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The California Department of Social Services, Office of Child Abuse Prevention (OCAP) just released their newsletter with information about the upcoming Child Abuse Prevention month in April 2017. Please check out the attached PDF for more information on materials to help #unite4kids to prevent child abuse and neglect for all California children and families.

Recent months have highlighted how quickly statewide concerns can turn from the devastating impacts of too little water during a prolonged drought, to the comparably destructive effects of too much water and resulting floods. Flood management is a complicated and expensive undertaking in Cal ifornia, given the state’s size, its extensive and aging infrastructure, the number of agencies involved, and the magnitude of its flood risk. In light of these complexities, this report provides basic...

California law allows counties to charge parents for every night their child is locked up, for renting ankle monitors, for alcohol and drug tests, for public defenders and for other costs. The fees are meant to help counties recoup their costs, without being excessive or unfair. State Sens. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, and Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, have put forward Senate Bill 190 , which has a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Public Safety Committee, to end these fees. They say the...

To assist some of California’s foster youth, there are more than a dozen proposed pieces of legislation working their way through various state Assembly and Senate committees. Several of the bills are hitting committee hearings this week. Activities funding >> Assemblyman Dante Acosta (D-Santa Clarita) introduced AB 754, which provides funding to help foster youth cover activities-related expenses. The funding would help cover costs for field trips, purchase caps and gowns for...

The girl had already burst into tears when the bold, yellow letters on the man’s jacket came into focus: “Police.” Rómulo Avelica-González had just dropped off his 12-year-old daughter, Yuleni, at a Los Angeles charter school — as he did every morning — and was heading next to the school of his 13-year-old daughter, Fatima. That’s when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents surrounded the undocumented Mexican immigrant’s Dodge Durango. Avelica-González, a 48-year-old father of four...

Editorial by Gail Kennedy: Hi all. Please consider tuning into this webinar on Weds to listen to the great work happening in CA and support our colleagues! The following is a webinar announcement (Wed, Mar 22, 2017 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM EDT; read more about it here ) from the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color : Often, youth of color are punished in the classroom, workplace, penal system, and in community for misunderstood behaviors that are natural responses to trauma. The Alliance for Boys and...

Wisconsin First Lady Tonette Walker (Center), Naomi Goldstein (R), and Elizabeth Hudson (L) ________________________________________________ The signature issue of Wisconsin First Lady Tonette Walker—advancing trauma-informed policy and practice in the state—began early in Governor Scott Walker’s first term (2011-2014) and continues to grow. She leads the statewide collaborative “ Fostering Futures ” (see attached fact sheet) that has an ambitious aim: “to improve child and family well-being...

Assemblywoman Susan Eggman has reintroduced a bill that aims to aid children exploited by sex traffickers. Assembly Bill 223 would call for a pilot project in three counties — San Joaquin, Alameda and Sacramento — in which the county's probation department or child welfare agency, or both, would be required to create a program to offer services to juveniles who have been sexually exploited. The bill , if passed, would include funding in order for the counties to include programs that assess...

In the past decade, there has been an average of 80,000 homes a year built in California — 100,000 units below what's needed to keep pace with population growth through 2025, according to a recent report by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). "In the Bay Area, we've added more than 600,000 new jobs since 2010 but created only about 60,000 new housing units," Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council , a public-policy advocacy group, wrote in...

Separate from its new California School Dashboard, the California Department of Education has prepared another online resource that some school officials say may be more useful than the dashboard itself. It consists of color grids showing a breakdown of how every school in a district did on each performance indicator, with links to each school’s dashboard report. The California Model Five-by-Five Placement Reports & Data , as the site is called, is a one-stop school comparison tool that...

Program Description Kaiser Permanente Educational Theatre (KPET) has developed a series of four workshops to address stress and social-emotional wellness for high school students. The workshop series are designed to meet the needs of each student and school in different locations. This program is provided free of charge to schools and communities to inspire students to build healthy relationships, gain tools to cope with high levels of stress and trauma, and to increase their ability to...

See attached a fact sheet created by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families and the American Academy of Pediatrics with information about MediCal, CHIP, and the ACA Cover Children’s Coverage. Download the full infographic here and you can see data sources at http://ccf.georgetown.edu/2017/02/06/snapshot-sources/. (And see similar infographics from all states).