From Our Newsroom Partners
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.
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.
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.
‘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.
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.
‘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.
Dozens of people died in Arizona sober living homes as state officials fumbled Medicaid fraud response
For the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
At least 40 Native American residents of sober living homes and treatment facilities in the Phoenix area died as state Medicaid officials struggled to respond to a massive fraud scheme that targeted Indigenous people with addictions.
Former staff at Spokane youth psychiatric unit blame Providence for closure
For InvestigateWest
Early last year, Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane painted a bleak picture of what would happen without its Psychiatric Center for Children and Adolescents.
Some Oklahoma parents turn kids over to the state after struggling to get mental health care for them
From The Frontier
Tucked between a highway and railroad tracks just east of Tulsa’s downtown, the county’s only emergency youth shelter acts as a temporary home for some teenagers who have been abandoned by their parents and have nowhere else to go.