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Jorge poses for a portrait at a park in East Oakland on Thursday, January 16, 2025. Credit: Hiram Alejandro Durán for El Tímpano/Catchlight/Report for America corps member

Soaring housing costs make life even more challenging for Oakland’s unaccompanied minors

From El Tímpano

Jorge arrived in the United States aged 16 and roughly $9,000 in debt to those who helped him make the harrowing journey from Guatemala to California.

The day after he arrived in Oakland, he found a job cleaning roofs and attics and eventually working in construction.

Theo Grace Quest

OVERWHELMED: Autistic patients say conditions at Arizona State Hospital are making them worse

From KJZZZ

Matt Solan is overwhelmed.

Solan has been a patient at the Arizona State Hospital since April 2020, found guilty of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Because he was found to be “guilty but insane,” a special designation in Arizona law, Solan was sent to ASH, as it’s often known, instead of prison.

During a December hearing, Magistrate Judge Alexander Rossario in December 2024 dismissed the charges of several people who had engaged with the program, and kicked out several people who had not. Image: Ted Alcorn

Inside New Mexico’s first diversion program for people who aren’t competent to stand trial

From New Mexico In Depth

James Ketcherside approached the bushes behind the Las Cruces fire station where the woman had been spending nights, bracing for resistance but determined to try.

Olivia Frausto, now 19, holds a photo of her younger self, taken before she entered West Virginia’s child welfare system. Photo by Jenny Lynn Photography

‘An ecosystem of dysfunction:’ West Virginia still has a child welfare worker shortage, and it’s taking a toll on foster kids and families

From Mountain State Spotlight

When Olivia Frausto was growing up with her father and sister in Martinsburg, sleeping on the floor and waking up to cockroaches scuttling on the walls, she remembers frequent visits from West Virginia Child Protective Services workers.

Judy Utley, right, with her granddaughter Alexis Nadell. Grandparents like Utley, who raised their grandchildren, say the state doesn't offer them enough support. Photo courtesy of Judy Utley.

West Virginia’s foster care system depends on grandfamilies. It does little to support their mental health needs.

From Mountain State Spotlight

After her son was grown, police would wake Judy Utley in the middle of the night and ask her to take in her two grandchildren and their two half-siblings.

Photo by Duncan Slade / Mountain State Spotlight

‘They’re all damaged.’ Despite progress, West Virginia is still failing to get foster kids the mental health help they need

From Mountain State Spotlight

By the time Sadie Kendall turned 18 and aged out of West Virginia’s foster care system, she had lived in more than two dozen places.