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Findings from a joint needs-assessment and youth photovoice project in Windham County, Vermont.
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WORTH PAYING ATTENTION TO:
NEW BILLS TO STRENGTHEN CHILD WELFARE
An unusually robust set of bills relating to children's and youth services have been introduced in Congress. They are:
Bill Would Increase Home Visiting Funding: Early Support for Families Act (HR 2667) would provide mandatory funding to states to create and expand early childhood home visitation programs.
Medicaid Services Restoration Act
S. 1217 would protect Rehabilitative and Targeted Case Management (TCM) services for vulnerable populations, including children in the child welfare and foster care systems. The legislation defines the TCM options and provide a transparent funding stream for therapeutic foster care.
Paid Sick Leave
The Healthy Families Act (S. 1152) would require most employers to provide up to seven days of paid sick leave for workers. Almost half of private sector workers have no paid sick time, the majority of whom are low-income workers.
Helping Young Adults with Serious Mental Illness
The Healthy Transition Act (S. 3195) would assist adolescents and young adults with serious mental health disorders as they transition to adulthood. Specifically, it would provide planning and implementation grants to states to develop statewide coordination plans.
Child Protection Improvement Act
A host of national child advocacy groups are pushing for reintroduction of this bill to create a permanent, streamlined system for youth-serving organizations to access to nationwide FBI fingerprint searches quickly and cheaply. It is based on the PROTECT Act pilot (SafetyNET), which mentoring organizations and others have been testing for nearly five years.
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THE CHLDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH WORKFORCE: WHAT CAN BE DONE?
This new report from NEN, 'Supporting the Direct-Care Workforce in Children's Behavioral Health Programs in NH' looks hard at workforce issues in 16 organizations working with emotionally and behaviorally challenged youth in New Hampshire. The findings reveal frustrations on both sides: from administrators, who are constantly forced to do more with less; and from workers, who need both practical help and a greater sense that what they have to say about their clients actually matters. Are there fixes, even in these times? There are, the report concludes, but they involve thinking differently about old problems.
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HELPING YOUNG PEOPLE IN PLACES
WHERE IT REALLY TAKES A VILLAGE
WHERE IT REALLY TAKES A VILLAGE
Transitional living programs (TLPs) located in rural areas have one of the toughest jobs in child welfare: connecting disadvantaged and sometimes troubled young people with services and opportunities that may barely exist. 'Surviving to Thriving,' a needs assessment of Vermont's federally funded TLP system, looks at promising practices in rural programming for youth, and makes recommendations that can easily be generalized to Maine, New Hampshire, western Massachusetts, and other rural pockets of the country.
See the report.