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Steve Volk | NextCity.org Reimagining a foster care system that errs on the side of protecting children, but disproportionately investigates and punishes Black families more for economic hardship than harm. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Part One of a two-part series in the “Our Kids” reporting project. Our Kids is a project of the Broke in Philly reporting collaborative that examines the challenges and opportunities facing Philadelphia’s foster care system. (See also Part Two, “Can Racial Bias Be...

By Allegra Abramo | INVW.com Poverty, disability, homelessness wouldn’t qualify as sole reason to take kids away With tears in her eyes, Karen Osborne recalled the day in 2014 when police showed up to take away her 6-week-old daughter. Osborne hadn’t been accused of abuse nor neglect. Instead, social workers were concerned about Osborne’s “mental capacity.” They had already removed seven of Osborne’s previous children and made plans to remove her new baby before she was even born. Social...

By Mike Catalni, Miami Herald, April 8,, 2021 Ebele Azikiwe was in the sixth grade last year when February came and it was time to learn about Black history again. She was, by then, familiar with the curriculum: Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a discussion on slavery. Just like the year before, she said, and the year before that. Then came George Floyd's death in May, and she wrote to the administration at her school in Cherry Hill, in New Jersey's Philadelphia suburbs, to...

BY NATHANIEL WEIXEL | The Hill The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday declared racism a "serious public health threat," becoming the largest federal agency to do so. "A growing body of research shows that centuries of racism in this country has had a profound and negative impact on communities of color," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement published on the agency's website. Walensky noted the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been felt most severely...

By Alla Katsnelson | NY Times An emerging branch of neuroscience asks a question long on the minds of researchers. Recent stimulus payments make the study more relevant. New monthly payments in the pandemic relief package have the potential to lift millions of American children out of poverty. Some scientists believe the payments could change children’s lives even more fundamentally — via their brains. It’s well established that growing up in poverty correlates with disparities in...

Not many young students will volunteer information, unprompted, about feelings of depression or their recent experimentation with drugs. That's why advocates, school employees and lawmakers are pushing for regular screenings of students at the middle- and high-school levels, as long as their parents consent. With a caseload of 400 students, counselor Cristina Puri at Lincoln Park Middle School typically wouldn't end up seeing a troubled student until someone else sensed an issue or the...

ANDREW S. LEWIS | NJ Spotlight When Veronica Grant reflects on growing up in the Venice Park section of Atlantic City in the 1970s, regular nuisance flooding isn’t a memory that comes to mind. Yet these days, high tides spill across the neighborhood’s streets and yards so frequently that Grant can’t keep count. Flooding has been a reality in Atlantic City since its founding a century-and-a-half ago, but it has never been as frequent as it is today. Since 1911, the city’s tide station has...

This two-hour presentation will focus on understanding and defining trauma and different Trauma Types. This two-hour presentation will focus on understanding and defining trauma and different Trauma Types; recognizing the impact of trauma on the brain; understanding Child Traumatic Stress (CTS), Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Adverse Community Experiences and Resilience (ACE|R); learning about resiliency and being trauma-informed. CEUs or certificates are not offered for this...

ATTN Monmouth and Ocean Counties Earn CME/MOC Part 2 credit! Join us Thursday, April 15th at 12 PM EST NJ InCK is a multi-sector collaborative child-centered local service delivery model aimed at reducing out-of-home placement as well as health care expenditures for children covered by Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). It operates through prevention, early identification, and treatment of priority health concerns like behavioral health challenges, physical health...

JEN URSILLO | NJ1015 It's been over a year since the COVID-19 pandemic began and kids are hitting a breaking point that many developmental psychologists have coined "the pandemic wall." The pandemic wall refers to cognitive overload, said Jaime Arlia, vice president of Children and Family Services at CarePlus NJ. Kids have hit the point where their bodies and brains just can't take it anymore. They're exhausted and worn out. They're taking the brunt of this because their capacities were...

For much of the past few weeks, I’ve been asked to comment on what we have learned as we mark the pandemic’s one-year anniversary from the perspective of an epidemiologist. But I’ve yet to be asked to comment on what I, personally, have learned. When I contemplated that question, I’m deeply, deeply saddened that collectively, we have learned new terms like epidemiology, rate of transmission, and case-fatality rate; but we haven’t come to terms with the fact that we are a country built on...