Foster care kids need help as they age out of system

Setting up a new apartment and living independently is challenging for a new graduate with a new job, but if you’re one of the roughly 113 children a month aging out of the foster care system in Southwest Florida the challenge can be even more daunting.

The Children’s Network of Southwest Florida provides independent living training each month for 100 to 125 people turning 18 and preparing to leave the foster care system, according to Aimee McLaughlin. She’s the spokeswoman for the agency that runs the adoption and foster care system in five counties. About 1,500 children are in foster care in Lee, Collier, Hendry, Glades and Charlotte counties.

“We can always use more support for our youth,” McLaughlin said by email. “One agency or one person can’t do it alone. We need mentors, more pro bono services like apartments willing to negotiate, businesses to offer classes, driving schools to offer lessons, etc.”

Full story of kid aging out of foster care at News Press

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Bullying Exerts Psychiatric Effects Into Adulthood

Once considered a childhood rite of passage, bullying lingers well into adulthood. Bullies and victims alike are at risk for psychiatric problems such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and suicide when they become adults, reported a study partially funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) that was published in the April issue of JAMA Psychiatry.

Background

Bullying is a repetitive, aggressive act done to abuse or intimidate others. It can take on various forms—primarily verbal, emotional, and physical, although cyberbullying is also on the rise. Typically these scenes occur inside school or on the playground, but they can also happen at home or at work. A power imbalance usually is involved in which one child or a group of children torments another child who is considered “weaker.” Methods employed by bullies include threats, rumor-spreading, and exclusion.

Most of what experts know about the effects of bullying comes from short-term observational studies. These studies reflect general society’s view that most people overcome these events by the time they become adults.

Full story of bullying effecting into adulthood at Health Canal

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Underage Drinking Laws on Campus

It is no secret that alcohol use is prevalent on college campuses. According to the National Institute On Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 80 percent of college kids drink alcohol, and over 50 percent of them have partaken in binge drinking in the last two weeks alone. Because less than half of  the collegiate student body is over 21 (the legal drinking age in the United States), most schools are left with a choice; they can either enforce underage drinking laws on and around their campuses, or they can ignore the underage drinking that takes place in their vicinity.

For the time being, these are the only two options universities have, although many (including the organization Choose Responsibility) advocate for lowering the drinking age to 18, thereby circumventing the issue altogether. Choose Responsibility claims that keeping the “legal age 21 is not working–not in urban America, not in rural America, not on college campuses.”

Many college students see a lowering of the drinking age as their legal right, including Wisconsin University student Ryan Perlic, who says that “I can die for my country and vote for my country, yet my country does not consider me responsible enough to drink.”

Full story of underage drinking laws on campus at Huffington Post

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Low Vitamin D Linked to Hepatitis B

Vitamin D deficiency might be a key player in hepatitis B (HBV) replication, researchers reported.

Low levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D predicted high levels of the virus and vice versa, said Christian Lange, MD, and colleagues at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany, in a retrospective case-control study.

Similarly the seasonal variation in 25-hydroxyvitamin D was reflected in an inverse variation of the virus, suggesting a “functional relationship” between the two, Lange and colleagues reported online in Hepatology.

Chronic HBV is difficult to cure although — like HIV — viral replication can be controlled by antiretroviral drugs. Nonetheless, better therapies are needed, Lange and colleagues noted.

“Vitamin D helps maintain a healthy immune system and there is evidence of its role in inflammatory and metabolic liver disease, including infection with hepatitis C virus,” Lange said in a statement.

Full story of vitamin D and Hepatitis B at Med Page Today

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Online Education Will Be the Next ‘Bubble’ To Pop, Not Traditional University Learning

Speaking in Providence, RI not too long ago, the post-speech conversation turned to college education. The word was that Brown University’s tuition alone had risen above $50,000 per year.

The above number is staggering. For the most part college students tune out during their four years on campus; that, or they memorize what’s needed to get As on the tests. Why then would any parent pay the sky-high tuition, and then barring parental help, what 18-year old would take on that kind of debt in order to be the recipient of lots of largely useless information?

Brown is course not alone in this regard. Whether at public or private schools, college tuition over the years has skyrocketed. One factor, though it’s certainly not as big as analysts presume, is the federal government’s growing role in the financing of education.

With the above entity increasingly the only market for college loans, and with that same entity rather generous with the money of others, colleges and universities have very little incentive to do anything but raise tuition. Since our federal government is price insensitive, tuition can keep rising.

Full story of online education versus traditional learning at Forbes

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How high-tech jobs could solve the autism unemployment crisis

Since getting his first Game Boy at five years old, Aaron Winston knew he wanted to work in the gaming industry. But as he got older, the prospect seemed less and less likely: Winston, who is autistic, enrolled in community college but never made it to his first day of classes. “The social environment scared me off,” he told The Verge. “I was too nervous.”

