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…”
Tag: Mental health
Lead Poisoning Settlements
How companies make millions off lead-poisoned, poor blacks, By Terrence McCoy, August 25, 2015, Washington Post: “The letter arrived in April, a mishmash of strange numbers and words. This at first did not alarm Rose. Most letters are that way for her — frustrating puzzles she can’t solve. Rose, who can scarcely read or write, calls herself a ‘lead kid.’ Her childhood home, where lead paint chips blanketed her bedsheets like snowflakes, ‘affected me really bad,’ she says. ‘In everything I do.’ She says she can’t work a professional job. She can’t live alone. And, she says, she surely couldn’t understand this letter. So on that April day, the 20-year-old says, she asked her mom to give it a look. Her mother glanced at the words, then back at her daughter. ‘What does this mean all of your payments were sold to a third party?’ her mother recalls saying…”
Ex-Offenders and Health Care
Linking released inmates to health care, By Michael Ollove, June 11, 2015, Stateline: “Joe Calderon faced uncomfortably high odds of dying after his release from a California prison in 2010. According to one study, his chances of dying within two weeks — especially from a drug overdose, heart disease, homicide or suicide — were nearly 13 times greater than for a person who had never been incarcerated. Despite suffering from hypertension during his 17 years and three days of incarceration, Calderon was lucky. He stumbled onto a city of San Francisco program that paid for health services for ex-offenders, and he was directed to Transitions Clinic, which provides comprehensive primary care for former prisoners with chronic illnesses. The clinic saw to all his health needs in the months after his release. An increasing number of states are striving to connect released prisoners like Calderon to health care programs on the outside…”