The 2023-24 school year saw the highest percentage of kindergarteners exempted from vaccinations, with increases in 40 states and Washington, D.C. In some localities, the so-called health freedom message has led to nonmedical exemption rates as high as 50 percent.
Louisiana’s criminal justice system now treats all 17-year-olds as adults. Lawmakers lowered the age from 18 to curb teen violence, but nearly 70 percent of the 17-year-olds arrested in the state’s three largest parishes aren’t accused of violent crimes.
With reductions in federal aid, Texas ended Medicaid coverage for more than 2 million residents, mostly children. State officials acknowledge some errors but people looking to get back on the rolls must now join a backlog of more than 200,000 applicants.
A new bill asks Gov. Kathy Hochul and state legislators to overhaul New York’s broken guardianship system. It cites a ProPublica investigation that found the elderly and infirm living in dire conditions while under court-mandated oversight.
Nine schools on the city’s Upper West Side are installing laundry machines for students in need; in 2022, 119 schools across the city had washer-dryers. A lack of clean clothes often hurts students’ attendance.
Getting a driver’s license used to be a huge teenage milestone. But just under 40 percent of teenagers aged 16 to 19 had their license in 2021, a 24 percent decline since 1995.
The state is just one of 13 in which prosecutors can try children as adults without getting approval from a judge. Only 10 percent of the more than 20,000 children tried as adults in Florida were given juvenile sanctions from 2008 to 2022.
The report identified issues of physical and sexual abuse, extended periods of isolation for the children, lack of mental health treatment and failure to provide adequate services for students with disabilities.
Approximately 8,500 fewer students were evaluated for a disability than during an earlier two-year period. That means thousands of students may not be getting the accommodations they need.
They need meaningful, continuing relationships to carry them into adulthood. But the child welfare system isn’t set up to provide that.
A year after the controversial project’s completion, the Douglas County Youth Center remains empty. Even with that, there are more kids in custody than beds in the county’s controversial detention center.
A lack of awareness, limited hours and a shortage of teachers are among the hurdles.
Peers who have been through the juvenile justice system can help put incarcerated young people on a path to rehabilitation and redemption, but these mentors need access. States should give it to them.
The new agency will combine programs that provide services for children under 6, which had primarily been divided among three different departments.
More than 200 children live on Skid Row, a majority of which stay in the only homeless shelter in the neighborhood that allows families. Advocates are urging the city to do more to help.
The state’s system for finding missing children was implemented in 2002. Since then, Minnesota has helped to recover all but one of the 46 children for which the state has sent out alerts, usually on the same day.
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