Three years later, however, Winston is thriving as a staff programmer at the nonPareil Institute in Dallas, TX. His first game, Space Ape, is available on iOS and Android, and Winston now looks forward to a future in the industry. “This is the right environment for me, and I want to stay at nonPareil for years,” he said. “They gave me a career.”

Winston’s success at nonPareil is no coincidence. The institute was established in 2010 by Dan Selec and Gary Moore, both parents of children on the autism spectrum, to hire and train autistic adults in software development. Both Selec and Moore’s sons demonstrated unique, remarkable talents where computing and gaming were concerned, but because of their struggles in social settings, risked never being able to apply those skills in paid jobs. “The institute was born out of two parents worrying about their kids,” Selec said. “I didn’t just want to start another nonprofit. I wanted to do something practical. I wanted a lifetime solution.”

Full story on autism and unemployment crisis at The Verge

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Free HIV tests for teens in public raise eyebrows

At first, John Chittick went alone, approaching teens to ask if they wanted to be tested for HIV with an over-the-counter kit.

The home test kits, approved last summer by the federal Food and Drug Administration for people 17 and older, use a simple oral swab and take 20 minutes to deliver results.

Chittick, the cheery, unorthodox leader of an AIDS education group, started the testing effort last October. Since then, he has broadened it, testing teens and young adults on public streets and in city parks and bringing volunteers of his Norfolk-based TeenAIDS-PeerCorps to videotape those he approaches.

Chittick, 65, also invites the media along.

Teens and young adults have been videotaped getting tested and finding out, on camera, whether they tested positive or negative for the virus that causes AIDS, a disease of the immune system transmitted through bodily fluids during sex or through infected needles.

Full story of free HIV tests for teens at Pilot Online

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Resilient Youth: Using Psychology to Prevent a Lost Generation

Switching on the news last night, I heard a young graduate telling a reporter, “I’ve done everything that society told me to do, and I’m still not finding employment.” As his words trailed off, the despair in his voice seemed to capture a generation that’s feeling let down and unsure where to turn. Increasingly, recent surveys from NUS and The Prince’s Trust suggest, the blame seems to be turning inwards.

There is research showing that in previous periods of high youth unemployment, those affected continued to be hampered professionally and socially long after the recession ended – a phenomenon that has been described as the ‘scarring effect‘. It’s data like this that gives some weight to the otherwise melodramatic claim that today’s young people may go down in history as a ‘lost generation‘.

One explanation for the ‘scarring effect’ is the psychological impact of unemployment. Research links unemployment with a perceived loss of control, and with what some psychologists call ‘learned helplessness’, which is a strong predictor of depression. Perceived loss of control is also linked to decreased performance and wellbeing at work – a correlation that exists not just in the western world, but globally.

Full story of youth and psychology at Huffington Post

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Online Media and Teen Suicide

In the wake of 12-year-old Gabrielle Molina’s suicide late last month, devastated parents and startled communities are seeking answers for how to best protect children and teens from the pressures of cyberbullying and digital harassment. Molina, a repeated victim of aggression from peers at school, also may have dealt with recurrent bullying online. A video of Molina fighting another student worked its way onto YouTube before her death, and Molina made reference to cyberbullying events in a suicide note left behind before she hanged herself in her home in Queens Village.

According to a preliminary report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 38,285 deaths were attributed to intentional self-harm in 2011, which represented the 10th leading cause of death for the year. During the same year, the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey found that 16% of high school students experienced some form of digital bullying within the past year.

Clearly, the pressures children and teens face online are more considerable now than in years passed. Victims are often unable to separate themselves from bullies who are just a click away online. Hateful text messages and the spreading of inappropriate content on social media, cell phones and video websites also represent serious concerns for parents, law enforcement agencies and educators. In addition to intentional aggression, today’s young people are also more aware when they are left out of social events due to real-time updates on Facebook.

Full story of teen suicide at Huffington Post

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City Seeking to Diversify Foster System

New York City is launching a campaign to recruit gay and lesbian foster parents, part of a major push to expand the kinds of families who consider fostering and to find more welcoming homes for children who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer.

The public ad campaign, set to roll out this week, features images of an interracial gay couple spending time with a young child. “Be the reason she has hope,” one of the ads reads. In another, a black woman is pictured alone with a white teenage boy. “Be the reason it gets better,” the message says.

How many of the nearly 13,000 children in New York City’s foster-care system identify as LGBTQ is unclear because the city does not keep such data. But, citing anecdotal evidence, researchers, child advocates and city officials insist that the children are disproportionately represented in the foster care system and say the need to find them supportive homes is great.

“When we decided to do this campaign we knew that LGBTQ young people are disproportionately represented in our foster care population, especially among our teens,” said Ronald Richter, commissioner of the Administration for Children’s Services, the city’s child welfare agency.

Full story of  diverse foster system at The Wall Street Journal

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