Blog posts -- Social services

The state Department of Health Care Services wants to interrupt the cycle between the street, the hospital, and back again by trying to house the most vulnerable and reduce their health care costs. The project began in 2016, and is known as “ Whole Person Care .” The pilot project is intended to model how Medi-Cal could take a more active role in addressing the state’s homeless crisis. For now, more than two-dozen county level health agency administrators are given state funding with the...

The housing crisis has placed those concerned about board-and-care residents with mental illness in a strange predicament: Many now find themselves advocating for facilities they consider to be of poor quality and outmoded. That’s because the alternatives they see—homelessness, incarceration, long-term placement in nursing homes or locked facilities—are worse. About a third of homeless individuals have serious mental illness, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center , a nonprofit that...

There is a severe human and fiscal cost of homelessness. In response, there's a new infusion of funding in California - approximately $750 million in three new programs - to help cities and counties address the needs of more than 130,000 men, women, and children who do not have a permanent and safe place to call home. These new programs include Homeless Emergency Aid Program ($500 million, deadline Dec. 31, 2018), No Place Like Home ($190 million), and the California Emergency Solutions and...

There is a new way to stay updated on Summer Meal sites! The Department of Education released a new, free app called CA Meals for Kids. This application makes it easy to find sites by physical location, custom map, county, city, zip code and partial site name. Users can filter searches by service status and meal types (e.g. lunch, snacks, etc.). Any smart device using Apple, Google Play, or Microsoft stores are available to use. GO HERE to learn more about the APP

Data on homeless children and youth in California are now available on Kidsdata. Over a quarter million , or 4.4% of public school students, were recorded as homeless at some point during the 2015-2016 school year. Most homeless students stayed with friends or relatives because of loss of housing ( 85% ), and the remainder were in a temporary shelter, motel, or were unsheltered. Unaccompanied Homeless Youth (Point-in-Time Count), Ages 0-17: 2017 Recording homeless students during the school...

Every evening, I try to engage my daughter in reflection, gratitude, and hope. I try to practice the same, but tonight, I felt the need to share with you all. Today I had the opportunity to attend the Toward a Trauma-Informed Northern California Summit 2018 – it was an incredible experience. We were welcomed with a moving, informative, and engaging keynote speaker, Dr. Isaiah B. Pickens , who laid the foundation for what would be a day of growth, reflection, connection, and peer support. He...

Kidsdata and Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) have partnered to release the latest data on poverty among California's children. Poverty and inequitable distribution of resources are fundamental impediments to healthy and well children. Addressing poverty among all children must be a key part of programs and policies that aim to maximize health and well being. Guest author, Caroline Danielson, who is a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, shares important...

GK note: Check out a new report from Patrick Gardner, Founder of Young Minds Advocacy. See a critique of the report from Scott Bryant-Comstock of the Children's Mental Health Network (which is a good weekly blog if want to stay current on these issues: http://cmhnetwork.org) Patrick Gardner, Founder of Young Minds Advocacy. has written an excellent report on the state of the child mental health delivery system in California. If there ever was a blueprint for a systems of care approach, this...

The Chadwick Center for Children & Families at Rady Children's Hospital San Diego has just released a set of trauma-informed guidelines with concrete strategies for approaching secondary traumatic stress (STS). While these guidelines were created for intended use within child welfare systems, they may be easily adapted into other child-and family-serving organizations. These guidelines were created as part of the Chadwick Trauma-Informed Systems Dissemination and Implementation Project...

Manuel Dircio, 20, a business administration student at Fullerton College boasts a 4.0 GPA. He is also a recovering alcoholic with a history of arrest and incarceration in juvenile detention — not quite what you’d expect from a seemingly model college student with a stellar grade point. Dircio credits the Youthful Offender Wraparound program (YOW), which he says “helped [him] grow successfully.” It’s what’s known as a full-service partnership (FSP) in Orange County, California, that uses a...

This Friday, September 23 , don’t miss the premiere of a compelling new documentary called Audrie and Daisy on Netflix. To kick-off the upcoming launch, we staged an unconventional but inspiring send-off with the help of the San Francisco Giants this past Sunday . It was our 19th Annual Strike Out Violence Day at AT&T Park, and this year, the Giants hosted the courageous families of Audrie Pott and Daisy Coleman, the two young women who are featured in the new film about two teenagers...

By implementing a “rapid rehousing” policy, hundreds of communities around the U.S. are moving from blaming, shaming and punishing the homeless, to understanding, nurturing and providing homeless people a safe place to recover and heal. In California, Orange County is changing its policy from putting people in temporary shelters to providing them permanent subsidized housing. So is Los Angeles — where 25,000 people are homeless. Instead of trying to force people who are...