding to be used in 500 U.S. cities. The City Health Dashboard compiles county and state health-related data from multiple agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the CDC, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The dashboard was piloted earlier this year, with health data from Flint, Michigan; Kansas City, Kansas; Providence, Rhode Island; and Waco, Texas. A $3.4 million award from the Robert Wood...

As trauma-informed initiatives have multiplied in recent years, more child welfare agencies are now grappling with how to properly screen for trauma. Along with access to trauma-focused, evidence-based treatments and staff training, screening is a key part of building a trauma-informed system. But that approach has until recently had relatively little traction in the child welfare field. According to a new paper that looks at the implementation of a recent wave of trauma screening...

The Chronicle of Social Change is highlighting each of the policy recommendations made this summer by the participants of the Foster Youth Internship Program (FYI), a group of 12 former foster youths who have completed congressional internships. The program is overseen each summer by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. Each of the FYI participants crafted a policy recommendation during their time in Washington, D.C. Today we highlight the recommendation of Alexis Arambul, a...

Every year in America, too many young adults leave foster care without a family or the opportunities needed to succeed. Yet, child welfare professionals and caregivers can help these youth better navigate the path toward a healthy adulthood — and a new report from the Casey Foundation's Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative tells how. The Road to Adulthood: Aligning Child Welfare Practice With Adolescent Brain Development explores the latest research on adolescent brain development...

An often-overlooked aspect of the opioid epidemic that has exploded across the U.S. in recent years is how often the abuse of heroin or prescription opiates is accompanied by domestic violence. This is tragic enough for the adults involved, but it’s a ticking time bomb for children who are exposed to these adversities, raising their risk for future drug use and multiple health and mental health conditions. Here’s how one community is trying to address the problem.

Excerpt from an article written by B Larissa McFarquhar. The Illustration (above) is by Anna Parini. What should you do if child-protective services comes to your house? You will hear a knock on the door, often late at night. You don’t have to open it, but if you don’t the caseworker outside may come back with the police. The caseworker will tell you you’re being investigated for abusing or neglecting your children. She will tell you to wake them up and tell them to take clothes off so she...

Unpaid elder care responsibilities are draining millions of Americans' bank accounts and forcing many to radically alter the way they work and spend their free time. This bleak takeaway from the Shift Commission's year-long investigation into the future of work in America surprised the 100 business, technology, policy, and academic leaders who took part in its nationwide planning sessions, said Shift's executive director, Kristin Sharp. The organization, founded by New America and Bloomberg...

Senate Republicans campaigned against Obamacare for seven years. Yet there was never an alternative that had support from a majority of their own party. The problem is simple: Many (not all) Republicans see health care programs that help people—the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, etc.—as welfare. Others look at the evidence and see these programs that are effective: insuring people, creating jobs, supporting a rural economy, and actually resulting in better health outcomes. Evidence-based...

After all, she’s locked up. She can’t miss a subway on her way to seeing me, and definitely won’t have a childcare emergency or conflicting appointment. I know where she is: “Rosie’s,” the women’s jail on New York City’s Rikers Island. And I know where I can go to meet her: not Rosie’s. Visiting anyone “on island,” as we call it, requires leaving your office for an entire day. That could mean neglecting the rest of your caseload. So most attorneys I know ask to have their Rikers clients...

We usually don’t realize we have them and yet they are powerful enough to dictate our decisions. They are powerful enough to steer our lives in specific directions, directions that may not be supportive or healthy, directions that may not lead to a fulfilling life. They become the lens thro [For more of this story, written by Margarita Tartakovsky, go to https://psychcentral.com/lib/how-to-effectively-deal-with-self-defeating-thoughts/]