California's Children

3rd-generation US Latinos reach dubious "parity" in foster system

April 29, 2013: In a lengthy analysis in Chronicle of Social Change, the news and analysis forum which he founded, journalist Daniel Heimpel, at left, reports:

...In 2000, almost half of California’s population was Latino, while one third of its foster care population was comprised of Latino children. By 2010, half the state’s population was Latino, roughly on par with the percentage of Latinos in the foster care population. In a decade an underrepresentation of Hispanic children in California’s vast foster care system had become parity.

On the last day of 1991 there were nearly 50,000 children under DCFS supervision in Los Angeles County, 14,000 (30 percent) of whom were Latino. On the last day of February 2013, the total number of children had dropped to 35,000. The number of Latinos had shot up to more than 20,000, accounting for almost 60 percent of all children involved in the county’s foster care system....

“The increase of Latino children in the child welfare system is likely due in part to a growing population of third generation Latino children, who are at greater risk of child welfare involvement than their first and second generation counterparts,” [University of Illinois at Chicago researcher Alan]  Dettlaff says. The longer your family lives in the United States: the more your children are exposed to child maltreatment.

A major study released this year supports Dettlaff’s premise, and suggests a steady increase in foster care removals among Latinos. The study, led by USC’s Emily Putnam-Hornstein and Barbara Needell of UC Berkeley, linked birth records for all 550,000 babies born in California in 2002 to Child Protective Services data through each child’s fifth birthday. The researchers were able to separate out babies born to mothers who were Latino immigrants from those who were born to Latino mothers also born in the United States.

Third generation babies born to U.S. born Latino mothers were twice as likely to be referred for child maltreatment than those born to foreign born mothers; almost three times as likely to have a case of substantiated abuse; and more than four times more likely to enter foster care...

Jerrell Griffin is the assistant regional director of DCFS’ Wateridge office, which covers those gang-infested, poverty-stricken zip codes where so many Latino families settle. Griffin left a job teaching at an L.A. high school for DCFS, and now oversees one of the most overburdened offices in the 7,300-employee department. In 2012 Wateridge had 5,555 reports of child maltreatments, and an average caseload of 37 children per worker...

Only Romania has worse child poverty rate than U.S.

April 23, 2013: The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) released its rankings of developed countries by the percent of children who live in poverty -- and the U.S. is 34th out of 35, only beating out Romania.

As reported by Max Fisher in the Washington Post,

The map gives a comparative sense of the data. The blue countries have less than 10 percent of its children below UNICEF’s relative poverty line, with the red countries approaching 25 percent. Southern European countries, among the most effected by the euro crisis, have some of the worst rates, although none as low as the United States. Former Soviet countries also score poorly. Northern European countries score the highest. English-speaking countries tend to fall somewhere in the middle.

The poor U.S. showing in this data may reflect growing income inequality. According to one metric of inequality, a statistical measurement called the gini coefficient, the U.S. economy is one of the most unequal in the developed world. This would explain why the United States...is ranked between Bulgaria and Romania, though Americans are on average six times richer than Bulgarians and Romanians....

To be clear, this data only reflects developed countries; it tells us nothing about ...for example, children in sub-Saharan Africa...And UNICEF is using its own “poverty line” here; the more typical international definition is a family that lives on less than $1.25 or $2 per day. Almost no Americans qualify for this definition. Internally, the United States defines the poverty line as a family living on less than about $22,000 per year, which includes about 15 percent of Americans.

Still, UNICEF’s data is important for measuring the share of children who are substantively poorer than their national average, which has important implications for the cost of food, housing, health care and other essentials...

But the [American] picture looks even worse when you examine just how far below the relative poverty line these children tend to fall. The UNICEF report looks at something it calls the “child poverty gap,” which measures how far the average poor child falls below the relative poverty line. It does this by measuring the gap between the relative poverty line and the average income of poor families.

Alarmingly, the United States also scores second-to-last on this measurement, with the average poor child living in a home that makes 36 percent less than the relative poverty line. Only Italy has a wider gap. ...

"Huge tax collection days" may signal more $ for Prop 98

April 17, 2013:  The Legislative Analyst's Office reports that today -- as was yesterday a "huge tax collection day" for California. 

Today's $2.9 billion of Franchise Tax Board (FTB) collections of California personal income taxes (PIT) significantly exceeded the $2.6 billion total reported yesterday. With month-to-date PIT collections, net of refunds, now approaching the $9 billion mark, California has surpassed the $8.5 billion total for the month that was necessary to remain on track with the administration's most recent revenue estimates. It is difficult to predict what will occur between now and April 30, but, based on recent years' results, collection of another $2 billion or more in PIT revenue during the rest of the month seems quite possible.

