Governments are paying out billions to settle thousands of claims. There is no substitute for justice, but keeping the abuse from happening in the first place would be far more cost-effective.
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.
The legislation would bar school districts from adopting parental notification policies that would require school staff to inform a student’s parents if the student shows signs of being transgender.
Too many children die as the result of abuse and neglect. The hard truth is that no one is working hard to count how many of them, or what’s behind outcomes that may be largely preventable.
Supplementing early childhood educators’ wages has gone a long way toward addressing a longtime crisis. Even if the program doesn’t survive the city’s budget process, it should remain an example for local, state and federal efforts.
Last year the state spent more than $170 million to address maternal and infant death, yet rates of infant and fetal mortality, as well as preterm and low-weight births, haven’t improved much since a decade ago.
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