Schools hit by expense of transporting homeless, By Kathy McCabe, October 6, 2011, Boston Globe: “The white van with a yellow school bus sign on top stopped at the front door of a hotel on Route 1. A young girl with a heavy backpack stepped off, waving to her mother, who came to meet the bus. Two other children exited the bus and pushed the glass door to enter the lobby. Hotels are a regular stop on public school bus routes north of Boston, where hundreds of homeless families are temporarily living because the state’s 2,000 family shelter units are full. As of Monday, there were 1,437 families living in motels and hotels across Massachusetts, according to the state Department of Housing and Community Development. More than 300 families are living at hotels in Burlington, Chelmsford, Danvers, Haverhill, Malden, Saugus, Tewksbury, and Woburn, according to state data. But since August, when a new program started to place homeless families in permanent housing, the number of families living in hotels has dropped by about 20 percent, or by 341 families, including 30 that moved from Danvers hotels…”
Day: October 6, 2011
States and Juvenile Justice
Texas juvenile justice reforms working, group says, By Allan Turner, October 4, 2011, Houston Chronicle: “Reforms instituted in the wake of 2007 allegations of widespread sexual abuse of minors in Texas Youth Commission facilities have led to dramatic improvements in the way the state deals with young offenders, according to a national juvenile justice study released Tuesday. Authors of the Annie E. Casey Foundation study, No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration, reported Texas’ number of incarcerated minors dropped from 4,800 in August 2006 to 1,800 in August 2010 – without an increase in the state’s crime rate or juvenile arrests…”
Hospital Quality and Health Disparities
Study: Worst hospitals treat larger share of poor, By Carla K. Johnson (AP), October 5, 2011, Salt Lake Tribune: “The nation’s worst hospitals treat twice the proportion of elderly black patients and poor patients than the best hospitals, and their patients are more likely to die of heart attacks and pneumonia, new research shows. Now, these hospitals, mostly in the South, may be at higher risk of financial failure, too. That’s because the nation’s new health care law punishes bad care by withholding some money, says the lead author of the study published Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs…”