Looking Ahead... Assuming that PIT revenues continue on the current track for the rest of April, next month's updated revenue forecasts from the administration and our office will have to make difficult judgments--based on limited data--about how much of the 2012-13 revenue gain results from previously unanticipated growth in taxable income and how much results from taxable income "accelerated" from future years to 2012 in order to benefit from lower federal tax rates then in effect. These forecasts will affect the Proposition 98 minimum funding guarantee for schools and community colleges, as well as the overall state budget situation for 2013-14.  As we discussed in January, to the extent that 2012-13 revenues are greater than expected, the additional revenues may be required to be allocated to Proposition 98, and this might limit substantially improvements to the state's financial bottom line that otherwise would result.

Study shows parents are still in the dark about HPV vaccine

UPDATE: March 19, 2013: Despite multiple studies showing that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine isn’t linked to any serious side effects, a study published yesterday found that an increasing number of parents of female teens are refusing to have their children vaccinated.

In the study titled Reasons for Not Vaccinating Adolescents: National Immunization Survey of Teens published on-line in the Journal of Pediatrics, researchers wanted to determine the reasons adolescents are not vaccinated for specific vaccines and how these reasons have changed over time.

According to Sharon Gloger Friedman for The Examiner, researchers, led by Paul Darden M.D. (left), a pediatrician at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, analyzed data for teens 13-17 from the 2008-2008 National Immunization Survey of Teens. Reportedly, 4.5% of parents expressed concerns about safety. In 2010, the number rose to more than 16%. 

Pediatrician and vaccine researcher Amanda Dempsey (left) from the University of Colorado Denver told Reuters Health,“There is a lot of very sensationalized anecdotal reports of (girls) having bad reactions to the vaccine.” Dempsey who was not involved in the new research later added, “Safety concerns have always risen to the top of the pile, in terms of being one of the main reasons people don’t get vaccinated, which is unfortunate because this is one of the most well-studied vaccines in terms of safety and is extremely safe." 

Parents had other reasons for not wanting their daughters vaccinated, including a perceived lack of need because it was assumed their daughters were not sexually active. Experts, however, were quick to refute this argument because the vaccine is most effective if given before sexual activity begins.Some parents also clamied that the vaccine wasn't reccommended from a doctor.

In an email, lead researcher Darden told Reuters Health, "These are wonderful vaccines preventing severe diseases,HPV is the first vaccine that will prevent cancer which is a tremendous health benefit."

Cervical cancer which can be caused from HPV is a leading preventable epidemic rising in young women (see story below).

 Written by Taylor McCulloch. 

LA County to test incarcerated girls' health program

March 18, 2013: The health -- mental and physical -- of girls who are in the custody of the juvenile justice system are "serious and complex," according to reporter Anna Gorman, writing in the March 16 Los Angeles Times. "Many of the girls don't have regular doctors, so [they] ... go undiagnosed and untreated. That continues when they enter a system that was designed for boys and has been slow to adapt to girls," Gorman reports.

Los Angeles County health and probation officials recently began working to better identify and treat the health and mental health problems of about 240 girls in custody... using ...the Girls Health Screen, a 117-question survey designed by Leslie Acoca, above left, [founder and] president of the Pasadena-based NGHJI...The Girls Health Screen ...targets an "extraordinarily vulnerable" population that has not had consistent healthcare, said Francine Sherman, who teaches juvenile justice at Boston College Law School.

(NPR's Carrie Johnson reported in October 2012 that "girls make up the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice system, with more than 300,000 arrests and criminal charges every year." Johnson was quoting a report from the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy by Liz Watson and Peter Edelman (funded by Annie E. Casey Foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, and the Open Society Foundations' Special Fund for Poverty Alleviation).The Georgetown report includes detailed case students from three US jurisdictions; one was Stanislaus County (Modesto). The report also noted that "girls are still routinely detained for status offenses" (a status offense is an offense that is only a crime if committed by a juvenile, e.g., truancy, curfew violations, runaways, underage drinking).

...More than one-third of girls in custody nationwide have a history of sexual abuse, compared with 8% of boys. Girls also have had more physical abuse, suicide attempts and drug-related problems, according to the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Few juvenile justice centers have shown they meet minimum healthcare standards, and girls are less likely than boys to get the care they need.

A report last November on NPR's "All Things Considered," stated that 90% of girls in juvenile detention had "experienced physical, sexual or emotional abuse...41% have signs of vaginal injury consistent with sexual assault; up to a third have been or are currently pregnant; 8% have had positive skin tests for tuberculosis; and 30% need glasses but don't have them..." [figures from the National Girls Health and Justice Institute (NGHJI), funded by the Kaiser Family Foundation]. 

The Georgetown report highlighting Stanislaus County's reform efforts, emphasizes that "local reform efforts are particularly important in California because of the increasing decentralization [realignment] of California's juvenile justice system...California's committee juveniles are held in local custody in greater numbers than in most other states...due in part to a long history of problems with facilities run by the state Division of Juvenile Justice." Stanislaus County's gender-responsive reform efforts were led by Lynn Wu, a staff attorney at the Prison Law Office in Berkeley (funded by a grant from the State Bar of California and the Sierra Health Foundation).