Blog

Frank Field (Letters, 28 September and 5 October) and Sebastian Kraemer (Letters, 3 October) are right to highlight the £750m cut to services to support vulnerable families. This is indeed a national disgrace, but has gone under the wire partly due to Brexit. Home-Start and Sure Start were truly progressive initiatives, now thoroughly undermined by these cuts. In 2011, Graham Allen and Iain Duncan Smith published a cross-party governmental report, Early Intervention: Smart Investment,...

Last February, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Two weeks later, it was removed by an incredibly skilled surgical team at UCSF. They did the surgery Friday afternoon and I walked out (slowly) Sunday morning. The surgery was the easy part. The months of dealing with steroids, radiation and chemotherapy were miserable. (My hat is off to those before me who’ve gone through this; to those who come after, I wish you a speedy recovery and a good sense of humor.) Thank goodness I have great...

In this extended Law and Justice interview with Scotsman, Kevin Neary, founder of Aid & Abet, we discuss the challenges of safely transitioning from prison back into society, childhood trauma, addiction, offending behaviour, recovery, the need for comprehensive, relationship-based community supports where basic needs are met, the utility of the Adverse Childhood Experience evidence, neuroscience developments and the ACE Aware Nation movement in Scotland, the fact that his family were...

The Brett Kavanaugh vote is barreling forward, but regardless of its outcome, Christine Blasey Ford and survivors like her will be left with the legacy of what they experienced. Ford testified that Kavanaugh assaulted her, which she said contributed to lifelong anxiety, phobia and PTSD-like symptoms. Many survivors of sexual violence report lasting depression , anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder . But new research published Wednesday in JAMA Internal Medicine draws a clear link not...

Violence perpetrated by youth continues to have far-reaching costs for society: It contributes to injury, community dysfunction, poor physical and mental health, lost economic output and premature death. In the United States, an average of 12 young people die from homicide every day, and homicide remains the third leading cause of death among youth 10 to 24 years old. Beyond the impact of youth violence on health and longevity, youth violence also contributes to behavioral and mental health...

As California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) prepares to leave office at the end of the year, the last round of child welfare legislation under his watch includes a new law to ease the path of relative caregivers under the Continuum of Care Reform (CCR), the major child welfare initiative developed during his time as governor. The Continuum of Care Reform is designed to reduce the state’s reliance on congregate care by placing more foster children with families, including more with relative...

For most of its modern history, Old Brooklyn in Cleveland has been a working-class white neighborhood. But it’s changing. Over the last decade or so, it has become a destination for black and Hispanic families; Today, Cuban cafés and Guatemalan businesses are sprinkled among old-school coffeeshops and Polish restaurants. Some longtime residents are happy to see new energy injected into the neighborhood. But others have been wary of newcomers—in part, because of their race. Jeffrey T.

"One of the biggest concerns we have as inmates is that our voices are being suppressed," prisoner Eugene Ross, 41, told a meeting at the Thompson Center in Chicago. Ross, who was arrested as a juvenile and is serving life without parole, was speaking to a press conference organized to demand the return of the weekly debate club at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois. The conference was organized by the debate club's adviser, Katrina Burlet, and Bill Ryan, co-founder of...

It started, as it does for thousands of women every year, with a routine mammogram, and its routine process of having my breasts — like a lump of dough — manipulated by another woman’s hands and placed, albeit gently, into tight compression. It’s never comfortable, but you get used to it because you have to. Unlike previous years, though, my next step was a biopsy, for which I lay face down, my left breast dangling through a hole in the table. Several hands reached for what’s normally a...

The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people. The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday say urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target, which they say is affordable and...

For decades, many law enforcement officers believed victims were supposed to be able to recall all the details of their assault. If they didn’t — or couldn’t — their allegations must not be credible, the thinking went. There is now the growing realization among police officers and others who encountered victims of sexual assault that they have long misread and mishandled those cases. The process was so common that experts have given it a name — “secondary victimization.” What officers...

Are you depressed? If you’re not sure, it’s no surprise. Perpetual sadness isn’t the only symptom. Anger, back pain, sleep disturbances and even indecisiveness could all be signs of depression. One in six adults will experience depression in their life, but you can’t get help if you’re not sure you need it. Your doctor can screen for depression, so it’s worth asking on your next visit. [For more on this story by Erin Blakemore, go to...