What's on our radar this week
Each week, Juvenile Law Center gathers the latest studies, reports, and headlines from around the country. Here's what we've been reading:
- Juvenile Law Center Staff Attorney, Kate Burdick, co-authored a compelling op-ed for Youth Today that discusses the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The new federal law provides opportunities for youth in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems to succeed in school.
- Girls account for one third of the youth in Oregon's juvenile justice system. But despite having "more acute physical and mental health needs," few programs exist to help these young women recover from past trauma.
- Wake Technical Community College (North Carolina) runs a program, Fostering Bright Futures, specifically to help foster youth attend college, graduate, and transfer into 4-year degree programs.
- The Annie E. Casey Foundation released a report detailing state foster care policies and practices. The report found that Connecticut leads the nation in the number of children in foster care who are placed in group homes.
- Southern Poverty Law Center released a report investigating the juvenile justice system and youth transferred to adult court in New Orleans Parish, Louisiana. The report found that youth in New Orleans are being prosecuted as adults in unprecedented numbers.
- In Montana, the Protect Montana Kids Commission is working to improve programs and services for foster youth. The Commission asked current and former foster youth about their experiences in in foster care as part of the state's efforts to improve its laws and child welfare services.
- A federal judge affirmed a previous ruling that South Dakota violated the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which was passed in the 1970s to protect tribes and their children from dissolution.
- Kentucky is one of 23 states where children as young as 7 can be charged as adults.
- The University of Florida Levin College of Law hosted a convening on solitary confinement of youth. Juvenile Law Center Deputy Director and Chief Counsel, Marsha Levick and Associate Director, Jessica Feierman discussed how solitary confinement is essentially, "state-sanctioned child abuse."
- Since Montgomery v. Louisiana states across the country are discussing how the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling will impact their justice systems.
- A diversion program in Los Angeles, Centinela Youth Services, is trying to divert youth from the juvenile justice system in an attempt to break the cradle-to-prison pipeline.
- A bill to implement the federal Strengthening Families act advances in the Nebraska legislature (LB746). In October, Juvenile Law Center Child Welfare Policy Director, Jennifer Pokempner gave testimony before the Nebraska state legislature to discuss implement the new federal law.
Did we miss a big story? Email us at [email protected] with your headline