- Studies: Disproportionate number of black children wind up in L.A. foster care, By Ben Baeder, March 23, 2013, Los Angeles Daily News: “Eight out of every 100 children in Los Angeles County are black. And 29 out of every 100 children in foster care are black. That jump in proportion, which is common statewide, is one of the most controversial discussions in the child welfare community. And when black children go into foster care, they get stuck there 50 percent longer than children of other races. During the 2000s, social work experts suspected that institutional bias and racism by social workers caused the high proportion of black children in foster care. Leaders in the social work community made that assumption based on decades-old data that showed that black children were abused and maltreated at the same rate as children of other ethnic classifications. County child protection agencies across the United States concentrated on training their workers to be racially sensitive. But new studies show that black children die and are mistreated by family members more often than other kids. And instead of rooting out alleged racism, the county now faces a more nuanced and difficult task – getting into black neighborhoods and finding out how to best help children who are mistreated…”
- Poor planning adds to Maine’s foster care crisis, By Kelley Bouchard, March 24, 2013, Portland Press Herald: “Foster parents Marie and John Beaulieu are on the front lines of a funding crisis in Maine’s foster care system that has been attributed, at least in part, to a sudden and surprising increase in drug abuse among young parents who are neglecting their kids. The Beaulieus worry that the state will reduce or eliminate support for the four foster children they’ve taken into their home in the last decade. A major culprit in the rising demand for foster care is a new type of synthetic, sometimes-hallucinogenic stimulants known as bath salts, child welfare officials say. But an investigation by the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram found that the connection to bath salts, while headline-grabbing, is anecdotal at best and that child welfare officials really shouldn’t have been caught off guard by the rising number of kids in their care…”
Day: March 25, 2013
Conditional Cash Transfer Programs
What Brazil can teach America about fighting poverty, By Mercedes White, March 20, 2013, Deseret News: “Luxury condominiums with tennis courts and swimming pools border the white sands of Rio De Janeiro’s famous Ipanema Beach. Tourists note the striking resemblance to Miami or Southern California. But looking up, away from the ocean, to the homes perched on the cliffs above Ipanema, a very different Rio comes into focus. It is the neighborhood of Rocinha, the city’s largest slum, where precarious looking shacks are stacked one on top of the other. The dichotomy between the posh apartment buildings on the beach and the shanty towns in the hills is a visual reminder of the income inequality that plagues Rio and other Brazilian cities. Brazil has the one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world. But the chasm between rich and poor Brazilians is narrowing, according to the World Bank. Between 2003 and 2009, the income of the country’s poor grew seven times as much as the income of Brazil’s rich. The World Bank also reports that during this period the Brazilian poverty rate fell from 42.7 percent of the total population to 28.8 percent. Contrast this with the United States, where more than 80 percent of income growth in the last 10 years has gone to the top 1 percent of earners. Moreover, poverty rates in the United States have remained between 14 and 15 percent of the total population for the last 50 years, according to Census data…”