California foster care: New laws signed to restrict psychiatric drugs, By Karen de Sá, October 7, 2015, San Jose Mercury News: “Creating sweeping new protections for tens of thousands of California’s most traumatized children, Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday signed the nation’s most comprehensive set of laws to curb the overprescribing of psychiatric drugs in foster care. For the first time, the state will train caregivers and court officials on the hazards of psychotropic drugs, scour medicated children’s health records for alarming prescriptions and step up scrutiny of residential facilities that rely too heavily on the medications to control kids’ behavior…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty