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Pioneering child-advocacy office loses its leader

LILO H. STAINTON, HEALTH CARE WRITER | MAY 13, 2022 | HEALTH CARE Private funds paid his salary. NJ taxes covered the staff. Now he’s gone New Jersey generated a national buzz among child welfare experts when in June 2020 it launched the first state-level office devoted to childhood resilience and arranged for private foundations to pay the salary of the director. Two years later acclaimed director Dave Ellis is leaving the Department of Children and Families Office of Resilience. The...

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We must combat the myth of declining homelessness — in New Jersey and beyond | Opinion Paul R. Shackford | The Bergen Record via Yahoo.com Last fall, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge announced the “House America” program to fund the rehousing of 100,000 families and the building of 20,000 affordable housing units. The goal is admirable but the reality here in Bergen County is that affordable rentals are a myth. The opportunity for local working families to find...

The Carceral Logic of Child Welfare - An interview with Dorothy Roberts, the author of Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World.

Lyra Walsh Fuchs | DissentMagazine.org Over 630,000 children, who are disproportionately Black and Indigenous, were “served by the foster care system” in 2020, according to the federal Department of Health and Human Services. That number doesn’t account for the many families placed under informal supervisory plans, or who received surprise knocks on their doors from caseworkers, often accompanied by police. Dorothy Roberts and a growing number of activists across the country have another...

Educational and social deficits worsen among NJ students

Eric Scott | NJ1015 After two years of remote learning and hybrid classes, New Jersey's K-12 students continue to struggle and are in danger of falling even farther behind. Even with in-person learning since the start of the current school year, the struggles are evidence in every grade level. The non-profit education advocacy group JerseyCAN recently completed the first comprehensive look at so-called 'learning loss,' and the results should alarm every parent. On average, New Jersey...

White-supremacist propaganda remained high in the United States in 2021, new ADL report says - Find out where NJ is on the list.

By MICHELLE BOORSTEIN Washington Post White-supremacist groups continued in 2021 to distribute propaganda at a historically high rate, a report published Thursday says, part of what some experts call an increasingly panicked reaction to growing diversity in America. The Anti-Defamation League’s research found 4,851 reported cases of white supremacist propaganda in 2021, including racist, anti- Semitic and anti-LGBTQ items. That’s down 5% from 2020 but way up from 294 cases in 2017, when the...

Shopping while Black: Bridgewater mall incident amplifies talk of racism in retail spaces.

By Vashti Harris | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com and Matthew Stanmyre | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com For Tionni Kennedy, Bridgewater Commons mall is a place she frequently visits to hang out with friends, browse through stores, and gab over meals in the food court. It’s also where Kennedy, who is Black, said she often encounters racism. The 17-year-old from Piscataway feels the glare of store workers when she walks into shops and notices how they always seem to follow her as she looks at...

‘Diaries of A Black Girl in Foster Care’ Podcast Launches

A new podcast series beginning Wednesday, Feb. 23 will explore the unique issues of Black girls who experience foster care in America. Diaries of A Black Girl in Foster Care (which uses @BlkGrlDiariesFC on social media platforms) will begin with three episodes that address cultural issues, racial disparities and stereotypes that organizers argue have contributed to poor outcomes for Black girls in America’s various foster care systems. “Everybody can get something out of this, not just Black...

California’s first surgeon general, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, resigns

California’s top physician is stepping down. Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, who became the state’s first surgeon general in 2019, announced her resignation Tuesday, her office confirmed. Dr. Devika Bhushan, chief health officer, will serve as acting surgeon general. Gov. Gavin Newsom thanked Burke Harris for “the impactful initiatives and frameworks she has put in place as California’s first-ever surgeon general.” “Dr. Burke Harris’ expertise and leadership in championing equity, mental health and...

Project Self-Sufficiency program supports trauma survivors, promotes prevention

By Community Bulletin The Newton-based Project Self-Sufficiency will continue the workshop and discussion series, “PACEs at PSS”, designed to facilitate the conversation about issues surrounding Positive & Adverse Childhood Experiences (PACEs), with a virtual session on Monday, Feb. 7 at 5 p.m. Participants are invited to explore the Connections Matter curriculum, a program funded by the New Jersey Department of Children and Families and led by Prevent Child Abuse New Jersey designed to...

Prison mandate for teen killers fought at top NJ court

Juveniles as young as 15 can be tried as adults in New Jersey, where they face a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years in prison if convicted. EMILEE LARKIN / October 26, 2021 TRENTON (CN) — The New Jersey Supreme Court pushed prosecutors on Tuesday to defend the constitutionality of a mandate that sends juveniles convicted of felony murder to prison for 30 years. Fighting the scheme is James Comer who was 17 years old in 2000 when one of his accomplices to four armed robberies shot and...

Report: An estimated 175,000 U.S. children have lost a parent or grandparent due to COVID-19

BY STACY RICKARD DALLAS UPDATED 1:00 PM CT OCT. 26, 2021 PUBLISHED 4:32 PM CT OCT. 25, 2021 DALLAS — COVID-19 has impacted the family dynamic for children across the world whose caregivers died from the virus. A recent study from the journal Pediatrics estimates from April 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021, more than 140,000 children in the U.S. experienced the death of a parent or grandparent caregiver. That number is now estimated to have risen to 175,000 , according to study authors. The...

WHO honors exploited heroine - Henrietta Lacks

Cells taken from Henrietta Lacks without her consent have saved countless lives. By JAMEY KEATEN Associated Press GENEVA – The chief of the World Health Organization on Wednesday honored the late Henrietta Lacks, an American woman whose cancer cells were taken without her knowledge during the 1950s and ended up providing the foundation for vast scientific breakthroughs, including research about the coronavirus. The recognition from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus came more...

Princeton Area Community Foundation awards $275,000 to statewide principal and administrator group to help students exposed to trauma

Krystal Knapp | Planet Princeton The Princeton Area Community Foundation is giving $275,000 to a statewide organization for principals and administrators to fund a program to teach school staff members in Mercer County how to identify students exposed to stressful or traumatic experiences, and how to engage all students in a way that promotes healing from the mental health effects of the pandemic. The Foundation for Educational Administration (FEA) is the nonprofit arm of the New Jersey...

This is What Trauma-Informed Hunger Relief Looks Like

SEPTEMBER 28, 2021 CUMAC’s two-story facility in Northern New Jersey has the look and feel of a standard food bank, with a warehouse, a handful of trucks, a client-choice pantry, and even a small garden. In practice, the operation has a mission that goes much further than giving out food or even addressing the root causes of hunger. In the view of Executive Director Mark Dinglasan, problems related to food insecurity go back — way back — to childhood traumas and the harmful impacts they...

Substance misuse linked to risk profiles, study finds - Jeff Grabmeier

The study found that scores assessing childhood trauma exposure among adults with substance misuse issues were 24% higher than previous estimates for other adults in the child welfare system, and 108% higher than the general population. While many parents and caregivers involved in the child welfare system suffered trauma as children, new research suggests that those with substance misuse issues as adults may have had particularly difficult childhoods. Not surprisingly, children in these...

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